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.

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!

Always a Project

After our delightful stay at Fort Wilderness, we left vacation mode and got back to more normal day-to-day life.  Our next stop was Sherwood Forest, a Thousand Trails resort where we stayed for two weeks.  We've stayed here before and it's definitely our favorite Thousand Trails campground in the Orlando area, both because of its proximity to Disney and the dryness and levelness of the sights.

Campsite at Sherwood Forest

It may be difficult to tell in the photo, but we had a site at the end of a row, which meant we had a little more privacy and a little more space than most of the other campsites.

While we were parked in Sherwood Forest we finally finished waxing the RV to protect all the new paint we'd applied in West Virginia.  And of course Aaron found plenty more projects to work on...

One of the furnaces stopped working.
Here Aaron is diagnosing it - ultimately
he just had to clean the electrical 
connections to fix it.

One of many loose tiles in our bathroom.  Aaron ripped them
all up....

...hacked all the grout off the back...

...and reseated and regrouted them.  Amazingly none of the 
subfloor was damaged, we're not sure why the tiles were loose.

All done!

Aaron also spent a lot of time working on the air conditioners...

He added insulation and taped the
corners around the intake/outlet boxes

And replaced one of the fan motors and one of the control boards

We had a couple of fun animal buddies in Sherwood Forest...

This red shouldered hawk frequented 
the area between our campsite and
the resort's laundromat

Random neighborhood cat who liked our campsite

And of course what everyone wants to know...how does COVID make this all different?  Well, the main pool was closed, the clubhouse was closed, all the resort activities were canceled, and you weren't allowed in the office (you knocked on the door and someone came outside to assist you).  Since we didn't regularly use any of these services, it didn't have a huge impact on us.  

We celebrated Aaron's birthday while staying in Sherwood Forest with some birthday muffins and a fun day at Disney.

Birthday breakfast

Obligatory birthday buttons at Disney

In front of Star Tours at Hollywood Studios

We saw the cavalcades at Animal Kingdom for the first time - they traverse the river - cavalcades are one wonderful thing that has come from the COVID response at Disney.

Character cavalcade in Animal Kingdom

And of course as soon as Halloween was over, the Christmas decorations went up at Disney World!

Main Street USA, Magic Kingdom

Trimble Park & A Birthday

We just visited Trimble Park, another Orange County park (like Moss Park, where we've stayed twice).  Our campsite was absolutely beautiful and right on the lake.

That's the lake in the background!

Our fire ring

We had a fire ring with nice bench seats as well as a covered grill.  The campground was relatively small and everything (hiking, picnicking, bathhouse) was within easy reach.  We had 4 fun visitors to our site - I took all of these pictures from within our campsite using my telephoto lens for my phone's camera.  There were lots of aquatic birds as well that I didn't snag a photo of.

Same owl - in flight!

Yes this was a different alligator

Overall this was a wonderful, peaceful, beautiful, wildlife-full site.  Now, the bad...the other animals we had in massive quantities were aquatic midges.  These disgusting insects were swarming absolutely everywhere the first two days at the campground.  We couldn't open the door to the RV without letting a few in.  You almost had to breathe them in.  On the bright side, they were annoying but not harmful...but man were they annoying.  Fortunately the last couple days at the campsite the wind died down and the midges went away (related? I'm not sure).  With the midges gone the campsite was absolutely blissful.  The other downside to the campground was that the road was a *little* narrow, but we were able to navigate it without too much trouble.

The main event this past week was my sister's 40th birthday!  We joined her and her husband on a Royal Caribbean cruise to the Bahamas on the Navigator of the Seas.  Unfortunately the weather was a little on the cool side and it was very windy, but we had a lot of fun all the same.  And now that my 'baby' sister has turned 40 *I* feel old!  (For those of you that don't know that's a little bit of a joke...she's only 17 months younger...but still!)

We beat the escape room!

Chef's table - courtesy of my mother

We won Disney cartoon trivia!