A day of errands

Friday, we had made appointments to see a dermatologist in Clermont, so after participating in the "Walk Fit" class in the recreation center at the campground, we headed up that way in late morning. It took a while to get both of our appointments completed, but everything came out okay.

After stopping for lunch, we headed further east with plans to stop at a few stores in Orlando.

The first stop was at Carhartt Factory Store at the Orlando Premium Outlets.

The route to get there was **weird** -- we were coming from the northeast down Florida's turnpike (the part coming from top center in this screen capture -- link to Google maps) -- we got off the turnpike and the outlet mall was right below the exit ramp, but, oh no, you couldn't get there from here... we looped around heading back up toward the north, then a full loop to momentarily get onto I-4, then another full loop on surface streets to cross over I-4, and another loop around to get into the outlet mall parking lot. But... that was just the beginning, then there were **no** parking places at the outlet mall. People were driving around, following pedestrians as they walked from the mall to their cars. There were some pay parking areas that had available space ($3/hour!). We ended up driving behind the mall (on the side next to I-4), where there were very few parking spaces, but we happened upon an available one. Then we found out why no one was wanting to park there... all the back doors of the stores were there, but no public entries! We found a propped open door that allowed us to walk through a long corridor that eventually led to the "inside" of the mall (the interior of the mall is all open-air, so it wasn't really "inside").

Thankfully, it happened that the corridor put us pretty near the Carhartt store, so it did not take a lot of additional time to find it. We were able to find a few shirts for Carl, so it was a productive stop. We asked the fellow who checked out our purchases whether it was always this busy, and he said, no, that people were redeeming gift cards that they got at Christmas, and he was hoping that it quieted down soon!

From there, we headed to The Florida Mall to visit Lenscrafters and Helzberg Jewelry. The parking lot there was busy too, but we found a space pretty easily. 

I had gotten new glasses when in Virginia in November, and although I had gotten them re-adjusted 3 times, they just were not comfortable. I took my old frames with me and asked if there was any way that they could put the new lenses into the old frames. The guy at Lenscrafters wasn't positive, but said he would try, and, it turned out that he could do it! He put my old lenses back into the "new" frames which I hopefully will never need to use.

At Helzberg, we had our rings inspected -- and they found a loose stone in my engagement ring -- so it is being sent in for repair, hopefully to be completed before we leave Orlando. Carl asked the lady there whether the mall is always this busy -- she said that she thought it was because there are a lot of folks who visit Orlando from overseas during the holidays, and that they are doing their last shopping before heading back home.

Other stores in the mall...

A Tesla store, selling cars and their "powerwall" for storing solar energy for home use (link to information), and maybe other things too -- we didn't go inside.

Across the mall from the Tesla store was an Apple store - you may not be able to tell, but it was packed -- there were a number of simple tables in the store (like maybe 4-6 rows of 4 tables) and there were items displayed on each table, and people around them playing on them or learning about them or comparing the items.

This is a picture I found on the web of the store... and here's the website link. We didn't go into that store either...

After a stop at Costco to get fuel for the Jeep and to pick up a couple of items, we were heading back to the campground... but got into a lot of traffic (we may have been in normal rush hour type traffic or maybe exit traffic from one or more of the Disney properties).

As we were stuck in traffic, we noticed that we were right by the new Portillo's (which we had read was going to open on January 10). It appeared that there were quite a number of cars there, so we turned in to see if it was open, and it was! So, we decided to stop to eat (two meals eaten out in one day, I can't remember the last time we've done that!) and hope that traffic got better...

Inside the restaurant while waiting for our meal to be prepared -- the monitor screen in the upper left is showing the order numbers being prepared...

and then they move to the right and turn red when your order is ready to be picked up.

As is the custom in all of Portillo's restaurants, they have a picture of the original restaurant which was in Villa Park, Illinois, near where Carl grew up -- though he does not remember that his family ever got food from there when he was growing up.

A view of the rest of the restaurant. There were quite a few people enjoying their Italian beef sandwiches or hot dogs.

We thought this person had a pretty good parking spot (suspended from the roof of the building).

Once we finished eating, we continued on our way back to Gracie, stopping for groceries at Walmart on the way, arriving home well after dark (to a very needy Miss Kitty who couldn't understand how we could have left her alone for the most of the day!). A busy day, but a number of to-do's off our list.

Around Thousand Trails Orlando (TTO)

We moved to Thousand Trails Orlando on Wednesday.

On Thursday, we joined a couple of exercise classes:

We joined the "Walk Fit" class at 9am - they did a 3 mile program by Leslie Sansone...

... about 45 minutes of good cardio workout.

Later in the morning, we joined the beginner line dance lessons - we wish they would teach fewer dances and go over them more before starting music... but... we were able to do some of it, and enjoyed our time with that too.

In the afternoon, we got the bikes out of the Jeep and rode around the perimeter of the campground -- it is about 3.5 miles around the outer perimeter. At one point, there is access to a lake (Lake Hancock). There are a number of retention ponds around the property, and lots of warnings about alligators and snakes!

