On Saturday, February 25, we left Eustis at 11am with 96,804 miles on Acey and 113,603 on Thor. We headed to Clermont where we stayed for 2 weeks. By 1pm we had settled in our site on the west side of the Thousand Trails Orlando RV resort (TTO) in a very quiet area surrounded by park models.
Sunday mornings, we worshipped with Stephens Valley Church by YouTube. We watch the previous week’s service since the current day is not uploaded until later in the day. We were not able to Zoom with our Sunday School class the first week, but we did the second week!
Our weekly Zoom with the family is a great way to keep in touch with those far away! Not everyone participates each week, but it’s usually a good chat.
We rode 14 miles on the South Lake Trail on another beautiful Florida day.
In January, when we were at the big RV show in Tampa, we saw some shades for the front of the coach, to replace the visor shades (that were not working right) and the curtain that covers the front windows for privacy. We measured for the shades and got them ordered. Jim had removed the old visor shades before we got a “before” shot but the curtains were still up!
Jim had to wire up the windshield shade before he could install it.
When the engine is running, the windshield shade stops and can act as a sun visor.
When the engine is off, that shade can go all the way down. The other shades are manual. Another nice improvement to our coach!
We went up to The Villages to meet up with Russ and Adele. We had a delicious dinner at The Havana Country Club and visited afterwards.
We rode on the General James A. Van Fleet State Trail several times during our stay – a flat and straight rail-trail that runs 29.2 miles through the Green Swamp. We always stop at the bridges to look for alligators!
Sometimes we see turtles.
We always see gopher tortoises along the trail, sometimes looking like a rock!
or not!
Several of them stand guard over their borrow, so they turn and hide before we can get a photo there,
but often we can get a close-up when they are away from home!
Occasionally we see a snake skitter across the trail along with squirrels, birds, turkey vultures, butterflies and lizards.
Lots of flowers are in bloom as we ride along; pickerelweed likes the wet swampy places.
Salvia
Lantana – looking like a little bouquet in each bloom.
Satintail grass
Lots of other folks are out on the trail, mostly with 2 wheels, an occasional tandem and often see 3 wheeled recumbents.
We have been on the Van Fleet Trail many times and always enjoy the scenery! We rode it 5 times, going 85 miles during our stay.
Linda FINALLY got around to baking these scones – a mix we bought when we visited King Arthur Baking when we were in Vermont back in July of 2021 – the box said “Best if baked by 4/5/22” – but they turned out delicious!
Around the RV park we had not seen as many sandhill cranes wandering as usual, but we did see a few!
An egret was at the pond when we were playing some putt-putt.
We decided to mount our maps on the slide rather than on the boards we had been putting in the windows.
We enjoyed our 2 weeks at TTO and move on the Zephyrhills on Saturday March 10.
Hi travelers,
Your map is looking very complete. Any plans to add Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes? I shudder to think how close you got to those gators, but maybe that’s just the wonder of telephoto.
After the house is built, we will explore our options! We’d love to go back to Alaska, back out west too – and also see more of Canada. Our ORIGINAL hope before the pandemic interrupted our plans was to go East and head to Prince Edward Island and across Canada. We’ll see what the future brings!
We were on a bridge above the gators, so we were not really all that close; a guy we saw at one of the bridges said he was riding along one day, and a big 10-foot gator was laid out across the asphalt, so he rode around it on the grass. NO WAY we would do that!