Campground Crowding! And a look at Orange County Parks

We just finished up a short (5 day) stay at Moss Park, an Orange County park where we've stayed many times, so I figured rather than extoll the many virtues of the park again, I'd talk some more about what got us here and Orange County parks in general.

But first, the obligatory campsite pic!  We returned to site 54, the first site we ever had here, with its nice seclusion at the end of the park loop.

Moss Park campsite

While we were at Moss Park, we visited Animal Kingdom and Epcot, and had beautiful days at both.  We were at Epcot for the first day of the Festival of the Arts and witnessed (but did not participate in!) the unreal 7 hour lines for the Figment Popcorn Bucket!

The Lion King 50th anniversary statues

Up close and personal with a giraffe on
Kilimanjaro Safaris!

We caught the Jungle Book version of the new KiteTails show

Mickey and Minnie on the river!

Painting Epcot's version of Starry Night

Full view of the paint-by-number mural (background) with the 
expectation of the finished product on the bookmark (foreground)

So, back to the promised content.  You may or may not have noticed we're off our typical 2-week Thousand Trails 1-week County Park camping schedule for the Orlando winter.  This is because 2 months ago, when I attempted to make a Thousand Trails reservation for the second week of January, NONE of the Thousand Trails parks in the Orlando area were available.  NONE.  We've had weeks in previous years where we had to settle for our least favorite of the Thousand Trails in the area, but we've never before experienced a time when we couldn't book ANYTHING.  We *think* this was because the Disney marathon weekend occurred over the time frame we were trying to book.  So, due to this, we ended up booking two weeks at Kelly Park.  But then...we thought we'd be able to get into Thousand Trails for the third week of January but NO, again, EVERYTHING was booked.  This time it seemed to be due to the Martin Luther King Jr holiday.  So, maxed out at Kelly Park (we can only stay 2 weeks at a given county park), we had to move to another park.  I tried to move just down the street to Trimble Park, but NO again, there was nothing available!  This is particularly unreal - I've never had trouble booking a county park at the start of the booking window.  So we ended up at Moss Park, even though it's the farthest away from Kelly Park, because (I assume) it has a lot more campsites available.  Of course Moss Park is lovely and we enjoyed our stay, but this experience was a bit unnerving for both of us.

Campground crowding has been a hot topic in the RV podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. that we follow.  Aaron has been quite concerned about what this means for our future for some time, but I adopted a more optimistic attitude...  However this experience has got us both thinking.  Our little 2-week/1-week schedule has worked really well for us the past two years, and with it challenged so strongly these past few weeks, we're thinking the lifestyle we hoped for - with a bit of spontaneity! - might not be possible for a while.  Now, we're probably inappropriately extrapolating our 2 week experience in one location to year-round across the country, but as linked above we're not the only ones experiencing issues.  I saw a headline flash by a few weeks ago that said you needed to book things now 6 months in advance, which is just much more advance planning than we usually have!  So we will see how the rest of the season goes (we typically book 45/60 days in advance, so far so good on the next 45/60 days), but if we regularly find these kinds of issues, we may be dissuaded from this lifestyle.  Having a 40-ft behemoth of an RV without a place to park overnight is quite a worry for me!!

The other thing I thought I'd mention is much less dramatic - looking at an interesting trend in the Orange County Parks.  Now that we've stayed in Kelly Park, and with my memory refreshed on Moss Park, I noticed a couple things.  I feel that you can group the Orange County Parks into two categories - Moss Park and Kelly Park have an entrance gate with an entry fee for general park use and do not allow pets.  Trimble Park and Magnolia Park are free for day use and do allow pets.  Moss Park and Kelly Park have more, larger, more private sites with nicer bathhouses (with actual shower stalls with doors, for example).  Trimble Park and Magnolia Park have fewer campsites with less privacy and cheaper bathhouses (they're still nicer than many we've seen, but opt for shower curtains instead of doors and don't have as nice a changing area).  There's an obvious correlation here if the parks have more money because they collect day use entry fees, so they have more money to spend on nicer accommodations, but it is interesting that there's not a difference in the actual cost to camp.  I'm struggling to understand the difference in the pet policy.  One thought I had is that it's hard to enforce a pet policy if you don't actually talk to each car on the way in at the entry gate.  I suppose they might also want to avoid the pet waste issue in their 'nicer' parks.  Not sure on this one but it's an interesting correlation!

