Dogsitting at Trimble Park

We just spent two weeks at Trimble Park, an Orange County Park we stayed at in previous years in the area and the last of the main 4 parks for us to visit this year.  We stayed at a corner site we'd used on our first visit, which benefits from a good view of the lake and a large relatively private campsite.  

Site 13 at Trimble Park

As we arrived, our neighbor mentioned this was the 'best' Orange County park.  I've reflected before about the various merits of the different parks, and although I think it's hard to pick an objective best, this one certainly is nice.  It's hard to beat the lakeside sites (about half are on the lake, a few more on an inlet, and I think just two have no water 'access' (not that you're going in the water at any of these points)).  The park maintenance here is really top notch, keeping everything in great shape mechanically and cleaning the bathrooms three times a day.  There are nice walking trails and a good park with playgrounds if you have need of it.  The campsites have good fire rings and separate charcoal grills, and the fire rings have wooden benches!  HOWEVER, in bad news for us...they've changed their policies here (I wasn't aware).  When we pulled in and talked to a ranger, he asked how big our RV was...when I answered (40 feet), he said newly this season they have restricted access to just 35 feet long and 12 feet tall, as they have had complaints from larger RVs hitting the trees and they would like to trim the trees LESS and not more.  Luckily for us, though he offered us a refund and to leave, he allowed us to 'take our chances' and stay...given that we've stayed here multiple times before, we took our chances and had no problem at all.  However, if they'll be trimming the trees less and enforcing the length restriction more in the coming years, there's a good likelihood we won't be camping here again, which is a little sad.

The highlight of this trip was taking care of my sister's dog Beamer (named after the former VT football coach Frank Beamer, not the car!) while she and her family went on a Disney cruise (yes, we were jealous!).  Fortunately, Beamer had stayed in the RV twice before with my sister, so it wasn't a totally unfamiliar spot for him, and of course he knows and loves us, so he settled in just fine.  I'd go out on a limb and say this was kind of a vacation for him, as he got to go on more and longer walks than he gets at home (due to the 4 children demanding most of the adult time at home), and the park had so many wonderful smells for him to explore.  He certainly seemed to love it!  I have to share some pictures here of his time with us :-).

His bed *just* fit in the living room

Emptying the tank - he seemed quite
happy to just trot back and forth between
the RV and the dump station - much
better than being left alone while we 
did the chore!

Aaron had to re-level the RV midway 
through the week - Beamer was alarmed
that the house was moving!

Sitting by the lake on our campsite.  He never looked at the lake -
he was always looking back toward the campground for any
hazards that we needed alerting to.

At the dock in the campground

He squeezed himself in the tiny spot on my side of the bed
to sleep at night (he split his night time between this spot, a spot 
on Aaron's side, and a spot at the foot of the bed - all pretty tiny)

Beamer's sleeping spot on Aaron's side of the bed

The other highlight of the week was a visit from our friend Mary and her daughter Lisa.  They live in St. Louis but had come to Florida for Spring Training.  They came up midday and we spent the afternoon hiking, playing games, and enjoying a campfire.  Good times!

Playing games under the RV awning in the rain!  It only rained 
for about 45 minutes but Aaron captured the moment.  We stayed
outside because the rain wasn't TOO bad and we didn't have a
big enough table to play inside.

At the campfire in the evening.  Beamer's sitting next to me
but you probably can't see the black dog in the dark.

One of the big perks of Trimble Park is, of course, the wildlife.  It's a fairly remote area and the wildlife are quite abundant.  We saw a large owl, a red shouldered hawk, a couple woodpeckers, raccoons, and tons of water birds...and of course a handful of alligators!  I disturbed a hawk that had just captured a snake and saw it fly away with the snake in its talons!  Unfortunately I didn't have my phone with me for most of these sightings, so you'll have to settle for this one photo of a woodpecker.  He was SUPER noisy chipping massive chunks of bark off the tree and having them crash to the ground.

Blurry zoomed-in woodpecker

Alligator!  This one was right next to our campsite.  I'd estimate
he was about 2 feet long.

View from our campsite

Aaron made a lovely campfire for our last night at the park

It was a great two weeks!  We thoroughly enjoyed our dogsitting and experiencing camping with a dog - it always looked so fun watching other people do it!  The only bad thing about the dogsitting was taking Beamer out for his final walk after dark before we went to bed - as I said, this place was TEEMING with wildlife, most of whom are most active a dusk and right after.  Beamer found two raccoons, which spooked me terribly until I determined they were raccoons and not alligators (he detected them several feet away in the brush).  I was always a bit on edge walking him at night, but other than that it was fun!