Our Travel Blog

A few clouds around but still up in the 80’s as the day wore on.

This morning we headed out to Daphne, a town on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay and some 30 miles from where we are staying. Lyn had a couple of stores earmarked for a visit.

On the way up we stopped off at next years campsite to see if it was OK to drop the trailer off on Easter Monday for storage, and to find out we we had to park the trailer. After we left there we spotted our first armadillo, unfortunately it was road kill!

We headed initially for the old part of Daphne where we saw a couple of murals painted on building walls, but like other towns in Alabama the big box stores have taken over and there is very little left of the downtown core.

We managed to find a little cafe before we left and had a great lunch sitting out on the porch of what had once been a fairly large house. We headed out to the stores, I spent a little time in one, then left Lyn to it. I went back to the truck searching for a WiFi signal on the phone (beats looking at fabrics!). It’s amazing how many stores have free WiFi. The next store we visited was purely fabrics so I never left the truck!

On the way back home we stopped at Staples as Lyn needed some special pens. I headed over to the computer section (surprise!) and got interested in a couple of printers they had, but I was good and didn’t buy one!

Back home I finished off booking the rental cars for the UK, then did a little research on printers! Turns out Office Depot had one on sale that would be just right. Office Depot is two minutes up the road. This time I wasn’t so good and did buy one!

No change in the weather!

Today being Tuesday is laundry day for Lyn and flush out the sewer tank for me. See it’s not all care-free camping!

Once that was done it was a switch into travel agent mode. Lyn remembered that there is a steam train ride up in Scotland that we will be able to take when we go over in July. It runs from Fort William in the Scottish Highlands down to the fishing village of Mallaig on the Atlantic coast. If you watched the Harry Potter movies you may remember a steam train crossing a viaduct, that is on this trip. I booked the tickets and also got a hotel booked for one night in Glasgow. All that’s left now is to book the rental cars.

After Lyn got back from her crafts class we headed out to the pool to cool off. It wasn’t as cold as last time, but still caused a shiver on first contact!

Another blue skied sunny day.

There was a nice breeze blowing which helped make us feel a bit cooler. The game of musical trailers continued as the weekend came to a close.

The internet has been having a “funny turn” over the last couple of days. I first noticed it on he phone and then on Skype. While talking the internet would “switch off” for 20 or 30 seconds ever few minutes. Made it really interesting when trying to finalise the booking of the UK flight. Didn’t help much when Paul and Amanda skyped either. Hopefully the problem will be fixed tomorrow.

Not much else was done today, life is tough!!

Blue skies and up into the 80’s today.

One of the things I have been meaning to do on the trailer for months was finally done this morning. Underneath the trailer is a red water pipe and a blue water pipe (hot & cold). These pipes were each capped with a screw on cap, which had to be removed to drain the hot and cold water lines. Being under the trailer they were not the easiest to get at, and the caps had to be on VERY tight to prevent leaking. Yesterday I finally found two taps that could replace the caps and make life a little simpler. They were fitted today.

After lunch we went to Weeks Bay where there was a board walk out to the waters edge. Although wildlife was again noticeable by its absence there were some pelicans on the water. It must have been bird lunchtime as the pelicans would take off, climb to about 50ft, circle around for a bit and then dive into the water for fish. At least it gave us something to watch for a while.

The campground has been a hive of activity for the last few days. Many of the people who were down for the winter have left, a lot of them leaving their trailers here to be stored over the summer, at the same time a number of the summer residents are getting their trailers out of storage. To add to the confusion, this week is spring break for the Alabama schools, so there a number of short term visitors. At times it’s like Piccadilly Circus with all the trailers moving around.

Another grey day up to 23C.

After breakfast the sky got very dark and the rain started. We had a much better thunderstorm today than yesterday, together with about 3/4″ of rain.

After lunch we went shopping to the local hardware store.  Amongst the items bought, not by me, were 2 packets of water balloons. Lyn then explained that now she had the balloons she needed to buy two pairs of flip flops!! If you need more info contact Lyn direct.

The last jam session of the season was held in the club house so we went along to listen.

I am trying to book the tickets for Europe, but Air Canada in their usual customer oriented way have had me on hold for an hour, what a pathetic way to run a business.

Pretty much a nothing day today. A little cooler around 24C.

The heavy rains forecast yesterday did not make it here, but in a few places just north of us there was over 5″

We headed off to do the weekly shopping, and on the way there the emergency broadcast system came over the radio stating that there was a tornado watch in effect for the next 6 hours, together with flash flood warnings.

