Escapees November-December 2023

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regularly dip into the 40’s. In Central Florida, including Orlando, overnight lows of 50 degrees are common. Gardeners even watch out for frost from December until mid-March. Occasionally, Central Florida experiences a hard freeze, where the temperature dips below 28 degrees for more than two hours. This is dangerous for the orange groves, and citrus farmers spray down the trees with water to form a protective shell of ice, which acts as an insulator. But overnight lows are not the same as daytime highs, and these are not easily determined by a quick online search of “average monthly temperatures.” While it’s supposed to be 75 degrees out when we’re setting up the Christmas Mickey outside our motorhome, it’s frequently much cooler than that. There’s really no way to know what you’re going to get until you get there. For example, in 2022, an “arctic blast” from the north caused a string of 50-degree days (and colder nights) in Central Florida, triggering one of the state’s quirky “Falling Iguana” warnings. Not only were Snowbirds a little stunned by the temperatures, but so were the iguanas, which can lose their grip after several days of severe chill and fall from their perches. I understand that the locals look forward to a break from the heat. Maybe they’re not into 50 degree days, which force them to cover their landscaping with burlap coffee bags, but they do enjoy a streak of days in the low-60’s, which are common. Among RVers, it’s the older men, especially those named Bob, who also seem

to relish this weather. And it’s the moms with kids howling for CoCo Key Water Park who are the ones shivering with frustration. But there’s another aspect to getting cold in Florida. You can get acclimatized, and then you get cold even when it really is warm. On another winter trip, we were enjoying ourselves at an RV park in the Florida Keys. The kids had spent half the day paddling canoes in the bay and the other half swimming in the pool. It felt like summertime, and I was dressed in a thin cotton shirt, shorts, and sandals. But that night, as we parents lounged in our camp chairs, I got up to get a sweatshirt. And then a jacket. Finally, I gave up and put on a down vest. I rubbed my cold hands over the fi re and said, “Geez, what’s the temperature out here?” My friends’ answer made me shout. It was 68 degrees by our little propane fi re pit. How could I possibly be cold? And then one member of the group told a story. He’d been an airplane mechanic in the army and had been stationed in Saudi Arabia, where they often saw highs of 120 degrees. One particular time, he and his crew were working the night shift when the temperature started to plummet. They called for their heavy-weather gear, including coats, gloves, and hats. When they asked what the temperature was, they were as shocked as I’d just been. Their cold hands and shivering shoulders were being caused by an ambient air temperature of 80 degrees. Well that explains the long johns I saw for sale at the Clermont Target. We acclimatize more quickly to heat, more slowly to cold. Not only that, a large temperature difference is hard for the body to handle, even if the low is in the range we’d normally consider comfortable.

Photo Correction View fi nder “City Lights” In the September/October 2023“View fi nder” column, this photo was incorrectly A Minaret (tower from which Muslims are called to prayer) at night near the plaza in Marrakesh, Morocco. There was a place for RV overnight parking behind the tower. With the minaret all lit up, it was easy for us to fi nd our way back to our camper after enjoying the captioned. The correct information is below.

We sturdy types who grew up snow skiing or ice fi shing don’t think it could happen to us, but it can. Spending just a couple of years “chasing 70 degrees” can cause our bodies to recalibrate. A merely warm day can start to feel hot, and a merely chilly night can have us running for hats and woolly mittens. If we stay in a hot climate permanently, we can become intolerant of the cold altogether. I decided that the thing to do was get a little snow under my boots. We went out west and wintered in our RV. We went snow shoeing, cross country skiing, and sledding. We snuggled under blankets and ran space heaters at our feet. We drank hot chocolate. And what was my husband’s response? “We could be in Florida right now.” By Bianca Dumas, Guest Contributor

evening on the busy plaza. PHOTO BY JOYCE SPACE #61818

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ESCAPEES Magazine November/December 2023