Dogsled Down....needs repairs

We are currently in Foley, Alabama but have been without internet for a couple of weeks. I will post the missing blog posts in order. Sorry for the long dry spell. 

Our Location: Gunter Hill Campground, Montgomery, Al

(Post Jan 11, 2017)

A nice warm night last night and today was even better. Tonight's temps are still in the 65F/18C at 8:30 pm our time (Central). We barbecued tonight so you know it was warm. ~laugh~

We decided yesterday that today would be a day of rest and we’d just stay home and relax, do some walking and perhaps just recuperate a bit. It kind of went that way.

Grey, cloudy, overcast this morning but warm, a bit of a breeze but still very nice. Not short pants kind of nice but still much nicer than it’s been since we’ve arrived here. After breakfast we tidied up a bit and enjoyed our books for a while. By 8:30 am it was raining. Not hard but enough to get everything wet. So our lazy day was looking like it would be stay inside day due to weather.

Winding wooded hardtop path in various parts of the park.

Yesterday morning I noticed a spot under the truck and upon checking it out I realized it was diesel fuel, since I had filled the tank I thought it was perhaps the result of me over filling it a bit and the sun heating it up causing it to over flow the vent. Yesterday in Montgomery I didn’t notice anything but we were parked on a bit of an angle as well. Yesterday late afternoon I noticed another spot under the truck and upon further investigation I realized I had a leak in the tank. Around 10 am I headed up to the guard shack in hopes of finding Barry, a Prattville local, to pick his brain about where to take it to get it looked at and/or fixed. Barry wasn’t on the desk but the nice folks there from Iowa had his number (they referred to him as Bruce) and called him asking him that question. As luck would have it, HIS baby brother is a mechanic and Barry/Bruce was at his brother’s shop as he spoke on the phone. Directions and address in hand Bella (US GPS) and I made the trip to 1381 Hwy 82 West the home to Will’s Automotive. Will confirmed that it was a leak and that he could indeed help me out. I explained I wasn’t from the area, had only this vehicle and had driven from Gunter Hill CG to his shop. No problem Brother Will brought me home to the Igloo and will pick me up when it’s fixed. I didn’t hear from Will this afternoon but he was certain we would have it back by the weekend. So I’m hoping for tomorrow. 

 

One of two bridges that we found on the path.

Back home by 11:45 am, I thought I’d have an early lunch and enjoy my book outside as the rain had stopped and the sun was peeking out from time to time. After I finished my lunch I decided a few chores needed completing. I removed the tank/propane heater from it’s hooked up spot by the dining room window. Attached this very same tank to the BBQ in prep for tonight's dinner. After that I managed to tidy things up in the basement a bit but I think tomorrow if it’s nice I’ll actually remove everything and vacuum the space. It gets dirty fast with moving chairs, bbq’s, hoses, mats, etc in and out of the space. I also topped up my batteries with water today. The solar panels are showing the ‘full charge’ mode and I’m happy to see it. I’ve actually shut the batteries off from the shore power as I know they are topped up already and we aren’t going to be needing them for some time, I think it’s easier to have them shut off and not charging all the time.

This needs to be repaired to connect the two loops in the park. 

 I sat outside for a while reading until I finished my book. Not the best book but it was okay. I started another but quickly decided after about 6 chapters that I didn’t like it and grabbed a new one. I don’t usually do that but if a book can’t hold my interest than I am getting better at just moving on to the next book. 

Not sure what this is but only found one of them in the closed loop.

NO walk for me today, I  just didn’t have the energy to do it. I’ll walk tomorrow though. We are debating about what to do if we get the Dogsled back early tomorrow. I’m leaning toward the zoo, and we need to get one of our big propane tanks filled as well. I think we’ll hold off on the laundry until we get to Blackwater River State Park this coming week as they have laundry facilities right in the park. I’ve not seen anywhere near by to do laundry and I think we can hold out that long.

Looking across one of the sites toward the first loop. 

The park is filling up with a few more trailers, more people out and about as well. The warm weather is  helping for certain. I’m curious as to the weekend and what it will bring in terms of local people. Americans are big on camping weekends as Will (mechanic) told me they had come down on the weekend of New Years to camp for the weekend (right here in this park, he was one site past where we are parked right now) but it was too cold and they didn’t enjoy it too much. I’ve found many state parks are like that, fill up for the weekend and clear thru the week. 

Dinner tonight was sausages, italian veggies, garlic onion potatoes. BBQing is something we enjoy and we’ve missed it the last few weeks.

Clean up inside and out, bbq cover on, lights off outside, lock up and head off in our own directions. Not an exciting day but it was our day. We enjoyed it and are hoping for the return of the Dogsled soon. Thanks for stopping by, feel free to leave a comment. Until next time…be safe…take care….

A nicer day today........

(We are currently in Foley, Alabama but have been without internet for the past few weeks. I will continue posting my blog posts in order, posting a few a day until I get caught up. Sorry for the long dry spell. ~laugh~)

Blogger will not let me arrange this how I would like, but at least its here.

Our Location: Gunter Hill Campground, Montgomery, Al

(Post Jan 8, 2017)

Even colder last night than the night before. We were down to 22F/-5C this morning. With the furnace turned down to 64F/17C and the electric heater running all night we stayed pretty toasty. However we will be very happy when it warms up.

