View from 'our' (campground's) dock ...

A happy new Year to Y'all, and may 2019 have a better ending than 2018 ... and a very good begin .. .. and maybe a nice middle part also .. knock on wood!

As I mentioned in the previous post we have moved to Camelot RV Resort in Malabar, about 10 miles from our previous place.

Rob, our friendly neighbor had agreed to tow us there, and we drove behind it on the way over, which was a very weird situation .. we'd never seen the RV this way, seen from the back, in traffic ..

Camelot sure is a beautiful park, right on the water and due to an unexpected cancellation, we ended up in a much better spot than originally agreed on! 

We also don't have to move to another spot in 4 days as was the case before. There you go, we're lucky already!

This site is much wider and has much more room all around it ..

 No direct bay-view but down the end of the road you can just see the water.

We've made ourselves at home already and attended the New Years 'party' here at the campground to get to know some of our fellow campers.

Happy hour (and free drinks) started at 6.30 and the music (a husband and wife musical-duo) started an hour later, and I'm really not that picky, but gawd, they were so incredible .. bad!

We sat through an hour of it and than quietly departed through a back door! Jeez .. did nobody check these people out?

We spent the rest of the evening happily in front of the TV, went to bad before 12 (as usual) and woke up in 2019. Perfect!

Despite me messing up the dough for our traditional 'oliebollen' something awful (twice the flour, and too much yeast and salt), James did a great job baking them.

As always. He saves many a day .. it's Super-James to the rescue!

And as always, I did a great job eating them! They were slightly salty, but heavily dusted with a cloud of powdered sugar and cinnamon, they were just fine!

We had to wait a little for our traditional 'watching of the Rose Parade', because of being all the way on the other side of the country, California is now 3 hours behind us!

But it did come through, and as always the floats were stunning and it was a lot of fun to see a little bit of California. 
I miss it, and after all our traveling so far, and seeing so many beautiful places, I still think it's the best place to live ... if it's up to me, we'll go back there once we've completed our 'Grand Tour of the US'.
Maybe somewhere north in the winter and somewhere south in the winter ... we'll see!

So, traditionally Tamales are eaten on New Year's Day in Latin America, and since we discovered a Costa Rican food shack right around the corner from the campground, we though they would be perfect for lunch.
 

Usually these traditions bring luck somehow, and we take anything we can get .. especially if it involves food!
 

           

Afterward we went for a little drive to get our bearings in our new neighborhood, and ended up on a quest to see if we could find some Manatees.

They've been on my 'to-see' list for Florida from the moment I knew we were going to go there and I'm determined to see them!

Manatees, or Sea-Cows, are Florida's state mammal and they are large aquatic relatives of the elephant.

They take up residence primarily in Florida’s coastal waters during winter and can be found in the warm waters of shallow rivers, bays, estuaries and coastal waters. They rarely venture into waters below 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Today’s population is estimated at approximately 6,000 individuals.

I did some googling and found a park close-by where they are seen on a regular base.

And guess what, they were there! 
Just two, and we caught only glimpses of them, but still .. so cool!

I hope we'll get to see more of them while we're here. 
I've heard people say they saw them at the campground's dock, so guess where I'll be hanging out a lot?

Another hangout for the Manatees is Turkey Creek Sanctuary, the very park where our truck gave up the ghost some 7 weeks ago!
(wow, I can't believe it has been 7 weeks already!)
Hoping history wouldn't repeat itself (!)we decided to go for another short visit to see if we could find some more Manatees.



We discovered we missed part of the boardwalk last time, and ended up seeing a view different areas of this beautiful little Refuge ..

We didn't see any Manatees but just like last time there were a lot of turtles around, like this Florida Redbelly turtle ..

 

And this huge Florida Softshell ..

And this pair of Gopher Tortoises seemed to be stuck in a 'face-off', probably a dispute about territory. They didn't move at all, didn't blink an eye, and were still there, exactly in the same position, on our way back:

We even came across this little fella. Quite unusual to see a Raccoon in broad daylight.

 

Unfortunately, he seemed pretty tame and was begging for handouts. He was definitely used to being fed, despite the signs all over the park telling you not to .. people are stupid ..

But what a beautiful place this is, we'll definitely go back again!

Next time I'll put up some more pics from the campground but I think I've covered enough for now.

Oh, by the way, no news on the truck yet  (as if that isn't important at all). Still a waiting game.

Who is going to pay for what and why (not) ...