Our Travel Blog

Life is much better… for a while. We topped out at 19 today  with an overnight low of 9°C. The same tomorrow, then up to 23°C on the weekend. with thunderstorms and 2.5″ of rain. I seem to recall a similar forecast for last weekend, let’s see if they do any better this time.

After breakfast we headed out for a combined sightseeing / shopping trip, we were headed to Bellingrath Gardens on the other side of Mobile Bay. On the way there we would pass agonizingly close to JoAnn fabrics, and also Harbor Freight, which is a tool / machine / hardware store. Once we got to JoAnn Fabrics, I bravely elected to stay and look after the car while Lyn went off and did her thing. While sitting in the car I got the GPS out and discovered there were a number of geocaches close by!

Three quarters of a mile walking led me to three caches, I could probably have got a fourth as when I returned to the car Lyn was nowhere to be seen for another 10 minutes.

Harbor Freight was a little quicker as I knew what I wanted, and we found it fairly quickly.

Next we headed south to the gardens, by which time it was time for lunch. I decided not to behave this lunch-time and had a club sandwich and potato chips. Hopefully the 2½ miles walking I did will help burn off some of the indulgence.

Unfortunately the frost we had yesterday had damaged some of the flowers, particularly the roses, but there was still a colourful display around the gardens, with lots of ‘mums.

Below are some pictures we took, unfortunately the map we had didn’t show what the different flowers were, so if recognise any let me know.

Number 1

Number 2

‘Mums along the water, by the house.

Bananas

Lyn is desperate to see an alligator in the wild, this is the closest thing we saw. The gardens have a light display over the Christmas season, all the paths are lit with Christmas objects, there is also the occasional wildlife created in lights hence the alligator. Unfortunately we won’t be around for the evening openings to see the final light show.

Number 3

We saw this at the side of the road on the way home, I am not sure why it was there, but it looked interesting but not particularly airworthy.

One final stop on the way back was at a liquidation store, normally I find these places full of cheap plastic junk, but this one was more like a hardware store. The merchandise was not particularly top of the line, but it certainly was usable.

OK, I’ve got over my sulk! -3°C overnight, when I got up there really was white stuff, of the frozen variety, on the ground. Admittedly it was frost and not snow, and no where near the 5 feet plus that they got south of Buffalo.

Another gas refill was needed this morning, these trailers aren’t exactly R2000 when it comes to insulation efficiency. We headed out this morning to visit a Colemans (as in camping) store, as Lyn had been looking for a more comfortable camping chair for outside. We timed it right as not only is it the end of season, it is the week before Thanksgiving, so there was a good sale on. After that we went across to a large tool store where I got a few small goodies.

Back at the trailer I continued my battle with programming and Lyn started on a new quilt which needs at least 300 pieces of fabric to be cut. Before we left home I made a cutting template out of acrylic for this project, so hopefully that will help.

After lunch the temperature had climbed up into the mid 50’s, so an afternoon walk was in order. About half way round we met a couple we had spoken to before, and stopped for about half an hour to talk. The guy makes his own rifles as a hobby, not new style ones but ones that originated a few hundred years ago, he had some pictures, they were quite impressive.

The forecast for tomorrow is promising, so we are heading out to some gardens on the other side of Mobile Bay with a side trip to a hardware store and a fabric store on the outskirts of Mobile.

There will be no blog today… I am too busy sulking ‘cos it’s cold out AND Lyn shamed me into going for a walk. See you when the temperature rises.

A warmer night last night, and a dull overcast morning to wake up to, but it was warm. By mid morning we were up to 22°C. The threatened rain was still a long way off, so I did some more work on the trailer while Lyn did some of her crafts.

Today’s project was to install a couple of connectors for the Satellite TV antenna cables. Usually These cables are just squeezed through a gap where the sliders are and then routed across part of the living area floor. A couple of weeks ago, I routed the cables up through the trailer under-body directly into a cupboard, but just left them hanging underneath. Now that e-Bay has delivered a couple of new fittings to me, I spent a couple of hours drilling holes in the trailer and fixing them on. As jobs go this one was surprisingly quick and easy. Here’s the end result.

Lunch was an outside meal, enjoying the warmth before the next Arctic Blast reaches us; would you guys please keep this inclement weather up north where it rightfully belongs!

After lunch we headed down to the walking trails in Orange Beach to get some more exercise and do some geo-caching. This was a new trail for us, and like all the others it was in great shape with a hard tarmac surface.

The shot above was taken just off the trail at the start of a bridge. There was a cache hidden in the under structure of the bridge.

That’s what a cache looks like, well the bigger ones anyway. A little further on we had to leave the trail for a hundred feet or so to find another cache. The picture below was taken from the cache site, we had the same view for 360° around us, you wouldn’t think there was a path nearby.

We stopped off at a shopping centre on the way back looking for Christmas ideas, alas nothing jumped out at us. Much to Lyn’s surprise I saw a couple of sweaters I liked, so we bought those as a consolation prize. Much to my delight an extra large size is way too big now, a large is a comfortable fit. The weight is still coming down, even though I am not consciously trying to lose any more, today the weigh-in showed I had now lost 40lbs since we started exercising and eating healthier.

So much for 1″ of rain today, we have had three quick (less than 10 seconds) showers all day. They are now calling for thunderstorms overnight. I am not holding my breath.

A cold night again, but a clear and sunny morning. We climbed up to 15°C today which was very pleasant after the last few days, this was made even better by the lack of any wind.

It’s amazing how easy it is to stretch a “simple” job over may days. I continued working on the camera wiring today. All the wiring at the back-end had been completed, but I wanted to put a switch in the circuit that could be activated from outside the trailer as all the logical inside locations for the switch would involve opening one of the sliders, which is not very practical if overnighting in a hotel. The transmitter for the camera is in the bedroom wardrobe, and I located an electrical box outside near the hitch that would make a good location for the switch. With a little help from Lyn, and a lot of thumping on the wardrobe floor we found a likely location for the wire to pass from the inside to the outside. The first hole I made was in exactly the right position, amazing!

After lunch I headed down to Radio Shack to get a switch, and also dropped in to the grocery store, with the odd name of “Piggly Wiggly” to pick up something we missed off the list yesterday. Back at the trailer it was a fairly simple job to drill a hole in the electrical box and mount the switch. The hardest part was back in the wardrobe, using small wire staples to hold the wires against the wood trim, hammer met fingers more than hammer met staples!

Lyn left the bad language to me today, as she settled down to do some less challenging sewing.

It was warm enough to go for our walk, and then sit outside afterwards to drink coffee. Even the BBQ was resurrected to cook a steak for dinner. Tomorrow’s weather should be interesting; all week they have been forecasting over an inch of rain, but at the same time the symbol in the forecast has been for a clear and sunny day, today the symbol changed to partly cloudy, but still with an inch of rain, guess they are playing the CYA game.