We flew back to Orlando on New Years Eve morning. There were no delays and we picked up our RV at the KOA storage lot near the airport by noon. After a lot of grocery shopping we got to the campground around 3 PM and got the last campsite, #7, available. I guess this week is a popular camping destination during the holidays.
The campsite was small and not level so on Tuesday morning we found a site closer to the river, #30, that had just opened up. We took a few bike rides around the FishHawk Ranch trails. See this link for a map. https://bcpoa.org/FHMap.pdf These paths are 5’ wide concrete sidewalks that mostly go through natural areas around the ponds and woods of this large housing complex. There has to be at least 30 miles of trails along with some mountain bike trails and roadside sidewalks. We biked about 40 miles on 3 rides. The paths are very curvy and slow. There is a large grocery store only 3 miles away which makes it easy to pickup more provisions.
I got on the internet and found that this model lock fails after a few years and a new better designed lock is available. It is still made in the USA but costs about $100.
The Phoenix factory was closed for the holidays so on Wednesday morning I ordered the lock on E-Bay from RV and Auto Parts in CA. I got the lock in 1-1/2 days by USPS, fastest shipment ever. It took a while to put it in because the dead bolt mechanism interferes with the aluminum channel in the door. So after some drilling, filing and Dremel cutting, I got a slot cut in the channel and it works great.
On Friday morning campsite #37, pictured above, opened up so we moved again since it is one of the only 5 sites that are right on the river. We like the river sites because we can get shuttled up to the put-in at Alderman’s Ford and paddle the 9 miles back down to our campsite. A friendly camper from MN, camped next to us, had a rack on his car and carried our canoe and us up to the put-in.
On 12/20 they got 7” of rain in the area and the river came up 10‘ almost flooding out these sites. The river was now back down to 500 cfs from the flood at 3500 cfs but we found it was totally blocked by large trees in two places. Peggy did not like portaging through the muddy jungle. It took us almost an hour more than it usually tales us. We were the only boat on the river that Saturday afternoon. It was nice and fast with no shallow shoals like in low water.
Our plans are to stay here until January 20th and then see if we can get a campsite at another Hillsborough County Park called EG Simmons.
I almost forgot to mention, finally we have really warm weather. See actual weather:
MON 12/31 Actual Temp 82° /59° Hist. Avg. 70°/52° | TUE 1/1 Actual Temp 82° /57° Hist. Avg. 71°/52° | WED 1/2 Actual Temp 82° /61° Hist. Avg. 71°/52° | THU 1/3 Actual Temp 81° /61° Hist. Avg. 71°/52° | FRI 1/4 Actual Temp 82° /63° Hist. Avg. 70°/52° | SAT 1/5 Actual Temp 68° /50° Hist. Avg. 70°/52° | SUN 1/6 Actual Temp 72° /45° Hist. Avg. 70°/51° |
Bad year for the rv. Bummer
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