Once back from shopping we had lunch and later took a walk around the resort and up to the office. Just as we reached the point furthest from the trailer the rain started. It wasn’t too bad and we made it back to the trailer just as it got heavier.

There was some extremely bright white lightning and thunder that seemed to be off in the distance, but the bass effect was amazing, the thunder wasn’t really loud, but you could definitely feel it!

Showers and isolated thunder continued for the rest of the afternoon so we just stayed at home.

A little cooler today at around 23C whereas Ottawa made it to around 28C! We had mostly overcast skies and the odd burst of rain. Overnight and tomorrow are forecast to have thunder storms and up to 2″ of rain.

This morning was cleaning morning, then after lunch we headed down towards the coast to a nature area. On the way down we saw a billboard sign for Sweetie Pies, this was a good and bad thing. Last year we discovered this place and it sold fantastic home made pies by the slice. We thought that it had closed down as we couldn’t see the store sign from the road. Definitely worth dropping into on the way home.

We found the nature area and walked about a mile down a sandy track to an observation tower. Unlike Texas there was no wildlife to be seen around the waters edge. On the walk back we saw a couple of tiny lizards scurrying across the track in front of us. We also saw an Alabama blue flowered pine cone that had fallen onto a bench.

Blue Flowered Pine Cone

The next place to go was a track down to the beach known as alligator alley. There are a couple of ponds off to the side of the road that are a known “hang-out” for ‘gators. Unfortunately there were none there today. We continued down the track to the beach, but the wind was picking up, and the rain starting, so we just sat in the truck and watched some fairly active wave activity.

On the way home we stopped in at Sweetie Pies, the store was still there!! Unfortunately there was nothing inside, the place closed down just after Christmas 🙁

Cloudy and around 25C today.

Tuesday is laundry day, so while Lyn was busy with that I went outside to do some work on the awning. In Texas it was too windy to have the awning out, but the wind here has been pretty calm for the last few days. We started off with the awning out only when we were around during the day time, but we’d retract it at night and when we were away (such an inconvenience having to hit a switch to roll it in!!).

Well this morning I figured the wind was behaving well enough to leave the awning out all the time. In this situation I screw a couple of anchor pegs into the ground and loop a strap over the two corners of the awning to stop it from flapping around too much if the wind gets up. In addition I put out some wind ornaments, including the beer can bi-plane, which hang from the awning roller. About an hour later the wind starts to gust fairly strongly, and someone came around advising that a high wind advisory has just been issued. Thank you Mr. Murphy. The awning is once again retracted.

This afternoon was Lyn’s craft time, so I spent a bit of time researching our route home. As we won’t have the trailer with us we are able to take a more touristy route rather than the freeways, so the initial plan is to take the freeways up to the start of the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway and follow it for 400+ miles into Virginia.

No change in the weather, up to around 27C today.

I continued to sort out all the stuff that I have brought down in the hope of freeing up some space. Lyn had a problem with her sewing machine, seems the tension wasn’t tensioning. A quick search of the internet produced a possible solution, which worked. Yet again I was a hero (for about 30 nano-seconds).

After lunch we said good-bye to our neighbours who were heading back to Ohio, then we set out to find Graham Creek Wild life park which had some nature walks. We found the park, and headed off towards the trails. 20 yards into the trail it petered out into a small, overgrown track through the trees. We turned back and went to look at one of the maps back in the parking area. It looked as though we were in the right area, but a second attempt got us no further. We decided we’d just take a walk around the edge of the woods. About half a mile on we saw a trail marker pointing towards the trail we wanted. We took the trail and almost immediately we were confronted with a small stream, someone had put a series of rocks in the water to walk across but on the far side was deep mud for about 30 yards so we gave up!

We continued around the edge of the woods, then headed back towards the parking lot. About a hundred yards from the parking lot we found the start of trail marker! It would have been a good idea if it was placed just a little closer to the parking lot. Any way we got a good walk in, albeit in the open rather than through the woods.

We took a drive around the local area which surrounds a bay, there were a number of nice looking sub-divisions, must have been the posh part of town.

Back at the resort (can’t call it a campground as that associates our activities with camping which gets my sister all riled up!) the mail had come which included the conversion kit for the trailer lights. Fifteen minutes later we had a pair of LED side/stop/turn lights at the back of the trailer.