Temps were warming up today, we reached a high of 38F/3.3C this afternoon. Felt down right balmy. ~laugh~ Tomorrow should be warmer still. We’re crossing our fingers. 

Sunday mornings are like any other morning for us, we have breakfast, decide about dinner, decide what we are doing for the day and then proceed to follow those decisions. This morning we started off having fried ham and eggs, sunny side up. It was pretty good. You’ll have to take my word for it.

The water in the ditch was frozen this morning.....

Since we are here to see some sights we discussed what we’d like to see and how many things to take in each day, etc. We determined since cleaning day is usually Monday but we have plans for the day that today would be cleaning day, so without further discussion we cleaned the house.

We headed out to the dumpster to deposit our garbage, and continued on for a walk around the park. Out to the guard shack, on to the entry road, and back around the park to the Igloo. Well Riley headed right back I took another tour around the loop checking things out. Bright blue skies, sunny, warming up, but a cold NW wind kept me shivering in some places.

 After that we knew we needed groceries and so off we went to Prattville to find a few things, diesel, groceries and a spot Barry told me about to get my propane tank filled. Since I am an orderly person I ticked off all the things in the order of importance. First we needed to find some diesel, we were below a 1/4 tank and I don’t let it get that far very often but with the rain and the nearness of our destination on Friday I knew we would be perfectly fine without filling up before reaching the park. 

 

 

Deer standing on the roadway, long distance for my phone camera.

We found diesel for $2.35 per gallon on our way to Prattville. Nice little station, gasoline on one of the side of the building and gasoline/diesel on the other side. Clean, quick in and out, no need to enter a zip code into the pump, therefore no need to enter the building. Fill up was $48.00 USD. Not bad at all.

From there we proceed to annoy Phoebe, our RV Garmin as she says ‘veer’ sometimes instead of ‘turn’ and since veer to me that the road splits and I need to take one of the splits I was confused by her telling me to veer when it should have a been turn or exit. I think because there was a ramp leading to the road in question she considered it a veer. Twice I didn’t ‘veer’ and realized only after that it’s a turn. Oh well…we still made it. ~laugh~

I will admit we didn’t tour the town of Prattville, we head to the local Wally’s World for groceries after a quick stop at the Big Lots store on the opposite side of the parking lot. The groceries were most important after the fuel as we were out of just about every vegetable we eat. We needed a few other things as well and believe it or not walked out with $144.00 in about a dozen bags. A few things not in bags as well though. More pipe wrap to keep the water line from freezing.

On the way home we figured we’d look for the ‘propane guy’ Barry mentioned. Of course me doing the driving I had two roads to choose from, guess what Rick Ferroni, I picked the wrong one. ~laugh~ Murphy!!!!!!! (inside joke with Mr. Ferroni)

Closer shot of the deer, bit fuzzy but not bad for phone camera.

We toured a bit of the country side, it was quite interesting and very back woods Alabama type thing. We were using Phoebe, our RV GPS, which of course thinks we’re hauling our home and therefore won’t take us down some roads. Bella, our US gal, couldn’t find the park because we didn’t know the address then and Phoebe wouldn’t give it up. ~laugh~ I know, I know…anyway… So at one point Phoebe was telling us to go right but I knew we had to go left, I turned left. Phoebe was not impressed. ~laugh~ I kept waiting for the word ‘stupid’ to sound, but it didn’t, she’s a classy lady our Phoebe.  Eventually we saw a sign for Gunter Hill Campground but had to do a quick turn around as we’d missed it. She wasn’t sending us that way but we were going. Guess what, we found the propane guy about 5 miles/8 km from the campground. ~laugh~ Only took us about 15 miles/25 km to find him. Aw well, we had a nice drive.

Home again I tended to the water line encasing it in pipe wraps, while Riley put away some of the groceries. After I finished I headed in to help. I bagged all the chicken breasts and sausages while Riley continued to put things away. Finally we had everything away, so we pulled things out to make some lunch. ~laugh~  We watched a movie while we enjoyed lunch, something called The Rainmaker, based on a John Grisham book. Matt Damon did an excellent job of portraying Rudy Baylor.

From there we moved forward to doing our own thing, mine was making certain all of the addresses for touring was loaded into Bella for easy travels this week. I also loaded our next two routes into Phoebe so we can head out with no issues when it’s time.

Talked to both my sister Jan, and my dad, Doug as they were both concerned about us, seems they heard about some wild weather down here in the south, snow, wind, accidents, pile ups, etc. I assured them I wouldn’t be driving in that kind of weather as we would just pull off and stay put. Having our home with us allows us to do that and no one will make you leave a parking lot in that kind of weather. I’m a fair weather driver and only drove in the rain because it wasn’t torrential, we could see fine and there was no wind. I felt perfectly safe driving on Friday or we wouldn’t have continued. 

 

 

 

Cold out here, we bundled up for our walk.

I’m still full from lunch and opted to miss dinner, but Riley is having Hamburger Soup again, adding a little pasta to it tonight.

So on that note, I’m going to sign off. Thanks for visiting. Hope you enjoyed yourself. Feel free to leave a comment. Until next time…be safe, take care…