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.

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.  

Sunshine Holiday Daytona

After Thanksgiving we took a short hop to the Daytona Beach area and stayed at the Sunshine Holiday Daytona RV Resort, part of Thousand Trails.  As soon as we arrived, our new neighbors came over to welcome us and offer any assistance we might need during our stay - so friendly!  On the bad side, they put us way in the back of the park with the permanent residents, where the roads were narrow and people weren't so careful about keeping their cars out of the roadway.  From talking to our new neighbors, it seems common for the office to put longer-staying Thousand Trails members in the back of the park, reserving the front for short timers and/or full paying customers.  I guess this makes sense.  

Our campsite at Sunshine Holiday Daytona

My sister came down the first Saturday we were there with her family and we all went to the light show at Daytona International Speedway.  The lights were lovely and very well done but we were VERY disappointed that you can't drive on the track during this event.  Aaron and I had been to the light show at the Charlotte Motor Speedway and most of the show is on the track and you can drive on the scary sloped part...unfortunately we expected the same here and got the kids' hopes all up...they were sorely disappointed.  So I'd say the Daytona speedway lights are overpriced for what you get - you can get the same kind of show in city parks around the country, being at the speedway didn't add anything unique since you just drive under the bleachers.

Christmas-y sign for the speedway

Only in Florida!

We spent half the week at my sister's place helping take care of the kids while my brother-in-law was out of town.  While we were there we were able to see a SpaceX launch from their front yard!  It was very cool.

SpaceX Launch

We also saw my nephews' first flag football game before leaving the area.  I learned a lot more about what flag football actually is...apparently I really didn't know how it worked before!  We were so exhausted from Thanksgiving and busy with helping my sister that we didn't get out to see much else in the area, so this post is probably a little boring!  We'll try to do better next time :-).