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!