This morning, as I logged in to start writing this post, I came across an old draft post from January 2021. It was just a couple of paragraphs, but had a familiar theme…
“I’ve been wanting to start blogging again, regularly, in 2021. I’ve said that before, but this year is different. I am different. Chances are, the blog will seem different, too. And that’s okay. Change is good.”
I chuckle to think of the person I was in January 2021, having that thought. (I AM a different person than I was 10 or even five years ago. Older and wiser in many ways, that’s for sure.) Five and a half months later, I am basically the same person I was earlier this year, but we are living a very different life. Back then, we’d been talking about what we were going to do after Mike retired. I’d only started looking at campgrounds, thinking about making reservations, wondering how to make sure we’d have Internet connectivity so I could continue working remotely.
Fast-forward to today. Mike is retired and I have quit my job. I’m sitting on our new, much more comfortable sofa in the RV. The sofa is against the passenger-side wall of the RV, right behind the front passenger seat. I have a partially obstructed view, but can see beyond the driver’s seat out the front of the coach. We are parked in a campsite at the Yellow Jacket RV Resort near Old Town, Florida. It’s a pull-in site, as opposed to a back-in or pull-through. (We will have to back out of the site when it’s time to leave, but we’ll cross that bridge a week from now.) The front of the coach is about 25 feet from the riverbank. There’s a boat launch to the right of our site. In front of our site, on the river, is a floating dock where rental boats are housed. There are trees around our site draped in Spanish moss. It’s a lovely spot.
As far as wildlife — critters! — so far in the river we’ve seen turtles (the same kind you’d see in freshwater lakes, rivers, and ponds in Virginia), a snake, minnows, and several five-foot-long (or longer) Gulf Sturgeon. We have not seen any alligators in the river, yet, but probably will.
There’s a local man, named Hal, camped next to us. I asked him if I need to worry about alligators eating me and/or Belle if we swim in the river. He says I’d only have to worry if we were swimming at dusk or night-time (not likely!). Especially when the boat launch is busy and there’s lots of boat traffic on the river. Simply put, gators are more afraid of us than we are of them. He’d be more worried swimming in the ocean than in the river.
At some point, Belle and I will be swimming in the river. The only thing I am a little concerned about are the sturgeon. They can grow up to 8 feet long, can weigh up to 200 pounds, are sorta armor-plated, and have the tendency to jump out of the water. For real. There’s a warning sign posted at the boat launch.
The only complaint we have about our current location is weak cell signal, which means limited Internet access. The campground does offer Wifi, but it’s slow. That’s okay, though. We can survive without constant connectivity, I think.
For now, here are some recent pics I have captured.
I’ll share more in a future post. For now, I am going to go outside and enjoy the day.