Back at Rose Bay...for the last time??

After Thanksgiving we headed back to Rose Bay RV Resort for a couple weeks.  Our original plan for the winter, which I've probably mentioned before, was to stay at the three Thousand Trails parks in the Daytona Beach area to be a bit closer to my sister, since we dropped our Disney Annual Passes and thus had no reason to be tied to the Orlando area.

Our campsite at Rose Bay

This time around our campsite was on mushy ground (due mostly to recent rainfall) and we only had 30amp power.  We were completely surprised that the RV park even HAD 30amp power (large RVs like ours and certainly all the permanent sites prefer 50amp power), but I couldn't remember if somehow I'd selected a 'value' site or something 2 months ago when I booked it, and we can survive on 30amp, so we didn't pursue it.  Last season one of our pads on our stabilizing jacks ripped off, and Aaron attached the remnant to the jack to keep it level this summer, but this was our first indication that it's really not the same...the affected jack, with a much smaller surface area, just kept on sinking farther and farther into the soft ground.  We ended up filling about a foot-deep hole with trash concrete we found at the edge of the RV park before the jack finally stopped sinking.  So we need to figure out a better solution to that...

Aaron decorated our RV for Christmas - I think he did a great job!

Ok this has nothing to do with Christmas
but while we were out at night this cute guy
was jumping on our car

Christmas lights!

We went to visit the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse during this stay.  It was a neat complex, with all the buildings well preserved/restored for both the lighthouse and the surrounding keepers' houses.  It is Florida's tallest lighthouse and still operates, though now it is in civilian hands.

At the entrance to the complex

Atop the lighthouse

While we were staying at Rose Bay, Aaron took advantage of living in Florida to book a VERY last minute cruise (two days' notice!!) on the Celebrity Silhouette - I'll make a separate post about that.  As we left on the cruise I attempted to book our next Thousand Trails stay...and hence the title.  For 3 stays now I've tried to book a Thousand Trails campground in the Daytona area with no success, and I've had increasing difficulty finding ANYTHING.  The first time, over Christmas, I didn't think much of it - it was a holiday, after all, and I was able to find a full two weeks in the Orlando area.  The second time also included a holiday weekend (MLK Jr day), so I thought maybe that was a problem, and I couldn't find anything in Orlando and had to call to have someone help me find a place outside Orlando for only 12 days (couldn't get 14).  This last attempt didn't include any holidays and I couldn't find any availability anywhere in the 10ish parks in the greater Orlando/Daytona area.  After several days of trying I found 7 days at the same outside Orlando park - I think someone must have cancelled a reservation.  This time the Thousand Trails phone line was so busy they weren't even allowing you to stay on hold for help.  So...things are looking very bad.  The true intense snowbird season is starting in January and with the hurricane closing a lot of parks on the west coast it seems that we're going to have a lot of trouble the rest of the season.  I'm a bit stressed!  We'll see what happens next time I need to book something...

We didn't take any pictures, but during the hurricane we experienced something odd with our RV where the engine lost power in surges and white smoke came out of the tailpipe.  Aaron read the code off our code reader that we purchased back in Texas and the first (and simplest/cheapest) solution was to replace the fuel filter, which he did during our stay.  Fingers crossed that this fixes the problem!

The last weekend we were parked at Rose Bay we headed up to Charlotte for our friends' Christmas party.  They hold this pretty much every year and it's always a good time!

Playing Catan at our friends' house the night before the party - 
for almost the first time ever, I won!

With my Bank of America friends at the Christmas party

Thanksgiving 2022

We struggled a bit finding somewhere to put the RV for Thanksgiving.  Since my sister and her kids were working/in school until Wednesday of the week, my original plan was to stay in Thousand Trails in the RV until Tuesday, then put the RV in storage and head to my sister's place.  However, in the first of what I was soon to find out was a long series of Thousand Trails booking difficulties, I couldn't find a place to park the RV into Thanksgiving week, so instead we decided to put the RV in storage on the Friday before Thanksgiving and spend over a week at my sister's (which all parties involved were excited about, so it ended up being a great thing!).  However, once we decided that, we could not find storage at any of the reasonably priced commercial storage locations in the area.  We finally thought to check the park where we'd be staying right before - Sunshine Holiday Daytona - and thankfully they had a mostly empty storage lot (most people who store with them are snowbirds who stay with them and store their RVs over the summer).  So come moving day all we had to do was pull the RV out of its camping spot and around the corner to the storage lot - nice!  Especially with gas prices these days!

