It got cold here!

We got cold this week!  Normally we get occasional drops below freezing when we stay on the Gulf Coast, but nothing like this.  This time it was ice from freezing rain and sleet.  Mobile, AL and Baldwin County shut everything down for Tuesday & Wednesday.  And as much fun as friends from the north made of that decision, it appears it was one of the best decisions made.  You see, this area of the gulf coast gets freezing rain, sleet & snow about as often as a BIG10 football team wins the BCS National Championship.  It happens, but kinda rare.  So people forget how to handle it, and no government will invest in road cleaning equipment that would be used so little.

We had a normal, beautiful weekend with our traditional lunch at Mikee's on Friday.  But the word was gettin' out.  On Monday we started prepping for the weather to come.  We filled the fresh water tank, and by late evening we'd pulled all the water lines up and stopped draining the gray water tank.  Oh, and we got in a great potluck dinner at Greg & Judy's RV park Monday evening before everything set in, too.  As we traveled home, we picked up a few things from Walmart.  We could tell temps had started dropping which they continued to do overnight & into Tuesday morning.  

It started raining early Tuesday morning before we got up.  Donna got out to get her new cap put on her tooth, but by noon the temps had dropped far enough that the heating & air conditioning control panel switched over to the furnace on its own. (We normally run two 15,000 BTU heat pumps and our electric heaters for heating.) By 3:00 PM the trailer steps were covered in ice, and you could see it building on the truck.   A quick trip earlier to the volleyball pit to grab some sand for the steps was turning out to be useless.  And the temps continued to fall.  We went to bed all bundled up for the long night chill.  For the first time it was cold enough that we realized one-half of our electric ceramic heater's heating element had quit and the heater was just blowing cold air on one side.  So off to sleep we went with all electric heaters running full blast and the furnace set at 62* F.

The picture (above) was what we woke up to on Wednesday.  And it stayed that way most of the day.  Almost no one was moving around until mid-day.  It appeared Wednesday morning that only dogs & their handlers were getting out for short periods of time.  On my couple of excursions outside the trailer, it was only safe to walk on grass.  Any pavement was a solid sheet of ice.  So solid there were no foot prints where others had walked.  So we entertained ourselves watching the Weather Channel and the local news.  By Wednesday afternoon the precipitation had stopped, but it remained cold.  Some people were getting out and around, but there was nowhere to go.  Facebook was full of the state park's videos showing you what was outside and warning us to stay put.

The sun came out very late on Wednesday afternoon.  Wednesday night was colder, but Thursday morning greeted us with warmer sunshine.  We got the truck cleared off & Donna got out for a hair cut.  Donna was just ancy to do something, so she went to work on the steps & got 'em cleaned off by noon. From there it became a normal day here at Gulf Shores.  We got out for lunch at City Grille and got groceries.  Oh, and a fill up of one of our propane tanks was in order, too.  From what we saw, it appears they did a great job sanding the bridges and intersections.

Anyway, we trying to head for warmer weather.  We head out Saturday if everything works OK.  We're planning for a stop at Disney World next week, and to make it down to Markham State Park by Feb 15th.  At least that's the plan.  Later, David

Weekly Update

I hope everyone out there is enjoying their weather.  We're fine and probably warmer than most of the midwest & northeast and wetter than the southwest.  We do drop below freezing every other night or so.  I have to admit, I started to feel sorry watching the mid-Atlantic & northeast deal with the snow.  I almost felt so sorry for everyone that I felt like going out and shoveling...sand.  But I didn't.  Hopefully, everyone's OK with how the match-up turned out for the Super Bowl, too.

Our normal week continues.  Donna gets in a ride or two each week with her gang, Folks-on-Spokes.  I prefer just walking around the campground and state park.  It's now close enough to our trip down to Walt Disney World that we can now get an early look a the the weather for the trip down.  Just as I thought back when I made the reservations in June 2013 - rain (Weather Underground's 10 day forecast).  Donna's also made another run up to the yarn shop in Fairhope to swap out some knitting needles.

Of course, going up to Fairhope gives us a good excuse to eat at the Tin Top at Bon Secour, again.  We got in another meal last Friday with the NuWa Owner's Forum members at Mikee's here in Gulf Shores.  And we got in a breakfast at Brick & Spoon.  I think that's it for eating out this week.  We're doing better at this eating out thing than we did two years when we ate out each day - sometimes twice a day.  And it's hard not to.  Food's good here.

We also took the opportunity to test out the new Good Sam RV GPS on the way up and back to Fairhope.  Trying to get use to it & it's little quirks before we hitch the trailer behind us and use the thing for real.  Maybe we didn't need the 7-inch screen and could have gotten by with the 5-inch screen model, but it's easy to see - even when wearing progressive lens.  Just wish they hadn't made way-points to be destinations.  Makes it tough to program in and save unique directions to a campground that tells patrons to not follow the GPS automated directions to the campground.  I guess we're back to a road map & written directions for those situations.  It also makes all the advantages that I thought I'd gain from the ability to plan a trip online and export to the GPS sort of useless, too.

