Colt Creek State Park – Lakeland, FL – January 5 – 12, 2024

We left Wekiva Springs State Park in Apopka, Florida around 1 pm on Friday, January 5, 2024 and drove about 90 minutes south to Colt Creek State Park in Lakeland, Florida arriving around 2:30 pm. By 4 pm we were all set up and shortly after that I was making homemade pizza. We enjoyed the pizza and finished watching season 3 of “The Umbrella Academy.” Looking forward to the 4th and final season coming out later this year.

Saturday morning it started raining and the wind was blowing pretty hard until around 11 am. The screen room I had so carefully put up the day before blew partway over. When the rain was over I went out and re-staked it into the ground as well as adding extra stakes since we were expecting more bad weather. We also took Bella for a walk when the rain stopped but had to confine ourselves to the paved portion of the loop due to the muddy conditions. But, we spotted two beautiful Red-Shouldered Hawks as we walked, though we only got a picture of one of them as it perched on a speed limit sign looking regal.

Then we sat down at our desk and re-looked at the upcoming Utah portion of our trip this year and made some adjustments which will put us closer to Zion National Park than we originally planned, so that was good. Cindy does a LOT of planning for our trips and then often sits down to go over everything again to make sure we’re having the best journey possible. All I have to do is drive, lol.

On Sunday, January 7th we awoke to rain at 7 am, but it only lasted about an hour. We walked Bella around the loop twice in the morning and twice in the late afternoon trying to get in our two miles a day and give her some outdoor time. I grilled hamburgers and chicken on the Blackstone while Cindy made a crockpot chicken meal as well. That’s because when we went shopping before arriving in Lakeland, Publix had a BOGO on packages of chicken breasts. So now we have several meals of various chicken-centered types.

Monday, Monday…

We also spent the evening getting ready to pack up and leave first thing Monday morning so we could take Nomad to the dealer for the slide-out cover repair. We had it installed last January and in May it broke. I had to keep climbing up a ladder to the top of the slide-out every time we set up or tore down to manually reposition it with my hands to get it to roll out or roll up. In September, while in Pennsylvania, I had a manufacturer-certified mobile tech remove it when he came to replace our slide-out motor that died. Now I’m hopeful that the dealer will repair/replace at no cost since we’re still a few days inside the one-tear warranty period.

But the best part of Monday will be getting to see my brother and his wife for the first time in two years and take him out for a belated birthday lunch.

Throughout our stay at Colt Creek, as mentioned earlier in this post, we enjoyed the presence of several beautiful Red-Shouldered Hawks. We would see them as we walked around the campground and even at the empty site next to us and the trees around our site. Here’s a video of several of the sightings and there are photos in the album.

Well, the best laid plans of mice and men, and all that stuff. Got up at 5:30 am Monday morning, took a shower, packed everything up, tore down and disconnected everything so we could hook up Nomad to Voyager and leave by 8 am to drive 90 minutes to the RV dealership.

BUT…just as we were about to hitch up Cindy notice the back passenger tire of Voyager was low. I got out my portable air compressor, hooked it up and started filling the tire when we heard the hissing sound. These are all brand new tires installed the previous Wednesday, and yet the tire stem is pumping out air as fast as I can fill it.

I had just showered and had no desire to get filthy changing the tire, so I used my AAA app to request service. No problem, it said, someone will be there in an hour. That would have still left me time to get to the dealership, though a few minutes late. Then, as the appointed time approached, I was sent a notification that they were running late due to “high call volume” and would let me know as soon as possible when the service would arrive. Arrrrghhhh!!! Finally, around 10:30 am it said the service would be there at 12:05 pm. Double Arrrghhhh!!! If I had known they would take that long I could have changed it myself and taken another shower long before they arrived.

At 12:05 no one had appeared or called and I am steaming. I try calling AAA but get lost in their call tree of nebulous instructions and so hang up and call back. As I’m once again navigating their ridiculously unclear instructions, I am getting an incoming call. I answer it and it is the AAA driver telling me he’ll be there in 45 minutes. I have some choice words I’m biting back.

Happy Birthday To The Bestest Brother in the World

He finally gets here at 1 pm and is finished switching out the tires in 15 minutes. I’ve completely missed my window at the dealership, so we just get in the truck and head for my brother’s house, about 90 minutes away. Our planned lunch has turned into a late lunch/early dinner but on the bright side where I would have had to leave very shortly after lunch to get back to pick up Nomad, we now have a little extra time (not as much as I would have liked) to spend with The Bestest Brother in the World.

Anyway, we got to his house and after all the hellos and hugging we got to tour their new home, which was also beautifully remodeled to their liking. Even though we travel the country I’m very happy to have he and his wife back closer to where we stay in the winter so we can visit while we’re in the area. Cindy has already booked one of our stays next January close to their home so we can spend some more time together.

Then it was off to a restaurant of Mark’s choice for his birthday meal. He and his wife chose a nearby restaurant they had been wanting to try named Gran Hacienda and it was delicious Mexican fare that we all enjoyed. We spent a couple of hours eating, drinking, and visiting, catching up with each other. Then it was back to their home for a few more minutes of visiting before we had to leave to get back and feed Bella.

But, before we left, Mark handed me a wine bottle gift bag and when I pulled out what was inside it was a bottle of Oban Scotch Whiskey, the only Scotch that Cindy and I like to drink. It is SO smooth. We discovered it when we travelled to Scotland 17 1/2 years ago (staying in Oban on the coast – you can read about that trip here) and after trying all the other Scotch Whiskeys on the tour/trail around the country Oban turned out to be our favorite. Mark also included a Star Trek decal with an outline of the Starship Enterprise that reads “To Boldy Go Where No One Has Gone Before” for us to put on the truck or trailer.

The next day I took Voyager and the tire to the dealer/chain in Lakeland that we had bought the tires from in Orlando. They fixed the stem and re-mounted the new tire in about 40 minutes. Then we ran several errands in town before heading back to the campground. Just in time, as a HUGE storm system was moving in from the Gulf of Mexico and we had bad rains and winds from about 5 pm, throughout the night, and into the next day. Gotta love Florida weather, lol. But it’s better than the snow and ice other parts of the country are getting, so there’s that.

A Funny Story

Here’s a funny story, at least to my warped sense of humor. During our walks around the loop we saw a travel trailer in a pull-through site (as opposed to backing in) with a spare tire cover that read “I Hate Pulling Out” on its rear bumper. It’s obviously meant as a double-entendre with a slightly naughty sense to it. I didn’t get a photo of it, but I’ve included a stock photo I found online in the photo album for this post.

We had noticed, since we walked past it numerous times, that there was never a tow vehicle in the site, just the travel trailer. On the next to last day of our stay we walked by in the morning and two rangers were at the site in their vehicles. I heard one on his cell phone saying he would give the person on the other end of the call the number of a tow service. We surmised from their presence and what we heard of the call that the owner of the trailer had experienced some kind of issue that prevented him from removing his travel trailer by the time his stay was up. Later that morning a flat-bed tow truck of the type we used in Canada to have Nomad towed drove past our site and around the corner to the site where the two rangers remained. Within a few minutes the trailer was removed.

In the end, the owner of the trailer was right; he hated pulling out.

The rest of our stay was pretty dreary, which matched the weather. It rained most of the time so we could only walk Bella around the paved loop road when it wasn’t raining because the trails were all muddy and full of puddles. Overall it’s a nice campground (only about 15 miles from civilization) and we’ll probably re-visit it sometime in the future.

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