RVing With a Purpose

Monday, January 1, 2018

We didn’t see the new year arrive, but evidently there were some others making an early night of it too. Shortly after we were snug in our warm bed around 10:00 there was a nice little volley of fireworks over on the beach that we could easily enjoy out our bedroom window. It was enough for us.

It was cold this morning. Really cold for Gulf Shores. The rangers here at the state park had asked everyone to please disconnect from the water system and leave the water dripping last night. Not a problem. We weren’t planning to leave our hose out in 26 degree weather. It was really surprising to us the number of people who seemed totally surprised to learn the weather was going to get really cold. Evidently some didn’t believe it because there were a number of broken pipes today. We felt sorry for the guys having to be out in the cold repairing them. We had this cool looking stalagmite icicle this morning at our dripping faucet.

We had a really pretty sunrise this morning. The sun was shining brightly and it looked so deceptively nice outside when in reality it was cold and windy. Around 10:00, the people who were in our site for the next four days pulled out of the park and we moved right down the road to site 31, from 16. This was the shortest driving day we have ever done. Less than a tenth of a mile. Wow, we were exhausted from all that driving. Anyway, we got settled into our new site and relaxed the rest of the morning.

The Alabama state parks have a program named “First Day Hike”. The first day of the new year, a ranger from each participating park leads a hike of their park. It is usually a pretty easy hike that highlights a feature of the park. We try to go to different parks to do the hike each year. The hike here at Gulf State Park this year was on Eagle Loop Trail that passes within viewing distance of an eagle nest. There is a pair of eagles on the nest so we of course wanted to make the hike. We wondered if it would be canceled due to the weather because others across the state were canceled, but not here. We put on multiple layers of clothing and went to the trail head. There was actually about 30 hardy souls at the trail head at 2:00. The park staff had a red tail hawk, a great horned owl and a barred owl for us to see and photograph while we waited for everyone to arrive. Really beautiful birds. The hawk is new to the park – less than 2 weeks at the nature center – and appears very curious when in reality his eyes aren’t focusing due to damage from West Nile virus. His depth perception is about 2 inches off when they try to feed him. He sadly will not be able to be released back into the wild. The staff had also built us a fire which we hated to leave when it was time to hike. But hike we did. Kelly, the park naturalist, lead the hike and shared information on various plants in the park as we walked. By law you can not be closer than 333 feet to an eagle nest or bother them in any way. Our first view of the nest we were quite a distance away but later in the hike we were closer and could see the white head of an eagle hunkered down in the nest. Beautiful bird. We also walked out to lake Shelby, the feeding ground of the eagles and learned more about the birds in the area and critters in and around the lake. We were told that the female eagle is on the nest about 80 percent of the time and the male relieves her for about 20 percent of the time. After the eggs are hatched, they share the work of feeding the little ones more equally. It was a good first day hike with a surprisingly large group given a temperature of 36 and wind chill in the teens.

After returning to FRED, it took us a while to feel warm again so we stayed in the rest of the day. It’s nice just looking out the windows at the water. Hope you had a safe and happy New Year’s Day.

December 31, 2017

The last day of the year began with rain. It started raining sometime during the night and rained intermittently and never very heavy until around lunch. So, it was another gray day. The sun didn’t even think about showing itself today. It wasn’t as cold as predicted either. Our low was only about 40, so no problem with staying nice and warm. The generator didn’t cut on at all last night. It was about to cut on this morning when Anne gave it a little enticement by cutting on the tea kettle. We love our automatic start on the generator.

We had a sort of slow start to the day partially due to the rain and partially due to Camping World not opening until 11:00. We were only about 2.5 hours from there. Between the showers Max went across the street to grab us some breakfast. When we did get back on the interstate it was a wet drive. We kept seeing these South Carolina cars with all sorts of orange flags and banners and tiger tails hanging out of the trunk. Wonder where they were going. Unfortunately for one of them who sped past us, Alabama law enforcement was giving them an unwanted welcome to our state a short way down the highway. Oh well, Mississippi may be doing the same to some Alabama fans. We were able to live stream the Lester Memorial UMC worship service while we were driving. In case you were wondering, Anne watched and Max just listened. Love our church and our pastor.

Yea, Camping World, not usually our favorite place. True to his word, Eric was there when we arrived and filled our propane tank. While we were at CW, they sold their last two bottles of RV antifreeze and had several more people come it hoping to purchase the same. We travel with our antifreeze this time of year. The low tonight here is 27 which doesn’t bother us, but tomorrow is predicted 23 in Gulf Shores so we will be using the propane furnace to keep the sewer bay and holding tanks from freezing tomorrow night. Our rear furnace is vented to blow warm air on the tanks and into the sewer bay. All should be good.

After CW, it was just a few miles on down to Foley to the Tanger Outlets. There is one store there where we are usually able to get much better deals on Merrill shoes/boots than any where else. We both found some boots on close out that were about half price. We may go back to check out the Eddie Bauer store. Today we were able to snag a last minute site at the state park so we headed on to Gulf Shores to check in. Our original reservation began on January 1 and we were planning to stay in Foley for the night but with the cold we decided we would really prefer to just go ahead and get in the park. Now we have all the 50amp power we want to power our fire place and heat pumps.

For dinner we went to Mikee’s Seafood, a well known restaurant in Gulf Shores and had some steamed Royal Red shrimp. Oh my, they were so good! We had been wanting some good seafood. Hope we can satisfy that craving several more times over the next few weeks.

Some of you have been praying for our second cousin Joshua for some time. He, at 13 years old, has a very rare brain and spinal cancer. He has done well the past couple of months. The family had a very good Christmas. However, at 12:30 this morning he was flown from Huntsville, his home, to Children’s Hospital in Birmingham,. They are still trying to determine if the current problems are related to disease progression or something else. Please be in prayer for the entire family.

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.