Our Travel Blog

Another cooler wake up, so much so that the heating came on. Finally got around to ordering a new outdoor sensor for the weather station, so will have some numbers soon.

Tuesday is craft day for Lyn, so as she headed over to the crafts I did what I do best and hung around doing nothing. Not quite true, I did spend some time organising the wiring for the TV, stereo, movie box, telephone and PVR so that when the TV is moved up and down in its hiding place the cables don’t get chewed up.

Before lunch we went on our daily walk-about, trying to lengthen the walk each day. By now it was hot and humid again. After we had lunch, Lyn headed down to last years campsite for their craft afternoon.

Having put it off as long as I could, I made a start on cleaning the outside of the trailer. Previously this had involved clambouring a round on a ladder to clean the high spots. After last weeks purchase of a cleaning brush with an extendable handle that allowed me to reach up to 13′ the cleaning went much faster. In fact I got the whole outside done in just under 3 hours. I seem to recall the first time took me a similar number of days!

As is typical, once the trailer had been washed the heavens opened. I think we have one more day of heat and humidity, then it drops down to the high 50’s / low 60’s for a while.

A much cooler wake up this morning, probably mid 50’s. The installation of the stabiliser yesterday was well worthwhile, as no one gets motion sickness now when the other person rolls over in the bed.

After breakfast I headed outside to gather stuff for cleaning the roof. The roofing on the trailer is plywood covered with a thick white rubber matting, replacement of which is somewhat expensive so keeping it in good shape is a good idea. I had put off the cleaning over the last few days as the wind had been rather strong, and walking around on a wet and slippery roof was not my idea of a fun sport.

The rain down here has obviously not heard about clean air acts as the roof was pretty filthy, it took a couple of hours to clean it up. Now all the dirty water has run down the sides of the trailer adding to the already dirty condition. An RV owners work is never done.

While I was doing the roof, Lyn was busy with the vacuum cleaning the inside of the trailer,   so we have a nice clean place to do nothing in!

After lunch we took our usual stroll around the place, this time we were on a mission. Friends of ours had put their trailer in storage here, but when we looked for it yesterday we couldn’t find it. Today we checked all the stored trailers, but there was still no Ontario registered ones in the main area. We walked a little further and their was an overflow storage area. Vicki, we found the trailer, it’s still in one piece!

Lyn spent some time sewing after the walk, and I continued working on the purchase of a new toy! This time I have move away from computing ( slightly) ans am in the market for a small milling machine. I had always wanted to do some metal working, in particular working model engines. I had found just what I had wanted, but some research showed that the dealer was a little “suspect”, so after a few chats on a forum I was put in contact with a known reliable dealer. Together we worked on putting a package together that suited my needs, at a price similar to the previous deal I had found. The reason I put slightly in brackets earlier is that the mill will be controlled by the computer!!

We’ve just had a cold front go through with some heavy rain and a 15-20 degree drop in temperature, let’s see what tomorrow holds.

Another warm morning when we woke up, but a quick look at the forecast sent shivers down the spine. Daytime high was 75F night time low was to be 34F with SNOW. Not sure if I believe it or not!

We headed out to the RV store later in the morning to get a tripod stabiliser to try and reduce the movement in the trailer when people are moving about. We also bought a longer handled brush for cleaning the outside of the trailer, now I can reach up to the roof line (about 12ft) without using the step ladder.

After a coffee and a trip to the local dollar store we headed back to the camp site. The box containing the tripod made lots of clinking noises when it was moved so I figures that there was some assembly required. I was wrong, the noise was the safety chain rattling. All I had to do was open up  the tripod, place it under the kingpin (the hitch connection at the front of the trailer) and adjust a screw device until the king pin was very snug against the tripod.

End result was the sideways movement of the trailer has been greatly reduced.

Checked the weather forecast in the afternoon, still no change for tonight!

With the demise of the satellite system, I am trying to find out how up to date we are on some of the TV series that we watch. Once that was done the poor old internet took a beating as I started to download new episodes.

It’s now 1115 PM and the outside air is still over 70F, another check of the forecast shows a low tonight of 64F and rain. Obviously the US forecasters are just as incompetent (or more so) than their Canadian counterparts

Another warm wake-up with the outside air already over 70F. After breakfast the plan was to make a start on cleaning the outside of the trailer, having been left in a dusty environment over the summer is was pretty dirty.

The starting point was to be the awning, both the top and underside needed doing, so I knew it would be  a wet job. Initially I  was wrong, I wouldn’t be getting wet as the campground water supply had failed.

