Travels with Snowbirds January 9 and January 10, Blue Spring State Park, Orange City FL to Floridian RV Resort, St. Cloud FL

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Wednesday January 9 and Thursday January 10, Blue Spring State Park, Orange City, FL to Floridian RV Resort, St. Cloud, FL

Yesterday afternoon we 3 girls took a trip ‘downtown’. Walmart and Olive Garden. What a bunch of senior citizens we are, right???? Olive Garden salad was awesome. I ordered a Panini, and got soup and salad as well, and brought most of the sandwich home to eat for dinner. Yummy. I needed a bunch of small camping things and some food from Wal-Mart, all in all a successful trip. So nice to have access to a car!!! It was a quiet evening of chatter and early to bed.

As usual, I was up very early and it was foggy. A walk for Winston and I started to unhook. With the fog, everything was very wet, and sandy, so it was a nasty unhook. I was ready much earlier than the time Ginnie and I thought we would leave, so I made the executive decision to go to the Laundromat to wash a much needed load. I have been to the Laundromat here before, and saw it on our trip out yesterday. $3 to wash!!!! Incredible!!!! I did 2 loads, and while the wash was doing its thing, I cleaned the inside of the RV. It’s not perfect, but I got a lot of the sand out. I stowed my winter clothes under the dinette seats, and home not to see them again!!!

I met up with Ginnie and we headed south. The most direct route to our next campground was on the toll road, and this caused Ginnie some pain. FL toll roads charge by the axle, I have 2, Ginnie has 2 on her rig and 2 on her car, so her costs were twice as much as mine. In my opinion, it was a necessary evil to take the toll road as it cut the trip in half. Once on the toll road, it poured. Downpour. 3 separate times, so hard that the windshield wipers didn’t work. To go about 25 miles it cost me over $6, and Ginnie over $12. Painful. We still don’t know if we made the right decision doing it that way, but in my mind it beat driving thru downtown Orlando at noon on a rainy day. As we exited, I chose the wrong lane and ended up in the lane that only took SUN PASS. I bolted thru, hoping that the bike strapped to the back of my rig covered enough of my license plate that they couldn’t get a picture. The lane Ginnie selected was CASH only, and she didn’t know how much to throw, so she put $1.

Floridian RV resort in St. Cloud. I have never spent time in this part of FL, south and EAST of Orlando just a bit. It looks like most of the rest of central FL, sand, pine, Spanish moss covered oak, flat. No orange groves to speak of just yet. This ‘resort’ is mostly permanent structures inhabited by full time residents and Snowbirds. They have a large field in the back which they reserve for groups, both large and small. Some of the sites have water and electric, some of the sites have just electric, and there is a lot of free space with no services. The area is under the trees, and there is a bathhouse within easy walk. It’s a nice enough facility, just old. It’s very large, and there are some beautiful homesites, and some trashy ones as well. It looks like there is a large population of full time residents, as we see kids walking thru on the way to and from the school bus.

There are just about 20 Loners on Wheels gathered at this monthly campout of the MidLow chapter. I think there are 6 LOW chapters in FL. I am a member of this chapter. I knew pretty much everyone here, and it was good to see old friends and make new ones. Ginnie knew a lot of people as well, having met many of them at other campgrounds throughout FL. We are in sites next to each other, far in the back, so if Winston barks, no one will hear him. She carries wire fencing to put up so the boys can have a place to run around, but it’s hard work, and she doesn’t put it up for 1 or 2 nights but she put it out here, and the boys are happy. Winston barked.

I had about 2 ounces of wine at happy hour, and my heart started beating wildly irregularly, so I went inside my rig and laid down and it was gone in 30 minutes and I was ready to rumble. But, I kept close to home and watched TV.

THURSDAY: Up very early Thursday morning to the honking of the resident sandhill cranes. There are quite a few of these tall leggy squawkers here. I haven’t been able to figure out the males from the females, other than by size, and there appears to be some babies as well. They are very friendly and get quite close to people. They are so tall, they could look me in the eye.

