Moss Park Picnic and Travel to Zephyrhills Florida

Christmas Picnic In Moss Park

Campground:  Rainbow Village, a CareFree park.  $92 for 7 days, PA rate.  One of dozens of Snowbird resorts in Zephyrhills Florida.  Many "park models" indoor swimming pool for year round swimming.

Central Florida Overpass

Of course one of the joys of the Christmas season is being able to see it through the eyes of children.  Kelly, Rust and their two kids Lucas and Brooke joined me out at Moss Park for their first year of “Light Up the Wild” events.  I arranged it so we’d have a picnic at my campsite and from there we would go up to the front of the park for the afternoon events.  The park is a total of 3,000 acres if you combine Moss Park with the adjoining Split Oak park.

I was able to take a few good shots of the family by one of our wonderful spreading oak trees that all the kids like to climb on and bounce up and down a particularly limber low swaying branch.  Along with a few silly gifts for the kids, I also gave Kelly an older laptop that Lucas can use for school projects.  It even contains a couple hundred music CD’s that I had copied onto the laptop and the whole family should get some enjoyment out of that as well.

Lucas wanted to go on the split oak hike, but instead we detoured the family to the front of the park to see what was going on.  We discovered there were free rides and snow to play in and it certainly became a fun filled afternoon for everyone.  I treated everyone to an airboat ride as well and must admit, it’s one of the nicest airboat rides I’ve ever taken.  The airboat glided across the top of the water and then went over the long grasses growing in the shallow waters nearer to shore.  We saw a whole herd of deer as they were grazing in the water eating those grasses.  Suddenly, they saw us coming towards them, the airboat making one heck of a noise as it skimmed across the water and grass.  The deer began to leap, jump and splash each other before finally heading to shore and the shelter of brush and tree cover.  It was quite a site and I couldn’t help but smile and laugh and the all the excitement.

At the festivities in the park, the kids enjoyed going on the snow slide on big yellow inner tubes and because it wasn’t crowded, were able to go down the snowy slide numerous times.  Then it was onto the Pirates Revenge.  A Norse looking boat that swung in a half circle back and forth like a giant pendulum.  Kelly even got on with the kids.  I didn’t as I’d had a really full lunch and didn’t want to loose any of it.

In the evening I had been able to ride through the “Light up the Wild” displays and was super impressed with the parks first year attempting such an undertaking. A couple of nights they had over 500 people come through each evening.  Pretty good for their first year.  Kelly’s family was not able to stay for that as they had other plans for the evening but hopefully they will be able to come out next year.

Zephyrhills/ Dade City

What a great diversion from my normal “enforcement” duties in the park.  On the Monday before Christmas, I headed on out with my camper as the park manager had told me they wanted everyone out of the park for the Christmas Holiday.  I decided to take a full week off and join friends in the Zephyrhills/ Dade City area about an hour and twenty minutes from Moss Park.  They are two small towns about 40 minutes away from Tampa Florida and are in a wonderful rural hilly part of Florida.  I’m staying at a campground that’s part of the CareFree network of parks and is called Rainbow Village.  Zephyrhills is home to dozens and dozens of RV parks, many, like this one are filled with “park models”.  Those smaller campers that are like miniature mobile homes and some spaces for RV’s like mine.  Obviously, many northerners like to rent or own these small park models and live in them during the winter months before heading back up north for the summer.

My Canadian friends Jill and Bob have landed here for the winter and we’ve had a great time sharing out experiences this winter.  Then I was off to join some good buddies of mine, Walt, Ben and Scott for a most wonderful Christmas celebration at another friends home where we had cocktails and a prime rib dinner with all the fixings.  Needless to say, I have been completely spoiled over the holidays what with being able to spend time with relatives and friends galore.  I’ll have to head back to Moss Park in a few more days, but it sure has been a fun break from my camp host duties.

I still have all of January and February to spend at Moss Park, then I plan on driving down to the keys for a visit on Pine Key as a guest of Ben and Walt.  They even have a spot for me… nice to have friends in the keys.