We spent a fun week+ with my sister and her family, and my parents and aunt joined us after a few days.  We arrived in time to attend two of our nephews' belt promotion ceremony at their karate school, volunteer at a native American education event for the same two nephews, and attend a performance for our niece.

Belt promotion board kicking!

Belt promotion board kicking!

Aaron at his table with one of our nephews - 
the hostess introduced Aaron as an 'animal 
expert' with 'years of experience' ... which 
cracked us up as he only learned the names of the
animals associated with the pelts on his table
about 10 minutes earlier!

At our niece's performance, with my sister
and her husband and my parents

My sister and I went on a huge shopping trip for the week, determined that we weren't going back...all told I think we went back 9 more times that week 🤦... so much for that plan!

You'd think that would be enough groceries!

We made one big trip with everyone to Castillo de San Marcos, where two of the kids completed the Junior Ranger program.  It was fun!

Aaron with the boys inside the magazine-turned-dump at the fort

The kids with staff in uniform

Thanksgiving Day was so gorgeous we were able to have dinner out on my sister's lanai!  Short sleeves for everyone!

All in attendance at our Thanksgiving meal (including my 
sister's family, my parents, and my aunt)!

We stayed into the weekend after my parents and aunt left, and wrapped up the week with Christmas cookies, Christmas decorations, and a shark tooth hunting trip to nearby Mickler's Landing.  I found two shark teeth!  

With my sister's family at Mickler's Landing

The kids attempted to outweigh Aaron on the see-saw at one of 
the playgrounds in the neighborhood

We had a great week with family!  We picked up the RV from storage the Monday after Thanksgiving - it survived just fine in storage, and no signs of mice infestation this time!

First time Cruising with MSC: On the Meraviglia

Aaron found us a rather last minute 4-day cruise aboard the MSC Meraviglia that fit conveniently within our stay at Sunshine Holiday Daytona, allowing us to just leave the RV parked and hooked up to utilities for the few days we were away.  An escape to a tropical paradise was just what we needed after the dreariness and stress surrounding Hurricane Nicole.

This was our first time aboard an MSC ship of any kind.  We had planned to cruise with MSC during the European expedition we planned for 2020 (which COVID cancelled), so we had a bit of cruise credit with MSC that we needed to use up.  Turns out, with MSC, you have to use all of your cruise credit in one go - you can't use part of it and then use the rest later...and since we had originally booked a 2 week cruise and were now looking at a 4 day cruise...we had a lot of credit to use up!  The representative we spoke to eagerly helped us with this, booking us on the top level room category (the 'Aurea' experience - which included drinks, wifi, and access to an exclusive area on the ship, among other things) and adding all sorts of drinks and fruit baskets in our room.  So we were doing MSC in nearly the top way that we could - exciting!

Sure enough, when we entered our stateroom, our desk was COVERED with food and drink - from the two bottles of wine and two baskets of fruit the representative had ordered us, plus another set we assume was either due to Aaron's status (MSC allowed him to transfer his top-level status from his hotel status he acquired when he used to travel every week for work), the Aurea experience itself, or something else we booked that we didn't fully understand.  We received ANOTHER bottle of wine, a plate of cookies, and chocolates the next day.  We just took all the wine bottles off the ship for consumption over Thanksgiving - since we had the drinks package - but did try very hard to eat all the food we couldn't take off the ship (we made a sizeable dent but sadly didn't quite finish everything).

The spread greeting us when we entered our room

Enjoying the quiet and serenity of the exclusive Aurea area of the ship

We had mixed feelings about our first-ever purchase of a drinks package.  On the one hand we appreciated being able to pick up Coke Zeros at will around the ship and ordering beverages from the strolling attendants who were always eager to grab us drinks.  It was also really nice to have on the private island, where we went 'bar hopping' all around the island.  However, we felt like we needed to get our money's worth out of the package, which meant we drank more than we really wanted to (and still failed to drink enough to make it worth it), and since the package only covered drinks up to $9, we weren't able to get some of the more fun looking drinks that cost $10 or $11...if we hadn't had the package, we would have just paid for the fun drinks, but since we had it, we couldn't see paying extra for drinks on the ship!  So we're glad we finally experienced what the drinks package was like, but will definitely never do it again.

