Campground Crowding! And a look at Orange County Parks

We just finished up a short (5 day) stay at Moss Park, an Orange County park where we've stayed many times, so I figured rather than extoll the many virtues of the park again, I'd talk some more about what got us here and Orange County parks in general.

But first, the obligatory campsite pic!  We returned to site 54, the first site we ever had here, with its nice seclusion at the end of the park loop.

Moss Park campsite

While we were at Moss Park, we visited Animal Kingdom and Epcot, and had beautiful days at both.  We were at Epcot for the first day of the Festival of the Arts and witnessed (but did not participate in!) the unreal 7 hour lines for the Figment Popcorn Bucket!

The Lion King 50th anniversary statues

Up close and personal with a giraffe on
Kilimanjaro Safaris!

We caught the Jungle Book version of the new KiteTails show

Mickey and Minnie on the river!

Painting Epcot's version of Starry Night

Full view of the paint-by-number mural (background) with the 
expectation of the finished product on the bookmark (foreground)

So, back to the promised content.  You may or may not have noticed we're off our typical 2-week Thousand Trails 1-week County Park camping schedule for the Orlando winter.  This is because 2 months ago, when I attempted to make a Thousand Trails reservation for the second week of January, NONE of the Thousand Trails parks in the Orlando area were available.  NONE.  We've had weeks in previous years where we had to settle for our least favorite of the Thousand Trails in the area, but we've never before experienced a time when we couldn't book ANYTHING.  We *think* this was because the Disney marathon weekend occurred over the time frame we were trying to book.  So, due to this, we ended up booking two weeks at Kelly Park.  But then...we thought we'd be able to get into Thousand Trails for the third week of January but NO, again, EVERYTHING was booked.  This time it seemed to be due to the Martin Luther King Jr holiday.  So, maxed out at Kelly Park (we can only stay 2 weeks at a given county park), we had to move to another park.  I tried to move just down the street to Trimble Park, but NO again, there was nothing available!  This is particularly unreal - I've never had trouble booking a county park at the start of the booking window.  So we ended up at Moss Park, even though it's the farthest away from Kelly Park, because (I assume) it has a lot more campsites available.  Of course Moss Park is lovely and we enjoyed our stay, but this experience was a bit unnerving for both of us.

Campground crowding has been a hot topic in the RV podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. that we follow.  Aaron has been quite concerned about what this means for our future for some time, but I adopted a more optimistic attitude...  However this experience has got us both thinking.  Our little 2-week/1-week schedule has worked really well for us the past two years, and with it challenged so strongly these past few weeks, we're thinking the lifestyle we hoped for - with a bit of spontaneity! - might not be possible for a while.  Now, we're probably inappropriately extrapolating our 2 week experience in one location to year-round across the country, but as linked above we're not the only ones experiencing issues.  I saw a headline flash by a few weeks ago that said you needed to book things now 6 months in advance, which is just much more advance planning than we usually have!  So we will see how the rest of the season goes (we typically book 45/60 days in advance, so far so good on the next 45/60 days), but if we regularly find these kinds of issues, we may be dissuaded from this lifestyle.  Having a 40-ft behemoth of an RV without a place to park overnight is quite a worry for me!!

The other thing I thought I'd mention is much less dramatic - looking at an interesting trend in the Orange County Parks.  Now that we've stayed in Kelly Park, and with my memory refreshed on Moss Park, I noticed a couple things.  I feel that you can group the Orange County Parks into two categories - Moss Park and Kelly Park have an entrance gate with an entry fee for general park use and do not allow pets.  Trimble Park and Magnolia Park are free for day use and do allow pets.  Moss Park and Kelly Park have more, larger, more private sites with nicer bathhouses (with actual shower stalls with doors, for example).  Trimble Park and Magnolia Park have fewer campsites with less privacy and cheaper bathhouses (they're still nicer than many we've seen, but opt for shower curtains instead of doors and don't have as nice a changing area).  There's an obvious correlation here if the parks have more money because they collect day use entry fees, so they have more money to spend on nicer accommodations, but it is interesting that there's not a difference in the actual cost to camp.  I'm struggling to understand the difference in the pet policy.  One thought I had is that it's hard to enforce a pet policy if you don't actually talk to each car on the way in at the entry gate.  I suppose they might also want to avoid the pet waste issue in their 'nicer' parks.  Not sure on this one but it's an interesting correlation!

Hope you enjoy my random musings!  :-)

A Quiet Week at Moss Park

 We spent another quiet week at Moss Park, where we stayed a few times last year.  This park has a lot of campsites, all relatively private and half of which are along the lake.  We picked a pretty good campsite this time (#31) with an okay lake view and very private fire pit.

That's the lake just beyond the trees

Mostly we just took it easy during this stay.  The weather turned suddenly very cold (50s) while we were here, and there was a bit of rain, so we spent a lot of time inside.  One of the perks of camping in an RV and not a tent!

Despite the cold Aaron was able to put up some Christmas lights, we're feeling festive!

Outside Christmas lights!

During the few warm and dry days this week, we went hiking at some nearby preserves - the Crosby Island Marsh Preserve and the Split Oak Forest.  While we were hiking in Split Oak we saw a wild pig!  The pig was very fast and we were so shocked we didn't manage to get a picture, but it was a pretty incredible sight!

A pond in Crosby Island Marsh

Back at our campsite, we enjoyed some campfires and grilled food.  

When you REALLY need that grill clean!

Pretty campfire pre-fire

This raccoon was traipsing through our campsite

While we were here I had the time to really tidy up the RV and so I took some pictures for those of you who have been dying to see the inside!  We don't have much, but you can see some of the interior Christmas decorations as well.