We took our morning stroll around the camp-ground and Lyn popped into the annual craft sale held at the site; I headed back to the trailer. The water outage was short lived and I was able to start on the awning. That kept me busy for the rest of the morning and half the afternoon. Next job is to clean the roof, oh joy!

Since we have had the trailer, there has always been some “sway” inside when someone is moving around. We have just lived with it, but this time there seems to be more movement so we set about tracking it down. The culprit seems to be some play in the front “legs” that support the trailer, there is some sideways movement when the trailer is pushed. Having discovered the weak point, we should be able to fix it. Tomorrow we’ll head off to the local camping store to see if we can find the solution.

A sunny morning with an indoor wake up temperature of around 70F, still don’t have the outdoor sensor fixed. Again a day for doing nothing, we find on most of the trips the first week is spent getting the place set up, acclimatizing and relaxing. Once that is out of the way we’ll set out to see what we can find locally.

The trailer is in need of a good cleaning, seems the rain down here is not the cleanest. All I need now is the motivation to get started! Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?

We wandered around the other end of the campsite today and discovered one more Canadian trailer. I also picked up some mail from the office which contained a cable to replace the one I forgot pack!

By mid afternoon the temperature was up in the mid 70’s and we could hear the sound of peoples air conditioners firing up. We got as far as putting the ceiling fan on and opening the windows to keep us cool. To celebrate the warm weather we ate both lunch and dinner outside.

Another warm and heaterless night, but we woke up to a humid and oppressive day. The forecast high was 72F and we made it there.

After breakfast and a leisurely start to the day we headed out to do the weekly shopping. Lyn has a neat app on her smartphone that allows us to add items to the shopping list from our computers or my phone, and it will update the list on Lyn’s  This app has a sub app that ensures the battery on Lyn’s phone dies half way through the shopping.

With the shopping done, we headed back to the trailer ahead of some nasty looking weather.After lunch we heard the distant rumble of thunder, followed a little while later by torrential rain.

While the rain was doing its thing, I opened up one of my Christmas presents from Lyn; a Raspberry Pi. No that is not a spelling mistake, nor is it edible. A Raspberry Pi is yet another techno gadget that I enjoy playing with. This time it is a small, credit card sized computer. The project was started in the UK as a charity to try and ensure every kid was able to afford a computer. It can be hooked up to a TV and just needs a mouse and a keyboard to get it running. This is not intended as a super computer, but more as a starting block to allow people to learn to programme a computer rather than just use it. Having said that, the computer is quite powerful, and the users imagination is probably the limiting factor in what it can do. The Raspberry Pi has built up such a following outside of the UK the waiting time to get hold of one of them  exceeded six months. I know, more toys, but isn’t that what retirement is about?

No heating came on overnight, which is a good thing! Wake up temperature inside was 65F. Not sure about outside as the outside temperature sensor has died, not doing too well with electronic gizmos so far. The day was damp and overcast, but temperatures climbed into the 70’s with drizzle and a late afternoon rain shower.

I finally declared the satellite receiver dead, and stole one of the cables to set up the cable TV provided at the camp site. Now the satellite is no longer taking up time, I can get busy relaxing! Tonight was the first BBQ of the trip, so I am now officially in camping (or as my sister calls it, glamping) mode.

We took a longer walk around the campsite this afternoon, as far as we can see there is only one other Canadian trailer here, also from Ontario. The vast majority of the visitors come from Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois.

Tomorrow forecast is for thunderstorms, so it may be a good time to finish of the household budget for 2013!

Monday was our first full day here, and I spent a lot of it setting up all the “toys”. The internet seems pretty fast with a reasonable download policy so that is good news. I also managed to get the phone set up so the “home” phone number now works down here. Setting up the satellite was a completely different story, it seems there may have been some damage to the receiver when it fell out of the truck. Sometimes we get a signal, sometimes we don’t. If we do get a signal then a number of channels are missing. All very frustrating, and the tech support line is worse than useless. If we were back home a tech would be dispatched to sort it out, but for some reason they don’t want to send one down here!

Later in the day we took a wander around the campground which is more crowded than we are used to. Luckily we are on an angled drive through lot, so there is no one close to us in front or behind, and because of the angling we are not looking into anyone’s rig.

The campground is centered around as water-park  which has some large water slides, a pool and a “lazy river” running around the outside. There are plenty of meeting halls for daily activities in the grounds as well as horseshoe pits and other outdoor games areas.