A few cool things on the ship itself...first, this was the only stateroom we've been in that had buttons INSIDE the room where you could set yourself in or away...I mean, the buttons were labeled differently, but they were there to tell your stateroom attendant where you were so he knew if he could make up your room.  I love it!  They triggered a set of lights above the door that indicated whether the room was clean or dirty, whether you'd chosen do not disturb, or whether you'd indicated you were out and ready for your room to be made up.

The main inside promenade area of the ship had a cool LED display on the ceiling - it reminded us of the light canopy on the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas.  The ceiling alternated between different scenes throughout the day, and a few times a day would have a scheduled animated show (dinosaurs, famous ceilings, etc.).  It was unique and quite fun!  The main promenade shop also included a chocolate shop with some incredible chocolate sculptures.

Here the ceiling was showing the world
in cloud form

Aaron loves Moana so I had to get a 
photo of him with the chocolate sculpture 
of Maui from the film

The highlight of the cruise itinerary was a two-day stop at their private island, Ocean Cay.  This island has a neat history as MSC reclaimed it from industrial use and turned it into a natural paradise.  It is a TINY island and you can easily walk the whole thing in no time at all.  They have a nighttime light show on the lighthouse for ships that stay overnight (like ours).  It was all blissfully relaxing and beautiful.  This was the one time we really enjoyed having the drink package as we did kind of a 'bar crawl' to explore the various beautiful settings to sit and have a drink.  Our ship was only about half full, so we had as much privacy as we desired the whole time.  We did meet some like-minded passengers at one of the bars, who live in their RV as well but also try to cruise as much as possible! 

A view of one of the beaches

The lighthouse bar with a view of our ship

Aaron at the lighthouse bar

Light show on the lighthouse!  We watched from the beach.

Overall we had a great experience with MSC.  Being a European-based cruise line, it did have some quirks like a lack of flat sheet on the bed (Europeans only use duvets) and (bonus!) a distinct lack of tipping culture.  All the staff we encountered were helpful and friendly, the ship was fun, and we loved the private island.  We are curious though how we'll feel in the future with only the base level stateroom package...time will tell.

We survived the hurricane!

Wow it's been a while!  We've been going nonstop since my last post, with two cruises, Thanksgiving, and a Christmas party out of town...more on those later.  I just realized that my last post left us preparing for the hurricane, so it kind of looks like we didn't survive it...we did!

As I mentioned in the last post, we were fortunate to make it to our next park (Sunshine Holiday Daytona) and set up before the rain hit.  In retrospect we were quite fortunate that our Moss Park reservation had been cancelled, as it left us with just a 30 minute drive in the growing wind and rain instead of a 1.5 hour drive.  We were also fortunate that we moved on the day we did, as Sunshine Holiday Daytona was closing their office that afternoon and not reopening until the storm passed (meaning: if we had delayed moving just one day we wouldn't have been able to check in and would have been 'homeless').  Finally, as the hurricane approached, the park we HAD been at (Rose Bay) came under a mandatory evacuation order, so if we had still been there we would have had to evacuate with the RV in intense winds on the interstate or abandon the RV to the park (which did end up flooding) as we escaped in the car.  We're feeling very blessed that things worked out the way they did...all these things combined to give us a safe way to get to a safe place to sit out the hurricane.

The calm before the storm!

The hurricane itself was much less stressful than I anticipated.  We kept our slides pulled in (partially because the slide seals don't deal well with driving rain while the slides are out, but mostly to make sure the slide covers, including the one we just replaced, didn't catch and rip in the wind) and stayed put.  The bedroom slide is out in the photo because I was gathering clothes to set out for the next few days - our bedroom cabinets and drawers are difficult to impossible to open with the slide pulled in.  The RV did rock a little bit in the intense wind, but never to the point we were worried about tipping over, and the wind didn't pick up anything that could become a projectile (though several palm fronds did fall straight down).  We were parked right next to the community center in the RV park, which provided a bit of a wind break, so we considered that fortunate as well.

