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Pulling back in to The Great Outdoors on November 1st felt good after a spending spring, summer and fall on a 4500 mile journey to the New England states. Best I can tell, the lot that we own was only rented out 22 of the 189 nights we were gone. It won’t generate a ton of rental income - less than $1100. It just goes to show than not many travelers pass through here in the summer months. But it is Florida which gets hot and humid, plus there was an active hurricane season this year that likely scared some folks away. The other factor was that the golf course at our resort has been undergoing a complete renovation so it was closed for all the time we were gone. Not being a golfer, I don’t understand the attraction to the game, but some visitors stop here and rent RV sites in order to get in a few rounds of golf. The course is scheduled to reopen in January so maybe next summer when we flee the heat, others will return to check out the new and improved course?
Our lot looked to be in good shape. The palm trees need to be trimmed, the garden beds weeded and the shed could use a good wash and a new deck, but we will be here long enough this year that we don’t need to try to tackle all the chores immediately. I like to call this “pacing myself” not procrastination! There are also a fair number of chores that the motorhome should have taken care of. It starts out by getting a good bath before we even pull out the slides.
Our plans are to be in Florida through late April. But actually we won’t be spending all that time here at TGO. At the beginning of 2024, Florida State Parks changed how they handle reservations. They used to have a rolling reservation window of 10 months for all campers but modified the policy to allow Florida residents a one month head start over the rest of the country. This advantage allowed us to book several state park campground sites along the east coast of Florida down into the Keys. We managed to string together a handful sites starting in early January thru mid February. More on this in upcoming blog posts.
Not all of our time was spent on chores on our site and rig. We fit in some free time to head over to one of our favorite local destinations - Orlando Wetlands Park. It’s only a 20 minute drive to this place. We have been here several times over this past winter and seem to always find lots to see. But this time we were able to take advantage of the shuttle service they offer on weekends. A volunteer takes groups of 8 to 10 people around the various paths of the park. There are a few of advantages of seeing the park this way. You get to see much of the park without needing to walk or bicycle. There are 10 pairs of eyes keeping a lookout for various birds and animals. The volunteers also know from earlier trips or other drivers what area has activity going on so we have a better chance of experiencing wildlife.
One early stop had possibly the neatest thing we have come across in a long time. An alligator was in a small pool of water just off the road. This is Florida so the alligator by itself isn’t all that interesting except for those visitors from out of state. This gator however was special because it had two of its babies resting on its back.
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| Two Baby Gators Resting on Mama's Back |
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| Passion Butterfly |
As we got driven around the wetlands, we would stop occasionally to check out other animal sightings. Our tour guide was quite knowledgeable about the ones commonly seen here. One stop was prompted by a man walking the trails staring intently into the grass just off the road. He has spotted some sort of snake. It was very difficult to see but I finally isolated its head for a picture.
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| Open Wide and Say Ahhh |
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| Snake in the Grass? |
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| Our Shuttle |
A disadvantage of taking the shuttle is we don’t get a chance to get out and enjoy the boardwalk. But we will get back to it after the tour is over. We definitely enjoyed the shuttle ride and all the information provided by the guide that we wouldn’t get on our own.
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| The Boardwalk |
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| Snowy Egrets in the Muck |
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| Common Gallinule |
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| Black-bellied Whistling Ducks |
We had brought along lunch, so we headed to one of the covered shelters to eat before exploring the boardwalk on our own. Even our lunch stop had wildlife. It wasn’t chipmunks begging for food like may have been expected but instead two pairs of sandhill cranes. They definitely were not concerned with our being there and in fact walked right thru the shelter as they continued on the way.
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| Sandhill Cranes Passing Through Picnic Shelter |
We eventually made it over to the boardwalk and started the slow walk along it looking to see what we could find. The larger birds are easy to spot as they wade in the shallow water looking for food. The tougher animals to spot are the turtles and frogs that seem to blend into the surroundings quite well.
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| Spiny Softshell Turtle Blending In |
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| Tricolored Heron |
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| Anhinga |
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| Frog |
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| Turtle |
While there were lots of birds, it did seem like the variety of species was down from our prior visits here. Likely because we are too early in the season for the full variety of birds. The good thing is this place is so close, we can come back frequently.
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| Another Tricolored Heron |
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| Anhinga Drying Out |
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| Great Blue Heron |
Not all the birds here are strictly wetland birds. We did spot a smallish hawk perched on the top of a dead palm tree. I am also always fascinated by two very similar looking birds - anhinga and cormorant. I’m not good enough to distinguish them from a distance but there was one on the boardwalk railing that didn’t seem too concerned with us slowly walking by even though we were only a few feet from it. By the straight beak, I know this was an anhinga. With such a closeup view, I was able to check out its dangerous looking webbed feet.
