Full time RV Park Living: Thunderbird Airpark

As I mentioned in the last post, our goal was to move the RV to a park a close drive to the property we're still attempting to buy.  This is Thunderbird Airpark, primarily of course an airpark, but they have 7 RV sites that they lease out for quite a reasonable rate.  They don't advertise the RV sites anywhere that I've found, so as far as I can tell these sites are full completely due to word of mouth or the occasional person like us that happened to drive by.

Our site at the airpark - still pretty tight!

Standing in front of the RV looking down the row of RVs - 
the grass strip is about 2/3s of the way between the RVs and the fence

We did spend some time at the property measuring out the driveway, house site, and septic field so we could finish our site plan, since that will be necessary for the building permit.  Our house plan is still underway, but we know what the footprint will be so we can go ahead with the site plan.

Measuring out the septic location at the bottom of the property 

I did drag Aaron to explore one site in the area - Ravine Gardens State Park.  The park has a couple of hiking trails and even a driving trail around the ravine (much to Aaron's delight!).  It's not a huge amount to look at, but it was serene and close!

At the bottom of the ravine

Aaron's parents came to visit for a weekend and we explored nearby Welaka State Forest, including Mud Spring, which was beautiful!

Mud Spring!

With Aaron's parents at Mud Spring

At Orange Point on the John's Landing Trail

 

We also checked out 12 Below Zero Ice Cream Bar in Pomona Park and went birding at Welaka National Fish Hatchery.

Enjoying waffle bowls at 12 Below Zero

Watching birds at the Observation Tower at the Beecher Unit 
at the Welaka National Fish Hatchery

We went to my sister's house for Easter and had a great time as always.

Dressed up for Easter dinner with my sister's family

My parents also came to visit for a few hours to see the property, visit our fun local hardware store (Hill's Hardware), and take us to lunch at 3 Bananas, an awesome place on the water in Crescent City.  They had come to Florida to visit my sister, so a few hours wasn't as crazy as it sounds!

The view from our seat at 3 Bananas

In local news, our new neighbors at the airpark took us to the local Fraternal Order of Eagles here in Lake Como, and we liked it so well we became members!  Turns out most of the people in RVs at the airpark are also members...I'm seeing how the word of mouth must have gone around for people to know the airpark accepts RVs!  

Helping our neighbors serve dinner in the Eagles' kitchen

I worked the register while Aaron washed dishes

Back at the airpark the baby sandhill cranes are growing up!

The last excitement for the last month-ish was when we were surprised by a burst drainage pipe under the sink after I did dishes one night!  I always thought it was remarkable that it didn't split before... since our sink is on the main slide, there is a flexible pipe that connects the sink drain to the inflexible drain in the rest of the RV, and it flexes back and forth and back and forth all the time as we bring the slide in and out.  So we had a late evening trip into Palatka (with the closest open hardware store) to buy a new pipe and fittings.  Fortunately it was a straightforward fix once we had the right materials!

Broken pipe!

Aaron working on fixing the pipe - access
was not easy

All fixed!

In land news... our latest update from the lawyers is that it will take another 2-3 months to resolve probate, determine the legal heir that needs to sign off on the revised legal description for the property, and get that signature.  Since Aaron can't stand to just sit in this park so close to the property he can't work on, we've decided to head back north for the summer.  We decided to go on a two week Alaskan cruise to use up some cruise credits we gained last summer during our COVID adventure, and then we'll spend the rest of the summer escaping from the heat in Virginia.  As soon as we actually own the property we'll head back to Florida and get to work!

Full Time RV Park Living: Trailboss

I titled this post to reflect that although we've been living in the RV for over 3 years now, we have never really lived in an RV park month to month as so many people do (at least snowbirds that we see down here!).  Month to month RVers pay their own electricity and might actually get involved with their local community and such, and this is our first time venturing into that realm.  For those who maybe haven't read my recent posts, we made an offer on some land in central Florida, and we have stopped our nomad life to settle down close to this property to start work on building a house.

There are a few RV spots across the street from where we plan to build a house, but those spots were not available in late February when we needed to start this more permanent lifestyle.  So we rented a spot for a month at Trailboss RV & Marina in nearby Welaka.  This was an interesting stay for us - the park itself is not much to look at, with mostly permanent guests.  It's under new management and they're working on improvements.  However, the lady who manages the park is absolutely delightful, and because of her I would gladly recommend this park to anyone looking for a monthly stay in the region.  When we first arrived we had some power problems at our pole, and she and her husband spent all evening working with Aaron to get them sorted out.  She greeted us cheerfully every time we passed and even chatted with us when we saw her at work at Lowe's.

Our spot at Trailboss - front view - note the retaining wall; 
the manager called this her "bus" spot because it was too
difficult for trailers to pull into.

Rear view of the spot.  We're pretty close to those neighbors!