Here is my feeble attempt to capture the wind and rain as viewed from my nice warm dry sofa inside the RV.

Aaron took a couple of screenshots from his weather app to document our experience.

Right after the hurricane we left the RV at Sunshine Holiday Daytona (which was distinctly NOT sunny) and went on a cruise!  More on that in the next post.

Rose Bay and Two Hurricanes!

We had decided earlier in the year that we would spend the winter bouncing between the three Thousand Trails parks in the Daytona Beach region; we usually spend the winter in Orlando, but since we dropped our annual passes to Disney World this year (considering the insane crowding and the various changes that have destroyed spontaneity in the park), we thought we'd try another area out.  We've been to two of the three parks in prior years, but this is the first time we stayed at Rose Bay.  

Our site at Rose Bay RV Resort

The Rose Bay resort sites were quite spacious by RV park standards, both wide and deep, and the park had the added perk of having the head of Rose Bay located in it, where we hear you can sometimes see manatees (something to look for when we return later in the season!).  Also the laundry is only $1.50 to wash/$1.50 to dry - one of the cheapest prices I've ever seen!  The ladies in the front office were friendly and helpful and our neighbors were friendly and quiet.  There were two downsides to the resort...first, it is located a little bit of a drive off the highway, which meant Aaron had to drive through a lot of stop and go traffic going through stoplights, which stresses him out.  Second, it was LITERALLY right on a train track, and the trains came through sounding their horns at all hours of the day and night, frequently shaking the RV.

The railroad was SO CLOSE

The first weekend we were parked here we drove up to my sister's new house in St. Augustine to go with them to the Jacksonville Naval Air Station's air show.  The highlight of this was getting to see the absolutely amazing Blue Angels!!  We had not seen them in person before, and their portion of the show was absolutely breathtaking.  The rest of the show was impressive as well, but nothing could compare to the Blue Angels.

With my sister's family standing in front of the Blue Angels' 
airplanes parked on the runway.  The ladies and the kids are
sporting USA sunglasses we picked up at a bank's tent.

The classic diamond formation for the Blue Angels.  Major 
kudos to Aaron for getting this amazing action shot!

We spent a quiet week not doing too much at Rose Bay and returned to my sister's house the following weekend for Aaron's birthday.  We went to an absolutely insane trunk-or-treat for their neighborhood, where people went all out decorating their trunks and had huge amounts of candy for the kids and alcohol for the adults!  

My sister and I got Aaron an Established Title to 5 square feet
of land in Scotland, which gives him the right to be called 'Lord 
Aaron'...make sure to remember that when you talk to him next!

Dressed up for Halloween with his
birthday cake

At the trunk-or-treat with my sister's family

My sister loved having Aaron there for the weekend because
it meant she had help carving the 'kids' pumpkins ('kids' in 
quotes because the kids tell her what they want on the 
pumpkin and then vanish while she does all the work).  Aaron
did the Pokémon ball and the scary pumpkin on the right.

After that things got interesting...well, we found out a little earlier, but this is when our plans changed.  We were supposed to leave after two weeks in our standard Thousand Trails-County Park rotation, but about a week and a half before our county park reservation we got a call from Orange County to tell us that the one park we happened to pick for our first stay of the season was still closed due to damage and flooding from Hurrican Ian.  While we were at Rose Bay we saw some damaged signs and huge piles of brush collected after the storm, but mostly everything seemed fine, so we hadn't expected any trouble in our RV stays.  So much for that idea!  So with 1.5 weeks to go we had to suddenly find an alternate location ... over a weekend ... in the winter season ... in Florida.  We were a bit panicked as all of our standard campground choices were full.  But we finally thought to ask at Rose Bay, and the helpful ladies at the front desk were able to work things out so that we stayed at our current site at a 20% Thousand Trails discount off their weekly rate, which brought the cost down within the range we were comfortable paying.  Phew! 

