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.
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| 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. |
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| 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.
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| The non-functioning marina. It suffered some damage during the hurricanes in the fall. |
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| 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.
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| Formal night in the main dining room |
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| Near the Mercury space program monument in Grand Turk - John Glenn's capsule splashed down in Grand Turk's waters in 1962 |
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| 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) |
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| 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.
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| The potential house location outline |
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| The front of the property, with our planned driveway flagged |
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| 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!