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| Hawk Scans the Wetlands |
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| Fearless Anhinga |
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| Unexpected Webbed Feet Talons |
As we worked our way from the boardwalk along the road on the northern edge of the wetlands, we realized there geocache hidden along a section of the Florida Trail just off the property. There is a bridge that gets us over the stream of water that comes out of the wetlands so it is easy to get to the nicely shaded trail. It’s been a long day here so we aren’t in the mood for a real hike, but it does look like a nice section of trail to check out.
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| Section of Florida Trail by Orlando Wetlands |
I mentioned in an earlier post when we were first renting at TGO and considering purchasing a lot that there are numerous clubs and groups at the resort. I had gotten a tour of the woodworking group - the Sawdust Club - and it looked like my kind of place. This club is not free, but for the $70 per year membership fee, I would have access to a very complete woodworking shop as well as the loaner tools. There are a wide array of saws, pneumatic nailers, sanders and other standard “woodworking” tools. But they also have a wide assortment of other tools I used to have before we sold our home and parted with most of my possessions. They have small tool kits for plumbing work, electrical work and drywall tools. Plus there is a shed full of shovels, rakes, pruners and other yard maintenance tools. Now that we have a lot, there are some things that we need to take care of and being able to go to the Sawdust Club to borrow a shovel or pick axe when Chris wants to dig out some old shrubs and plant new ones sure beats going to the hardware store and buying tools I likely won’t need to use again for a few years.
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| Some of the Loaner Tools at Sawdust Club |
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| Even More Options |
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| Well Stocked Garden Shed |
One project that needed to be taken care of on the motorhome was to replace the large springs on the hydraulic levelers. Being over a dozen years old the springs that retract the levelers have grown weak. I often would need to use a long pry bar to help them come all the way up before we could travel for the day. We had purchased replacement springs back in April 2023 when we passed through the Newmar parts center while having our solar system installed in northern Indiana. But I had not gotten around to replacing them yet. Based on my research, it looked like a job I could handle. In order to remove the old springs, I just needed to drive the jacks out enough to wedge a series of shims on each pair of springs on a jack. Then I could retract the jack using the help of a crow bar since the springs give no help with all the shims installed. Eventually I was able to unhook the old springs and get them out from underneath the rig.
My research had shown a few methods for removing the shims from the old springs and then installing them on the new springs. The most common approach is to grab the spring, bend it enough to release the pressure on a shim and pull it out. This would take some time and effort since each spring requires around 20 shims. Removing the shims from the old spring worked okay but when I attempted to bend the new springs I was not able to apply enough force to even get a few shims installed and it didn’t look like any amount of Wheaties or spinach was going to make me strong enough for the task.
Other people posted videos of using a vehicle with chains or straps with the spring between the car and a tree. The car was slowly driven to stretch the spring to remove the shims and install them on the new spring. While this looked plausible, it also looked to be a bit dangerous if something broke free during the process. I could only imagine what would happen to me or the car if that method failed. I had noticed that the Sawdust Club has a floor jack to borrow and after discussing using this to help stretch the springs with another member, I came up with a way to handle two springs at once using the floor jack and one inch bar stock. Since they come in pairs, this approach was ideal.
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| Old Rusty Leveler Springs |
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| Stretching Out Old Springs to Remove Shims |
It turned out that the biggest issue with tackling the job now was simply crawling underneath the rig to access the springs. The rear was particularly difficult. For those of you that do mechanical jobs in tight quarters, you know how having an additional joint in your forearm would come in handy. With a few contortionist moves, and Chris’ help, the new springs are installed and now retract much more quickly.
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| Stretching New Springs to Install Shims |
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| New Springs Installed on One Corner |
Another day trip was north to the Dunlawton Sugar Mills Gardens just a little south of Daytona Beach. From the description, it looked like an interesting place. Unfortunately when we arrived, we found it was closed from hurricane damage earlier this season. We had planned a few other stops in this general area but the next one was to be lunch and we really needed to kill some time before we would be hungry. Not far from the closed gardens is the town of Port Orange. There was an Adventure Lab that toured us around Riverwalk Park on the shore of the Halifax River. As we were finishing up the trip around the park, we noticed a woman that had seemed to be mimicking our moves. We made an educated guess and confirmed she was also geocaching. But even more unusual was that she too had planned to go to the Dunlawton Gardens, found it closed and picked this same park as her plan B!
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| View at Riverwalk Park |
Our next stop was for lunch and while there are plenty of decent restaurants in this area, we were heading to something a bit more eclectic. We have seen several Buc-ee’s over our years of traveling but have never actually stopped at one. If you’re unfamiliar with these places, they are massive gas stations that are generally found in the south of the US. We have never stopped while traveling in the motorhome simply because the fuel pumps are not configured in a way that works well for a rig our size towing a car. The one in Daytona Beach has 104 pumps! All of the Buc-ee’s we have driven by are always jam packed with cars and people, and this one was no different. After filling up the car with gas, we find a parking spot and head in.
