Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Frontier Days, the big yearly re-enactment event here at Fort Toulouse – Fort Jackson, starts on Wednesday of this week and runs through Saturday. As we have the past four years, we’re volunteering again this year. David is even coming up from Panama City to help out and stay with us here at the campground.

We’ve had a busy week or so here. The replacement wheel for our trailer arrived at our friends’ house (where we have all our shipments sent) within a couple days after filling out the warranty claim. Great service.

The replacement wheel.

We picked up our wheel and other packages from our friends after church on Sunday. This morning, Malcolm ran the new wheel and old tire and wheel to the tire store to have them remount the tire on the new wheel. He installed it on the trailer when he got back. He also fixed the leaf springs on the left-rear of the trailer as the middle leaves had shifted in the spring pack at some point. They’re all lined up, tight and straight now.

New wheel and straight springs

On Wednesday, Malcolm went in to get one of his teeth fixed. A filling had fallen out right before our Hawaii trip and the dentist filled it temporarily at that time and indicated that eventually, the tooth would need a crown on it. Since the temporary filling finally fell out again recently, Malcolm went in and got it fixed for good this time. He was at the dentist’s office for a total of an hour and a half. In that time they made the crown and installed it on his tooth.

New crown

On Wednesday evening, we loaded up and went to our church’s annual chili cook-off. It was a great evening with a beautiful sunset.

Sunset at the chili cook-off

Speaking of sunsets, we’ve been enjoying several of them here. The weather has been hot, dry and clear in Alabama. Montgomery has broken temperature records several days in the last week alone, with daytime temperatures hovering around 90 degrees. Malcolm captured this sunset afterglow down by the Tallapoosa River at the boat dock here.

RIver Sunset

Early this summer, we found out that our trailer had a hydraulic leak in the underbelly. Malcolm narrowed it down to the door-side slideout ram and more specifically to the inner hydraulic connection. He ordered a couple replacement fittings and a roll of Flex-Mend tape to close up the underbelly after cutting an access hole in it for prior investigation and recent fix.

The factory fitting had a bad o-ring which was letting hydraulic fluid seep past and collect in the trailer’s belly. We think we have most of it drained out and Malcolm verified that there is no more leak when the slide is run in and out.

Ready to repair our leak

Since we have started staying here at Ft. Toulouse for most of the fall and spring, we decided to purchase a golf cart to putt around in. It’s a five year old Yamaha electric cart with rear seats and fairly new batteries. We got a pretty good deal on it from a cart dealer in Montgomery. It looks like brand new.

We were given the OK to leave it here while we are on the road and we purchased a “shed-in-a-box” to store it in to protect it from the elements. Good friends of ours who stay full-time here at the park will watch it for us and keep the battery maintained while we are away. The shed is set up next to their trailer.

Our other “ride”

The cart will be very handy this week at Frontier Days. We’ve already been enjoying riding around the park area in it. We added a trailer ball to the rear deck to allow us to pull our sewer tote to the dump station, as well.

Toting the sewage in style

We don’t have plans to carry the cart around with us as we travel. We’ve looked at various means of moving it around and none are inexpensive. So, we decided to just leave it here under good care.