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
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