Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Since our last update, we’ve been taking care of day-to-day stuff. Some of it involves preparing our new car for travel duties. We had a Class III hitch put on it. We’ll probably have the bikes riding on the back of the car when it travels with us. For that purpose, we purchased a bike rack (we had one like it before, but gave it away when we thought we weren’t going to be using it anymore).

New hitch and bike carrier

Malcolm also installed a new rear hatch window gasket on the car. After five years, the original one was compressed and was allowing water to leak into the hatch. Seems it is a fairly common problem. The new gasket is a Ford part ordered through Amazon.

Last week, Malcolm found out that his company was having a Christmas party for the office here in Wetumpka on Thursday evening. We attended and had a nice dinner and conversation with some of Malcolm’s co-workers that are still in the office here in Alabama.

Wetumpka office Christmas party

The next day, on Friday, we loaded up the car and headed up to Nashville for the weekend (sans trailer) to attend another company Christmas party – this time for the office that Malcolm is officially assigned to.

View of Nashville from the top of our hotel

When we got into town, we stopped by the Green Hills mall and did a little shopping before heading to the hotel. The initial plan was to check into the hotel and head to our favorite Irish pub and restaurant for dinner. However, we decided to stay close to the hotel and eat nearby instead of driving through Nashville rush hour Friday traffic.

On Saturday, we got out early and braved the Opry Mills mall. We were fortunate to have beat most of the holiday traffic going in. Leaving was a breeze. After leaving there, we stopped by Kroger for some tea that Val likes as well as to pick up a last minute Christmas gift for one of Malcolm’s co-workers. We stopped by the Irish place and had lunch since we were in the neighborhood. Then we headed back to the hotel.

Irish fare

We watched TV and relaxed all afternoon at the hotel until it was time to get ready to go to the Christmas party. It was supposed to be rainy all evening, but the rain didn’t move in until much later at night. We were able to walk to the Christmas party (just a block away) and back to the hotel with no problem. The temperature all evening was in the 70’s.

Overnight, the storms rolled through along with the rain and wind. By morning, it was all frozen. The cold front that swept through left the temperatures in the upper-20’s all day in Nashville. We waited for a little while before checking out of the hotel and heading south back to Wetumpka, where the temperature was at least in the 40’s.

Frozen cars in the hotel parking lot

Malcolm has been working the early part of this week (Monday through Wednesday). He worked a little this morning, but took off when our new Christmas present arrived via FedEx late this morning. We got a new set of steps for the RV and Malcolm installed them (with some help from our son who was already in town visiting friends). You can read more about the steps in our product review by clicking HERE.

After the steps were installed, we took David to go get pizza for lunch, then returned to the trailer. He headed off to visit with his friends and we spent the afternoon getting ready to leave for the Seattle area. We’ll be driving up to Atlanta tomorrow, staying in a hotel overnight and flying out early Saturday morning.