Friday 23rd December – Christmas shopping and festive stuff

An easy morning.  My orientation cycle ride told me that this park was more sociable than some of the others we had stayed in which was a pleasant surprise for this time of year.  There was a screen room where an event was held most evenings, whether it was a film or a wildlife talk or just for a barbecue.  This evening’s pleasure – Elf the movie, amazing!  Time to get festive.  I was going to watch it whether Simon joined me or not!

We discovered a local Walmart about 15 minutes away to go and do our Christmas food and drink shopping.  On the way out of the park we chatted to the wardens for advice on cycle trails and kayaking routes.  There is a pleasant, short bike trail we plan to do tomorrow with an interesting feature – there are a pair of resident alligators in one section that you are almost certain to see.  The important distinction from the staff – ‘if they are blocking the trail you will have to turn around and come back rather than try to make them move’.  We had no problem with that advice.

Impressive tree eh?

Real size........

Onwards to Walmart we splashed out on extra festive alcohol – bottle of bubbly, port for me, vodka and red bull for Simon, a few decorations to jazz Harvey up a bit (right), and of course more food than we really needed.  Having eaten turkey for Thanksgiving we chose as our Christmas lunch feast some Jack Daniel’s pulled pork instead.  Random.  The bill was extortionate as expected.  But it is Christmas!

On the way back we stopped briefly at a bar right near the entrance of the park and discovered that they were open for business on Christmas Day and had Wi-Fi!  The plans were coming together.  In the park itself we were totally incommunicado but now we had somewhere to try and get in touch with Family on the big day itself. Plus, it was cycling distance to allow us both to partake in festive cheer!

Back on our plot we got the decorations up.  It was then time to catch up on laundry and have a general tidy up so that we could be extremely lazy for the next few days.

I managed to persuade Simon that going to see Elf would be sociable.  And we could sneak some beers in despite it being against park rules to drink alcohol in public! There were a handful of other guests in there.  It wasn’t very sociable after all as everyone just watched the film, so just like at the cinema really! But Elf is a classic so I enjoyed myself any way.  Afterwards we kept the merriment going with beer, port, marshmallows and a games night until bed time. 

(Bug update – yes there are mosquitos here and bites have been suffered but they are your normal-sized bastard mozzies so they can be controlled more effectively!)