Family time at the movies theater to see “Wicked”

Lake Louisa State Park in Clermont, FL December 20, 2024 – January 3, 2025

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Lake Louisa State Park

The two weeks before Christmas and after New Years Day are always busy for us when we’re in Florida and this stay was no exception.

Check-out time at Clarcona Horse Park is noon, so we left there at precisely that time on Friday, December 20, 2024 and drove as slowly as we could to Lake Louisa State Park in Clermont, Florida. We still managed to arrive at 1:10 pm and had to wait in the holding area for about 20 minutes while they got our site ready. That really wasn’t as long of a wait as we expected, since check-in time is 3 pm, so we were happy.

We were at site 16 this time; a new one for us. It was a pull-through site with full hook ups and we needed that since our middle granddaughter Abby would be spending some time us during her school holiday break. Adding another person increases the amount of galley, gray and black tank water in Nomad and we have found out through past stays like this that we would reach capacity in our tanks before our 14-night stay was over. That would necessitate either breaking everything down to go empty at the dump, or trips to the restrooms to keep from overflowing our tanks. With an FHU site we can empty the tanks right on site and save a lot of trouble.

And we needed a FHU site for another reason which I’ll cover toward the end of this post.

After we got Nomad all set up, we showered and then drove to Orlando to See Ann, Mikey, Charlotte and Seth for a few minutes and drop off some more Christmas tree ornaments that Cindy had tatted for them. They were all getting ready to go see the latest Sonic movie and were excited for that.

Dinner at IHOP

Then we drove to meet Amber and Abby at IHOP for dinner. Well, actually, our first plan had been to go to Steak and Shake. Cindy and I arrived first and were surprised to see that they now have NO SERVERS! Even if you’re dining in; you place your order at a kiosk, wait for them to call your name, and then go to the counter to get your food and drink. That was NOT the dining experience we were looking for so we left and suggested IHOP to Amber by phone and we all met there.

By the way, I checked and noted NO decrease in price due to lack of servers. Isn’t that the way it always is? They save money by not paying servers but never lower the price to reflect that savings. They just line their corporate pockets with the extra money.

After a delicious meal at IHOP (Thank you Amber!) and excellent table service, we grabbed Abby and her luggage and drove back to our site.

Saturday morning we got up, enjoyed breakfast and hiked a trail with Bella, then went to run some errands.

Christmas Movies

When we came back we watched (second time for me, first for Cindy and Abby) “Red One” and I enjoyed seeing it again and they enjoyed watching it their first time as much as I did. Looks like this one will join our other “Must see” Christmas movies; “The Christmas Chronicles” 1 & 2 and “Die Hard” (I slipped that one in. Cindy doesn’t think that’s a Christmas movie, but you and I know it is, lol!)

Sunday we hiked a different trail, had lunch and then Abby got ready to meet up with her mom and other grandma for an afternoon horse carriage ride in nearby Clermont. Cindy spent the rest of the day working on her new tarot card reading course and I read/wrote until Abby rejoined us later that evening.

Monday we had doctor appointments and more errands to run, then Tuesday morning we hiked a new trail and later prepared for Amber to join us in the evening for a Christmas Eve meal. We made Amber watch “Red One” and she enjoyed it as well. After the meal and movie we drove around nearby neighborhoods for an hour or so looking at Christmas lights and holiday displays on homes. Then Amber and Abby went back home to get ready for Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas!

Wednesday morning Cindy and I were up at 5:30 am, showered and out the door at 6:15 am to drive an hour to Amber and Abby’s for our first Christmas Day stop at 7:15 am. Cindy and I had fun going into Abby’s bedroom and waking her up, and she took it good-naturedly. After opening gitfs (I got some cool stuff! See the photos) and enjoying a delicious breakfast that Amber made, we headed to Ann’s around 9:00 am to open gifts with Ann, Mikey, Charlotte and Seth for a little over an hour (I got some MORE cool gifts, lol).

Then Cindy and I drove down to Splitsville at Disney Springs to meet our friends Kirk and Laura for lunch and then a walk around Disney Springs. But before they arrived we had a good FaceTime call with our West Coast Family as they were just getting up and ready to open presents.

Disney Springs was very crowded when we first arrived around 10:30. But the time we finished lunch with Kirk and Laura the place was truly packed! We did, though, stop at the Vera Bradley store to get Cindy a new Zip Card Pouch. The one she got from her late mother more than a decade ago was starting to wear out. And I know the salespeople are all supposed to look stylish, but I swear I thought the young lady who assisted us was Scarlett Johansson.

