Jace and January Together - 2/08/2021

Happy belated New Year, and welcome back to Parental Parolees!

My writing has been severely cramped due to our 4 year-old grandson traveling with us since the beginning of the year, and given I usually write late at night or in the middle of the night, his sleeping area (and my writing area) is off limits once he goes to bed. We need him well-rested or our work is multiplied three-fold once he gets cranky if he doesn't get enough sleep. Pray for us . . .

But anyway, I've found a rare moment to catch you up on the past month.

Leaving our usual haunt at Leisure Acres in Cleveland, GA, we had an easy drive south on I-75, stopping at a small campground called Paradise Lake RV Park, just outside of Tifton, GA. Inexpensive, because there was neither a lake nor was it considered paradise by any means. But it had a 50A hookup with water and sewer, plus it kept me from having a long driving day of over 9 hours to our final destination in Florida.

After overnight rains, a sunny day dawned for our short drive to Winter Garden, Florida. Winter Garden is about 15 miles directly west of Orlando on State Route 50. The park was called Stage Stop Campground. We chose it for it's central location to both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and it's proximity to all of the possible Orlando parks. Disney was out, since at 4, Jace is a bit too young to truly enjoy everything there, but Sea World was definitely on our radar screen. We also chose Stage Stop due to it's low monthly rate; just $775 as opposed to the more pricey parks closer to the coasts. State Stop is a no frills park (no playground for Jace), but it has very level grassy lots that have at least 30 feet between slides and the next lot. We definitely had plenty of space, especially if the lot next door was unoccupied, as it was for about 70% of our month-long stay. One oddity of their sites was their water and electric hookups, which were centrally shared between the BACK of the back-in lots, so we needed every bit of our power cord and fresh water hose to make our connections. One power box was shared, with either two 30A connections or a 30A and 50A connection. Sewer, fortunately, was in it's normal driver's side spot.

Winter Garden has a nice railroad museum in their quaint downtown that Jace enjoyed. The people there are very friendly and are clearly hampered by not being able to properly present their museum due to COVID restrictions. It will be nice to return when they can really show off their programs. There is also a very nicely done Farmer's Market each Saturday morning, with not only the usual produce, but breads, cheeses, spreads, pastas and pies. Downtown also features Scoops Ice Cream, where Jace enjoyed his Superman ice cream of red, blue and yellow colors and flavors.

A day trip over to Plant City was in order to see Dinosaur World. It's really a pretty neat place to take kids to see life-sized representations of a couple of dozen types of thunder lizards in a wooded setting. As with many places, lots of exhibits were closed where some learning activities would have been presented, but all-in-all it was a good way to spend a few hours outdoors. Jace was NOT thrilled with the animatronic versions of a couple of dinosaurs by the exit to the museum, but he loved everything else, including the dinosaur themed playground.