RVing With a Purpose

Sunday, April 7, 2019

We started today very early. We were out of bed at 4:00 am and on the road back to Oneonta at 5:00. We met our dear friends Donna and Barry for breakfast before early church. This will be our last time to worship with our friends at Lester Memorial for about six weeks so it was definitely worth the effort to attend. We had a good time visiting with Donna and Barry and then had another great time of worship. Our praise band seems to be just getting better and better under Chase’s leadership and Pastor Harvey’s messages are always such a blessing and today was no exception. The services are streamed each week on YouTube (link) so you might want to listen in sometime. We are so glad we can listen when we are on the road.

After Sunday School, we spent some time with the Aunts and then checked on Aunt Helen’s house and then our house to be sure there was no damage from last night’s storm. Thankful we found no problems at either place, we headed back to Deerlick Creek in Tuscaloosa County. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and we took advantage of it, walking over 7.5 miles today. The dogwood trees are in full bloom in the woods, as are some other things we can’t identify. The trees are all greening up and the grass is too. Spring time in Alabama. Love it! We forgot to tell you, we keep cameras around the house. When we check them, we find we have a lot of visitors. The deer are no longer afraid to come right up to the garage including a couple of really nice bucks. Along with the coyotes, turkeys, raccoons, possums, rabbits and squirrels we have also had a bobcat, a fox, and a river otter. So cool! We know there has been a sighting of a black bear on the mountain. It sure would be nice to get a picture of a bear. That’s it for today. We are going to have another storm come through tonight or tomorrow so everyone stay safe.

When we returned to Deerlick Creek we were greeted by this little fellow near our doorstep. It is imaginatively named a “brown snake” and is common in most of the south. Most people have never seen one because it is usually less than 12″ long when fully grown and spends most of its time hiding under debris on the forest floor. This one was only about 8″ long. We shooed it off the pavement so we wouldn’t accidentally step on it.

Saturday, April 6, 2019

We moved today. We have been in Tuscaloosa parked in Mama Ruby’s driveway for almost two weeks. We have not been blogging very much because we have been working non-stop on the family business and the little old ladies (LOL’s – remember they came up with this name not us). There was a lot of paperwork to do for the LOL’s as well as the filing of their tax returns. Glad to say that is all done. We visited the post office yesterday and mailed it all. YEA!! We have also completed the accounting work for the businesses, Max’s mom’s final tax return and all our taxes. Fred is also clean. Of course it is now raining so he may have to get another rinse off but that’s okay. Max also cooked some great meals while Anne was busy with the accounting.

We celebrated with a dinner at the Texas Road House. We enjoyed the salmon and ribs and the line dancing by the servers. We went back to Oneonta yesterday to visit with the LOL’s and now we are at Deerlick Creek COE campground looking out over the Warrior River. We are just slightly upstream from the Holt Dam so we can watch the tugs and barge traffic. It is so quiet and peaceful here. Very nice after the noise of Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa is beautiful in the spring and we have really enjoyed everything in bloom along the greenway which we walked every day but this Corps of Engineers park out in the woods, on the water and only 41 sites is much more to our liking. We will get a few days of relaxation before heading back to Baton Rouge next week. Hope you all have a great weekend. Remember to be in prayer for all the worship services tomorrow. May we all have ears to listen to the Word.

Friday, March 29, 2019

Today was another beautiful spring day in Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa is in full bloom. Azaleas, star magnolias, dogwoods – all the trees full bloom. We are having the typical weather – cool enough to need a little heat to knock the chill off in the morning and then Fred wants a little air by 2-3:00 and then a light blanket again at night. It’s great!

What have we been doing this week. Working. Max thinks he needs to go back on project to get some rest. He has been doing the spring cleaning on the exterior of Fred. Everything is nice and clean now and the wheels and mirrors are bright and shiny. However, within a couple of hours of Max washing and treating the roof the pollen had collected in a thick layer on the roof. Guess we may have to rinse it off again in a couple of weeks when the pollen count declines. At least we are accustomed to this pollen and we can still breathe.

 

Anne has been working on accounting. There was all the business books to complete as well as tax returns for both the moms, the two aunts and our personal return. She is making good progress but will be really glad when she has it all completed. We have been getting in some good walks each day and have only been to Cookout for shakes twice. We did take a little break this afternoon and got our passport pictures made. Our passports expire in about 6 months so it’s time to get them renewed. We would love to go to the Canadian Maritimes, maybe back to Alaska, maybe other far away places. We also did a little shopping while we were out. Other than visiting with some of the neighbors, that’s about it for our week. Hope you had a good one.

Monday, March 25, 2019

Yesterday we went to church at First United Methodist in Red Bay. We have gone there a couple of times before and are always made to feel welcome. Scott and Teresa, the other NOMADS couple at the Tiffin Service Center attended the service with us.  In the afternoon we went to the Red Bay Museum where a former state representative from the Red Bay area was unveiling a new exhibit of Native American artifacts, some of which were uncovered in archeological digs on his property.  While there we looked through the rest of the museum. The town is very proud of the Tammy Wynette room. Tammy was born in Tremont, Mississippi – just a few miles down the road. It is a really well done museum.

We were expecting to sit in Red Bay today and just wait on our cabinets to be ready tomorrow, but we got the call about noon that they were ready to be installed. Installation took about 2.5 hours. Then we headed to Tuscaloosa, carefully watching the weather. Even with the predicted risk of severe weather we had nice weather the whole way. The only time we got rained on was while hooking up the truck before we left.

 

We are now safely driveway camping again in Tuscaloosa.

Of course, one of the first things we did after getting set up was walk to Cook Out for milkshakes.