Wintertime (and the living is easy)
We’ll cover January 2021 in this post, and January is of course wintertime not summertime, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere. But “Wintertime” isn’t a jazz standard, and we spent our January down in Florida where the weather was summery and the living was easy. We helped to make things easy for ourselves by doing what fulltime RVers call the “Florida shuffle,” moving back and forth between Thousand Trails RV parks for our free stays, now limited to two weeks at a time during high use season. So our expenses were low, the government kept giving us money, travel days were short, we had full hookups for our rig, we were familiar with the parks, we could receive packages, we knew where to do our grocery shopping, and best of all, our schedules overlapped with our friends pretty well. We decided not to worry too much about getting out and exploring, but rather to sit back and enjoy having friends not too far out our front door.
We started the month by heading back to Thousand Trails Orlando (TTO). As previously mentioned, TTO doesn’t have assigned sites, you get to pick from among the open spots when you arrive. This visit, we coordinated with the friends we made during the previous few weeks to all park near each other in the self-designated family area of the park. It was fantastic. We were able to park around a large open field that the kids had a great time running around in. Us parents were then able to setup a chair on the edge of the field and relax while the kids had fun. All the kids loved having someone to play with so close by, and parents loved not having to personally keep kids entertained all the time.
The living was so easy, Charlotte decided it would be a good time to start painting the interior of our rig. Luckily it was a nice day for Izzy and me to be kicked outside.
We did venture out of the park a couple of times with our friends, which was a lot of fun. First, we hit up World of Citrus, which is a “U-Pick” citrus orchard, but also has a lot other Florida tourist stuff.
Later, we all agreed to go on a real Florida adventure: kayaking and snorkeling with manatees! We drove out to the town of Crystal River, on the Gulf coast. We donned wetsuits, and then stiffly walked a couple of blocks over to a park on the river with a kayak launch. It was pretty windy, so the water was a bit choppy. Izzy and Charlotte had a tough time, getting pushed around by the waves since they didn’t have enough weight in their kayak. Izzy then decided that she wasn’t up for kayaking in such rough waters, so she and Charlotte got out and walked, while the rest of us paddled a short distance upstream to a different park with a beach where manatees like to hang out. There, we met back up with Charlotte and Izzy, then put on our snorkel gear to check out the manatees!
While in Orlando, you can’t help but see Disney all over the place. Izzy and I have never been to Disney World, so we thought about making the short drive over, but we decided not to do our first visit while pandemic restrictions are still in place. Still, we wanted to get a taste of that Disney magic so we decided to visit Disney Springs, which is a big outdoor shopping mall run by The Mouse. It was a very nice mall, but lacking in magic, I think due to pandemic restrictions.
TTO isn’t actually in Orlando proper, but it isn’t exactly out in the wilderness either, so we were surprised to find quite a bit of “exotic” (to us Midwesterners) wildlife during this stay.
After two weeks at TTO, we headed back down to Peace River. This time the park was much busier, so we spent one night without sewer hookups before playing the park “lottery” to claim a full hookup site.
We had a good time just living easy, swimming at the pool, and doing activities with friends.
We ventured out to make another trip to Siesta Key beach, on what turned out to be a very foggy morning. We still had a good time with our friends, building a big sand castle and playing with new Christmas toys.
All too soon, our stay at Peace River was up. We went out with our friends to a goodbye dinner at a well-named outdoor taco stand before parting ways.
January was a great month. Izzy had so much fun getting to play with friends almost every day (and Charlotte and I enjoyed the socializing as well). Alas, all good things must come to an end, especially since RV plans are not so easily changed at the last minute during the winter in Florida. Our plans took us down to the southern end of the state, which we’ll cover next time. See you down the road!