Saturday, December 30, 2017
It didn’t get as cold as predicted last night. We stayed above freezing. With the sun out this morning as we were doing our final load out, it felt rather nice. The weather service says it will be the last nice day for a while.
When we got up this morning a decision had to be made. Anne hasn’t been feeling well – cough, crud that’s going around – but this morning also had a low grade fever. Yesterday she thought she was better and we planned to go to Tuscaloosa to see Mama Ruby and then head south from there. We decided we just could run the risk of going for a visit. We also check the forecast. The weather service was still talking about slick roads from a glazing of ice tomorrow morning. So, since we were already loaded and we really didn’t want to start carrying things back inside, we decided to drive part way to Gulf Shores today. Since we were leaving from home, we drove I-65. That route takes us within a few blocks of Bass Pro Shop. We took that opportunity to stop and trade in some old socks for new. If you don’t know, Bass sales lifetime guarantee socks. When they wear out you simply return them for a new pair. We have been wearing these socks since we started preparing for our hike to be bottom of the Grand Canyon in 2011. We love walking in with old socks and out with new with no money out of the bank account.
We left Bass Pro Shop and headed on south. Our plan was to top off the diesel, DEF tank, and propane all of which were about ½ full. Since we can take care of all three at Flying J, that is where we stopped. However, today they had no one to pump the propane. It requires an individual license and no one working today had a license. (Seems like poor scheduling to us.) They suggested we go to Love’s, about a block away. We went to Love’s and their tank was “out of service.” The temperatures tomorrow night and all of next week in Gulf Shores will not be nearly as cold as north of here, but cold enough we have to have more propane. We called Camping World in Robertsdale and they say they will fill us up tomorrow. We certainly are hoping so.
We stopped for the night in Greenville, AL. Not because we couldn’t have driven further but we don’t have a reservation at the state park until Monday. We can’t get in early because someone else is on our site. We had planned to spend the night at Cracker Barrel (most of which allow overnight parking for RVs) and have supper and breakfast there. This one has RV parking spots, mostly empty, but has signs everywhere shouting “NO OVERNIGHT PARKING.” We just turned around in their parking lot and left. We stopped at the Tractor Supply about a block away to see if they had propane. They don’t. But as we were talking to the manager, a very nice young man, he said it would be fine if we stayed in their parking lot tonight. So instead of spending money at Cracker Barrel, other restaurants nearby got our business.
Our plan is to leave here in the morning, stop at Camping World, then head to the outlets in Foley. This is a very quiet location and we are toasty warm. We are back traveling in FRED again. All is good.
RVing With a Purpose 