Cold, clear day here in Montgomery, Alabama......

(We are currently in Foley, Alabama but were out of touch for a couple of weeks. I will post my blog posts in order, a few a day until I get caught up. Sorry for the long dry spell. ~laugh~ )

Our Location: Gunter Hill Campground, Montgomery, Al

(Post Jan 7, 2017)


A very cold morning here, 24F/-4 C by the outside thermometer, warmer inside at 57F/14 C. We left the electric heater on all night and the furnace down to 63F/17 C so it wasn’t too bad in the Igloo. The temperature gauge inside is on the table on the lower level while the furnace thermostat is on the upper level so the difference in temps is always a few degrees. Which is why we leave the  heater pointing into Riley’s room at night so she gets the benefit of the direct heat and I get the indirect benefit as heat rises, some of it makes it’s way to my end.

The long winding road from the guard shack to the camp sites.

Breakfast was a quick and painless thing. ~laugh~ Since we are in the Central Time Zone we are one hour behind our Canadian family and friends. We were up shortly after 7 am our time and everything finished by 7:30 am. I then went outside to see what was up with the water. I walked to the site across the road and pulled the handle on the water there…nothing. So either I was doing something wrong, they had a major issue or someone didn’t tell them the water was turned off. I looked across the way to a camper that was already here when we arrived and noticed the blue handle on his pump was straight up in the air, not just the half way that I had tried. Back to our own site I had to really pull hard on the handle to get it to all the way to the top and when it got to the top the water came shooting out. Problem solved. Reattached the hose and went inside, no water. Hmmmm… back outside, long story short, my water pressure valve was frozen, a bit of ice in the water line and those things combined to make certain our water didn’t flow. I removed the ice by letting the water run thru the hose for a bit while adding some water to the holding tank in case we needed to use water while it’s still too cold to manage with the water lines, reattached the hose again without the water pressure valve, turned on the water and bingo we were good to go. I took the WPV inside to thaw out.

The entry sign on Booth Road.

We decided to make Hamburger Soup (we use ground turkey instead of beef) for dinner as it was going to be a cold day here. All of that stuff tossed into the crock pot to simmer all day, I left the dishes because I was waiting for the water heater to heat it up. I headed out the door for a walk to the dumpster with all of our garbage, then continued on to the guard shack to tell them I’d found the problem. It was a long walk and I was cold by the time I got back, but I took a turn around the park and it’s a huge park, very nice, backs onto a river. Lots of space between spots and lots of trees but enough open spaces to allow the sun to shine in and warm us up.

Looking across the river from our loop of the park toward the second loop of the park with a boat ramp at the edge. Between those trees is a cement pad leading to the water. It's very steep, gave me the willies just thinking about backing something down there. ~laugh~ 

We didn’t leave the park today, we were both still kind of tired from yesterday’s long drive, plus with the rain yesterday I was worried the bridges here would be covered in black ice as there was evidence of black ice on the hard top here in the park. Found from Barry at the guard shack that indeed there were warnings out about black ice on the roads and bridges.  Tomorrow we will be heading out to do a few errands.

I texted Jason at Coastal Solar this morning to tell him that with all that rain nothing leaked, and I seen nothing flying off, nor dragging along behind me so I was pretty certain everything was still good. ~laugh~ He texted back that he was thankful for the update as he had decided to leave me alone until Monday before he sent me a message asking me if things were going okay. ~laugh~ He’s such a sweetie!!

An idea of the scenery IN the park here at Gunter Hill.

Back home after my walk which took me about an hour, I washed the dishes from breakfast and making soup, straightened up a bit, then watched a movie while Riley was playing a game on her computer. I went outside to set up the propane heater as the electric heater just can’t keep up with the cold here. About 10 minutes it was all set up and before long we were pretty toasty in the Igloo. Read my book for a bit, Catherine Coulter’s Born to Be Wild. Just started it, it seems pretty good. Riley and I both had a bit of a nap this afternoon. I guess we both were a bit more stressed by the drive in the rain than I thought.

I read a book that Barry at the guard shack gave me about things to see and do in the area, some of which I already know but some were new. I spent a while this afternoon going thru the book and figuring out which ones we’ll go see and checking out a few others I know nothing about. Since we have no internet connection yet, I can’t do any research which is something I always do. I have no idea why I didn’t check into the wifi connection but for some reason I just didn’t. Oh well, I’ll write my posts and post them when we get a connection.

A pull thru site next to ours. 

After that Riley and I each did a bit of our own thing for a while, I read, she played a game on her computer. Dinner was quiet, and I forgot to take a picture of my soup. ~laugh~ We have left overs, maybe I’ll remember tomorrow.

We chatted about what we need to do tomorrow and about the things we’ll go to see this coming week. I think we’ll manage even though it’s cold here, although according to Barry it’s going to warm up by Friday when it will be in the 70’s. Looking forward to that. ~laugh~

To my cousin Sheila, I wish you the happiest birthday!!!!

That’s about it for another day here in my little world. I hope you’ve enjoyed your visit, thanks for stopping by. Feel free to leave a comment. Until next time…be safe, take care…..