Bedroom

Dining Area

Living Room

Kitchen & Dining Area

Close up of The Child/Baby Yoda/Grogu Ornaments

That's about it for now!  Like I said, a pretty quiet week, quite refreshing.

Moss Park & Another Rocket Launch!

We spent another wonderful week and a half at Moss Park.  I'm getting used to this no sewer thing and we lasted the whole 10 days without having to dump our tanks!  I've posted on Moss Park before so I won't reiterate the wonderfulness of the park now...however the sandy road was a little worse for the wear after some intense rains the day we arrived.  We did get some great 'critter' pics while we were here this time.

This little guy surprised us on the way to the bathhouse!

These two made the rounds every day looking for food.  They had no fear and would come right up to humans!

No fear!

So cute!

This little lady and her mate occupied a bush across from our picnic table

We've definitely caught the Disney bug and continued to spend a lot of time there despite the 35-40 minute drive to get there.

With Ariel at the Princess dinner at Akershus in Epcot

With the 'Master' (Beast) in the Beast's castle for dinner at Be Our Guest in Magic Kingdom

We attempted to 'rope drop' Universal Studios Islands of Adventure again to see Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure but AGAIN our plans were thwarted when the ride didn't open until late afternoon.  We're starting to think we're cursed!  Of course, not being able to ride one ride is a minor thing in the grand scheme of things...  We spent the afternoon at Epcot instead.

With King Julian (Madagascar) at Universal Islands of Adventure

Working on the community mural at Epcot's Festival of the Arts

After our misadventure with Universal Studios, we came home to discover our refrigerator had bit the dust.  You may remember from an earlier post that we had some trouble with our refrigerator tripping a GFCI, but that went away mysteriously after Aaron banged on it, without any obvious cause.  Well, we came home to discover our 'watchdog' had turned off power to our whole RV due to a 'hot neutral', which we traced back to our refrigerator.  Unfortunately our first thought was that one of the new campers had contaminated the electric system at the park, and we contacted our campsite hosts before our full diagnosis revealed the cause, but they were absolutely delightful and friendly even with the false alarm at 9pm.  

Fortunately Aaron was able to repair the propane functionality of the refrigerator (which had been broken since just after we purchased the RV), so we were able to keep the refrigerator running while we waited for the replacement heating elements to arrive.  Aaron got the new elements installed after a couple days and everything is working properly again.  Thank goodness he's so handy! 

Working on the refrigerator

I'm sure Aaron's little helper helped!

The last bit of excitement at Moss Park was another rocket launch at Kennedy Space Center!  This SpaceX launch of 60 Starlink satellites was originally scheduled for Saturday but got postponed twice to Monday morning.  We had to move the RV Monday, so it was a complicated day getting up early, moving the RV to the boat parking area, and then running to Kennedy Space Center by 8:30 to catch the launch to the LC-39 viewing gantry.  We purchased the package that gave us breakfast, a souvenir cap, and guaranteed seats.  The day was much clearer than the last launch day, so we had a great view of the rocket.  I also remembered my telephoto lens for my phone camera so I have a somewhat decent video to post this time!

Free caps!

Rocket Launch

Moss Park & SpaceX Launch

We just spent a week at Moss Park near Orlando - an Orange County-maintained park.  It was GREAT!  The park felt very much like a state park - the sites were wooded and spacious, each site had a grill and a fire ring, everything was well maintained, and we had access to two lakes and some nice hiking trails.  The roads and sites were fairly well-maintained packed sand, and at least our site seemed pretty level.  Most of the sites on the east side of the campground had some sort of lake view (including ours) - and our site had immediate access to the fishing pier (not that we fish, but it's always fun to walk out over the water).  Overall the campground was fairly quiet, though the family sites (with multiple RVs per site) got a little loud during the afternoons on the holiday weekend.  Only downside - no sewer!  We managed to last the whole week without having to empty our gray tank though!  We're getting better at this water conservation stuff :-).

Moss Park was a little far from the amusement parks, but we still spent a bit of time at Disney.  We particularly enjoyed dining at Garden Grill and the Spirit of Aloha dinner show.

I have to give a particular shout out for Spirit of Aloha.  We had our doubts about going due to some questionable reviews online, but we thought it was amazing.  The first half of the program is kind of a goofy story and some hula dancing for the kids to participate in, but the second half of the program is a demonstration of native dances from various Pacific islands, and the dancers were incredible.  The strength and control you have to have to do the dances is remarkable.  Not to mention they finish off with the most impressive fire dancing show I've ever seen.  The food was quite tasty as well.  Now, the down side is that the seating is open air (there's a roof but no sides) and the stage is out in the open, so apparently they do have to cancel the show for inclement weather, but if you are able to book it once you're already in Orlando and know the forecast (we booked our seats a couple days ahead, no problem), I don't see a downside.

The last thing we did while staying at Moss Park was drive out to the Kennedy Space Center to see the SpaceX Crew Dragon Launch Escape Demonstration.  This unmanned test was designed to show that if the launch had to be aborted for some reason, the crew capsule ("Crew Dragon") could disconnect from the rockets and return safely to earth.  Neither one of us had ever seen a rocket launch live before, so this was very cool.  Unfortunately the clouds were so thick that we could not see the fireball when the rockets were disconnected, but we could see the gigantic plume of steam from when the second stage rocket fell to the ocean and exploded.  The platform was 3.5 miles away, so although we could see the launch pretty well, it was hard to capture on camera.