After saying goodbye to Kirk and Laura we went back to Nomad where we took a much-needed nap. Getting old ain’t for sissies! Then we enjoyed a piece of Amber’s delicious Apple Cranberry pie while Cindy set up her new digital picture frame that I got her for Christmas. The cool thing about this new frame is that family can email photos directly to the frame. We’ve already enjoyed seeing some surprise photos pop up on the display. Afterward, we settled into our recliners and streamed “The Christmas Chronicles”, something we’ve done every Christmas since it was released in 2018. I wish they would release it on DVD.

Thursday we drove back to Orlando to pick up Abby for the second portion of her stay with us during her school holiday. Friday I took care of some tasks around Nomad and that night we watched “Love Actually” and made Abby put a pillow in front of her face a few times so she couldn’t see the screen, lol! Cindy and I hadn’t seen it since it was first related back in 2003. Saturday morning we hiked another trail and in the afternoon I played Yahtzee for the first time (really) and Abby beat both Cindy and I. Then Abby and I played Scrabble and she won both of those games.

It’s hell getting old, lol!

Wicked

Sunday, December 29th, we took the family (except Mikey) to see “Wicked” at the movie theater. I think we all had a good time and I enjoyed the movie, even though I’m not usually a fan of musicals. My only disappointment was in finding out that this was just part one of the story and we have to wait for the second movie to come out in November of 2025.

It was storming rain and wind pretty bad when we left. Ann, Charlotte and Seth were driving out to Sea World for the fireworks show while Cindy, Amber, Abby and I headed to have some pizza for dinner. As it turned out Ann and the kids didn’t make it out to Sea World, but we didn’t find that out until a couple of days later. Meanwhile the pizza restaurant we thought we were going to turned out to be a food truck in a court of other food trucks, so we got a little wet ordering our dinner but had a dry dining area to eat it in. The pizza was good, but a tad over-priced for food truck fare.

Monday was a day of several errands including a Cindy’s last medical appointment of the year for this stay, dropping Abby back off at home and taking our Xmas decorations back to the storage room where, hopefully, they will safely wait for our return and their usage next holiday season.

New Year’s Eve

This is our last stay at a FHU site for a while and we have some stays coming up where we’ll need to use our onboard water supply, so late in the afternoon I did the first step of sanitizing our fresh water tank by filling it with a bleach solution, running it through the water lines by using our onboard water pump and then letting it sit overnight for 12 hours. Tomorrow will be the step where I’ll be flushing the tank and lines with fresh water multiple times and letting the bleach water empty into the sewer. Hence the need for a FHU site to properly dispose of the bleach water solution as I empty the tank and lines.

At midnight we toasted with champagne, kissed each other (lustily, I might add), then called our kids to yell “Happy New Year” at them before heading off to bed.

Happy Birthday Mark

It’s New Year’s Day and a big “Happy Birthday” to my younger brother, Mark. He is The Bestest Brother in The World and I’ll fight anybody who says otherwise. I won’t get to see him until later in the month when we make our way to his part of the state, but today is his day.

Flushed out the sanitized water tank and cleared the water lines. We’re now good to go for the next 6 months as far as using water from our fresh water tank without falling prey to some kind of algae growth or water borne disease.

Tuesday, January 2nd, I spent several hours at Amber’s house on a project while she, her mom and Abby went out shopping and having lunch. I tried this project last year and failed. Basically, it amounts to using routers and a VPN to make our router in Nomad look like it is actually the router at Amber’s house. This is so that various streaming services that insist on limiting your viewing if they think you’re away from your home IP address (stupidest idea ever! Especially for those like us who travel full time) are fooled into believing we ARE at home when we’re not.

It took me a while and several tries, but amazingly I got it to work. Thanks very much to people on YouTube who offered up videos with instructions on how to accomplish what I wanted. We went back to Nomad at the end of the day, fired everything up and now it always looks like we’re in Orlando when we stream. No more “Do you want to add a new household for an extra charge?” messages every time we try to stream, and then having the stream cut off for not being at “home.” Of course, now most of the commercials they show (don’t get me started on having to sit through commercials on a service you’re already paying for) are Orlando-centric, but we mute those useless, aggravating things anyway.

I love sticking it to “The Man” whenever I can when they’re trying stick it to me.

Friday it’s time to move to our next stop…and it’s NOT the one we’re supposed to be at.

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1 thought on “Lake Louisa State Park in Clermont, FL December 20, 2024 – January 3, 2025”

  1. Pingback: Clarcona Horse Park in Apopka, Florida January 3-5, 2025 -

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