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.


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