Check out more pictures on PICASA    

Christmas In Moss Park

Moss Park Camp Hosting stories continued:

Christmas in the Park

1st year for "Light up the Wild" event

Christmas comes slowly into the park.  This is the first year for “light up the Wild” in the park.  It’s never been lit up for Christmas until this year.  Stringing of lights  began on a small scale around Thanksgiving and has continued at a slow pace.  Very few of the lights are even visible during the daylight hours, all being of the mini-light variety and of course they are not lit during the day.  The first signs visible to the park visitors has been Santa’s sleigh and reindeer strung high up between a couple of tall pine trees and a grouping of Christmas trees made out of strands of Christmas lights.  Some of the smaller trees are white, pink and red.  Quite dreadful if you ask me.

Last week I was told they were authorized to spend about $10,000 on lights and the crew was off to Home Depot to make that happen.  Had to order some as the store didn’t have enough in stock.  Today, while checking in at the front office, I saw the park crew dismantling lights strung out front near the entrance and also installing lights along the concrete bridge.  Come to find out the supervisor of parks had authorized the 10k sum without checking the higher ups about the spending.  I understand some of the lights will have to be returned to the store and those being removed up front will be re-allocated to make better use of them.  Sounds like government working at its best to me.  Put up lights.  Take down lights.  Re-install lights someplace else.  More decorations will be arriving from a small Orange County park just before the “Light up the Wild” nights begin on Dec 19th.  Understand they have all the big blow-up decorations.

Fortunately our park manager isn’t at fault over all this mess, just the boss over him.  Oh, I finally got an Orange County Parks Hat.  No t-shirt but at least I look like I belong in the park.  Still using all my T-shirts from the volunteer work I’ve done at Florida and Arizona State parks and BLM land.

I'm not a fan of pink and red Christmas trees

Tomorrow we have a 10k run through the park and with so many workers taking time off to be with families as their kids graduate from college and grad-school, that leaves only one worker at the front gatehouse to check in all those runners and folks coming into Moss Park.  I’ve promised Jerri I’d pick up donuts and coffee in the morning and also stop by Publix to get a couple of their great home-made subs for lunch.  She’ll arrive at the gate at 5am tomorrow for all the festivities and work a 11 hour day.

Imagine all this lighting up of the park all for one week.  Then of course it all has to come down.  I’ve volunteered to help direct traffic on those nights.  Haven’t been asked to help put up any lights…. And haven’t offered either.  Mama didn’t raise no dummy.  Actually I'm sure I would have enjoyed putting up some of the lights, but since it's their first year, they are doing a lot of setting up, taking down and moving lights which doesn't sound like much fun to me.

can't wait to see how it will look at night

The weekend is in full swing.  We have 4 “family” campsites that can accommodate 3 rv’s each or multiple tents and up to 16 people on each site.  Because of the larger groups involved, I usually go over and suggest they be considerate of other campers and respect the 10pm quiet hour and turn off those super bright automotive repair spot lights and not turn them towards other campsites.  You know, the ones on an orange tripod and produce about 200 watts of light.  Well I was walking through the family section today because I had a small kids shirt that had been left out on the sidewalk and wanted to see if I could find the owner.  As I’m walking through the family campsites, the one group that has been real quiet and not giving any problems, decides to cause me trouble.  You see, as I was walking past the site, one of the guys had collected a few empty beer cans and was proceeding to bring them to the trash can.  He saw me, I saw him, he turns slowly and goes back to their fire pit and leans over and deposits them where I’m not supposed to see them.  Of course I have and well you know the rest.  Either dump the remaining alcohol or pack up and leave.  Seems it’s always the wife that decides they should pack up and leave rather than waste the beer.  After four of them started to gang up on me with arguments as to why they shouldn’t be made scapegoats, I call the front office and ask for reinforcements.   A couple minutes later, Randy comes and confronts the group.  The usual, "we’ve been coming here for years".  "If everyone was checked for booze, there would be no one in the park".  "Have we caused any problems while we’ve been here?"  A minute later, two more park staff drive up.  As I’m leaving, it just so happens that the Sheriff decided to do a drive through and the front office sent them to Site 1 where all the action was taking place.  Even though they had decided to leave and take their beer with them, the Sheriff convinced them that it would be in their best interest to dump the booze and stay.  Great.  Now I have to worry whether my camper will have 4 flat tires on it tomorrow morning.  Oh and as a final note on this bit of excitement, one of the vehicles on site 1 is a Budweiser Distributor vehicle and I didn’t even notice it until after I made the call.  Could you get more obvious.