We were finishing up our bike ride up near the recreation center. While there, we were chatting with another Lectric e-bike owner, and a new arrival came in...

Double Decker Family

We looked up information about them and their bus - a family of 8 (mom, dad, 6 kids). They had the bus converted to an RV for their use. A video about their rig: https://www.motor1.com/news/603826/double-decker-bus-converted-rv/

Even though it was an overcast and rainy day, we enjoyed some activities out and about the campground!

Moving day

Wednesday was moving day from Clerbrook Golf and RV Resort to Thousand Trails Orlando (TTO) RV Resort. The checkout time for Clerbrook was 11am, we had only about a half hour drive to our next campground with a noon check-in, so we endeavored to leave as close to 11am as possible. We were a little concerned about getting Gracie out of our site... when we got there, we had put the drive wheels of Gracie on our rubber pads to ensure that they did not go down into the grass/mud. It had not dried much while we were there. The fellow in the site next to us was also leaving with his 5th wheel on Wednesday - his back drive wheels on his pickup started slipping and he put it into 4-wheel-drive and got out okay. But, Gracie doesn't have 4 wheel drive... we put additional rubber pads down in front of the drive wheels so we hoped Gracie would get going and not slipping. We decided to pull pretty close to straight out onto an asphalt street that was in front of our site so we would not need to stop or maneuver while we were still on the grass. It turned out that Gracie pulled out just fine, no slipping, we got onto the asphalt and then re-positioned on the asphalt to head toward the exit, hooked up the Jeep, and headed out.

We had heard that TTO was very particular about not letting anyone enter until 12 noon or after, that they would turn rigs away from the entrance. We had been told of a place where people "staged" up the highway from the campground -- I drove slowly, catching as many lights as I could, taking about 45 minutes to make the half hour drive, and got to the offsite staging area. There were a few other rigs there, and after negotiating our way around the tight parking lot, we joined the line up to enter TTO.

We had also heard that they were very effective at processing the rigs coming in - thankfully, they have a long entry driveway - maybe 10-15 rigs can fit in the entry driveway - others are lined up along the highway in front. One other Thousand Trails member reported that he watched 59 rigs came in on December 14 in one hour.

We had disconnected at the offsite staging area to enable us to get around in the parking area...

... so I was driving separately in the Jeep as we got into the campground. I took this picture when Gracie was in the "inside-the-campground" staging area, where they provided you with information about what campsites might be available, and then escorted you to a site. The golf cart next to Gracie was prepared to escort Carl to a site in the new section with concrete pads.

Other rigs in the inside-the-campground staging area -- about 5-6 rigs can fit into this area at a time - they efficiently move them in, give them their arrival number (we were #16), determine which section they want, and then escort them out.

We were impressed -- we were on our site by 12:30pm.

Nice new sites just recently put in. In fact, the printed map doesn't even have these sites.

The satellite view from Google Maps shows that this area (a little south of where Carl's picture is showing) used to be where a storage lot for RVs was located. (Link to Google maps)

There seem to be a lot of activities here, and we're looking forward to participating!

SpaceX launches

We're in Florida, SpaceX is doing launches... can we see them?

We had talked to a few folks here in the campground and they indicated that the launches can be seen from this location, so, since a launch was scheduled for Tuesday morning at a reasonable time, so we decided to try to watch it.

We started watching the countdown on TV when it came on about 10 minutes before the scheduled launch...

... beautiful blue skies in Florida (well, they weren't *that* blue to our eyes, but they were clear!).

When the launch occurred, we headed out of the rig to see what we could see... there are some trees east of us so we couldn't see much ...

... we walked down to the end of the campground road (just a few sites down from us) where the trees were not quite so thick...

... well... there it is... hmm... glad we didn't get up in the middle of the night!

We've heard that night launches are more visible. We are contemplating seeing about getting into a campsite on the east coast of Florida in March before we start heading north... SpaceX did 31 launches in 2021, planned 52 for 2022 and accomplished 61, and has a possible 100 planned for 2023 - so about 2 a week. We also can try driving from the campground in Orlando to Cape Canaveral. We'll definitely report on any further launch observations!

Enjoying the campground

The Clerbrook Golf and RV Resort campground is large - about 1200 sites, and a couple of miles if we bike all the way around it on the exterior roads (we haven't tried going in and out on all the side streets).

We are parked way up at the upper left end in the pink sites backing up to the golf course -- if you want to see a better version of the map, check out: https://rvonthego.com/media/com_rv/uploads/resorts/sm0216-clerbrook_1454617901.pdf - we are in site 691.

 

Carl found some neat bike paths through the woods up near the road here at the campground (in the area where the "911" and informational legend are printed on the map). He took me there on Friday...

It was a really pretty area - we couldn't tell if the trails were "official" and kept groomed or just used enough to stay clear. That's Carl heading along on the path (I have to stop to get a picture, so he gets almost out of sight before I can get the picture taken! Someday I may learn to take a picture while I'm riding but I kinda doubt it!).

There were lots and lots of trails, all intersecting, and every once in a while having an entrance/exit to a part of the campground.

