Weekly Update

Boy, time flies when you're having fun!  Another week has gone by quickly.  This week was highlighted by a surprise visit from Don Guy.  Don worked with us during our volunteer stint at the Louisiana Methodist Children's Home last September.  He's volunteered his services on NOMAD projects at Moss Point, MS these past few weeks and dropped by for a spell.

Don Guy

We continued to eat as normal with visits to the Oyster House, Mikee's Seafood, Longhorn Roadhouse, and Yogurt+ this week.  I finally got my broken crown replaced with a temporary one.  With moral support and a lot of advice from Greg, we got the fuel filter for our transfer flow auxiliary 50-gal diesel tank changed.  (It was just a "little" over due.  Plus you're suppose to be impressed - I'm not mechanically minded.  Remember, my talent is in breaking things!)

We've learned that if there's a squall line at Fort Morgan moving east, it gets to us in about 20 minutes.  That also means we can't notice that squall line, get in the truck and drive to a local restaurant before we get dumped on.  We also learned that the local wildlife will visit the campsites along the lake (see photo at the top). Unfortunately, these guys just don't generate the "awwwwwww" factor that the deer in Shenandoah Nat'l Park generate.  I guess there's just some places you should avoid while walking your dog when camping here.

Oh, and I got to rant about how Warren Buffet's secretary pays a higher effective tax rate than Warren Buffet.  According to an ABC reporter, her effective tax rate is 35.8%.   Seems most people are oblivious that to get that high of an effective tax rate, she has to make more than the President of the United States and, most likely, is a millionaire herself.  Yep, she definite represents the average tax payer who's paying more in taxes than those other lousy millionaires &  billionaires!  Then there's that 35.8% effective tax rate.  If the highest tax rate anyone pays is 35.0%, how'd she end up paying 35.8%?  Sounds like she needs one of those "second-looks" that H&R Block's been advertising on TV lately!  Then, again, how accurate is ABC News in it's reporting?  Think they may have gotten the effective tax rate wrong?

Otherwise, we're fine.  Up next week is a visit to the Naval Aviation Museum (and IMAX) at NAS Pensacola.  And cooler weather.  And more eatin'.  Later, David

Weekly Update

Some members of the NuWa Owner's forum at LA BBQ, Robertsdale, AL

We continue to do what we do well - eat.  SFCC taught us well, and we enjoy practicing in retirement!  Photos are courtesy of Greg Bahnmiller.

Still enjoying our stay in the area.  Weather's great.  We get below freezing overnight every now & then.  Rain once a week or so, too.  Donna still pedaling hard on her bike; getting out for a couple of hours (or more) each day.  I get in an hour every other day or so.  We've gotten the trailer washed professionally, so all the pine sap and black streaks are gone ( for now, anyway).  Most stuff working.

We'll soon start branching out further over the weekend.  There's other state parks to visit.  Still got to get on the schedule to visit Bill & Debra.   I think Donna's working on getting some friends down here in February.  I've got to renew my CFI-II while here, too.  More restaurants to visit plus we have a couple of gift certificates we need to use while down here, too.  And I haven't been to the Naval Aviation Museum since I was at flight school (NAS Pensacola/Saufley Field) back last century, so we want to go there.  Another couple here (Craig & Jenny) said it took them four days to see the museum.  May take me longer!

So that's it from here.  Everyone take care and be safe.  David

Not all of us may own NuWa Hitchhikers, but...

Roll Tide!

We're definitely enjoying our time here.  Donna's wearing out the gears on her new bike and chasing down all the local wildlife:  hawk, alligator, armadillo, rabbit, etc.  Eating out for lunch seems to be a popular activity for us, too.  For me, it's prep for tax time and reading all the RV forums.  Plus there's the gathering of all the documentation to get updated military IDs so we can take advantage of the military campgrounds out west.  

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Some things never change, though.  Our current challenge is arriving at NAS Pensacola when the system is up to get the new IDs.  We try again tomorrow.  If this does follow my experiences when I worked, this may take awhile...

So far we've endured just one real day of rain and a couple of nights below freezing.  Some windy days, too, but that seems par for being so near the beach.  The pictures here show what we can see from the roof of the trailer.  Looks like any good sunset pics will need to come from the local piers.  Good excuse to go walk the beaches.

