Full time RV Park Living: Thunderbird Airpark

As I mentioned in the last post, our goal was to move the RV to a park a close drive to the property we're still attempting to buy.  This is Thunderbird Airpark, primarily of course an airpark, but they have 7 RV sites that they lease out for quite a reasonable rate.  They don't advertise the RV sites anywhere that I've found, so as far as I can tell these sites are full completely due to word of mouth or the occasional person like us that happened to drive by.

Our site at the airpark - still pretty tight!

Standing in front of the RV looking down the row of RVs - 
the grass strip is about 2/3s of the way between the RVs and the fence

We did spend some time at the property measuring out the driveway, house site, and septic field so we could finish our site plan, since that will be necessary for the building permit.  Our house plan is still underway, but we know what the footprint will be so we can go ahead with the site plan.

Measuring out the septic location at the bottom of the property 

I did drag Aaron to explore one site in the area - Ravine Gardens State Park.  The park has a couple of hiking trails and even a driving trail around the ravine (much to Aaron's delight!).  It's not a huge amount to look at, but it was serene and close!

At the bottom of the ravine

Aaron's parents came to visit for a weekend and we explored nearby Welaka State Forest, including Mud Spring, which was beautiful!

Mud Spring!

With Aaron's parents at Mud Spring

At Orange Point on the John's Landing Trail

 

We also checked out 12 Below Zero Ice Cream Bar in Pomona Park and went birding at Welaka National Fish Hatchery.

Enjoying waffle bowls at 12 Below Zero

Watching birds at the Observation Tower at the Beecher Unit 
at the Welaka National Fish Hatchery

We went to my sister's house for Easter and had a great time as always.

Dressed up for Easter dinner with my sister's family

My parents also came to visit for a few hours to see the property, visit our fun local hardware store (Hill's Hardware), and take us to lunch at 3 Bananas, an awesome place on the water in Crescent City.  They had come to Florida to visit my sister, so a few hours wasn't as crazy as it sounds!

The view from our seat at 3 Bananas

In local news, our new neighbors at the airpark took us to the local Fraternal Order of Eagles here in Lake Como, and we liked it so well we became members!  Turns out most of the people in RVs at the airpark are also members...I'm seeing how the word of mouth must have gone around for people to know the airpark accepts RVs!  

Helping our neighbors serve dinner in the Eagles' kitchen

I worked the register while Aaron washed dishes

Back at the airpark the baby sandhill cranes are growing up!

The last excitement for the last month-ish was when we were surprised by a burst drainage pipe under the sink after I did dishes one night!  I always thought it was remarkable that it didn't split before... since our sink is on the main slide, there is a flexible pipe that connects the sink drain to the inflexible drain in the rest of the RV, and it flexes back and forth and back and forth all the time as we bring the slide in and out.  So we had a late evening trip into Palatka (with the closest open hardware store) to buy a new pipe and fittings.  Fortunately it was a straightforward fix once we had the right materials!

Broken pipe!

Aaron working on fixing the pipe - access
was not easy

All fixed!

In land news... our latest update from the lawyers is that it will take another 2-3 months to resolve probate, determine the legal heir that needs to sign off on the revised legal description for the property, and get that signature.  Since Aaron can't stand to just sit in this park so close to the property he can't work on, we've decided to head back north for the summer.  We decided to go on a two week Alaskan cruise to use up some cruise credits we gained last summer during our COVID adventure, and then we'll spend the rest of the summer escaping from the heat in Virginia.  As soon as we actually own the property we'll head back to Florida and get to work!

Family Camping at Magnolia Park...Our last real camping trip?

Due to the short stay at Southern Palms, we enjoyed a nearly two week stay at Magnolia Park!  This was kind of a nice ending to our nomad lifestyle - a long stay in a public park, our favorite, peaceful, kind of camping.  Our next sites will be month+ long stays at proper RV parks where we're properly paying a monthly rate, with the ultimate goal of moving the RV onto our potential property as soon as we have water and sewer hooked up.  But more on that later.  

Our campsite at Magnolia Park - right on the path to the bathroom!

The kids appreciated the easy access to the bathroom.  We had lots of fun cooking out, playing games, playing catch, driving on the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive, and searching for roosting peacocks at night!

Playing Telestrations around the campfire

With my sister and nephews in front of the first large alligator
we found on the wildlife drive

This alligator was so close!

If you zoom in you might be able to see that there was an
alligator's nest at the far side of the water.  The kids wanted to 
come out to see but my sister insisted on having them hold hands
constantly so they wouldn't fall in near alligator mom.

Aaron got his old chainsaw up and running while we were at the campground - a feat that required lots of cleaning and a couple small replacement parts.  We'll need the chainsaw for land clearing once we actually own some land!  My parents brought Aaron a bunch of his tools from the farm in West Virginia - a small enough set to fit in the RV basement but large enough to put together a shed so we can go get a larger load and have room to store the tools.

