Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Prepare yourselves for a long post. Go ahead, grab a beverage, make yourself comfortable, we’ll wait….

This morning started out with Malcolm performing the weekly tank emptying ritual. This campground doesn’t have sewer hookups at the sites, so we have to cart our waste to the dump station with our sewer tote. We’ve found over time that about a week is the limit for the gray water tanks, so we empty them all once a week.

Today was the first time that Malcolm forgot to close the black water valve after emptying the tank. He quickly found that out when he arrived back to empty the gray tank and popped the cap off. Surprise! At least it wasn’t half a tank of waste.

We headed over to the house to do some yardwork and cleanup. Since the county provided the garbage truck to empty waste in today, Malcolm headed up there with two different truck-loads of stuff. The first truck load was empty boxes. To say we use Amazon a lot for shopping would be an understatement. We pretty much filled the eight foot pickup bed with boxes for the first run, and they were pretty much all from Amazon. The second load was tree limbs from the back yard.

Three reasons that Malcolm likes to take the trash to the county clean-up – they park the truck at the stables.

Malcolm found out that the battery in the riding mower was dead to the world. Neither the battery charger or jump starting it from the truck would bring it to life, so off to Lowes to get a new one. Fired up first try with the new battery. Malcolm mowed the front yard, then sprayed it with weed and bug killer. We tidied up a bit and loaded up a few things to take to the trailer as well as a bunch of stuff to donate to the local thrift shop.

We had considered staying at the house all afternoon and eating dinner there with our son, but Malcolm wanted to spend this nice day (it got up into the 70’s) at the campground, which was bustling with activity. We set up the dining canopy we had purchased a couple months ago and put the screened in part on it, as well. It is now set up over the picnic table.

Busy campground #1

Busy campground #2

Busy campground #3

We’ve been having problems with birds trying to nest under our kitchen slide. Malcolm spent the evening yesterday looking at ways to prevent them from trying to nest there. One idea that somebody posted on a forum was putting down carpet tape (double-sided) as birds won’t stay around if the the landing spot is sticky. Malcolm cleaned up the tray really well and lined it with carpet tape. We’ll see if that works.

We had a visitor this afternoon (sorry, I forgot her name) that was talking to Val when I walked around the trailer after working on something. Turns out that she and her husband would love to full-time at some point and are thinking of upgrading their current pull-behind trailer to a fifth wheel. We showed her around our trailer and showed her the truck. She had lots of questions that I hope we answered. We gave her the name of our blog for more information. Hope we helped you guys!

Our son came over for dinner (Skyline Chili!) and a movie. We watched “Wreck It Ralph” on the big screen. Really good movie. Afterwards, our son went on home.

After talking to our visitor earlier, I’ve got some more ideas for the blog that I think I’ll add over time. All in all, it was a really productive and fun day.