Still with us? Yeah, it’s been a while. Quite a few things going on around here since we last posted in (gasp!) October.

Dates: Oct. 21 to Nov. 2, 2018

Location: Our RV Lot at Deer Creek RV Golf and Country Club

Here’s our latest RV project – a dishwasher. We had looked at small built-in units, but they run around $600-800. After thinking about it for a while, we found a spot where we can install one. After shopping around again, we found that countertop units are $200-300 and are roughly the same size as the built-in units.

It holds a decent amount of dishes for its size. For now we are running it as a countertop unit, but eventually will install it through the wall next to the refrigerator and into the bottom of the bathroom cabinet on the other side of the wall (very top-right part of the above picture).

Since the installation is going to take a bit of work and we were getting ready to travel, we decided to hold off on installation until a later date.

Dates: Nov. 2 to 3, 2018

Location: Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park, Madison, Florida

On November 2, we hit the road heading north for our annual volunteer effort at Fort Toulouse.

We decided to split the trip in half on the way up and stopped for the night in Madison, Florida (east of Tallahassee). It was a cool, yucky day, but the rain held off when we arrived. We decided to just keep the truck hitched up overnight.

Dates: Nov. 3 to 11, 2018

Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

On November 3rd, we left Jellystone and stopped at the Love’s Travel Center at I-10 and US 231. David drove up from Panama City to grab some supplies from us. We brought him extra bedding (in case any of his Air Force friends needed a place to sleep) and our MiFi unit so he will have unlimited Internet at home (he had tapped out his phone’s limit).

Note in the above picture how many trees were blown over. This is about 60 miles inland, north of Panama City. We saw quite a few blown down trees across the panhandle on I-10 and for several miles up US 231 to just north of the Alabama state line.

After having lunch with David, we headed on north to Wetumpka and set up the trailer in our usual spot at Fort Toulouse.

Most of our time spent in Wetumpka was helping out at the annual Frontier Days re-enactment event they put on in November. Malcolm parked cars as usual and Val helped direct the busses full of school children. We did this on Wednesday through Friday.

Malcolm parked cars on Saturday and Val wandered around in period dress, visiting with friends we’ve met. Malcolm took some time Saturday afternoon to get some photos. They are all in our photo album at this link: [Click Here].

We left on Sunday morning with plans on stopping on the way home whenever we got tired of driving. We ended up making the whole trip home in one day (around 500 miles), arriving back to our spot around 5:00 PM. We got the trailer all set up before it got too dark.

Dates: Nov. 11 to Dec. 6, 2018

Location: Our RV Lot at Deer Creek RV Golf and Country Club

Shortly after we returned from Fort Toulouse, Malcolm had a Dermatologist appointment to remove a spot on his back. Part of that procedure involved stitches and Malcolm was told to not do anything strenuous (including trying to install a dishwasher). The return appointment for removing the stitches was two weeks later (near the end of November).

Shortly after the surgery, the main air conditioner on the trailer started making a lot of noise. Since Malcolm couldn’t climb up on the roof of the trailer, we called in a mobile repair person. He did a great job of cleaning out a bunch of dirt and debris from the fans in the unit, but the motor was pretty well needing a replacement (it was badly out of balance and the shaft had lots of play in it). We decided that we would order a replacement motor off Amazon and call him back out when the motor arrived.

We’ve been slowly adding some re-decorating touches to the trailer in a more mid-century modern style. One thing we recently added was this vintage “radio”. It was an inexpensive eBay find by Val. It was non-working, so Malcolm gutted it and it now houses a Bluetooth speaker. It also coordinates pretty well with the other items on the table.

While perusing Facebook, we found out that a high school classmate of Malcolm was in town with his wife. We met up with them for lunch one day at Disney Springs and walked around with them for a few hours of shopping and chatting.

David decided to come visit us for Thanksgiving as both of his roommates had gone home for the holiday and most of his co-workers were scattered about due to continuing rebuilding efforts from hurricane Michael. We readied the guest house for his arrival.

David arrived with both of his kitties. This one is Siren. She is less than a year old and recently learned how to fetch a ball and bring it back to you. It turns out she loves it so much that she will keep bringing you a ball until you stop what you are doing and actually play. She will chase the ball for a half hour or more.

This is Maui. His favorite activities include eating and lounging about the place. He also likes to hide behind our theater seating unit when it is time to go to the guest house for the evening. He ended up spending the night in the trailer with us most every night.

On Thanksgiving, we ate our dinner at The Wave bar and restaurant at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. They had a great buffet along with a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

Dinner with David.

After dinner, we rode the monorail around to the Grand Floridian resort to check out the life-size gingerbread house they have in their lobby. It was pretty awesome.

We also played a round of miniature golf one day and visited a couple of the Disney parks.

Morning breakfast line.

Our air conditioner motor arrived right after Thanksgiving over the weekend. We called the RV guy the following Monday to set up an appointment for him to replace it.

On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Malcolm had his stitches removed. The spot that was removed was benign, so we’re glad for that.

While we were out one day, we decided to get our flu shots (we missed getting them last year). The local Publix grocery store offered a $10 store card for each person getting a flu shot. Insurance paid the bill for the shots, so we picked up some needed groceries for next to nothing.

The RV repair guy came out and replaced our motor for us. The air conditioner runs better than it did before. On the day he was working on it, we had a cold snap the night before so it was only in the 40s that morning. A couple days later, we had temperatures back in the 80s and got to test everything out pretty well.

On the 29th of November, we headed to Disney’s Magic Kingdom for the Very Merry Christmas party. We collected lots of goodies and treats and we got to ride several rides with minimal wait. We stayed until the park closed at midnight and came home with very tired feet.

We went back to the miniature golf the other day for another round.

The last couple of days we’ve been busy packing for our upcoming Christmas trip out west. We fly out this Friday, December 7th to Seattle. It’s earlier than we usually head out but we’re doing things a bit different this year. More on that coming up soon!