Dogsitting at Trimble Park - Second Time

We spent a little over a week at Trimble Park, in the same campsite as the one we used last year when taking care of my sister's dog.  Technically you're not supposed to have more than a 35' RV in this park now (new regulation last year), but the trees still haven't grown in enough to prevent our 40' monstrosity from navigating the roads.  We weren't planning to stay in this park this season because of the new length restriction, but with the 60-day return limit on the individual Orange County Parks and the fact that half of them won't let you bring a dog...we had to risk it so we could take care of our dog nephew while my sister's family went to Disney World.

Campsite at Trimble Park - that's Lake Carlton in the background

As always at Trimble Park, the view from our campsite was gorgeous!

Beamer arrived a couple days after we did, dropped off as the family drove to Disney World.  Having stayed with us about a month ago, he settled right back into the routine we established over Christmas.

Happy puppy!

The big news for this stay is that we found a lot to make an offer on in Putnam County, Florida!  We made the offer the night before Beamer arrived and took him up to the land to try to do a survey (which did NOT work, as this land had not been surveyed before and did not have pins set...it's a 'metes and bounds' parcel, which means a real surveyor has to figure out the boundaries based on bearings from known locations...only subdivisions in Putnam County have proper plats recorded at the courthouse).

Looking at the property before we decided to make an offer

Picnic lunch at Riverfront Park on our way to try to survey 
the property

Cool wood carvings at Riverfront Park

We returned Beamer to his family near the end of our stay, meeting them at a branch of their boat club on nearby Lake Eustis.  The boat ride through the lakes and canals of central Florida was really neat, and quite different compared to the boat rides we've taken with them before on the intracoastal waterway.

With my sister's family on the canal leading to Lake Eustis

We had a campfire near the end of our stay at Trimble Park - always try to do at least one when we're in the public parks!

Sunset at the campfire

Time will tell how the land purchase process goes!

Dogsitting at Trimble Park

We just spent two weeks at Trimble Park, an Orange County Park we stayed at in previous years in the area and the last of the main 4 parks for us to visit this year.  We stayed at a corner site we'd used on our first visit, which benefits from a good view of the lake and a large relatively private campsite.  

Site 13 at Trimble Park

As we arrived, our neighbor mentioned this was the 'best' Orange County park.  I've reflected before about the various merits of the different parks, and although I think it's hard to pick an objective best, this one certainly is nice.  It's hard to beat the lakeside sites (about half are on the lake, a few more on an inlet, and I think just two have no water 'access' (not that you're going in the water at any of these points)).  The park maintenance here is really top notch, keeping everything in great shape mechanically and cleaning the bathrooms three times a day.  There are nice walking trails and a good park with playgrounds if you have need of it.  The campsites have good fire rings and separate charcoal grills, and the fire rings have wooden benches!  HOWEVER, in bad news for us...they've changed their policies here (I wasn't aware).  When we pulled in and talked to a ranger, he asked how big our RV was...when I answered (40 feet), he said newly this season they have restricted access to just 35 feet long and 12 feet tall, as they have had complaints from larger RVs hitting the trees and they would like to trim the trees LESS and not more.  Luckily for us, though he offered us a refund and to leave, he allowed us to 'take our chances' and stay...given that we've stayed here multiple times before, we took our chances and had no problem at all.  However, if they'll be trimming the trees less and enforcing the length restriction more in the coming years, there's a good likelihood we won't be camping here again, which is a little sad.

The highlight of this trip was taking care of my sister's dog Beamer (named after the former VT football coach Frank Beamer, not the car!) while she and her family went on a Disney cruise (yes, we were jealous!).  Fortunately, Beamer had stayed in the RV twice before with my sister, so it wasn't a totally unfamiliar spot for him, and of course he knows and loves us, so he settled in just fine.  I'd go out on a limb and say this was kind of a vacation for him, as he got to go on more and longer walks than he gets at home (due to the 4 children demanding most of the adult time at home), and the park had so many wonderful smells for him to explore.  He certainly seemed to love it!  I have to share some pictures here of his time with us :-).

His bed *just* fit in the living room

Emptying the tank - he seemed quite
happy to just trot back and forth between
the RV and the dump station - much
better than being left alone while we 
did the chore!

Aaron had to re-level the RV midway 
through the week - Beamer was alarmed
that the house was moving!

Sitting by the lake on our campsite.  He never looked at the lake -
he was always looking back toward the campground for any
hazards that we needed alerting to.

At the dock in the campground

He squeezed himself in the tiny spot on my side of the bed
to sleep at night (he split his night time between this spot, a spot 
on Aaron's side, and a spot at the foot of the bed - all pretty tiny)

Beamer's sleeping spot on Aaron's side of the bed

The other highlight of the week was a visit from our friend Mary and her daughter Lisa.  They live in St. Louis but had come to Florida for Spring Training.  They came up midday and we spent the afternoon hiking, playing games, and enjoying a campfire.  Good times!

Playing games under the RV awning in the rain!  It only rained 
for about 45 minutes but Aaron captured the moment.  We stayed
outside because the rain wasn't TOO bad and we didn't have a
big enough table to play inside.

At the campfire in the evening.  Beamer's sitting next to me
but you probably can't see the black dog in the dark.

One of the big perks of Trimble Park is, of course, the wildlife.  It's a fairly remote area and the wildlife are quite abundant.  We saw a large owl, a red shouldered hawk, a couple woodpeckers, raccoons, and tons of water birds...and of course a handful of alligators!  I disturbed a hawk that had just captured a snake and saw it fly away with the snake in its talons!  Unfortunately I didn't have my phone with me for most of these sightings, so you'll have to settle for this one photo of a woodpecker.  He was SUPER noisy chipping massive chunks of bark off the tree and having them crash to the ground.

