Our Travel Blog

Yet again a bright sunny day, although a little cooler first thing. We eventually climbed into the low 70’s.

This morning we headed about 40 miles NW to Mobile (pronounced Mobeel), in search of the USS Alabama, a WW2 battleship. It wasn’t quite where the TomTom said it should be, but we were close enough that we could find it.

Driving into the parking lot we were greeted by an number of out door exhibits including tanks, fighter jets and bombers. There was a B52 there, which is a pretty large 8 engined bomber, I have no idea how they got it there, but there must be an interesting trip report somewhere.

The main attraction was the Battleship weighting in at 35,000 tons with 9 16″ guns and countless smaller guns all over the place. Three designated tour routes were laid out within the ship which took you through the living quarters, combat areas, galley, engine room etc. The sleeping quarters for enlisted men were an eye opener, bunk beds 4 high packed into any available space below decks, no privacy or personal space at all. The exhibit was very well done, with very little added display areas, they simply showed the ship as it was.

Next stop was the aviation hangar, this houses mostly fighters ranging from WW2 through to present day. In addition there was an A-12 Blackbird, which was the predecessor to one of my favourite planes the SR-71 Blackbird, a reconnaissance aircraft capable of Mach 3.5and flying at over 100,000ft

Next stop was a tour of a submarine. After seeing the accommodation on the battleship, I figured it must be much worse on a sub! Although the sub was small, and every piece of space filled with equipment, the living / sleep area seemed more spacious.

The hatches between each of the compartments was only about 2.5 ft by 4ft, with the bottom of the opening about 18″ off the deck. Finally manged to get through them without damaging my head or shins!

All in all an excellent set of exhibits, well worth visiting.

As we were now in the big city of Mobile, there just happened to be a few craft shops that Lyn had noticed in her Internet searching. Luckily I had been pre-warned and brought a book with me!!

Another clear, blue sunny day in Southern Alabama!

Midway through breakfast there was a knock on the door, the previous two times this has happened it has been someone telling us there is a tornado warning! This time it was one of the ladies from the campsite that makes small banners from beads to hang outside the trailer. We had ordered a Canadian flag version a few days ago and this was it being delivered,

Later on in the morning I took a trip into home depot, the el-cheapo Chinese taps they install in the trailer were playing up. The kitchen ones we got replaced under warranty, now the bathroom ones were the problem. They weren’t leaking, just squeaking and getting stiff to turn. As usual, buying the taps was the easy part, removing the old ones and replacing them took a lot longer…. there’s just no room to work in a trailer!

Lyn spen the afternoon at a craft group and came back thinking about a new project. There are pine needles around here that are 10″-12″ long. Evidently baskets can be made from these and Lyn is thinking about trying to make one.

We’ve both decided we like this campground, so on our daily walk around the park we dropped into the office to see how early we would have to book for March next year, turns out there are only 3 sites left! We decided to book one there and then. Next years plan is most likely to be a trip down to the Texas Gulf Coast after Christmas for 7 weeks or so, and then a drive along the Gulf Coast back to Alabama.

Another warm and sunny day, seems last weeks poor weather is a thing of the past.

This morning we made a quick trip to Home Depot to get some stuff for my toys and Lyn’s plants. The rate antennas are going up here we need to rename the trailer “El Erizo”

After lunch we headed south to the beach, the road was busier than we had seen before, then it clicked, Spring Break! We got to the beach and found the usual parking lots were full, or charging more than normal, supply and demand at its best. Once on the beach we found it mobbed, last week there were about 20 of us on a half mile section of beach, today it was wall-to-wall students. We took a walk along the water line for about 40 minutes, must say, the scenery had improved from last week!!

Another warm, partly sunny day into the mid 70’s

This morning I finished up routing the wiring for the rearview camera, next I need to change a few connections then try it out. Also fixed the gas problem by switching everything off then turning on the tanks sloooooowly.

A few times while working in the gas area there had been a smell of gas, which I had put down to some being vented by the regulator, but I wanted to make sure there were no leaks. So off to the local WalMart to buy a spray bottle, which then got filled with a solution of washing up liquid and water. All the connections got sprayed, and lo and behold one started to bubble. What was interesting/disturbing was that the leaking connection was not one that had been touched when I had the regulator replaced in Florida. This must have been like this since day 1 :-(. I disconnected the fitting, cleaned it up and put some yellow PTFE tape on it, reconnected it and showered it with soap spray…. no more leak.