Philosophical Question:  The group mentioned above are regular campers to the park.  They have never caused any trouble.  Should I have “let them get away” with drinking in the park?  The park has a strict no drinking policy but the manager says he'd let people get away with it if they don't cause trouble.  Signs are everywhere as you enter the park and the tag they give you to put on  your windshield clearly states “no alcohol in the park”  yet the park only confronts a group when they see alcohol or a group become rowdy.   We know many others have “gotten away” with bringing booze into the park.

What do you think?  

It appears our campers are all getting lit way ahead of the Light up the Wild week.  I have to chuckle or I’d cry in my beer.

Back to the Christmas decorations more are going up over the weekend as it gets closer to the big event next week with additional help from employees of other Orange County parks,.  Since it’s their first year they will have to use generators in many locations for electricity as the park does not have power along all the wooded route the lighting will take place.  Something they will have to address as the new tradition of lighting up the wild continues into future years.

Kids.  Why does it seem that every kid that goes camping has the need to try and break, bend and strip all the young tree sapling they can?  I see it almost every weekend.  I was sitting out looking into the forest behind my camper and saw four or five young tikes literally bend a young pine tree all the way to the ground.  Parents of course could see them doing it, but ignored it.  So of course I walked over to the kids and asked what they were doing.  Were they trying to kill the tree?  Break it in half.  So as I’m explaining to them how they need to be good stewards of the land, their dad comes up to me.  Bit of a redneck, big ring in one ear, a couple tattoos over his body, and proceeds to get real close to me, you know in that intimidating way a guy can stand.  I continued to talk to the kids trying to educate them on taking care of the land, the trees and our wildlife in the park.  We talked about the large sand hill cranes that are very tame in the park and one little tyke said, “can we chase them if we don’t catch them?”  The dad finally taking up the hint that maybe it was time to start being a bit proactive with his kids.  Telling them, no we don’t want to chase the wildlife in the park or throw things at them.  He had initially asked me which one was trying to break the small pine tree.  I told him all of them were climbing on the tree and the issue was more about teaching them what was right and wrong and how to take care of our land.  He finally thanked me and they all went on their way.

Another week in the park.

A major holiday in the Park

Camp Host stories Continued: 

about a dozen turkeys came into the park over the
Thanksgiving Holiday, pretty smart on their part

The Thanksgiving Holiday week has been filled with campers of all types.  We had three turnovers in about a 10 day period, with campers coming and leaving, filling every site in the park.  Some even had to wait for a campsite to open before setting up.

Lots of turkeys were deep fried at the campground and others simply prepared entire Thanksgiving feasts at home before coming out to the park.  Making for an easy Thanksgiving dinner day for those Moms who did all the prep work ahead of time.

I of course did my patrols and cautioned a number of folks about our alcohol and quiet time rules.  Everyone assuring me they had no booze with them.  Yeh, right.  Where have I heard that story before.  I thought we were doing fairly well until I had a knock on my door Sunday evening.  An older couple stopped by to tell me they saw a pit bull in the park. They thought on site 28.  I thanked them and said I would go check it out.  It was pitch black outside so I grabbed my bright LED flashlight and put on my shoes and headed on out to the offending campsite.  It should be noted that the guy that stopped by with his wife was carrying a beer bottle. Gheez, are these people really that dumb.  Well, anyway, I headed on out to campsite 28 and confronted the large family, three cars a truck and their Rv parked in their campsite. Along with a huge outdoor movie screen playing some action flick.

The park has mature oaks and pines along with new growth 

I stopped all conversation as I proceeded to ask them, does anyone have a dog at this campsite as I had gotten a complaint about it.  You see, we have lots of wildlife in the park, everything from deer, raccoons, armadillos, opossums, large turtles, sand hill cranes, buzzards and crows a plenty and it’s not a good idea to mix domesticated animals in with this mix of wildlife.  Oh did I mention we also have alligators as well who love little appetizers like little white poodles.  Yes, it ended up being a poodle.  Had to tell the couple that was visiting that they’d have to leave immediately and I would escort them off the property.  As I turned around to walk to the entrance to their campsite and wait for them to say their goodbyes, I look down next to their 5th wheel camper and see a full 24 case of beer sitting right out for God and the whole country to see. So of course I now have to address the no alcohol rule in the park and read the minimal choices they have.  Either dump all the booze now and they can stay, or pack up and leave.  If neither is acceptable I would be happy to call the sheriffs office for them.  After a short muddled conversation, two of the guys began to pour out the booze onto the ground.  But alas, one of the wives was upset that all that booze was going to waste and said “stop, I can’t see us wasting all that liquor, lets just leave.”  With about a third of the beer now poured out, they stopped, agreed with the woman (she didn’t appear to be a person one would argue with) and proceeded to pack up and leave in all of about 40 minutes time.  The main comment one of the guys said to me was, “well I guess you have to make an example of us, don’t you?”  I commented back that that was hardly the case as I had had to do this a number of times over the past week or two and he was hardly the 1st example.

