Eye of the storm....

[GoneCamping]

Well, that was interesting!! As a full timer, I had little choice but to ride out Hurricane/TS Nicole last night & today. The strongest rains fell during the wee hours of the morning, I just slept right through it. Was up at 6:30am and by 7am was out walking the dog in heavy rains & wind. By around noon it let up as the Eye of the storm passed over us, minimal storm damage, just Leaves & Spanish Moss. By late afternoon the storm was out over the Gulf, and just a bit windy, and dinner time is was over. Oddly enough I was supposed to check out at 11am, and decided not to even attempt it. Will leave in the morning I guess. The campground sent all their personnel home anyway, so they don't have a clue (yet)....

[4Campers]

Scary, glad it wasn't bad.
Heard that's the first November storm in a long time.

[toomanytents]

You must be living right!  Glad everything is ok.

[GoneCamping]

The day didn't go too bad, just a couple of hick-up's...

Managed to get all packed up, closed up, and hitched up (or so I thought), and pulled out and headed for TTO (Thousand Trails Orlando), pulled in around 11:15am and went straight to the office (normally would pull up to the gate shack), got my paper work and bypassed their strict 12 noon check-in policy since I was offically 23 hours & 15 minutes late, found a nice site with some shade and started to set-up.

I then realized I left the Dog's tie out lashed to the picnic table at the old campground. I have 2 more so figured no big deal. Then as I was getting things complete here comes a thunder storm, so trying to hurry up I went to set-up the Dish Satellite, that's when I discovered I left my high dollar tripod at the other campground too. That one was easy to miss, I had it set up about 2 sites away from mine where I could get a signal.

So I got the Dog in the truck, and drove the half hour north to the other campground, through 2 different down pours. Lucky for me, everything was still there. On the way back I stopped at BJ's to check their "Lost & Found" for an Umbrella I left there day before the storm, and sure enough it was there!!!

I wonder if maybe I need to start taking memory pills or something, getting forgetful lately! At least I got all my stuff back so I'm relatively happy. Only did a partial set-up, as my favorite site is available tomorrow, so I'll change sites in the morning (it's allowed here, first come first serve and I can move before 11am and just call it into the office).

I'll be here for 4 weeks, then back to Clerbrook for 1 week, then return here to TTO for another 3 weeks. Kind of nice spending 7 of the next 8 weeks at one campground!!! And this place is only 5 minutes from where I work, the other place is 40 minutes each way...

[4Campers]

As long as you remembered eventually, all is well. Best part is everything was still where you left it.
Memory pills made my mom get the shakes. Pill to stop the shakes made her forget to take her memory pill. LOL
Pretty sweet you can pick any spot you want any day. Guess you have to become friends with whoever is in that "sweet" spot you want to find out what day they going to be pulling out.

[GoneCamping]

Well, I didn't actually get that spot after all. I took the morning off so I could move, and packed & hooked the trailer and went 4 streets over to wait for them to vacate (waited in next site that was empty). By 10am I got the feeling they weren't leaving, hell they weren't even in the campground or packing anything up (strict 11am check-out here). The tag in the windshield of their MH was dated 11-12, but apparently they had either extended or had Back-to-back reservations. I wound up 3 sites down from there, under a couple nice shade tree's, just not as nice as the one I was after.

Thousand Trails policy is almost always "First come, Frist served" as far as site selection goes, and most of them also allow you to change campsites to any open site, the only thing is, you have to be completely moved to the new site by 11am, and call it into the office.

Oh, in case you're wondering what Back-to-back (B2B) reservations are, they are also known as complex reservations. When you try to book via TT online portal, many times it fails because the system doesn't show any one campsite open for the full length of your requested stay. So you call reservations desk, and they can look through the system and see various other sites are open, and piece you together until all your dates are full. The reason this works is because they don't actually allow reserved specific sites, it's just that the reservation programing doesn't figure things that way. Since sites are not specifically reserved, they can piece them together, but once you're on site you don't have to move.

My current reservation was for the max allowed 21 nights, and over the course of those 3 weeks I had 9 B2B's, plus I paid $29 to extend for a 4th week (I can buy two 1 week extensions per year), and even that had 2 B2B's in it (total of 11 B2B's). It does help that I work for the company that owns the park (I work at another campground), and know the system well enough to play it for everything I can squeeze out of it.

[GoneCamping]

And if anyone is interested, this is a picture of yesterdays Sunset taken at where I work, Encore's Lake Magic RV Resort about 4 miles away from where I'm staying at. This was taken from the Maintenance shop which is located in the middle of the RV storage area....

[4Campers]

That looks like a nice site. I take it trees are scarce there.
You have to do what you have to do to keep a site. Too many folks have learned the system here. I'm not sure how they do it, but many of the preferred sites are taken long before a holiday weekend.

[GoneCamping]

I found out today, that the site I was trying to get, was occupied by an employee of this park, and they signed an annual on it. They know as well as I do, that one particular site has the best shade in all sections of the park except section D. We're talking about a single tree, a huge Oak that covers the entire site. The site I have has a smaller Oak, actually 2 of them. The sun comes up behind my rig and goes down in front, which means the tree's provide pretty nice shade on the trailer most of the day. Since it's still in the 80's here right now, and I only have one AC unit, shade is very important.

I mentioned D-Section, which is really (in my opinion) the nicest area with the most shade, and thick tropical vegetation between the sites. I don't use that area because just about all of them are only 30amp (my rig is 50 amp), they also have reports of occasional Rattle Snakes in that area, and it's very tight in there. I drove through there today and noticed about 1/3 of that section is under 2-3 inches of water still (from the latest Hurricane). That section is also known for NOT getting very good Cell phone & internet service. On the plus side, you can watch Disney's nightly fireworks from the lake area!!