Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

More of the same the first three days of this week: sorting, packing, cleaning at the house. We’re moving from one end of the house to the other in preparation for company coming in the next few days. We’re having a going away party for David on Saturday and guests start arriving tomorrow. The majority of the house is pretty clean now.

David got an extra burst of energy today and pretty much got all the stuff he is keeping all packed up and stacked in the hallway. Earlier in the week, we rented a 10 x 10 storage unit.

Storage Unit

One thing that we have an abundance of is old family photos from both sides of the family. So far, we’ve just sorted them all into containers that we’ll store initially, then go through over time. Malcolm plans on scanning them all in to digital format. He started this week on slides, as we still have a full-size bed scanner with a slide attachment.

Slide Scanning

The slides are a bit tedious, as the scanner software is less than intuitive at times. However, Malcolm can scan slides on one window and do other tasks on another, such as writing the blog. Pictures will probably go a little easier, as it seems to be better at detecting the edges of pictures. Those will come over time.

We had a rude awakening this morning at 3:00 AM. A loud crash shook us out of our sleep. We immediately knew it had to have been a branch that fell on the trailer. Malcolm got his flashlight and headed outside. A quick scan of the ceiling showed that it wasn’t terrible, as we had no wood poking into the interior.

Malcolm found the offending branch on the ground next to the bedroom slide, and found that it had bent the top flange on the slide when it hit. He decided to wait until morning to walk the roof and found that the damage was solely to the slide flange. The branch apparently narrowly missed our antenna, which is extended.

The slide from up above

And down below

Close-up

The offending branch

From the size of the branch, Malcolm was surprised it bent the flange as much as it did. We’ll fix it ourselves before we leave, as the slide obviously won’t pull completely in as it sits now. A couple 2×4’s and C-Clamps should have it pretty straight. We’ll wait until all the excitement of David’s leaving is over and fix it on a warm, sunny day.