Clock in bathroom

A very minor modification this time: we added a battery-powered clock on the wall in our bathroom. It is an atomic clock, that can set the time automatically, and has convenient time zone support, useful for us as we travel around the country. Plus it shows the temperature and humidity, useful for the bathroom, and reminds us which day it is, handy when we’re still waking up:

Clock

It is attached with Command picture hanging strips, that has two velcro-like pieces that can be pulled apart easily, so I can change the batteries. Nice and convenient.

Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground

We stayed at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground within Walt Disney World, Florida. (Campground Reviews listing.)

A magical campground within the Disney World bubble.

Dates:

  • Check in: 2025-02-09
  • Check out: 2025-02-16
  • 7 nights

Weather:

  • Partly cloudy
  • High temps 79-87°F, lows 59-66°F
  • Little wind, gusts to 20 MPH, but sheltered

Noise:

  • A little road noise (including bus on main road)
  • No train horn noise
  • A little neighbor noise (kids)
  • Fireworks most nights

Site:

  • #555, back-in, concrete
  • Needed to disconnect toad, parked beside coach
  • Level site; used hydraulic leveling
  • Concrete driveway about 55 feet long by 25 feet wide
  • 30 feet to neighbors on both sides
  • Trees between sites
  • Picnic table
  • Fire pit
  • Tall trees
  • Clean site
  • Elevation 100 feet, front facing West

Utilities:

  • 50 amp power, conveniently located
  • 75 PSI water, conveniently located
  • Good sewer connection, very conveniently located (2 2-foot pipes needed)

Internet (in usage priority order):

  • T-Mobile: 230-300 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up, 15-35 ms ping
  • AT&T: 155 Mbps down, 32-55 Mbps up, 60 ms ping
  • Verizon: 5 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up, 35 ms ping
  • Starlink: not used
  • Campground Wi-Fi: not used

Amenities:

  • Pools
  • Garbage bin near site
  • Golf cart rental
  • Boats and buses to Disney World parks

See our previous stay here for our review on Campground Reviews.

Campground map:

Map

Another map:

Map

An interactive map:

Our site, with our rental golf cart out front:

Our site

Our site

Not quite as long as the site we had last time, but there was room to hang off the back of the pad:

Our site

Our site

Convenient utilities:

Utilities

We rented a golf cart, and decorated it a bit to be festive, and to be able to identify it in golf parking lots:

Golf cart

Solar-rechargeable lights at night:

Golf cart

Other nearby sites in our loop:

Other sites

Other sites

Other sites

A squirrel trying to get into a box left on a neighbor site:

Squirrel

Horse-drawn carriage ride:

Horse-drawn carriage

A bus stop near our loop, that we used to pick up our golf cart:

Bus stop near our loop

We could have used the shuttle bus to get from one end of the campground to the other instead of getting a golf cart, but the cart was more convenient:

Shuttle bus

Playground over the road from our site; not as annoying as the basketball court we had next to us last time:

Playground over the road from our site

Golf cart parking:

Golf cart parking

Meadow Swimmin’ Pool:

Meadow Swimmin' Pool

Meadow Swimmin' Pool

Meadow Snack Bar near the pool:

Meadow Snack Bar

Meadow Trading Post:

Meadow Trading Post

Definitely the best place to stay when visiting Disney World.

Florida’s Forgotten Coast

While staying at Ho-Hum RV Park, we did a few drives along the Forgotten Coast, in the panhandle of Florida. Amongst other things, we saw all four of the lighthouses on the coast.

A pamphlet for the lighthouse driving tour, with information about each lighthouse:

Lighthouse driving tour pamphlet

Lighthouse driving tour pamphlet

The first drive was west of the RV park, with lunch at the Blue Parrot Ocean Front Cafe (they have a live cam you can view, too), then St George Island Lighthouse.

Here’s the route on an interactive map:

Bridge to St George Island:

Bridge to St George Island

Blue Parrot for lunch:

Blue Parrot

Blue Parrot

Blue Parrot

Blue Parrot

Blue Parrot

Blue Parrot

Blue Parrot

St George Island Lighthouse; unfortunately the museum was closed when we visited:

St George Island Lighthouse

St George Island Lighthouse

St George Island beach:

St George Island beach

Further west, the Cape San Blas Lighthouse in Port St Joe:

Cape San Blas Lighthouse


The second drive was east of the RV park, to St Marks National Wildlife Refuge, St Mark’s Lighthouse, and Publix groceries on the way back.

Here’s the route on an interactive map:

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge:

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge

The refuge visitor center, with info about the lighthouse too:

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge visitor center

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge visitor center

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge visitor center

The wildlife refuge:

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge

St Marks National Wildlife Refuge

St Marks Lighthouse:

St Marks Lighthouse

St Marks Lighthouse

St Marks Lighthouse

St Marks Lighthouse

St Marks Lighthouse

St Marks Lighthouse


The third drive was to have lunch at The Fisherman’s Wife restaurant in Carrabelle, then visit the nearby Crooked River Lighthouse.