Aaron with his working chainsaw

We enjoyed our last peaceful nights at Magnolia Park reflecting on our nomad RV journey and making sure to enjoy some good campfires!  Aaron and I have some conflicting views on our future in camping - while we still have an RV, I'd like to run out to a public park every couple months or so, but Aaron is completely focused on building a house (once we can!) and stopping driving the RV so we can drop the expensive RV insurance...we'll see how things end up working out!  We've decided we enjoyed our 3.5 years on the road, seeing the sites and meeting neat people.  We are both disappointed that crowding and costs made it impractical for us to really get out and explore the country the way we thought we would...of course everyone has different tolerances for these things, we know plenty of people are going out and exploring despite these issues, but it didn't work out for us.  We also hated the thought of being away from family for a year or more that would have been required for a real round the country trip.  But we enjoyed the adventures we did take, the big Texas trip being a highlight, and also just being exposed to this whole other aspect of living that we hadn't understood before.

Our last campfire

This peacock had no fear walking near
running cars

The peacocks finally put on a display as we were leaving!  With
the peahens gone, they did not display very often.  As far as I 
could tell, these two were trying to intimidate a squirrel.

So what's the future of this blog?  I think I'll keep it going as long as we have the RV.  Hopefully we will get out camping a few more times before we sell it, and if we can ever close on this property we'll have some building adventures to share while we're living in the RV on the land.

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!

Family time and Cruising

As I mentioned earlier, we have left the Orlando area!  Our first stop on our trek north was a two week stint at Sunshine Holiday Daytona, a Thousand Trails resort where we stayed in the fall to be close to my sister while we helped with the kids.  As with the last time we were here, we parked in the rear of the park with all the full-time residents.  I have mixed feelings on this resort, as the parking situation is not great - again it was difficult to navigate around the permanent residents' lawns that held vehicles, lawn decorations, and outright anti-RV posts to the edge of the lots.  However, the staff here are quite friendly and accommodating, they have the cheapest laundry I've seen since we started RVing, and *most* of the residents are very friendly.  I say *most*...for the first time basically ever since we started all this, we encountered a hostile neighbor.  We're thinking he was grumpy because he was going through a divorce - when we arrived, there were two kayaks and two bikes at the site, but by the time we left there was only one of each, and in the couple days we were there before we moved we only saw one man.  We promptly asked the office to be moved and they were able to accommodate us a day later, relocating us between two friendly new neighbors.  Somehow in all of this we didn't manage to take a picture of either site, so instead of our typical campsite photo here I'll show you a picture of poor Beamer, who we still had for the first day we were there, wondering why his house shrunk and why it was moving!!

Stressed out pup!

We chose this campground due to its proximity to my sister, and we went over to her place both weekends.  We enjoyed playing games, eating good food, and trading cruise stories.

Playing Carcassonne

Playing the card version of Pictionary - a rare event when my
brother-in-law and our eldest nephew actually joined the game!

As anyone who knows Aaron would guess, he constantly has his eye on cruises and discounts on cruises.  As luck would have it, Carnival cruise line was running a spring/50th anniversary sale when we arrived at Daytona.  Aaron found a great deal on a cruise that ran during the week, leaving us our weekends free to spend time with my sister.  It was going to two islands we hadn't visited before on a ship we hadn't been on - perfect!  So with a few days' notice we booked the cruise and headed down to Port Canaveral to board the Carnival Elation.  We cruised in our first-ever inside cabin...I have mixed feelings, on the one hand it was a LOT cheaper and had basically the same space as the outside cabins on the ship, but on the other hand not having any natural light actually made it harder for me to sleep, and the lack of natural ventilation made it a little musty (though that might have been the age of the ship - 20+ years old).  The ship, being old, was much smaller than they build cruise ships nowadays, had basically no specialty dining, and had quite small entertainment lounges.  We had trouble finding seats at the evening theater productions and at the comedy shows.  On the flip side, the entertainers were very talented, and the ship had more character than the more modern ones did, with artistic architectural and decorative touches everywhere.  The one hiccup in this cruise was that someone had a medical emergency on route to our first port (which should have been Grand Turk) - right at the beginning of a sea day - so we had to divert to Nassau, which became our first port instead (we skipped Grand Turk and headed to the Dominican Republic on schedule).  As far as we know the person recovered well after getting to Nassau.  Here are the highlights of the cruise!

A dolphin swam around the port area before we departed!

Our daily breakfast spot at the buffet restaurant

One of the best things you can expect on a Carnival cruise
is a towel animal zoo!

A first for us - this ship offered tea time
on sea days, which consisted of tea,
sandwiches, and light desserts - yum!

A nighttime view of "Tiffany's" buffet - I loved all the stained
glass peacocks!  Hopefully you can kind of see what I mean
about the artistry of the ship

An outside view of the ship from the port at Amber Cove

The view atop Loma Isabel de Torres - amazing!

The Christ the Redeemer statue atop 
Loma Isabel de Torres

A heart shaped photo opportunity in the park
surrounding the peak

A young man was driving these cattle in the middle of the road!

We had a few days after we returned to visit my sister again and do laundry before beginning our trek north through public parks (read: no sewer in my future!).  We also discovered we were down to just 18% left on our propane tanks - a problem since I use propane for cooking all the time!  Unlike the last time we rushed to fill the tank when we misread the gauge, this time we were legitimately low on gas, so we needed to fill up.  Finding a place to fill the tank permanently attached to our RV has always been a challenge, but much to my delight I discovered this time that truck stops can sometimes provide propane!  A Flying J on our route on 95 offered reasonably priced propane, so we didn't even have to divert from our travel plans.

Aaron likes to see what's going on and 
ask the guys about what they're doing
when we get the tank filled

With that we were headed to our last stop in Florida on the way north.