Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

It’s been a busy several days, so here’s a catch-up post.

On Thursday, our friends Nick and Sheila arrived. They met us (Malcolm, Val, David, Elizabeth and Scarlet) at Cracker Barrel for dinner. After dinner, we took them to the house to get them settled in. David has been staying at the house (as usual), but Elizabeth and Scarlet have been staying out at the trailer with us.

Thursday evening, Malcolm got an email from someone interested in buying our old truck (Malcolm had put an ad in Craigslist). Initially, the buyer wanted to come down Friday and look at it (he lived about 45 minutes away), but called back and asked if he could come down Thursday evening, instead. He sounded pretty sure he was going to buy it, so Malcolm stopped by the trailer, picked up the title and other paperwork and met the buyer at Walmart.

The gentleman ended up buying the truck, so Malcolm cleaned it all out and Val drove over from the campground to bring him home. We were glad to have one more thing off our plate. We knew the truck would probably sell fairly easily (and it did). We didn’t quite get as much as we wanted for it, but it was good to have it taken care of.

Friday morning, Val dropped Malcolm off at work and everyone ran around during the day, visiting, going out to lunch, etc. Malcolm stayed at the office for lunch so he could get an extra hour of work in and leave an hour early to get back to the trailer.

Once Malcolm got back to the trailer, he pulled both LP tanks to get them filled. Instead of taking them to the feed store where we recently paid $51 for 30 pounds of LP, he took them on up the road to Superior Gas (upon the recommendation of one of the other campers here at the park). They filled both tanks (one was about 1/3 full) for $32. It would have been about $40, but the gentleman filling the tanks gave Malcolm a couple gallons free.

Val’s sister and her family arrived Friday afternoon. We had them over as well as Nick and Sheila and the rest of our crew and cooked out hamburgers and hot dogs at the trailer (we had already emptied the house kitchen of most all cooking utensils, etc.).

Saturday morning started the big day. Malcolm emptied the tanks on the trailer. After that, Nana and Pa took Scarlet and went to the grocery store to get ingredients for Santa Fe soup. We stopped back by the trailer and picked up Elizabeth and headed to the house to cook soup. Malcolm and David headed to Costco to pick up party foods.

Malcolm stopped by the grocery store to pick up soft drinks and then headed back to the house. We had a bit of time to kill, so Malcolm, Elizabeth, Scarlet, Nick and Sheila headed up to the stables to visit the horses. Elizabeth had a buddy in Zoey the horse, who snuggled up to her and Scarlet.

We loaded everyone up in the truck and Nick and Sheila’s car and headed to Prattville to the Milton’s house. They were gracious enough to host David’s going away party for us. We brought all the food and everyone started getting everything prepared. We had people coming and going all evening (the party was from 4:00 to 8:00).

After visiting at the Milton’s for a while, then helping clean up, we headed home to get everyone back to the house and then head to the trailer for a much needed rest. We ended up getting back to the trailer at nearly midnight and fell into bed.

This morning we got up and got going early enough to drop by the house and say goodbyes to Nick and Sheila. Elizabeth and David drove to church in David’s car and Malcolm, Val and Scarlet drove in the truck. Elizabeth got to see a lot of people at church that she hadn’t seen for a while. After church, we drove into Montgomery to eat at Mellow Mushroom. Scarlet napped for a while on the way.

After lunch we headed back to the trailer to relax for the afternoon. Val, Elizabeth and Scarlet borrowed our camp host’s golf cart and took a tour around Fort Toulouse. Malcolm worked on a couple issues on the trailer.

The first issue was that our toilet was burping up bubbles of air when we would flush it. Malcolm tried flushing the vent tube on the top of the trailer with a running water hose, but it was clear. He dragged the hose around to the door and flushed the toilet drain with the hose, finding that it was mostly clogged up. He unclogged it with running water then flushed the black tank for a while into the sewer tote. Once that was emptied at the dump station, it was on to the second task.

Malcolm took the old corner piece off the off-door side of the end of the roof and replaced it with the one that we received back in August in San Diego (Malcolm and David had replaced the door side one while in San Diego). The back wall of our trailer has been showing increasing signs of delamination on the off-door side. Malcolm found that water had been intruding behind the corner piece. Here are a few pictures of the final product. The self-leveling sealer and the silicone sealant he used will dry and weather to a better match to the trailer in a couple months.

This evening, our friends Steven, Ashley and their children Tori and Hadlee dropped by to visit. They brought chips and buns and we heated up the leftover hamburger and hot dogs from Friday evening. We all sat around and chatted for a couple hours. Scarlet was happy that there was another friend her age (Hadlee) to play with.

After all our company left, we cleaned up and Malcolm caught up the blog. We also face-timed with Cole and Violet back in Washington.

One thing we haven’t mentioned on the blog is that Val will be having surgery on Wednesday of this week to remove her gall bladder. She has been having occasional pain on her right side and after a visit to the doctor last week they determined she has gall stones. It should be a pretty routine outpatient surgery. We’ll keep everyone up to date on her progress through the week.