Back at the trailer, Lyn took advantage of the warm weather (15C) to sit outside and read, while I played with the satellite dish. Just as I was about to admit defeat, I would read another article on the web that gave me hope, and Lyn got pulled away from her reading to help. This happened a few times, I don’t think I was too popular!

Today (Tuesday) started off cloudy, but the sun broke through and the temperature climbed into the high 60’s. Lyn went off to the craft group in the morning, and I carried on obsessing over the satellite issue. Perseverance paid off (sort of). I could finally get a signal, and watch one channel. The channel was a Pay Per View one which we weren’t subscribed to which was meant to be showing “Exotic Women’s Wrestling”; in reality it was showing a French soap opera. However having got a good signal coming in I called the satellite company and asked for help.

One hour of talking on the phone and carrying out a multitude of actions led to the complete loss of signal, and the official declaration that the problem was due to the antenna. The fact that we had a signal at the start of the call, and the antenna had not been touched didn’t seem to matter. Oh well, I’ll probably admit defeat tomorrow and play around with the roof mounted TV antenna to see what that brings in.

After lunch Lyn headed down to the campsite we were at last year for an afternoon of crafts. I figured I had done enough with the TV, so I tidied up the mess I had made indoors over the last couple of days and then went outside to set up the picnic table and BBQ.

Had one panic moment this evening when I was washing the dishes; the water wouldn’t drain. Tried a few things indoors to solve the problem, without success. I then went outside to check that the drain valve was open; it was stiff to operate and I had originally thought that it was in the open position… it wasn’t.

Now every thing is pretty well set up, it is time for me to stop fixating over the satellite issues, and get on with life in Alabama!

Up around 7:30, and as the motel had no breakfast (what do you expect for $40 a night) we headed over to Egg McMuffin land. Once the grease had lined our stomachs we headed South again, we left Virginia, crossed through Tennessee and the city of Chattanooga, and then clipped the corner of Georgia before entering Alabama. We stayed the night at Fort Payne. As we crossed into Alabama we also crossed from the Eastern Time Zone to the Central Time Zone, thereby gaining an hour. Rather than wasting the hour that evening we figured it would have more use the next day so we didn’t reset our watches! As we unloaded the truck a bag fell out, unfortunately it was the one carrying the Satellite Receiver, more on the consequences of that later.

Next morning we were up at 630, thanks to the extra hour, this time we had breakfast at the motel, the difference between a $40 and a $50 motel!

We still had some snow in the back of the truck as I found out when Lyn lobbed a snowball at me! Probably the only snowball fight in the state of Alabama. As we headed South the early morning fog changed into rain showers. We arrived at the camp site around 1 PM and found the trailer on our site already, unfortunately it needed leveling so we had to hitch the truck up for a little manoeuvering. By this time the rain had set in, but I managed to set up electricity, water and sewer. In the meantime Lyn was setting up inside, we were pleased to see that there was no obvious damage to the trailer which had sat in the 100F temperatures and high humidity of an Alabama summer.

Once the place was habitable we headed out to fill up the fridge and shelves with food and drink. By the time we got back from shopping the weather was clearing, so I started to setup the satellite dish. Guess what, no signal.

More to follow.

Friday morning, early, saw us packing up the truck and heading south. The afternoon before I started the truck up just to make sure everything was OK. It wasn’t! The truck refused to start. 48 hours of -20 and below temperatures had thickened the oil and weakened the battery, so out came the battery charger and on went the block heater. For those across the pond that may not be familiar with a block heater, it is a small device similar to an electric kettle element that sits in the the middle of the engine and heats the water that normally is used for cooling, this in turn heats the oil which thins it.

Truck started fine Friday morning, and as a bonus because the engine water was warm, it heated up quickly! First stop was Kemptville about 20 minutes south for a hearty breakfast then on to the 1000 Islands to cross over into the USA. Recently we   have had   friendly border guards, but this one was from the old school totally humourless and unable to speak words of more than one syllable, but despite him, we were allowed to cross into hallowed territory. From then on it was non stop driving until lunch time in Goldberg Pennsylvania. After lunch we left Pennsylvania, crossed through Maryland and West Virginia into Virginia where we spent the night at Winchester. We hit no bad weather, although blowing snow off the fields reduced visibility and made the roads slippery at times. A little experimenting with the toys on board the truck showed 65mph / 105kmh gave a reasonable 21.2 mpg. We arrived at the hotel 11 hours after leaving home.