Stormy Morning and Cancelled Plans

This morning was our first really good storm in the trailer. We had heard on the weather reports that a storm front was approaching early in the morning, and that it would be very windy, cold and rainy. Today was the day we had planned to drive down to Disney World, but upon reviewing the costs for fuel, tickets, and dog boarding, we decided it wouldn't be worth it to walk around the park in the rain...after all, it's not like we haven't been there before, or won't ever go again, right? So we cancelled the plans for the day, and decided to hold tight for the storm. We did roll up the awning, and put more stakes into the screen room.

Chelsea was very restless during the night, and by around 5am was getting in panic mode. We calmed her down, and fell back to sleep. By 7am, I got out of bed, and took a peek out the window...wow, the wind was howling! The few trees we do have around us we bent over, and the screen room was starting to look like the farmhouse in The Wizard of Oz! It wasn't good! The weather alert started going off, and I've never been anywhere before where there were at least 8 alerts piling on top of each other in rapid succession. I was especially concerned about the tornado warning, but the active alert area was a bit to the north of us. The rain started coming down in buckets, and by now, Chelsea was curled up in the shower, poor thing. Casey, on the other hand, couldn't have cared less :-). The lightning was shooting down all over, and I was looking out the window towards the office when this bolt shot down and cracked as loud as I've ever heard, sparks flying...I stopped looking out the window!

Luckily, the storm front passed through fairly quickly, and we didn't get any hail like they did north of us. The screen room held it's moorings, was just a little bent and tipsy and needed to be put back in place :-). Chelsea calmed down, and we all had breakfast. The rain ended around noon, but it is significantly cooler than it had been...yesterday in the 90's, today in the 50's!

I did some more paperwork, changed the address on my checking account down here, and registered our little sport runabout boat with the Florida DMV, also gathering information for registering our vehicles and getting driver's licenses. Such nice people down here in the DMV...NY could really take a lesson or two!

Al did some work on the trailer; the water pressure was really lousy today, so he was checking that and making sure it wasn't us...and it wasn't. The pressure straight out of the spigot was down under 20 lbs of pressure today. He also finished putting on the rear JT Strongarm stabilizers now that we had the bar welded on, and the trailer is nice and solid feeling now :-). We are also grateful for the Progressive Industries surge protector system, as the campground seems to be having some electrical issues tonight as well as water!

I took some pictures today, after the sun came out! Some birds that we saw at the campsite, and the riverfront area.

The hardy screenroom..it'll make it through anything!

View down the row from our campsite. The sites here are nicely spaced, and have quite a bit more privacy screening between sites than last year. Vegetation grows quickly here!

This is the bath house/laundry room across from our site. The bath houses are immaculate, such a pleasure to see. The washer/dryer is actually outside, under the roofed porch. They did a really nice job when upgrading the campground 2 years ago.

Picnic areas down by the river front. The areas have roofs over them, and a barbeque grill at each area. It's really nice for people to have family gatherings here.

The views up river and down river from the loading area. They bring tubers in from the tubing center down the road, and they jump in the river here and float back to their cars. Pretty neat! You can also launch boats and kayaks here, and we hope on Thursday to take a ride in our boat up to the headsprings; Park ranger Martha told us we really have to do that.

A towhee was serenading us tonight at the campsite!

I think this is a Downy Woodpecker, not a Hairy Woodpecker. He was making a lot of noise, and I spotted him in this dead tree, hammering out quite a hole!

This dude was hard to spot, he was quite a ways into the woods and I couldn't get close enough to get a good picture. I had just caught him flying by out of the corner of my eye and was able to snap this picture before he took off again. Maybe a red-shouldered hawk?

The last rays of sunshine hitting the moss hanging off this tree by the riverfront; some people find the moss creepy, but I find it graceful, and the epitome of the south for some reason; once I see the moss, I know I'm in the South!

Tomorrow we drive a bit north for our interview at Otter Springs campground. I had applied there last month for a camphost job next Jan, Feb, and March. The manager invited us up for an interview, and to see the campground and local area, make sure we liked it before accepting the position. I thought that was great, and so that is what we are doing tomorrow. Wish us luck, and hopefully I'll find some interesting things to photograph near the Suwanee River :-).