This afternoon we headed back to Orange Beach to an Arts Festival, this must be the cultural side of RVing! The show featured artists from Florida, Alabama and Mississippi as far as I could see. There was a mixture of painting, pottery, glass ware, jewelery and even iron pouring which was a first.

Lyn managed to buy a couple of articles, a pottery mug and a wind chime made from a wine bottle!!

On the way home we noticed many stores with signs out welcoming Spring Breakers, so we may have to lie low for the next few days!!!

Blue skies, no wind and 70F today.

At this campsite the community breakfast is on a Saturday, and it runs to 9AM, so we could go without getting up early!!!

Yesterday some cable arrived that I had ordered from eBay, so I spent part of the day installing it. The rear view  camera that I installed before we moved to Alabama worked fine when we were stationary, but was useless once we got moving. I suspect the problem was the distance from the rear of the trailer to the front of the truck (50ft) was too far for the wireless signal.

The new plan is to put the transmitter in the wardrobe at the very front of the trailer and connect the camera to it via a length of cable. Unfortunately it is not possible to run the cable inside the trailer for the whole length, and conventional wisdom prohibits drilling holes through outside walls, evidently they are guaranteed to leak however well you seal them. I finally managed to route the cable the length of the trailer with only one hole drilled, and that hole was inside a weatherproof compartment into the wardrobe. Next job is to connect it all up.

This evening our old enemy the gas problem returned. After changing the switchover from one tank to another we nearly all gas pressure, even though both tanks had plenty in them. Of course this happened in the middle of BBQing dinner! Luckily dinner was cooked enough to eat 🙂

After dinner I went back outside and after much swapping of tanks and playing with hoses, I got one tank working. Once I got back in I did some research on the web and found that this is not an uncommon problem. It all stems from the multitude of safety devices built into tanks, pipes and regulators. One of these devices will prevent a cut hose or uncoupled hose from leaking gas at high pressure. If the system detects a high rate of gas flow it will switch to a low flow / no  flow mode which may provide just enough pressure to run a gas burner at half power or not at all. The system, it appears, will also go into this mode if the tank valves are opened too quickly. Sometimes safety is a bit too smart!!

A clear, Sunny, Breezy and coolish day (60F)

We decided to take a trip to BonSecour, a State wildlife refuge on the Gulf Shore. We drove south to about a mile before the coast then west for about 12 miles.

We found the refuge welcome centre, looked at the maps and chose a walk. The walk started a couple of miles from the centre so we decided to drive to the end of the road first. The geography of the area is like a H lying on its side running east- west. The small line running north-south is the main highway that continues northwards. South of the H is the Gulf of Mexico, between the the two bars are a couple of lagoons and north of the H is a waterway… confused?

The end of the road led to a car ferry that crossed the southern end of Mobile Bay and also housed an old fort, probably to keep the Brits out of Mobile. I was surprised at the number of oil drilling platforms just off the coast, both to the north and south of us. The other thing that has be surprising has been the fact that there is no evidence of last years massive oil spill (unless you count a large bill board at the side of the road inviting clean up workers who may have after effects from their work to contact a particular law firm)

After watching the waves for a while we headed back to the walk around the wildlife area. We had high hopes of seeing a multitude of wild life in their natural habitat, we were highly disappointed. The sum total of animals was 5 ducks, 1 seagull, 1 pelican, a 3″ lizard and an unidentified bird 🙁

At least we got some exercise on the 2 mile walk.

After yesterdays weather, today was a quiet, cool sunny day. Lyn did the laundry, and I took one of the gas tanks down to refill (cold weather tends to empty them!) then it was off to the shops for the weekly refill.

After lunch we took our daily walk around  the site and dropped in for mail. The new SIM card had arrived for the phone, so I got that set up. The theory of using our home phone connected through the Internet has never given consistently good results so I went hunting for a new cell phone plan. Finally found one that seems to cost 5¢ for every thing. 5¢ texts and 5¢ per minute for USA, Canada and Europe. The home phone is forwarded to the cell now.

Spent some time playing with the ham radio now it is all set up, and then did some work on a spreadsheet I am working on……. such a tiring life!

This morning started dark. Most mornings do, I know, but at this time of morning it should have been light. The sky to the west was black, not dark but black. In fact the only time I recall seeing a sky similar to this was on the day the tornado hit Barrie. Thunder was rumbling around the sky from all directions.