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| Welcome to Buc-ee's |
The store here covers an amazing 50,000 square feet and it takes some time to wander through all the different departments. It was amazing how much Buc-ee’s branded stuff there is and believe it or not, visitors were selecting all sorts of things. We however didn’t find anything we absolutely needed - one advantage of living in a 400 square foot motorhome, we don’t have room for this type of stuff. We head over to the food area where there are a dozen employees preparing all sorts of options - none of it would be considered healthy but we make our choices. Surprisingly they don’t seem to have any tables and chairs to enjoy our food inside or out so we headed back to the car. The stream of people coming in and out is pretty continuous.
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| Food Options |
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| Nice Old Coupe |
Next we head over to Daytona Beach proper and park near the boardwalk area. It was a nice day but not too crowded to enjoy the walk along the beach. The sand was nice and firm and actually would have been ideal to have our bicycles to see more of the beach. Besides taking in the sights, we stopped for a creative geocache right outside of a restaurant. Fortunately with the minimal people around, we were able to find this well hidden caches.
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| A Fairly Quiet Daytona Beach |
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| Joe's Crab Shack on Pier |
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| Fish Mural |
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| Osprey Flies By |
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| Daytona Beach Bandshell |
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| Clock Tower |
Our next stop of the day in the area was to the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse. We’ve seen and visited a lot of lighthouses this year so adding another to the list seemed appropriate. I had not investigated this place before arriving and was really just expecting to see the lighthouse and possibly the light keeper’s house. But it turns out this place is much more than that. Your admission fee allows access to tower plus 8 other buildings on the immaculate grounds.
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| Ponce Inlet Lighthouse |
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| Lighthouse Museum Grounds Map |
Starting out in the entrance building which includes a large gift shop, we head out to explore what they have here. The old wood shed has been converted into a small theater with a 20 minute video about the history of the lighthouse. The first lighthouse was built here in 1835 but on the opposite side of the inlet. It was destroyed in a storm and replaced by this one in 1887.
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| Former Lighthouse Keeper's House |
After getting the rundown on the lighthouse, we decide to tour the tower. Standing 175 feet tall. There are 213 steps up a spiral staircase with a couple of landings along the way.
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| Looking Up the Spiral Staircase |
After the long climb, we make it to the top. The actual light and lens are in a locked room up a short final set of stairs but we can read about some of the facts about the light and look into the light room through a glass section.
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| Just Below Light |
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| Good View of the Light |
There is a walkway that wraps around the outside of the tower just below the light level. The old railing is there but they have also added extra safety railing to prevent people from taking a plunge.
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| Safety Railing on Outer Walkway |
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| Looking Down on the Museum Grounds |
The views from up here are spectacular in all directions. The beach is about a third of a mile to the east. It’s not close enough to see people walking but we could easily see the waves breaking on the beach. The inlet is where the Halifax River exits with the town of New Smyrna on the other side of it.
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| A Look at the Beach |
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| Ponce Inlet |
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| Breakwall at Inlet |
There were several other people making their way up as we headed down. We were grateful for the landings since the stairs are a little narrow to pass others without one person being right at the edge of the railing looking a long way down.
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| Long Way Down |
The various light keeper’s houses are still standing and some have been converted to exhibits while one still has the rooms configured as they might have been back when a family lived here.
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| Another Keeper's House |
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| Lighthouse Display Area |
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| Fresnel Lens |
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| Parabolic Mirror |
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| Residence Bedroom |
There is a surprising amount of things to see and we spent a lot longer here than we originally expected. The last building we toured was the Lens Exhibit Building. This is a newer building (1995) built to house and display the vast collection of lenses the museum has collected over the years. It was really interesting to see the different style of lenses including two of the large first order Fresnel lenses that tower above us.
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| Old Equipment |
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| Huge Fresnel Lens |
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| Staring Into Fresnel Lens |
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| Another 1st Order Lens |
We originally had plans to head to one more nearby destination, but we had spent nearly 2 hours touring this great museum and it was nearly 5 o’clock and we still had a little over an hour long drive back to camp. The day didn’t go exactly as planned when we headed out early this morning, but it still turned into something special.
Later in November, we headed just down the road from TGO to where the Florida Trail comes through. We parked at the trailhead next to another fairly large campground and head north. We have a few geocaches to find along the way as we work our way up towards Orlando Wetlands. It was a nice walk in the woods but we struggled to find one of the hides about 2.5 miles into the walk, so we gave up and turned back before actually making it to the wetlands.
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| Fish Hawk Pond |
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| Florida Trail Signage |
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| Unusual Bridge |
One other things we were taking care of when we arrived in November was to get in visits with a dentist and doctor. Part of the reason we had purchased the lot here in TGO was so that we could have an actual primary care doctor that we could visit and make sure we were doing okay. Our visit back in the summer of 2023 in western New York had shown that finding dentists on the road is feasible, but it is very difficult to handle general health issues on the road ad hoc. So we had investigated different options in the area and scheduled appointments over the summer for when we returned in November. That’s where I’ll pick up on the next blog post.
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| Gator Relaxing at Pond by Our Lot |
