“Welcome to Lake Williston.” We had a LOT of rain starting around 7:00 PM last evening. It continued through the night and into today, with an occasional rumble of thunder and periods of heavy downpour. We also had a tornado watch until 5 PM.
The drainage at Williston Crossings RV Resort is generally good, but there are always going to be low spots that collect water. The road in front of our site becomes a shallow river during moderate rain and a lake when the rain is heavy, so we had waterfront property for a while today. 🙂 The rain was like a tropical monsoon at times.
We took care of shopping and outside chores yesterday and did not have to leave the rig today if we did not want to, so we spent the morning inside our small but cozy home away from home. OK, it’s not that small, but it is a lot smaller than a house, and Linda gets cabin fever much more easily than I do. By mid-late morning she needed to go for a walk. There was a lull in the rain so she put on her raincoat and headed out. The rain resumed before she could get back to the coach, but she enjoyed it just the same.
I was so pleased the other day with the Imsanity image resizing plug-in that I decided to test the Image Watermark plug-in today. This plug-in is used to add a custom watermark to images uploaded to a WordPress site, and one of its key features is the ability to watermark images that have already been uploaded to the WP Media Library. I configured the settings for the plug-in and tried to add a watermark image to one of my recently uploaded photos, but it didn’t work.
I went to the support forum at www.dfactory.eu looking for some documentation. The documentation was very thin but it is a fairly simple plug-in to use, at least conceptually, so that was not a complete surprise. I checked the “bugs” forum and found that I was not the first or only person to have this exact problem. The plug-in author provided guidance on how to get this feature to work but following his advice to the letter did not work. The plug-in was recommended to me by Technomadia, who use it successfully on all their website/blog images. Based on the info in the support forum, it apparently works just fine when the watermark is applied as the image is uploaded into WordPress, but not after it is already in the WP Media Library.
By mid-afternoon the clouds broke up, revealing blue skies above and allowing sunshine to penetrate all the way to the ground, so we went for a walk around the RV resort. I guess we were not the only ones who felt cooped up by the weather as there were a lot of people out walking. There is a Carriage owners rally here starting on Monday and participants have been dribbling in since Thursday. They will reportedly have 60 – 70 5th Wheel RVs attending. More arrived today and the bulk of them will arrive tomorrow with last minute arrivals on Monday.
Approximately 35 seasonal residents left on March 1st. A few others have left during the month and quite a few more are pulling out just ahead of the new arrivals. As a result we are seeing new faces in noticeable numbers for the first time since we got here. We are also seeing an increase in young children in the park. During the winter season this is an “adult” park, although no one seems to object to grand-parents having their grand-children visit. But from approximately April 1 to November 1 it functions more like a normal RV park, allowing families with children and hosting rally groups like most RV parks and campgrounds. Business is business, after all. The carriage rally goes all week and they will have the exclusive use of the clubhouse for their activities. By the time we pull out of here on Monday, April 7, the resort will likely have a very different look and feel.
It wouldn’t be Saturday night at Williston Crossings RV Resort without the fire pit and “Smitty” on guitar and vocals. Jeff brought his guitar too and they played and sang a lot of songs together as well as each ding solo numbers. A much larger group gathered this evening, with over 40 people at one time, and 50 or more total. The group included a number of children and young adults, the first time we have seen that many at the campfire. Winter is definitely turning into spring here.