Getting ready for Christmas

Later the next morning I was up at the front office and we all saw a car drive out with a pit bull hanging out the window.  Gosh, there really was a pit bull in the park.  An hour or so later, the camper tried to re-enter the park with the dog and was duly turned away.  Again a little while later, they snuck back into the park with the dog.  Two of the park rangers went after them and gave them a real good scolding and forced them out of the park once again.

By then all of the campers that were scheduled to leave on Sunday had vacated the park, leaving only a half a dozen or so campers and myself once again to enjoy a now quiet park.  Since I’d finished my rounds, I decided to walk out onto the boat dock, looking forward to a peaceful walk along the pier and waters edge.  I was surprised to see so many guys fishing and a couple with small child preparing to do a photo shoot for what they hoped would be a great Christmas card.  A red plaid blanket was laid down on the deck, a few other props including two Christmas mugs with candy canes were ready to be filled with,,,,, are you ready, Captain Morgan’s Rum mudslide.  Really!  Oh, I was assured it was only hot chocolate and if I didn’t believe them I could take a whiff.  I let it go as it was really pretty much a photo shoot and I didn’t have the heart to kick them out.  Yes I do have a heart and it does pain me to have to be the cop in these situations.  So as they began taking their pictures and attempting to get the little guy to smile at the camera, I started to talk to one of the fishermen.

He told me he was actually down visiting friends in the area and they decided to come out and do a bit of fishing before driving back to South Carolina later in the day.  As I scanned the four guys fishing, I notice a pretty blue bottle next to a lounge chair at the end of the dock.  Hmmm.  I decided to walk down to the end of the dock and check it out.  Budweiser beer in a blue bottle.  Asked the guy about 10 feet away if it belonged to him. Yes sir, it’s mine.  Time to dump it, I say.  He picks it up and starts to walk slowly back to his friends at the other end of the dock, and I assume he will deposit it in the trash can.  Does he?  No.  He looks at his friends and take a swig of the beer.  Well darn it all.  Didn’t I just tell him he had to dump it?  With my commanding voice, I let him know he’d better stop and dump it right now.  Gheez.  At that point they all hold up their beer bottles and comply with dumping them out.  One more in a small cooler is also dumped.

Normally I would have told them to leave the park immediately, but because I wasn’t sure how much they had drunk, and the first guy appeared a bit tipsy, I thought it best that they sober up a bit before getting back on the road.

What a week.  One other thing to note.  Quite a few campers are now bringing out outdoor theatres to the campground.  Big screens and video projectors.  Fine for early evening entertainment, though why you’d do that while on a campout is a bit perplexing.  And of course the sound coming from their movies fills the campground so that everyone in the vicinity gets to hear your movie whether they want to or not.  Another thing I will have to now comment on a remind campers that quiet time in from 10pm on and that includes their movies…

To show that it’s not all crap, I have to admit that I’ve come around to realizing that I am doing a service to the other campers hoping to have a great camping experience in the park.  One young mother dropped by my campsite today along with her 8 year old little girl to tell me that they appreciated the way I handled the situation last night.  As they were camped out right next door to the family that ended up leaving last night.  The mom said the noise from the outdoor theatre kept them up the previous night till almost 4 in the morning.  But besides that, we ended up talking about great vacation destinations and after mentioning that her family were planning on going to Utah this coming summer, I was able to give her some great tips on National Parks to visit, including one of my favorites, Zion National Park.  She even took notes.  I’ve been fortunate to have similar conversations about the great campgrounds, springs and State parks throughout Florida, as many campers have not even begun to explore the great destinations within Florida and elsewhere.  Many of the state parks in Florida are centered around some historic site adding a bit of education along with a campout.