That's it from this neck of the woods.  Hope you enjoyed the BCS Championship game.  It was definitely a hit here at the 'shores!  More later.  David

@ Gulf State Park, AL

When we first considered Gulf Shores, AL as a wintering-over location for 2011, Randy Mc highly recommended the state park here.  I passed as it didn't have cable TV, and we didn't own a satellite TV receiver & antenna at the time. (Of course having a sat antenna and receiver doesn't guarantee you TV reception, either.)  After arriving in Gulf Shores last year and given a great tour by Greg and Judy Bahnmiller, we knew this was the place to stay and our first few days here in 2012 has not disappointed us.

If you were to zoom in on the park using Google Earth,  we're on a cul-de-sac just to the left (west) of the swimming pools. Hard to get a picture of what we see from the trailer as you really can't see much to the south due to the new tree growth and bushes.  Plus we're pointed northwest and we catch the sun full-on to the rear of the trailer making any pictures to the south hard to take.  If we get a good sunset or sunrise, I'll get on the roof and try again.

This is bicycle riding territory, too.  Apparently, we can ride from Perdido Bay to Fort Morgan on bicycle friendly roads or trails.  Donna's averaging over two hours a day on her bicycle.  Today was my first day out on the bike, and it's truly a bicycle friendly location.  So bring your bikes when you come.

It's been an expensive first few days here.  A month's rent for the campsite, a new satellite receiver, and a new bike for Donna has created quite a bill in just a few days.  Campsite rent includes electricity, so we're not complaining.  Donna's never been real happy with her bicycle as it only had seven gears.  A choice of adding more gears vs. buying a new bicycle quickly turned to a new bicycle.  (Just like it did with a new 1990 Acura Legend over 20 years ago.)  She now has a silver, super-duper 24-gear, rapid-fire gear changer, Trek Navigator 3.0.  Yep, she's happy now!  Remember, this is a lady who loved the Acura Legend and took my corvette away from me to be her own.  Only the best...

Ah, the satellite receiver.  We have satellite TV reception now, and we have no idea why.  On Monday we tried the DishTV directions for setting up a new receiver to no avail.  My droid app showed we had a clear sight-line to satellites 110, 119, and 129, but we didn't have any reception on sat 119.  We decided to try the Winegard directions Tuesday morning, and it still showed no sat 119 reception.  Just as I was about to turn everything off to go to lunch with Greg and Judy, the darn system started downloading the channel guide and we were off to the races.   I'd still like to know just what the correct procedure is.  It's a shame no one thinks to put it in their owner's manuals!  (Oh, there's directions there, but are they the correct directions? Apparently not!)

We're beginning to get out and meet the neighbors.  We've got friendly dogs to play with.  And the gossip group meets each morning in the center of the cul-de-sac.  So we're learning.   Anyway, this blog post is way too long.  So this is it for today from Gulf Shores, AL.  Later, David

Happy New Year!

Stephen C Foster Culture Center & State Park, White Springs, FL

Happy New Year!  We spent about five days traveling from Markham State Park to Gulf Shores State Park in Orange Beach, AL.  We spent New Year's Eve in White Springs, FL near the Stephen C Foster Culture Center and State Park.  We decided to visit and found a nice state park with museum and campground.  This park has nice hiking and mountain biking trails plus there's also a couple of places to launch kayaks

or canoes to paddle the Suwanee River.  Oh, and the museum has a boat load of old pianos of which a few photos are posted below.

Our actual over-night campsite for New Year's Eve was in a campground called Lee's Country Campground.  It's a great over-niter campground on I-75 just north of the I-10 interchange.  They had a small get-together on New Year's Eve for those of us staying  in the campground.  What we were told when checking in was that there'd be finger food and a gathering of those staying in the park who would like to attend.  Turns out it was a full spread and a full  

house.  And it was good - just like the great company of all the other campers - most of whom were continuing further south.

While the calendar may have changed over, our disgustingly poor luck with purchasing electronic equipment that actually works continues.  We were never able to get satellite TV to work at Markham.  After a lot of trouble shooting with DishTV and Winegard,  

it was determine that our receiver was bad.  No problem.  We thought we'd wait until we got here at Gulf Shores and get a new receiver.  Well, we have the new receiver, and we still have no satellite TV reception.  You know, you have to be retired to have the time to put up with all this crap.  I now know why DishTV always wants to send a tech out to trouble shoot everything.  They're the only ones who'll put up with this junk.  A normal, sane person just wants to bust it to pieces on the pavement.

Oh, and while this may be Verizon 4G territory, I only had to restart our little Verizon 4510L MiFi twice to get tonight's blog written and posted. Yep, that's reliability you can count on (that is, you can reliability count on it not working!) 

I'll stop now before someone - usually me - gets hurt cleaning up busted electronics.

Later, electronics-slammin' David