So that's been our week.  Everybody stay warm.  And if you're on the west coast, get wet.

Later, David

Warmer

Yeah!  We're back above freezing.  Except for a day of rain every few days or so, the weather is good here.  However, time here (for this season) getting short as we plan to leave in a couple of weeks.  Donna still out riding with her bicycle gang - Folks on Spokes.  She's getting in about two long rides a week with them.  Donna's halfway to a having a new cap for a tooth. It suppose to be here before we leave.

We've managed to get our trailer washed by Bob's RV Wash.  We've had an issue with our bathroom skylight leaking. Didn't realize it until we got to Alabama and got into soaking, all-day rains.  The outer cover of the skylight was dry rotted & cracked and no matter how much lap sealant I put on it, it leaked in heavy rains.  So we got a new outer cover from DRV and got it installed.  Got the truck washed.  Ate at Mikee's (Donna), Steamers & Cosmo's.  All our gift cards from The Shrimp Basket are now gone.  And we've found out our exhaust leak in the truck isn't fixed.

Donna also got a new knit project to work on, and we also bought a new, larger-screen RV GPS for me to fuss about.   I was never real happy with our trucker's GPS.  We got off to a bad start with it when I set our profile at 28,000 lbs and it routed us over a bridge that was only rated for 12,000 lbs.  So with that in mind I start using this new one with a trip planned from Gulf Shores, AL to Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL.  I planned the trip on the Good Sam Website, exported it to the GPS, and started the trip just to see what would happen.  It took us 0.8 mile to the dead-end of the campground road where we're at and said we'd arrived.  Yep, good start with this one, too!  Let's see - we're only 550+ miles short of making it to Walt Disney World...

Anyway, that's it for us.  Suppose to be below freezing tomorrow night, so we're not out of the cold weather, yet.  Later, David

Cold in Paradise

Well, it's warmer now - but it got cold here in Gulf State Park.  19* F Tuesday morning & 23* F Wednesday morning.  It's OK, though.  About 60* F now.

We got the truck back from repairs,again.  This time, only charge was for the oil change.  So for the last two services we're averaging $5k per service.  I wonder if Ford really intended their trucks to be so unaffordable to maintain?  We're still have to drive it a while, let it clean the exhaust filter and see if the exhaust leak truly got repaired.

As in all the times we've been here before, eating out gets high billing.  This week we got in Mikees, Tin Roof, and Ya Ya's.  Rest of the time we stayed inside staying warm.  Donna did get in a ride with her gang - the infamous "Folks on Spokes" gang, today.  Oh, and our MagicBands from WDW arrived today, too.  So I guess we are going to Disney World.

Other deliveries included a wash/wax mix (new to us) that we can use on the trailer, and our new skylight cover also made it in.  The old cover was getting pretty cracked from weathering, and I couldn't get it to stop leaking.   Hopefully, we get that new cover on tomorrow.  (Note to self:  on the next custom-ordered trailer - no stinking skylight!)

So that's it for us. Just normal life stuff.  Glad we're retired.  Wouldn't know when we'd get all this stuff done, otherwise.

Later, David

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We started off with a nice New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, but the weather slowly deteriorated into another soaking - our second since we've been here.  As I'm writing this, it's cleared some, but we're getting 30-40 mph winds out of the north.  They say it'll get below freezing overnight and over the weekend.

This past week, Donna finally made it from the state park to Fort Morgan (24 miles) biking.  Her next milestone is to make it to the fort and return.  She also got in a ride with the "Folks on Spokes".   We got in meals at Mikees, Cosmo's, and yogurt at Yogurt+.  The truck's back at a Ford dealer.  We're having them look for & repair an exhaust leak.  So goes life with a truck past 100k miles.  We finished with 2013 as an expensive year, and it looks like it'll continue into 2014.  2014 was our planned year to put new tires on the trailer and new front tires on the truck. Factor in two weeks at Disney World and, yep, it's gonna be an expensive year.  And that doesn't count any of the unplanned stuff like dentists visits for broken caps and emergency room touring.

The new (and also unplanned purchase) computer, itself, is fine.  It has a larger screen, a larger keyboard, a numerical key pad, and a USB 3.0 dedicated USB port.  We got a "Windows 8.1 for Dummies"  book, and it's helped with the Windows 8.1 operating system.  Of course, it's kinda interesting when even the book doesn't like Windows 8.1.  The best line so far:  "Take a deep breath and try to stay calm."   However, once I learned that the front "start" page is really the old start menu, learned an efficient way to shut the computer off, found the "app" to control speakers and headphones, figured out how to get two panes of the "This PC" to open side-by-side (to make file management easier), and learned some of the short cuts from the "Dummies" book, it's gotten easier.  The printer and scanner are now recognized by the computer.  So I'm back at working on spreadsheets, playing with Quicken, playing with old trip planning software, and to Donna's dismay, reading a lot of what's on the internet.  Yep, we're back using a lot of data via the MiFi.

So Happy New Year!  Later, David