Here’s the route on an interactive map:

The Fisherman’s Wife; we wanted to eat here last year, but they were closed for the holidays. They were closed again most of the time we were at Ho-Hum this time too, but opened a few days before our departure:

The Fisherman's Wife

The Fisherman's Wife

The Fisherman's Wife

The Fisherman's Wife

The Fisherman's Wife

Crooked River Lighthouse, the tallest of the four:

Crooked River Lighthouse

The old lighthouse keeper’s house, now a small free museum:

Crooked River Lighthouse

Crooked River Lighthouse museum

Crooked River Lighthouse museum

Crooked River Lighthouse museum

Crooked River Lighthouse museum

Crooked River Lighthouse museum

Crooked River Lighthouse museum

Crooked River Lighthouse museum

Crooked River Lighthouse museum

Fascinating stuff. We really enjoy this area of Florida; much more laid-back than the more touristy and populated parts.

Red Bay food and shopping

Some food and shopping around Red Bay, Alabama.

Casa Fiesta Mexican Grill, not bad Mexican food:

Casa Fiesta Mexican Grill

Casa Fiesta Mexican Grill

Piggly Wiggly grocery store, pretty basic:

Piggly Wiggly grocery store

Piggly Wiggly grocery store

Holiday lights:

Holiday lights

Holiday lights

Holiday lights

Mia Marlie’s Hometown Pizza, fairly good and inexpensive:

Hometown Pizza

Hometown Pizza

Cardinal Drive-In, much like Sonic, but better:

Cardinal Drive-In

Cardinal Drive-In

Cardinal Drive In

Big Star grocery store, much nicer than Piggly Wiggly, and lots of super-tasty treats (of which we stocked up!):

Big Star grocery store

Big Star grocery store

Big Star grocery store

Big Star grocery store

Happy Hollow, home-goods and outdoors stuff, we always get some cat toys there:

Happy Hollow

Happy Hollow

Happy Hollow

Happy Hollow

Happy Hollow

Happy Hollow

Red Bay is a small town, but has some good food and shopping options.

Humidifier and water distiller

Back to our regularly scheduled blog posts, with RV modifications on Mondays, travel on Tuesdays, campgrounds on Wednesdays, and attractions on Thursdays and Fridays.

When staying in deserts or other places with low humidity, we use a humidifier to make us more comfortable. It lives on our bathroom counter (or stored in the closet when in more humid places):

Humidifier

It is important to only use distilled water with the humidifier, to avoid greasy steam. For a long while we purchased jugs of distilled water from grocery stores, but that gets expensive and a hassle after a while.

So we later bought a water distiller to take tap water and distill it:

Distiller

We fill this with tap water, and it effectively boils it and captures the evaporation as distilled water, dripping it into a jug, that we can then pour into the humidifier. It takes about three hours to make a jug of water, but it has a timer to turn it off when it’s done, leaving a little water in the bottom to make it easier to clean up. One jug per day is enough to be able to keep the humidifier running all day.

We’d rather be in places with a comfortable level of humidity, but we do enjoy deserts, and would rather too low humidity than too high (and yes, we do have a dehumidifier for such places too). It’s good to have tools to be able to make such places more comfortable.

2024 special posts

While most of the posts on this blog are about modifications, travel, campgrounds, and attractions, I sometimes post about other topics. This is a summary of those posts from 2024. (See also those from 2023 and those from 2022.) These posts have the special category (with earliest or latest posts at the top).

As with previous summaries, for each I include a link to the corresponding blog post, and a sample picture; see the post for details.

Sinclair Trails QR codes:

Map, QR code, URL

Third anniversary of buying our motorhome, with an updated tour of the interior:

Living area

U-Haul to move stuff from a storage unit to a shed:

U-Haul pickup

The shed:

Shed

ENGWE Y600 830W electric scooter:

Scooter

Follow Sinclair Trails on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, Micro.blog, Facebook, YouTube, and more:

Icon

Preminder app for iPhone helps remind you when to book RV parks:

6 months before

Rechargeable motion lights

Inside cupboards and in the half bath we have compact motion-activated LED rechargeable lights, that are magnetically mounted to a self-adhesive patch, so they can be easily removed and recharged via USB. These lights have a switch to toggle between off, on, and auto; we leave them set to auto, so they come on via motion.

Convenient to illuminate in cupboards, and also in the half bath, so we don’t need to turn on the ceiling lights. In that bathroom, we have one mounted on the wall and one under the cabinet, above the sink.

Light

Shields Date Garden

We visited Shields Date Garden in Indio, California, to have brunch, explore their garden, and browse their store.

Shields entrance sign

Firstly we went to their restaurant, the Café at Shields, for brunch:

Menu

Menu

Menu

I had the Churro Waffle, and Jenn had the Beef Sopes:

Food

There was live music (can’t really see him, but a guy playing a guitar):

Live music

Restaurant

After lunch, we explored The Walk, a garden path that winds through the date farm, with biblical statuary:

The walk

The walk

Ladders formerly used to harvest dates (nowadays they just use cherry pickers):

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

The walk

Then we watched their film about date growing and harvesting in the Romance Theatre (you can watch it on YouTube):

Romance Theatre

We perused their shop:

Shop

We bought a couple of date samplers, plus some Cactus Candy (that we’ve enjoyed elsewhere):

Date samplers and Cactus Candy

Finally, we got a date shake to share; it was very tasty:

Date shake

A worthwhile visit in the Palm Springs area.