In our final week at Rose Bay we did a little more exploring of the immediate area.  Sadly we're not really beach people, so even though we were staying near Daytona Beach we didn't actually go to the beach.  Instead we explored nearby Spruce Creek Park, which had a nice little walking trail, and went to a local ice cream shop (Neighbors Ice Cream Parlor) where they made their own absolutely delicious ice cream. 

Hiking at Spruce Creek Park

Ice cream at Neighbors Ice Cream parlor
- don't worry they're not both Aaron's,
I had the waffle cone!

So the title promised two hurricanes...just our luck, our time at Rose Bay ended with the approach of soon to be Hurricane Nicole.  We took a look at the forecast for our travel day, where the winds started out the morning around 10mph or so but steadily increased to over 20mph during the time we should have been traveling to our next park, according to their check in time.  Torrential rain was promised starting around noon as well.  As a result, we rushed to get off the site early and got to our next park an hour before check OUT (two hours before check in).  With our early travel we avoided the worst of the winds (very important when driving a massive windcatcher like a 40ft RV!) and most of the rain, and were able to both tear down and set up without being rained on.  I'll tell you how we end up weathering the hurricane in the next post!

Cary State Forest...Again!

We spent a whole week at Cary State Forest - I think this may be the longest time we've spent there, though we've been to the campground many times.  Now that we have the waste tote, we can stay longer in places like this.  I think with this stay we have finally stayed in every one of the 6 campsites in the campground.  

Campsite 1 at Cary State Forest

We enjoyed relaxing in the campground for most of the week, but did make one excursion to Amelia Island at the recommendation of some friends in West Virginia.  We walked around the town of Fernandina Beach, which was cute.  It had lots of shops and restaurants and many of the buildings had a very Key West vibe.  Then we drove up to the north of the island to Fort Clinch State Park.  We thoroughly enjoyed our visit there - the fort was in great condition!   It was garrisoned during the Civil war, the Spanish-American War, and World War II.

Outside the welcome center in Fernandina Beach

Atop Fort Clinch

We found a tortoise on the way out of the fort!

We had a couple of nice campfires this week, giving Aaron his first chance to use his 'bellows' that he bought at Aldi this summer.  When a more gentle 'bellows' was needed, he resorted to our designated outdoor anti-mosquito fan...

With his new 'bellows' from Aldi

The more gentle 'bellows'

Campfire time!

Sunset over the campfire

We had a nice relaxing week after our quick trip south.  Next we'll make it to the Daytona Beach area, where we're hoping to spend most of the winter at three Thousand Trails parks in the area.

Back on the Road - Lake Wateree State Park

We're back on the road in the RV!  We left West Virginia in early October, it turns out just a few days before the first freeze of the season - just in time!  

We followed a typical path down south - stopping at a Cracker Barrel north of Charlotte overnight and ending our trip to Florida with a stay at the Thousand Trails Oaks at Point South - but we switched things up just a little bit in the middle, stopping by Lake Wateree State Park just a little north of Columbia, South Carolina.  One of my friends at Duke had recommended this to me when we first started our journey, so I was excited to finally try it out!

Our campsite at Lake Wateree

View of the lake from the front of the RV!

Although we weren't lakeside per se, we did have a campsite on the inner side of the road that had a relatively unobstructed view of the lake!  We enjoyed watching the water from our campsite and several hard-to-access beachy areas around the park.

Aaron 'swimming' in Lake Wateree - this was a beach across
from our campsite

We enjoyed dinner from the campfire and found an adorable frog while we were out hiking.  We were promised views of a beaver dam on the hike but couldn't identify it anywhere along the route - the cute frog made up for it somewhat!

Building a fire

Fireside dinner!

Can you see the frog?

The most fun part about this park was the over-the-top Halloween decorations throughout the park.  We only took pictures of a few decorations, and I won't bore you with even all of those, but it was just really cool how much effort the state park put into making everything festive!  Based on one banner we saw we think they may actually host some sort of Halloween event at some point.

A skeleton family's campsite near the road

Skeleton fishermen!

If you're into fishing, there was a large boat ramp at the main office and then places to tie your boat up near the campground, so it looked excellent for that.  We're not into fishing, but we thoroughly enjoyed the serenity of the place and of course all the decorations!  I'm glad we finally checked this place out!