Hope you enjoy my random musings!  :-)

Kelly Park and Florida Springs

Over the last couple weeks we discovered a wealth of gorgeous locations in Florida created by the presence of large springs.  Kelly Park, a county park in Orange County, was the cause of this discovery.  This is the only Orange County campground we hadn't yet visited.  A neighbor at Trimble Park told us last year that Kelly Park was a nice park and we should try it out.  'Nice' was an understatement!  Kelly Park has the largest campsites of all the county parks, with corresponding privacy, and holds the absolutely incredible Rock Springs.  Our former neighbors had told us that it could be difficult to get into with a big rig, but we had no trouble at all.  To be fair, there is a tight curve to follow if you follow the park's signs to the campground, and perhaps that would have been difficult, but the park ranger advised us to drive out of the park and pull around to the after hours gate, and when we did that we had absolutely no trouble getting to our campsite in our 40' RV.

Look at that massive campsite!

We wandered down to the springs and were completely blown away by the view that awaited us.  I was used to springs in Virginia that trickled down the side of a mountain.  I was completely unprepared for the gorgeous high-flow creek created by Rock Springs.  The water was completely clear and with the sunshine and trees it had a turquoise color that reminded us of the Caribbean Sea.  This spring is a popular tubing destination, and mid-stream the park built a reinforced swimming area, careful to prevent runoff from the ground and parking lot from reaching the clear water.  At only $5/car, this is a great deal for a family outing!  Pictures won't do it justice but I'll attach a few anyway.

The springs start in the cave behind the floats

My sister came to visit a few days while we were here, and we decided to explore some of the other springs in the area - Wekiwa Springs State Park (wekiwa means 'spring' so the name is kind of funny) and Blue Spring State Park.  Wekiwa Springs' primary focus was a huge swimming hole, which was still remarkably clear but did not have the pristine quiet appeal of the spring head of Rock Springs.  I think if you were to rent a canoe or kayak you might be able to see some more beautiful areas there.  Blue Spring was a real treat though...the park ranger let us know as we drove in that SeaWorld was there to release a rescued manatee!!  We couldn't believe our luck.  Apparently manatee sightings are very common at the park (the springs were full of manatees - the rangers counted 38 the day we were there), but it was such a treat to watch the recovered manatee released to the wild.  They told us that the manatee had been rescued 500 pounds lighter in February 2021 when she was suffering from cold stress.  She required CPR from a University of Florida veterinarian at some point to recover!  After almost a year of rehabilitation, she had grown to 900 pounds and they decided she was ready to return to the wild.

   

We also enjoyed seeing the other manatees in the springs - we're pretty sure we even saw one or two babies!

Mother and baby?

Not a manatee but it was hilarious watching this alligator haul
himself out of the water to sunbathe on the log

This is the released manatee - she fit right in with the 
manatees already there, and we could keep track of her easily
by the breakaway satellite tracker they attached to her tail

With my sister

We drove my sister down into Disney World one day to go to one of our favorite restaurants - Sanaa - where we enjoyed the 'bread service' and were treated to ostriches hanging out right near our table!

With my sister back at Rock Springs

As if all that excitement wasn't enough, we did do a few other things while we stayed at Kelly Park.  We bopped into Magic Kingdom one day - still VERY busy due to a marathon week at Disney World, happened across a very randomly placed Challenger memorial at a local school, and enjoyed biking, hiking, and wildlife watching at Kelly Park.

A memorial to the Challenger

These wild turkeys made a pass through the campground 
every day

We also spent a lot of time emptying our new waste tote over the two weeks!  Thank goodness we have it!  With regular water usage we can go about 2 days between hauling a load to the dump station.  (I know, you're asking: what about the 4 days you used to be able to stay off sewer? Well, with the waste tote, I don't haul the dishwater to the bathhouse dishwashing station anymore, and that makes all the difference.  Also, the tote only hauls 21 gallons from our 60 gallon tank, and we don't usually make more than 2 runs at a time.)  Aaron figured out a good way to hook the tote up to the car so he doesn't have to break his back hauling the tote to the dump station, which was particularly good this time because we were quite far from the dump station at this campsite.  We did have to do this once while my sister was with us, so she got some good pictures of waste toting in action!

Filling the waste tote from our gray tank

Aaron's rig to attach the tote to the car - the blue straps are 
ratcheting straps attached to the metal loops on each side of
the car (where the back door latches) - we added work towels
to protect the bumper

Emptying the tote at the dump station - I keep my foot on the
cover to prevent the elbow from popping out of the sewer hole

Overall it was an AWESOME two weeks at Kelly Park, and my only regret is that we missed out staying here the last two years!  Also, I think I've already booked the rest of our stays in the Orlando area (though we're still working out the details of when we want to leave), so we probably won't be back this year.  If you're in the area, check this out!  It's really an awesome place to be.