Aside from the awesome property manager, the definite highlight of this park was its location on the St. John's River.  The marina is currently closed, but we could walk down to the water and the sunsets there were gorgeous.

The non-functioning marina.  It suffered some damage during the 
hurricanes in the fall.

Sunset over the river!  We wandered down to the river several 
evenings during our stay to watch the sunset.

We went on two cruises while the RV was parked at Trailboss.  Both were with other people, which was fun, and the timing of each was determined by those other people's schedules, which is why they were only two weeks apart!  Our first cruise was with our friends Mary and Mark from St. Louis, aboard the Carnival Sunrise.  We went to Nassau and Grand Turk - our first time in Grand Turk, which was very fun!  The second was with my sister and her whole family, which mean we had kids in our stateroom for the first time ever!  This was aboard the Carnival Elation and included our first ever trip to Freeport, Bahamas.

Formal night in the main dining room

Near the Mercury space program monument in Grand Turk - 
John Glenn's capsule splashed down in Grand Turk's waters in 1962 

In Freeport at Pinders Point Lighthouse,
about 1 mile walk from the cruise port - pictured
with my sister and her oldest son (the only
one who could make the walk)

In Nassau we took a semi-submersible tour of the coral reef - 
here we are with my sister's whole family

So...the whole point of stopping the nomad lifestyle was to start working on a house, right?  Right...  Shortly after we arrived at Trailboss, the title company contacted us to let us know that there was an error with the legal description of the property on the deed, which prevented them from writing title insurance for the property.  We already had a survey scheduled (after the original closing date), so we waited for that survey and provided the official updated boundaries to the title company.  Their next step was to contact all the people who had previously held a deed on the property (the error on the legal description dates back 50 years to when the property was first carved out of a larger parcel) so that they could sign off on the revised description and confirm that the error did not give them legal right to the property.  However, in the middle of this whole process the first owner of the property passed away, so now we are waiting for probate on her estate to determine her legal heir who can sign off on the deed.  So no progress on this front!  We have decided we like the property well enough that it is worth waiting for, so we're proceeding with our house plans and scouting out boundaries and whatnot to create a site plan.

The potential house location outline

The front of the property, with our planned driveway flagged

Baby sandhill cranes across the street!!

Our first foray into long-term RV park living turned out quite well.  We enjoyed interacting more with our neighbors, and I was a lot less nervous about going on cruises knowing we weren't days away from moving the RV once we got back.  The lovely park manager even picked our packages up for us while we were away!  So I think this stage of our lives will be fun as well!

Family Camping at Magnolia Park...Our last real camping trip?

Due to the short stay at Southern Palms, we enjoyed a nearly two week stay at Magnolia Park!  This was kind of a nice ending to our nomad lifestyle - a long stay in a public park, our favorite, peaceful, kind of camping.  Our next sites will be month+ long stays at proper RV parks where we're properly paying a monthly rate, with the ultimate goal of moving the RV onto our potential property as soon as we have water and sewer hooked up.  But more on that later.  

Our campsite at Magnolia Park - right on the path to the bathroom!

The kids appreciated the easy access to the bathroom.  We had lots of fun cooking out, playing games, playing catch, driving on the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive, and searching for roosting peacocks at night!

Playing Telestrations around the campfire

With my sister and nephews in front of the first large alligator
we found on the wildlife drive

This alligator was so close!

If you zoom in you might be able to see that there was an
alligator's nest at the far side of the water.  The kids wanted to 
come out to see but my sister insisted on having them hold hands
constantly so they wouldn't fall in near alligator mom.

Aaron got his old chainsaw up and running while we were at the campground - a feat that required lots of cleaning and a couple small replacement parts.  We'll need the chainsaw for land clearing once we actually own some land!  My parents brought Aaron a bunch of his tools from the farm in West Virginia - a small enough set to fit in the RV basement but large enough to put together a shed so we can go get a larger load and have room to store the tools.

Aaron with his working chainsaw

We enjoyed our last peaceful nights at Magnolia Park reflecting on our nomad RV journey and making sure to enjoy some good campfires!  Aaron and I have some conflicting views on our future in camping - while we still have an RV, I'd like to run out to a public park every couple months or so, but Aaron is completely focused on building a house (once we can!) and stopping driving the RV so we can drop the expensive RV insurance...we'll see how things end up working out!  We've decided we enjoyed our 3.5 years on the road, seeing the sites and meeting neat people.  We are both disappointed that crowding and costs made it impractical for us to really get out and explore the country the way we thought we would...of course everyone has different tolerances for these things, we know plenty of people are going out and exploring despite these issues, but it didn't work out for us.  We also hated the thought of being away from family for a year or more that would have been required for a real round the country trip.  But we enjoyed the adventures we did take, the big Texas trip being a highlight, and also just being exposed to this whole other aspect of living that we hadn't understood before.

