Lake Louisa, Day Three

What a great weekend! We have had perfect weather for being outside. It might have approached eighty today, but the humidity has been low. Barbara and Jocelyn went canoeing before lunch as planned. The wind was blowing strong enough that we elected to rent the canoe from the dock on the upwind side of Lake Dixie where they could paddle in the sheltered lee of the trees on the upwind bank. Yesterday I wrote that there were three lakes in the park. I was way off. There are six lakes and several good-sized ponds; all fishable.

While the ladies were paddling I took time to do a little RV work. I installed the remaining elements of a battery watering system. This motorhome has three deep cycle batteries for the “house”. All lighting in the RV is 12 volt, as are fans, the furnace, and other accessories. They are powered by the batteries, which are charged by 110 volt shore power when hooked up in a campground. When stopped in areas without electrical hookups we would run off batteries alone, or run the generator. These batteries are “wet”, which means they are lead acid batteries that require occasionally adding water to them. Remember the days when your car did not have “maintenance free” batteries? Same thing. These batteries are on a pull out tray, but it is hard to get to the middle and back battery. What I installed today amounts to new caps for the battery cells and connecting tubing. A squeeze bulb is then used to pump distilled water from a container through these new caps by way of the tubing and stopping when the water reaches the proper level. The job is easier which means it will be more likely to be accomplished routinely and the batteries will be happier and last longer.

After working on the RV and packing up some of the things that we were not going to need again I drove back to Lake Dixie to collect Barbara and Jocelyn. They had a ball. It turns our Jocelyn is a nature paddler and picked up on the paddling techniques right away. She says she learned by watching the summer Olympics! Go figure!

Returning through Mugwomp Swamp

We did the campout ritual of grilling hot dogs for lunch. We could not let Jocelyn miss out on that! After a little napping we headed out for an afternoon hike. It was a nice circuit and brought us more spider and deer sightings. No deer pictures this time, they were too quick to run deeper into the woods. The spiders were slower.

They turned out to be Black and Yellow Garden Spiders according to the Florida Audubon book. I sure am happy they aren’t in my garden. These suckers are big!

Disregard the portion of the track in red. We were almost a mile down the road in the car before I remembered to fish the phone out of my pocket and stop the App from recording our hike. When I did it congratulated us on “our fastest 5K to-date”. Little does it know.

We returned to camp as the sun was setting. THAT is sure happening early these days! Jocelyn got in another round of quizzing with the math flash cards for homework before packing up for the ten-minute ride home.

Barbara and I are now enjoying the relative quite of an evening to our selves. Tomorrow we return the motorhome to the barn and return to our normal routine. Lake Louisa State Park is great and has a wonderful campground. It should be on your list of places to visit if you are coming to the Orlando area and like the outdoors.