When we got back to the rig, this is what greeted us -- "watch cat" -- not amused!

Can you tell we woke her up when we came in?

Our site -- we have the awning out and shade attached -- the passenger side ("public" side) of Gracie is facing south, so we get a lot of heat on that side when the sun is out...

... behind us is the golf course.

On Sunday afternoon, we headed back to bike on the wooded paths...

Carl was taking the pictures so they are better than the ones I take!

On Monday morning, we joined the campground scheduled line dance lessons. We had tried to come on Friday but the instructor was not there so the lessons were cancelled.

We find that the level of line dance lessons is not very consistent from one park to another -- we were supposed to be there for "basic beginner" lessons, but they were at an intermediate level according to what we have learned before - barely going over the steps before "everyone has it" and the music starting, and then going on to fast music when we couldn't keep up with the slower music!!! Oh well, we got good exercise, for our bodies and our minds!

2022 by the numbers

We keep various records of our travels during the year - it is interesting to look back on the previous year as we welcome a new one...

We reset the Trip A counter on the Garmin on 1/1/2022, so 9309.5 miles is what it thinks Gracie traveled in 2022.

In a similar way, on the Jeep, the Garmin indicates that we traveled 7189 miles in 2022.

For comparison, looking back two years, 2021 had 76 stops. One of Carl's cousins said that the 2021 outline looked like a moose, and challenged us to make an outline of a bear or an armadillo in 2022 -- I told her it may be a Picasso representation of a bear or armadillo... but I'm not sure we did either one... 

We'll have to check with Jenice on her opinion of whether we achieved any animal outline in 2022 -- I'm thinking a smiling shark swimming west!

Of course, I have to keep spreadsheets -- here are a couple of captures from the rollup page:

Our "Other charges" are high for 2022 for a few reasons: we transferred Peggy's Thousand Trails (TT) Platinum membership into our names and got Trails Collection (costs allocated in December 2021 but reflected in 2022 "other charges"), we upgraded the new-to-us TT membership to Elite in May (1/3 of that cost is listed in December 2021 also - we decided to "write off" the cost over 3 years), and Venture Out (the resort where we own a lot in Mesa) had a large maintenance project that required a special assessment which doubled our M&O fees for the year. On the plus side, we were able to get Venture Out (VO) rental program to rent out our lot for several months in the winter of 21-22 and again 22-23, which we are counting against the M&O and the special assessment (thus the negative amounts for a couple of months).

The "per night for month" column just looks at campground fees - you can see it varies a lot by where we are staying for that month.

In the past, our overall goal has been to average $15 or less per night. However, with the costs of campgrounds significantly increasing over the past 2 years, we've decided to make our goal to stay under $25/night on average.

We have a few memberships that go into the equation: Thousand Trails (TT), Trails Collection (TC), Harvest Hosts (HH), Good Sam, Passport America (PA), Golden Age, and RPI. 

The Harvest Hosts calculation could include the amounts that we spend patronizing the host but since we get goods or services for that amount, I don't include it. 

This year I added a calculation for the number of nights spent in Service Centers - I calculate the cost of camping as "free" but we know that there are significant expenses involved with staying at service centers - we keep those in a separate part of our budget allocation for RV maintenance and upkeep.

We don't have membership fees for Good Sam or Passport America because Carl has a lifetime membership with both of those. Golden Age is the 1/2 price camping that we get a public "national" campgrounds - National parks, Corps of Engineers (COE), National Forest or Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Campgrounds -- due to Carl having a Golden Age card (62+ get 1/2 price camping and free entry fees). 

We got RPI for free for a year due to upgrading to Elite with TT. We only stayed at one RPI campground (Hart Ranch in South Dakota in August) - which we really liked - but from what we've read, Hart Ranch may be an anomaly in the RPI system as far as quality is concerned, so we're undecided on whether we will keep that membership for next year. As I understand it, we won't have to make the decision to pay for that at the date the free year runs out (I think in May)... we can elect to get it later when/if we see a need during the year (e.g. there is an RPI campground in the area where we want to stay and it has good reviews). RPI is a yearly membership fee + camping fee program - you pay a one year fee (I think it is $169/year) and then you pay per night for the campsite - $10/night -- and for some campgrounds you additionally pay a resort fee, like $5-15/night. So our campsite at Hart Ranch was $22/night, really a great deal for the quality of the campground there.

Probably more information than most of our readers have interest in, but... I'm in the process of putting our 2023 files together, and closing out 2022, so I thought I'd share!

Local wildlife

Happy New Year!

We are at Clerbrook Golf and RV Resort. There are a number of heron, egrets, and sandhill cranes around the campground -- the sandhill cranes seem to be especially tame...

Along the golf course...

... at a campsite...

... we've seen them at this particular campsite a few times...

... maybe they are getting fed (though the campground asks that you don't feed the wildlife).

They have a very interesting call:

In case the embedded video does not work (as it seems it often does not!), here is a link to hear them on Youtube: https://youtu.be/64UaFLwqZYY