Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Before leaving on our trip out west to visit the grandchildren, we went to a Montgomery Biscuits ball game. The Biscuits are the minor league farm team for the Tampa Bay Rays. It was a great game and the Biscuits won. It was also fireworks night, so we stayed to watch those.

On Monday, the 25th of April, we left the trailer about 8:00 in the morning and drove to Nashville. We parked the truck at the airport and flew out to Seattle to visit our daughter and family.

We had a lot of fun visiting with the granddaughters. Malcolm took the girls across the street on a few occasions to give the neighbor’s horses some carrots.

We had fun running around with the girls and doing various errands. Of course, appropriate dress was required.

Malcolm and Elizabeth got to slip out for some Daddy/Daughter time, retiring to a local coffee shop to practice some digital artwork.

We all went to the mall one evening so Nana and Mommy could go shopping. Cole and Malcolm took the girls to the carousel in the mall.

On Saturday, the YMCA was having a special day for the children, so we all went to that. Violet impressed everyone with her rock climbing skills, making it to the very top for the first time.

On Monday, our last full day in Washington, we had a great day. We started off by taking Elizabeth and the granddaughters to lunch at their favorite pizza place. Afterwards, we all headed to the YMCA for an afternoon of swimming. After swimming, we headed home to wait for Cole to get home from work. Then we all loaded up and headed to a Tacoma Raniers game. It was great weather for a ballgame, as it was unseasonably warm (88 degrees) for the Pacific Northwest.

Tuesday morning, Cole took us to the Seattle-Tacoma airport and dropped us off. We had breakfast at the airport and caught our flight back to Nashville. We stayed in Nashville overnight at a hotel since our flight got in around dinnertime.

This morning, we left the hotel and headed over to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. From there, we started on the 4 1/2 hour trek back south to our trailer. About 45 minutes from home we stopped at a rest area since we hadn’t really had any other stops the whole trip. As we pulled into the rest area, we noticed another Heartland brand trailer with an owners club plate on the back.

We wandered over to say Hi and realized it was our friends Wayne and Anita Cooper. They were more than happy to see us as their truck’s clutch had gone out. The clutch would hold enough to drive the truck alone, but not enough to pull their trailer. We ended up hitching their trailer to our truck and pulled it down to the campground we are staying in. They dropped their truck off with a Ford dealer on the way to be repaired.

We got the Cooper’s trailer set up here at Ft. Toulouse, then headed out for a late lunch (it was after 2:00 by the time we got to the restaurant). After lunch, we stopped by to grab some groceries, then back to the campground to visit and catch up. We chatted and visited until almost 8:00 this evening.

Malcolm’s working the next couple days and we have some organizational items to tend to in our storage unit (we bought a bunch of new storage containers in Nashville) over the weekend. Then, we’re heading down to Panama City to visit with David and help celebrate his birthday in a little over a week.