The grandkids were supposed to have a three day weekend off from school this weekend so we made reservations at Colt Creek State Park. Aaron had Monday off and he and Alysa were planning to come Sunday night. Unfortunately, Monday was declared a hurricane makeup day for Hurricane Ian so the grandkids could only stay Friday and Saturday nights.
On this trip we were in Site #12 which is on the inside of the loop and just two sites away from the restrooms/showers. We connectivity similar to what we experienced last time in Site #9. Our AT&T hot spot’s downloads were generally in the 5 – 10Mbps range allowing us to stream the with only a little buffering. We did pickup most of the local channels on antenna, but they would come and go at different times of the day.
Once we arrived and got setup Friday afternoon, I took the grandkids with me to purchase firewood from a guy in Zephyrhills. The price was great, but the wood wasn’t as seasoned as we had hoped. It smoked quite a bit and it took a bit of effort to keep it burning. When we got back to the campground the kids played in the gravel with all their excavating equipment while we got a fire going and prepped for pudgy pies. Evie and Chuckie had pepperoni pizza pudgy pies while Penny had a cheese one. After dinner Beth took the girls up to the bath house for showers and I showered Chuckie in the camper. After a full day of school, travel, excavating, and pudgy pies, the grandkids were sound asleep fairly early Friday night.
On Saturday I took them to a presentation on Owls by pregnant Ranger Heather. Although there was a lot of concern about the fact that there was not going to be a live owl on display the girls seemed to enjoy the presentation and it was the perfect length (roughly 25 minutes) because just about the time I thought I was going to have to remove Chuckie from the scene the presentation ended. They all three got owl stickers and we now know that as of Saturday, Penny has the wing span of your average Florida great-horned owl and Evie has the wing span of your average Florida barred owl (and I learned that barred owl and barn owl are two different things). After the presentation we walked out on the dock of the nearby lake and saw a small alligator which was VERY exciting. If you zoom in you can see it in the background behind Penny and Evie in the pictures (closer to Penny). When we got back to the camper we had lunch. After lunch Chuckie had to go into timeout for throwing gravel. As you can see he didn’t survive his timeout in the lawn chair consciously.
Our friends Raul and Debbie came to visit Saturday afternoon. They had originally planned to bring their 7 year old granddaughter, but she ended up getting sick. This would have been a disappointment, but Debbie the school teacher kept the kids a hop’n and we have invited her to join us ANY TIME we have the kids. We cooked hamburgers, hotdogs, and brats over the fire for dinner. Once again, after showers and snacks the kids didn’t last long Saturday night.
On Sunday morning I took the grandkids home so they could rest up for school on Monday. Their family minivan had a flat, so we stopped at our house on the way and picked up our floor jack so that Aaron would have an easier time removing the tire. I got back to the campground just in time for the Bucs kickoff.
With us and the three grandkids in the camper from Friday night until Sunday we had nearly filled the black tank even though we tried to use the public restrooms as much as possible. We dumped the black tank and probably 8 to 10 gallons of the shower gray tank late Sunday afternoon that got us through the remainder of the trip (we left Tuesday morning).