Pretty much everyone in the group has a dog. There are cocker spaniels, a Wheaton, a Scottie, and a lot of mutts. Amazingly, they all seem to get along. Winston barked. I put him in his crate if I am going to be out for a while. He barks, but at least I know he can’t wreck my RV or hurt himself, so I let him bark.

The club campout hosts served continental breakfast this morning, a real nice treat. I showered in the adequate bathhouse, old and worn, but working well.

Ginnie and I decided to head to Sea World for something to do. It would give us the opportunity to renew our season passes. A one day pass is around $80. You can buy a ‘Fun Pass’ for $89 plus tax, total $94, which allows unlimited entry until the end of 2013. Such a deal! I got it last year and it paid for itself. One of our Thousand Trails campgrounds is about 10 miles from Sea World. When you have a season pass you don’t feel bad about going for a few hours, and we will get there at least 3 more times before I head north. It’s a no brainer. Ginnie gets a parking pass, too!

Our campground is south and east of Orlando. Sea World is north and west of where we are about 25 miles. The easiest way to get there was back on the toll road, again, not Ginnie’s favorite thing to do, but I am all about the easiest ride, so we did it. It worked out just fine, until we went to get off. The exit we went off had 2 toll lanes, one for SUN PASS and cash. We went thru the CASH lane and it was closed. WTF? Now what do you do. The basket was closed. How come????? So, we went thru without paying. Now you know Ginnie is going to get a letter at some point in the future probably with a hefty fine attached. How could this happen to us 2 days in a row???

As we were driving into SeaWorld, Ginnie asked me if I wanted her to drop me off nearer the entrance, rather than walk from the far end of the row they were currently parking in, and I thought that was a wonderful idea. As we were pulling up, a guard told us how to pull in to dropoff, and told Ginnie to park in any space she saw available except handicap. She was able to pull in the 3^rd space in a much closer row. We will remember that scam for sure!!!!

We decided to visit the new TurtleTrek exhibit and then head back to the campout. TurtleTrek has 3 areas, they kind of got their ‘staging’ ideas by taking a lesson from Disney. The first area lets you see 3 manatees from underneath. These are rehabilitating from some event that I never heard what it was, and will be released back to the wild in the future. The next area showed us 11 Sea Turtles either in recovery and waiting for release, or there permanently because they cannot be released due to injuries that would mean their demise in the wild, mostly missing flippers. They are beautiful creatures, and such elegant swimmers. The 3^rd area is a 3D movie in a dome that you have to stand thru. Not my favorite kind of event, as I don’t like standing in those round things for 20 minutes. The animated story was of a sea turtle from hatching thru the perils of life until she went back to the same beach she hatched from to lay her first eggs. It was ok, not super, not awful, but very educational, and kids should really understand it and learn a lot.

We spent a short time at the dolphin pool and then left. Total time there, about 1.25 hours!

Stops at Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart on the way home and got here in time to catch the end of General Hospital.

Winston was happy to see me, I suspect he barked a lot in his crate while I was gone.

Dinner tonight was 4 different types of chili made by our campout hosts - White, Spicy, Regular, and No Beans. I tried all except spicy and they were excellent. They also made regular and Spicy cornbread, an excellent dinner.

That takes us to right now, as I write this. I have decided I have lived long enough without internet, so on my MY VERIZON app on my iPhone, I turned on my wireless hotspot, and loaded up the blog I had done several days ago, and now I will load up this one. I am not sure exactly what 2 Gig will give me, I suspect I won’t be able to watch a movie, but if it allows me to upload my blog and some pictures, I will be happy.

Gonna drag out the vacuum tomorrow and get rid of some of the sand.

Kat out.

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Comments

[Maria]

Look forward to your travel blog
I love reading these blogs of yours. Makes me feel like I am traveling along with you and your friends. Keep them coming and safe and enjoyable travels.

[NanaKat]

Maria, Do I know you?
Thanks for following along!!