First impressions of new place - Day 2175 (Year 6, Day 336)

Land O'Lakes, FL

I haven't had the chance yet to walk around and explore, so more will come, but here are my first impressions from what I've seen in the last 2 days.

For one, Mitch was super ecstatic about his commute: he said it only took him about 10-15 minutes to get home last night (as compared to almost an hour).

The view out my windows:  the view from the back window is right up against the trailer behind us, with a rusted awning and air conditioner unit. I closed the day shade so at least I don't see it and there's still some light coming in.  This is acceptable. I was concerned about looking out my "office" window and seeing a rusted shed, but all I can really see is a small portion of the corner of the roof.  Mostly I see our tree and the highway, the trailer across from us and if I move my head a bit, 2 bushes with pink and lavender flowers.  Not as pretty as Zephyrhills, but not as terrible as I anticipated either.  I can live with this view.  And if I sit outside, I will see more open space (and the highway) instead of the shed, which was what I originally feared.  On a side note, being right off the highway, the noise is horrific.  But I'm sure at some point we'll get used to it and be able to tune it out.  Bottom line: not as bad as I feared.  Not great either, but I can learn to live with it.

There is a great deal of activity here.  We are a few feet away from the dumpsters, so of course there is a lot of foot and car traffic of people bringing their trash. On a positive note, it makes it incredibly easy for us to dump our trash.  At Z'hills, Mitch would put the bags on the hood of the car and drive it to the dumpster on his way out.  In other places, we had to do the same thing, or walk a bit of a ways to get there.  So this is very convenient.  Unfortunately, they don't have a recycle program here so we'll need to find where the public recycling place is.  After 1.5 years of recycling our  plastics, it sickens me to think how much we were throwing out and sending to the dumps (which would eventually find its way to the oceans and kill the fish and birds).  I really want to be able to continue recycling, even if it's a bit inconvenient to bring it to a dump site.

Back to activity... the park is basically a large circle and I've seen quite a number of people either walking or bike riding around it.  Most of them pass our site between 10 and 20 times.  I'm hoping at some point I will sit outside and start a conversation with all the passersby.  I'm also hoping that the weather will permit on Saturday for me and Mitch to take a walk to the end of our road where the public access to the lake is.  We're told there's a dock where we can fish.  I'm hoping there are chairs there as well.  Really looking forward to learning how far it is (can I do the walk?).  Overall, I'm feeling extremely positive that there are a lot of good, friendly folks here and we will make a few new friends.