Gulf State Park

Middle Lake & Boardwalk, Gulf State Park, AL

We've made our way back to Gulf State Park, AL for the winter arriving Sunday.  We're in our normal site, settled in and filled with groceries.  We've seen a few friends since arriving, got an early dinner in at Mikee's, visited the new Interpretative Center at the park's pavilion, visited & ate lunch at the new lodge, and walked the new changes (updates?) to the old State Route 2 bicycle path.  There's a new, larger crock-pot in the trailer now.  We've gotten the water heater fixed only to develop an overheating ASCO Red Hat II solenoid that controls propane flow to the stove to prevent the stove from staying or turning on while the stove top is closed.  It's an old solenoid that's wearing out, it's probably shorting out, and - of course - it obsolete.  Start getting that resolved tomorrow.

The Folks-on-Spokes folks are beginning to arrive, so we're looking forward to seeing them.  We're also looking forward to visiting with our standing Friday lunch group, too.  Since we get into a routine when we're down here, I'll starting updating the blog about twice a month.

That's it for now.  Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Pics are from our walks this week around the park.  Enjoy your Christmas shopping!  David

Displays at the new Interpretative Center

New swings at the pavilion

Lobby at the new Lodge

Lobby at the new Lodge

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  We're near Birmingham, AL celebration Thanksgiving with family.  Hope everyone one has a great holiday and weekend.  Safe travels to all who move around this week.  We plan to be in Gulf Shores, AL on Sunday.  Thanks for dropping by!  David

Cave City, KY

Our new "We're Traveling" photo

We're free!  We've broken away from the Elkhart area and moved - as you'd guess -  south back into more snow - wintry mix - rainy weather.  Some would say it's like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.  It's really pretty much the way things work for us in the RV lifestyle.

We made it to Cave City, KY.  We came

This is how Elkhart treated us.

here because when we first planned our move south, this was the first area we could reach where we could get freshwater and temps would be above freezing.  Turns out temps are at freezing or just below freezing, and we can only get water during the day.  Amazing how fast that weather forecast changed in just a few days!

Anyway, we're out of Elkhart.  Donna is working like a busy bee cleaning the inside of the trailer.  We've more or less de-winterized and using water out of the freshwater tank as the campground shuts off freshwater at 5 PM each day.  So far we've got an intermittent left turn signal light on the door side of the trailer (only showing up when temps dropped below freezing), a hot water heater that only runs on propane (happened before - we'll get it fixed so it runs on electricity later), and we haven't tried the new washer/dryer combo.  Oh, and a new MCD shade that doesn't want to work properly.   Search on YouTube may help us get that solved.

I kinda keep track of how long we go after service with everything working.  Been a couple of years since we left service with everything working.  That's part of the reason we had an extended service this time as we're just trying to get things to work they way they were suppose to.  Looks like we get a big zero for this session, too.

We got the new suspension.  The new hitch and new suspension now have us competing for the world's tallest RV at 13 ft, 5 inches.  (That's obviously not true, but when you're use to 13 feet, 1 inch, it feels that way.)  The upside is that we can now travel off road in the deserts of Arizona without fear of the trailer hitch pin taking out one of the bed rails.  This new growth also required new steps so we could reach the door without having to pull out a step stool every time you wanted to enter or exit the trailer.  The new steps made the door now harder to open and close (these steps stow inside the door of the trailer).  Nothing like improvements, right!  But so far all that stuff works.  Just gotta get use to it.

So that's it for us.  As I close the weather radar says light snow.  If so, that's the hardest snow I've ever experienced.  It's raining and raining fairly hard.  Hopefully, it won't freeze!  It's too bad some of this weather can't slide west to help out with the fires.  Anyway, thanks for dropping by!  Until next week, David

Donna gets her cat

We're beginning to see the end of our 2018 fall service session.  It's been a long one as we got the trailer painted, and Donna got her cat as you can see here.  As I write this, the trailer is at Indiana Interstate Enterprises where some of the accessories removed for painting are being reinstalled, 4 new AGM batteries installed, holding tank valves are

replaced, and some troubleshooting to try to find a wayward ground fault is being done.  The trailer still remains winterized as the local weather is catching up to us.  Elkhart experiences it's first accumulation of snow this weekend.  Once, again, we've stayed north for too long! 

Our last appointment - we hope - is this coming Monday at MORryde where we

hope to have a new suspension installed. 

If you look closely at the third picture from the top, you can tell we don't have enough clearance between the bed rails and the "chin" of the trailer.  We've got about four inches of clearance at the tailgate.  Ideally, we should have five to seven inches between the bed rails and the "chin" of the trailer.  We had a new, taller hitch installed Monday evening at Dan's Hitch to get us that additional clearance.  Of course the trailer now travels too high in the front and we need that corrected so the trailer travels as level as possible for proper weight distribution over the trailer's axles.

Consequently, part of the plan with MORryde, besides the new suspension, is to add additional risers to help level the trailer when it's hitched to the truck, install new trailer steps that stow inside the door of the trailer, and put a storage box in the location where the old steps are stowed for travel.  As always that's the plan and may change depending on what really fits. 

Our plans to de-winterize the trailer here and ensure everything works before we leave have been destroyed with the weather predicted for this weekend and next week.  At one point, the Weather Channel was indicting the highs would not go above freezing until late next week.  That's changed a little, but we've realized that we need to just take our chances and head south as quickly as we can.  Hopefully, we'll be at Cave City, KY this time next week de-winterizing the trailer and fuzzing with appliances that don't want to work.  That's the new plan, anyway...until it changes!

Why get the trailer painted?  Our trailer's exterior was gel coat with painted graphics and decals for the large D & Mobile Suites emblems.  The gel coat was beginning to deteriorate and we could no longer make it look good and clean after washing.  The decals had faded.   DRV gave us (via Indiana Interstate Enterprises)  the proper paint color codes to match the 2011 Mobile Suites colors.  I wanted the trailer to look as original as possible  (being it's a 2011 model), but knew that was unlikely.  What you now see is a trailer painted by Mike's Custom Painting (Bremen, IN) with the 2011 Mobile Suites model colors.  The graphics are different, but give us the general appearance of a 2011 model trailer.  The emblems are now painted on (all in gold) and using the current DRV fonts.  The white is Mike's Custom Painting's basic white (Donna's choice) vice the white DRV recommended.  Luckily for us, no delamination was found.  That made the painting process go a little quicker and at a little lower cost.  For comparison, I've posted a few of the pictures of the trailer when it was new at the bottom of this post.  Take a look and see what ya think.  We think they did great job trying to make it look original!

OK, it's been a longer than usual post.  I'll let you go.  Thanks for dropping by and checking on us!  We're doing fine, and Donna can't wait to be back in her house.  She was excited just to tow the thing from Dan's Hitch in Elkhart over to Indiana Interstate Enterprises in Lagrange Monday evening in the dark.

Until next week, David