Just before we had breakfast Lyn answered the door; it was our neighbour saying there was a tornado warning just issued for the area, and that a lot of people were moving to the club house.

We elected to stay in the trailer, partly because we hadn’t had breakfast yet and partly because we didn’t believe the clubhouse was really robust enough to provide much more protection.

A quick look at the radar showed very heavy precipitation and thunder cells just off to the west, together with a tornado signature that was going to track slightly  north of us. During breakfast the wind increased and there was a lot of lightning activity, but not as much rain as I expected. The weather radar showed that the tornado had passed north of us, but that there was a lot more storm activity to come.

Lyn had a hair appointment at 11:00, so we sat around watching the storm (and the radar). The thunder and lightning were ceaseless, and the rains increased. By the time we had to leave the rain was in full swing, the roads were showing signs of flooding and the lightning was doing its thing. As we drove through one set of traffic light there was a bolt of lightning and we could see all the lights in a city block go out…. including WalMart

I dropped Lyn off at the hairdressers and waited in the truck for her. At this time the heavens just opened for about 20 minutes, the lightning was more like a strobe light, never stopping. The road flooded over and at the junction of the side road it got to about 12″ deep. By the time Lyn came out the rain had eased quite a bit but was still very heavy.

Back at the campsite there large puddles on the road, but overall the drainage seemed to be holding its own, when we got to the trailer we noticed a river flowing behind us that wasn’t there before!!

The New River

The rain finally stopped at 1230, in the three hours since it started 3″ had fallen (equivalent to 75cm / 2.5ft  of snow). By this time a state of emergency had been declared by the State Governor due to flood and tornado damage. The tornado I saw on radar destroyed 8 houses in one of the small towns we drove through on Monday.

Once again the trailer stayed dry on the inside, thankfully.

On a different note, I have had to put a small verification process on the page when you register or leave a comment. I am getting an increasing number of comments being left by web bots (robots) which are nothing more than advertising. Hopefully this will keep them at bay. Drop me an e-mail if it is causing a problem.

24 hours without the heating coming on, must be summer.

We hung around the campsite for the morning then headed off to Orange Beach, about 15 miles away for their Mardi Gras parade. After some initial navigation error (due to someones overuse of the word assume) we found the parade route.

We managed to find a space in one of the shopping mall parking lots and joined the masses lining the parade route. All generations were represented, parents and kids, groups of teenagers and the more mature members of society!

The 2PM parade got under way about 2:30, by which time the younger kids were getting a little impatient. At the head of the parade was the only marching band, the local high school, all the rest of the participants were floats. The one thing that no one told us to do was to wear protective clothing. The “in thing” to do at Mardi Gras is “present” on lookers with bead necklaces. The presentation is in the form of people on the floats throwing one or more necklaces into the crowd, some you see…… some you don’t. I have no idea how many necklaces are presented, but Lyn got 20, and most people had way more than that.

Apart from necklaces, moon pies also get propelled from the floats. You can google the origins of moon pies, suffice it to say they are a choclate covered marshmallow centred sponge.

The parade lasted about an hour, and one of the floats was entered by our campsite. On the way home we drove beside an inland waterway, they were having their own parade with a flotilla of boats dispensing necklaces to the onlookers.

Back at the campsite, the sites entry in the parade was doing a lap of honour dispensing its remaining goodies.

At the Parade

Back at the Campsite

Once we cleared the condensation off the windows this morning we noticed a distinct lack of grey stuff in the sky. As the morning progressed the sky turned a nice shade of blue and the sun emerged. We actually got close to 60F today!

Spent the morning playing with clamps and putting an antenna mast on the back of the trailer, got the antenna mounted on the mast, should raise a few eyebrows!

After lunch we headed off to the town of Fairhope, about 20 miles away to the West on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. We drove cross country to get there and noticed a huge difference between rural Alabama and rural Florida. Florida had a dry parched look with sand as the basic soil, lots of trees but very few crops or animals. Alabama is much greener with cultivated fields and a lot more cattle. Also, the housing looks a lot better here, les trailer sites and more brick houses that look better cared for.

Fairhope was a little like Merrickville-on-the-Sea, numerous antique stores and restaurants, old but well cared for buildings and tourists! They were preparing for their Mardi Gras parade, many people are wearing long strings of beads in the Mardi Gras colours of Purple, Green and Gold. I didn’t realise until today how big an event Mardi Gras is; schools are closed for two days, some businesses closed and decorations. All we got in England were pancakes with lemon juice!!