Our last campfire

This peacock had no fear walking near
running cars

The peacocks finally put on a display as we were leaving!  With
the peahens gone, they did not display very often.  As far as I 
could tell, these two were trying to intimidate a squirrel.

So what's the future of this blog?  I think I'll keep it going as long as we have the RV.  Hopefully we will get out camping a few more times before we sell it, and if we can ever close on this property we'll have some building adventures to share while we're living in the RV on the land.

Back at Southern Palms, ever so briefly

We finally hit my most painful reservation of the season - wherein I could find only 8 days at only one of the Orlando area Thousand Trails parks.  We managed to get back in at Southern Palms, and initially I could only get 6 days!  I kept on trying though and managed to inch the reservation up to 8 days with other peoples' cancellations.  Fortunately, we really enjoyed being at Southern Palms before - it's a great location for access to thrift shops, groceries, and land searching - so the fact this was the only park I could find ended up being good...but the fact we could only stay 8 days, not so good.  Aaron forgot to take a picture of our campsite this time, but we ended up staying in a different satellite campground (Pines section rather than Sun section, if you look at the map), right across from the laundry room, which I THOROUGHLY appreciated.

We stopped by our hopeful property-to-be on our way to my sister's place for our twin nephews' birthday celebration.  We wanted to mark out an approximate house location and approximate septic drain field sites for the health inspector, who was coming later in the day to do a percolation test before we close on the property (timing of that still to be determined...).

Our approximate house site.  We chose a spot at the top of the
hill with as few trees as possible - we want to keep as many 
trees on the property as we can.

Aaron felled our first tree!  This thing
was thoroughly rotten and fell over 
without substantial effort.

We met up with my parents at my sister's house right as they went to pick up the kids from the school bus.  We had a fun-filled family weekend celebrating the twins!

Aaron taking the twins to their karate class in the golf cart

Aaron made lightsaber handles from skewers, duct tape, and a 
permanent marker.  My sister will use them to serve fruit at 
the twins' party with friends the next weekend.

The big outing for their birthday was to the USS Orleck, newly arrived in Jacksonville.  They are still working on converting it to a full-blown museum, so we weren't able to explore the entire ship, but what we saw was cool and we really enjoyed listening to the two retired Navy docents working there.  One really unusual thing compared to other naval ships we've explored was that this ship was used by the Turkish navy for a while, so many of the words were in Turkish!

Approaching the USS Orleck

On deck with the missile battery

The logo/coat of arms for the ship
laid out in rubber flooring on deck

Finally, in an action we should be questionably proud of, we taught two of our nephews to play poker!  The older one had crazy beginner's luck and won most of the hands...not quite the lesson against gambling that we were hoping for!

Aaron teaching the kids poker.  No real money changed hands.

And in case you're wondering...the land passed the perc test!  Now we're just waiting on the title search before we can finalize the purchase.

Dogsitting at Trimble Park - Second Time

We spent a little over a week at Trimble Park, in the same campsite as the one we used last year when taking care of my sister's dog.  Technically you're not supposed to have more than a 35' RV in this park now (new regulation last year), but the trees still haven't grown in enough to prevent our 40' monstrosity from navigating the roads.  We weren't planning to stay in this park this season because of the new length restriction, but with the 60-day return limit on the individual Orange County Parks and the fact that half of them won't let you bring a dog...we had to risk it so we could take care of our dog nephew while my sister's family went to Disney World.

Campsite at Trimble Park - that's Lake Carlton in the background

As always at Trimble Park, the view from our campsite was gorgeous!

Beamer arrived a couple days after we did, dropped off as the family drove to Disney World.  Having stayed with us about a month ago, he settled right back into the routine we established over Christmas.

Happy puppy!

The big news for this stay is that we found a lot to make an offer on in Putnam County, Florida!  We made the offer the night before Beamer arrived and took him up to the land to try to do a survey (which did NOT work, as this land had not been surveyed before and did not have pins set...it's a 'metes and bounds' parcel, which means a real surveyor has to figure out the boundaries based on bearings from known locations...only subdivisions in Putnam County have proper plats recorded at the courthouse).

Looking at the property before we decided to make an offer

Picnic lunch at Riverfront Park on our way to try to survey 
the property

Cool wood carvings at Riverfront Park

We returned Beamer to his family near the end of our stay, meeting them at a branch of their boat club on nearby Lake Eustis.  The boat ride through the lakes and canals of central Florida was really neat, and quite different compared to the boat rides we've taken with them before on the intracoastal waterway.

With my sister's family on the canal leading to Lake Eustis

We had a campfire near the end of our stay at Trimble Park - always try to do at least one when we're in the public parks!

Sunset at the campfire

Time will tell how the land purchase process goes!