A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, just 48 miles from Clermont to Disney World, Florida.
Month: March 2025
Travel from Clermont to Disney World, Florida
We drove our coach just 48 miles, about one hour of driving, from Clermont to Disney World, Florida.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading in a deliberately long route, to kill time before check-in time:
An interactive map:
Checking out of TTO; unusual to need to check out, but at TTO one needs to hand in the site number tags:
Leaving TTO:
Clermont water tower:
An idiot driving with a flat tire, practically falling off:
Going through a toll plaza, entering Florida’s Turnpike:
Florida’s Turnpike:
We stopped at Turkey Lake Service Plaza for lunch, and to kill some time:
KFC for lunch:
A trailer staging area in the service plaza, which we could have used if the truck/RV parking was full:
Toll plaza when leaving the turnpike:
Exit to Disney:
Entering Walt Disney World:
Exit to Fort Wilderness:
Passing by Magic Kingdom parking:
Entering Fort Wilderness:
Fort Wilderness security gate:
Fort Wilderness Reception Outpost:
Unhitching area, where we untoaded:
Kennedy Space Center
We visited the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Merritt Island (by Cape Canaveral) on the coast of Florida.
An interactive map of the area:
Selfie:
Orbit Cafe:
Atlantis Space Shuttle building, with the booster rockets and fuel tank out front:
The shuttle is suspended in the air:
Space toilet:
Space bed:
Challenger and Columbia memorial:
Shuttles:
Astrovan:
Bus tour to the Apollo/Saturn V Center:
Rocket:
Vertical assembly building:
Saturn control room:
Saturn V rocket:
Space suits:
Capsule:
Rocket garden:
Green-screen pic:
An interesting place to visit, at least once. We probably won’t visit again, though.
Bok Tower Gardens
We visited Bok Tower Gardens on Iron Mountain in Florida. It is a 250-acre garden and bird sanctuary, with a tower that includes a 60-bell Carillon. The “mountain” on which it is built is one of the highest in Florida, at 295 feet elevation (yeah, Florida is very flat).
Here’s an interactive map of the gardens:
The brochure map:
Tower cross-section:
Entrance:
Visitor center:
Exhibits:
Changing Florida:
Elevations of Florida:
Cafe:
Gift store:
Bok Tower:
El Retiro historic home:
Art boardwalk:
Window:
Sundial:
Bok quote: “Give to the world the best you have and the best will come back to you”:
A fascinating tower and nice gardens. Highly recommended.
Thousand Trails Orlando RV Resort
We stayed at Thousand Trails Orlando RV Resort in Clermont, Florida. (Campground Reviews listing.)
A third visit to TTO, the flagship Thousand Trails park. Actually the first of two stays here this year, totaling five weeks, separated by a week in the Disney bubble.
Dates:
- Check in: 2025-01-19
- Check out: 2025-02-09
- 21 nights
Weather:
- Mostly sunny, a few rainy days
- High temps 45-80°F, lows 36-61°F
- Occasional wind, gusts to 31 MPH
Noise:
- A little road noise
- No train horn noise
- Little neighbor noise
- Gas golf carts going by (on the route for maintenance workers)
- Distant fireworks from Disney most evenings
Site:
- #49 Hurricane Road, back-in, concrete
- Needed to disconnect toad, parked in front of coach
- A little unlevel site; a little high on driver side and rear; used hydraulic leveling
- Concrete driveway about 55 feet long by 12 feet wide
- 25 feet to neighbors on both sides
- Just grass between sites
- Picnic table on 25 by 10 feet concrete patio
- No trees, one shrub
- A bunch of small trash on site
- Elevation 120 feet, front facing South
Utilities:
- 50 amp power, conveniently located
- 40 PSI water, conveniently located
- Unthreaded sewer connection, conveniently located (1 10-foot pipe needed)
Internet (in usage priority order):
- Starlink: 140-180 Mbps down, 12-25 Mbps up, 30 ms ping
- T-Mobile: 25-30 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up, 35 ms ping
- Verizon: 5 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up, 20 ms ping
- AT&T: 0.7-38 Mbps down, 0.3-11 Mbps up, 60-180 ms ping
- Campground Wi-Fi: not used
Amenities:
- Garbage dumpsters only in a central location
- Package delivery to office, for $5 per package (we got a local mailbox)
- Pools
See our previous stays here for our review on Campground Reviews.
Campground map:
An interactive map:
Our site:
After setting up our griddle and furniture:
Utilities:
Aerial view of our site:
Aerial view of a long line checking in, shortly after noon:
The new section; nicely paved sites, but don’t you dare even think about putting anything on the scraggly grass:
A line of RVs snaking around the parking lot and road by the tennis courts, waiting to be guided to a site:
Another view of the entry road:
Above our loop:
TTO is very strict about only allowing checking in after noon. They don’t even let you line up on their entry road before then. So some people wait for noon on the highway turn lane, which risks getting ticketed by cops:
Check in line:
Line to be assigned a site:
Other sites:
Most sites are back-in, but there are some pull-through buddy sites (that we’d avoid like the plague):
Main intersection:
Pool:
Game courts:
Group fire pit and benches:
Lake:
“Alligators and snakes in this area”:
Pond and birds:
More birds roaming the campground:
Lizard:
A nice thing about TTO is there is a Publix grocery store and pretty good Chinese food nearby:
And a Japanese restaurant:
Plus Chick-fil-A and pretty much any other fast food you might want within about 10 minutes drive:
Back to TTO soon!
Video: Dunnellon to Clermont, Florida motorhome travel timelapse
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 77 miles from Dunnellon, Florida to Clermont, Florida.
Travel from Dunnellon to Clermont, Florida
We drove our coach 77 miles, only about 1.5 hours of driving, from Dunnellon, Florida to Clermont, Florida.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading southeast:
An interactive map:
After exiting our (very nice) site and looping around, we passed our site on the way to the check in area to toad up:
Exiting the campground:
A fuel stop:
Filling the DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid):
“Welcome to Florida’s Turnpike, The Less Stressway”:
Toll plaza when exiting the turnpike:
Arriving at Thousand Trails Orlando:
“Welcome to Thousand Trails Orlando; We Are Family”:
A long line to get sites:
At TTO people go to a parking lot then are guided to a site; you can request an area that you like, and are shown to that section, and can ask for a different site if you don’t like it. Kinda a hybrid between the usual Thousand Trails approach of first-come-first-served, where you roam around and find a vacant site, and the more typical assigned sites approach of other RV parks. Though Thousand Trails is moving to an assigned sites approach.
A bunch of RVs waiting to be guided to a site; this is where motorhomes untoad, too:
Guided to our site:
Polished and replaced exhaust tips
While in Red Bay wet got Steve Brooks, aka School Bus Steve to do a few repairs for us. He’s so-named as he uses an old school bus for his mobile RV service:
One minor fix was to polish the exhaust tips of our generator and Aqua-Hot system.
He was able to polish the generator exhaust nicely:
But the Aqua-Hot one was beyond hope (see it on the ground), so he replaced it:
Much nicer!