Our Travel Blog

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.