Waterfront Living

OMG, what a month this has been. My plans to sell the trailer I had been living in were squelched when the owner of that park sprung the news that I had to REMOVE that trailer from the park if I left. Nice, huh? The chances of finding someone who wanted to buy the trailer AND pay to move it were pretty slim (since I had paid less than $5000 for it just one year earlier), so I gave it to a neighbor who was able to remove it (at no cost to me) and use it himself for a hunting camp. Win-win. I chalked up my original cost of buying that trailer as still less than apartment rent for that year.

Then I move over to this new park and the manager starts making noises about my RV. She's concerned that it's too short (?), too old (it's a 1998), "is it self-contained?" she asks. This new park is under new ownership and the manager doesn't seem to have a clear picture of what they want. I'd like to think they want clean, quiet, employed people who will pay the rent in a timely fashion, but what do I know? After two weeks of not knowing if I could stay or not, I enlisted the assistance of one of the maintenance guys here who helped clarify things between the owner and the manager and now I have THE BEST SITE!

I am in "the ghetto", as they call it here. It's in the far back of the park, on a cul-de-sac, ON THE BAYOU (yeah, waterfront, baby), and pretty much all permanent renters here, versus older, retired snowbirds. We're all around the same age +/-, we all work, and we all like to hang out and just get along with each other. If there's a downside, it's that Hillsborough Avenue is within a few hundred yards of this section. After living off I-75, though, this highway is nothing. It has already become white noise.

I can launch my kayak right from my backyard. I can sit here and look at the water and I even heard we get manatees going by. Yes, this park and this site are a bit more expensive than my last place, but it's still less than $500 per month for site rent. The cost of electric for the first two weeks I've been here, in the dog days of summer with the a/c running? $20.