We survived the hurricane!

Wow it's been a while!  We've been going nonstop since my last post, with two cruises, Thanksgiving, and a Christmas party out of town...more on those later.  I just realized that my last post left us preparing for the hurricane, so it kind of looks like we didn't survive it...we did!

As I mentioned in the last post, we were fortunate to make it to our next park (Sunshine Holiday Daytona) and set up before the rain hit.  In retrospect we were quite fortunate that our Moss Park reservation had been cancelled, as it left us with just a 30 minute drive in the growing wind and rain instead of a 1.5 hour drive.  We were also fortunate that we moved on the day we did, as Sunshine Holiday Daytona was closing their office that afternoon and not reopening until the storm passed (meaning: if we had delayed moving just one day we wouldn't have been able to check in and would have been 'homeless').  Finally, as the hurricane approached, the park we HAD been at (Rose Bay) came under a mandatory evacuation order, so if we had still been there we would have had to evacuate with the RV in intense winds on the interstate or abandon the RV to the park (which did end up flooding) as we escaped in the car.  We're feeling very blessed that things worked out the way they did...all these things combined to give us a safe way to get to a safe place to sit out the hurricane.

The calm before the storm!

The hurricane itself was much less stressful than I anticipated.  We kept our slides pulled in (partially because the slide seals don't deal well with driving rain while the slides are out, but mostly to make sure the slide covers, including the one we just replaced, didn't catch and rip in the wind) and stayed put.  The bedroom slide is out in the photo because I was gathering clothes to set out for the next few days - our bedroom cabinets and drawers are difficult to impossible to open with the slide pulled in.  The RV did rock a little bit in the intense wind, but never to the point we were worried about tipping over, and the wind didn't pick up anything that could become a projectile (though several palm fronds did fall straight down).  We were parked right next to the community center in the RV park, which provided a bit of a wind break, so we considered that fortunate as well.

Here is my feeble attempt to capture the wind and rain as viewed from my nice warm dry sofa inside the RV.

Aaron took a couple of screenshots from his weather app to document our experience.

Right after the hurricane we left the RV at Sunshine Holiday Daytona (which was distinctly NOT sunny) and went on a cruise!  More on that in the next post.

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!