Author: rvingwithapurpose

Saturday, August 11, 2018

Friday was a rainy day. Rain during the night which made for great sleeping and then again in the afternoon. We spent most of the day trying to win the war of the ants. One of the “joys” of camping this time of year is that at times most campgrounds have some ants. We have never had ants in Fred 2. However just before going to bed last night we found ants around our sink. Terro is absolutely the best product we have ever found for ants and we never travel without it. It’s a borax product that the ants take back to the nest and it kills the queen and all the ants in the nest. For a day or so it looks like it is making the ant problem worse, but then suddenly they are all gone. By morning things were looking better, then mid-morning we found more ants by the refrigerator. So more treatment was needed. Fortunately the Terro does work and by the end of the day the ants were gone.

There were still no barges on the river Friday, but we finally found out why.  Max found a navigation bulletin that was actually released August 3rd, that stated that resumption of river traffic is postponed until 6:00 pm August 12.  At least we can stop watching and listening for the horns at the locks.  But we will be watching Sunday evening.  That was about it for Friday except for getting out and enjoying the wonderful park and getting our exercise.

Saturday was a dry, sunny, beautiful day.  We were up early and on the road back to Blount County.  We picked up breakfast before hitting the interstate and stopped at our local produce stand on the way into Oneonta.  We got more local corn, peaches, tomatoes and watermelon.  Last week’s was great so we expect to enjoy this as well.  We then went to visit with the Aunts.  Jean and Helen both were about the same.  Both said they had a good week.  Helen went to Bible study while we were there and said it was great even though she couldn’t remember what they studied.  We went to the mountain and collected everyone’s mail and checked the houses.  We returned to Oneonta and visited a while longer before getting us some late lunch and then heading back to Tuscaloosa.  Always thankful for our safe travel days.  We topped off another good day with root beer floats for supper.  Great way to end our day.  We plan to watch the YouTube stream of services at Lester Memorial tomorrow.  Hope you are all praying for all the services tomorrow.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

No barges again today. But we did get the storms. It sounded like lightning struck somewhere close by this afternoon. The campground lost power for a few minutes twice after close strikes. You couldn’t see across the river or the dam it was raining so hard. On the plus side, the temperature dropped to 72 for a short while. Incredibly cool for August in Alabama. It’s actually quite nice out this evening and we are sitting out on our deck looking over the river working on this blog entry. Hopefully our ThermaCell will keep the mosquitoes at bay.

We were able to get both our morning and afternoon walks in today. We have been blessed the last several weeks to be able get more exercise and we can both tell we are feeling and sleeping better than we were for a while. Otherwise, we did some more estate work, and paid bills for Helen and Jean. We also ate breakfast and our late lunch (grilled again) on our patio. We also met some folks that came in last night and visited with them a while, of course sharing the NOMADS story.  Sure enjoying Deerlick Creek COE campground. Enjoying it so much we decided to extend our stay. We will go back to Blount County this weekend but it’s not much further from the campground than Mama Ruby’s house and it’s so nice here.

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Another relaxing day. We had clouds off and on and at one point were surrounded by rain but it never rained at Deerlick Creek. The temperature did drop by about 10 degrees which made for much nicer walking tonight.

After our morning walk we again cooked breakfast and ate outside. Love eating outside at quiet campsites like this. We sat outside waiting to see if the lock was back in service but never saw any barges passing today. There was construction noise. We haven’t found anything online about a delay but appears the river is not back open. There is usually a lot of barge traffic and it hurts businesses when the river is shut down so hopefully it will reopen soon. We both took naps out on our deck today.

We have seen this young deer every day since we have arrived but today finally got a picture. This area of north Alabama has lots of deer, wild turkey, coyotes and an occasional bear, wild hog, or bobcat. All our neighbors pulled out today so we are the only ones in the river side loop tonight. We might just have to extend our stay.

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

By 10:00 it was 96 with heat index of 100. That is just too hot. However, about that time we started having some clouds come and go. We had thunder and threats of rain most of the rest of the day but never got a drop. We did have some nice light breezes and over about an hour we went from 96 to 88. Much better.

We got a nice walk in this morning before it got too hot. We walked a couple of the trails as well as the roadway in and out of the park, a little over three miles, some nice wooded trails. We also stopped and visited with the work camper in the gate house. He and is girl friend started work here yesterday and we were one of the first RVs they checked in. A nice visit. We might like to work camp here sometime. After a wonderful breakfast of cinnamon raisin brioche french toast at our picnic table we enjoyed reading and relaxing and watching the light boat traffic. We were expecting to watch the barges but never saw any. Then we realized there were working on the locks. From reading the news stories online we found that Holt lock was closed in July for replacement of the gates and is scheduled to reopen tomorrow. That would explain the lack of traffic. There is a neat YouTube video on the replacement of the gates. If it reopens tomorrow we expect lots of backed up barge traffic. It will be interesting to watch tomorrow.  As the temps rose we retreated to the comfort of Fred except for grilling a late lunch. We visited with our next door neighbor who left late today and did another hike just before dark. That was our day. A wonderful return to a day in the campground. Good food. Good hiking.