Blurry zoomed-in woodpecker

Alligator!  This one was right next to our campsite.  I'd estimate
he was about 2 feet long.

View from our campsite

Aaron made a lovely campfire for our last night at the park

It was a great two weeks!  We thoroughly enjoyed our dogsitting and experiencing camping with a dog - it always looked so fun watching other people do it!  The only bad thing about the dogsitting was taking Beamer out for his final walk after dark before we went to bed - as I said, this place was TEEMING with wildlife, most of whom are most active a dusk and right after.  Beamer found two raccoons, which spooked me terribly until I determined they were raccoons and not alligators (he detected them several feet away in the brush).  I was always a bit on edge walking him at night, but other than that it was fun!

Busy Times at Trimble Park - Data Plans, a Tropical Storm, and a Rocket Launch!

We just spent 11 days at Trimble Park in northern Orange County, FL - about 45 minutes from Disney.  We stayed here just a few days last year, mostly while we were actually on a cruise ship for my sister's 40th birthday, so we didn't get to properly appreciate it.

Our beautiful wooded campsite!

Unfortunately I managed to pick one of the few campsites with an obscured view of the lake, but we could still see it, and being close to the bathhouse was a definite plus since we had no sewer - I *think* this is the longest we've ever gone without a sewer connection.  We stayed here longer than we normally would to reset our travel schedule to Tuesdays (a much easier travel day than anywhere close to the weekends in the Orlando area).

Obscured lake view

While we were here we enjoyed hiking around Trimble Park and some neighboring parks.  

A small alligator seen from the dock near our campsite

The lake as seen from another dock on the hiking trail

Cycling along the Lake Apopka North 
Shore trail, with one of a TON of 
anhingas visible in the background

At the Mt Dora Lighthouse

The boardwalk at Palm Island Park

Tropical storm Eta hit while we were staying at Trimble Park.  I have to admit I was pretty worried, what with all the warnings about mobile homes and whatnot.  We took in all of our patio furniture, lashed down the bikes, closed all the awnings, and even brought in our slides to protect the fabric-like slide covers.  I was pretty nervous all night long, but the crazy strong winds didn't rock the RV at all.  I guess we're just too heavy!  The next morning we woke up to branches and palm fronds down all around, but no damage to our property.  We survived our first large weather event in the RV!

The storm position the next
morning

Palm fronds down everywhere!

While we were here we learned a LOT about our new limited data plan.  I think I mentioned before that we had to give up the amazing unlimited AT&T plan for the Togo Roadlink....they figured out it was TOO good a deal.  We're now on a data-only plan from Cricket Wireless.  The connection speeds have been great and we have no complaints there...but it's amazing how many little things you don't think about eat up data!  We've gone into our computers to reduce allowed data usage (for those of you with Windows 10...that's under "Data Usage" in the Settings), disabled app updates on our phones (we update them when on free wireless while out and about), and set low resolution on all of our streaming accounts where we can (Netflix, YouTube, etc).  We go into a local library to download anything large for our computers or tablets...speaking of which, quick segue...

The Mt. Dora Library (close to Trimble Park) is one of the neatest libraries I've been in.  It's a nice facility, and they have a butterfly garden, a velociraptor display, and...most incredibly...cake pans that you can check out!!  I've never seen the like.  Super cool.

Velociraptor

Cake pans! In a library!!

Back to data usage...despite our best efforts, we were just blowing through our data plan.  Granted, initially we used a bunch of data before we figured out how to limit everything, but even after flipping all the switches I just mentioned, we blew through an additional purchased 15GB in just one day (!!!!!).  We finally figured it out though...the XBOX!  We hadn't had the XBOX on in quite a while because we mostly only use it to play DVDs, and we didn't use it at all while in quarantine and didn't turn it on much at Fort Wilderness or Sherwood Forest because we had free cable if we wanted entertainment.  However, once we reached Trimble Park we decided to watch some DVDs to conserve our data...and the impudent little device went and downloaded the long-amassed updates for all its games and apps in the background while we watched our no-data DVDs!!  I'm not sure the size of all the updates, but the one that killed our extra 15GB was a 60GB update for the Halo Master Chief Collection.  60GB!!  It really drove home that the majority use case for the XBOX, computers, and the like is to have an unlimited data connection, so the devices and the software suppliers don't think too much about data.  Well, thank goodness we FINALLY figured that out, and went in to the XBOX settings and told it to start operating offline.  We'll get the XBOX updated sometime later.  For anyone out there contemplating a limited data plan...make sure you go into the settings for EVERYTHING you have that connects to the internet ever and limit or turn off data usage!  Leave no device unexplored!

Our last big event at Trimble Park was a SpaceX rocket launch at Kennedy Space Center!  We went to see the Crew-1 launch - the official beginning of regular manned space missions to depart from the US.  This was a very different experience from the launches we saw earlier in the year due to COVID-19.  Earlier in the year we bought a package that took us on a crowded bus to a crowded viewing platform.  This time we bought a package that guaranteed us a spot of ground in a large staff parking lot in the main visitor complex (i.e., that we could walk to from the main parking lot).  This was also our first nighttime launch - SUPER cool.  The rocket was incredibly bright, and we could even see the firing of the thrusters (?) on the stage 1 part that came back to land on a platform in the ocean.

Countdown clock at the space center entrance

Livestream projected on a building next to the parking lot

Crew-1 climbing into the sky

This was an exciting 11 days!  And we left with the gray tank only 67% full!

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!