~Monday, January 11, 2021~
Day 211
Nice to see the dreary gray weather shift to at least a little sun today. The forecast runs the gamut, from upper 50’s to upper 60’s and suppose this West Coast girl was naive in thinking all of Florida was nice and toasty most of the winter. I guess we’re going to have to head a little more south for that, which we are plenty ready for. So for now, we’ll just have to enjoy what we have. Northern Florida weather is very similar to our winters in Napa, CA, so I think we can adapt just fine.
I’m sure most of you are wondering why we chose Old Town, Florida in the first place. Around October of 2020 when we were planning the Florida portion of our trip, we were a little late to the forethought party. Staying somewhere warm for the winter months, for most RVer’s, is the best place to be. And when you add the surge in RV’ing to that, what’s in store is a battle to score the perfect spot. Plus, we’re the type of people that don’t like to be too locked into something, letting things just unfold as they should. But when we stumbled on Suwannee River Hideaway and became intrigued with the property, we decided to work everything else around that. So here we are. Suwannee River has actually been a lovely place for us to have a peaceful, corner spot in the park, all to ourselves (great for Sadie too), and an opportunity to get a lot of things checked off our to do list, which always feels good. And in time, we’ve found a few hidden gems to check out as well. We have a few more days to try and get these 4 places seen:
Olustee Battlefield Historic Park in Sanderson, FL (about 90 minutes away) 🪖
Manatee Springs State Park in Chiefland, FL (minutes away and it’s Manatee season!)💦
Nature Coast State Trail (a 32-mile bike/walking paved trail that connects 5 rural towns with a trestle bridge over the Suwannee River through an occasional corridor of trees and lush vegetation). Hopefully no flat tires this time! 😉🚴♀️
Rainbow Springs State Park in Dunnellon, FL (about 1 hr. away), to do a day of kayaking 🚣♀️in a crystal, clear spring.
Since you guys are holding us accountable in making sure we are getting things checked off our chore list,
you can cross these off as of today:
Cleaned solar panels
Ran the generator (a generator can’t stay idle for more than a month or the oil/gasoline start to do funny things)
Topped off the air in the truck tires
Torqued the lug nuts on the trailer and truck
Cleaned and oiled the front door hinges
Took care of all the squeaky doors inside trailer
Cleaned and oiled the retractable stairs
Sealed the top of the cabinet doors under the sink with 3 coats of polyurethane
While we were tackling a few chores, volunteer resident, Gypsy, played Santa, delivering a few packages…..more books to add to our “Trip BookRoom” (check our book list out at https://www.footprintsonwheels.com/trip-bookroom and Jeff’s new free standing Mock One hammock (a late Christmas gift from moi). Can’t wait to see how good it is. Apparently, it’s THE hammock to buy. If it proves to be great, then I think I’ll follow suit and get myself one. We already have several backpacking hammocks that need trees to set up. So this is a great alternative, and super compact.
Spent a fun evening watching the Alabama/Ohio College National Championships…...Jeff and I were rooting for the underdog, but of course, Alabama won, again. What a blow out!