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Catch-Up Post

Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Just realized we haven’t posted in three days, so we’ll do a quick catch-up.

Sunday, we picked up David and went to church. After church, we ate lunch at Mellow Mushroom, then stopped by the trailer to change clothes, then headed to the house to drop David off. While there, Malcolm caulked up the garage door trim he hung on Saturday. Looks great and ready to paint.

Once back to the campground Sunday afternoon, Malcolm made the three trips to the dump station (two grays, one black) with the honey wagon and our friend Nathan’s golf cart. We sat around and chatted with folks for a bit before realizing we hadn’t had dinner. So, it was back to the trailer to eat dinner and relax.

Monday, Malcolm headed back to work. Val and David took care of errands. We started getting a lot of vendors and re-enacters in the campground for Frontier Days. Malcolm took our internet device to AT&T since it has been acting flaky lately. They looked it up and it is about 2 weeks out of warranty. They recommended we call tech support, as they might be lenient on the warranty expiration. Malcolm never found out, as he was on hold so long. We decided to live with the unit’s irregularities.

David came over in the evening and we went to the local Chinese buffet for dinner since dinner wasn’t started in time. It turned out to be a bad decision for Malcolm, who got some mild food poisoning and spent most of Monday night and early Tuesday morning feeling terrible. He was better by morning, though.

Today, Val and David treated the house for fleas (again). This time, they took all of David’s laundry to the laundromat while the flea bombs went off. They stopped by to air it out and then to close it up. David is staying at the trailer with us through Saturday so he can be here to help volunteer for Frontier Days. Malcolm will be helping starting on Thursday, as he needed to work on Wednesday.

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Work on the House

Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Today’s big project was removing the old, rotting trim around the garage door on our house and replacing it with new trim.

Our first task was to put things in the truck from the basement of the trailer that we would not need during our trip to Nashville. This would free up some room to put the boxes of equipment in the trailer that Malcolm will be taking up there in a little over a week. Malcolm also checked and found we had an empty LP tank.

With all our stuff and the LP tank in the truck, we headed to the grocery store to get an ingredient for dinner (in the crockpot). Then we stopped at the feed store to get the LP tank refilled. Back to the trailer, Malcolm re-installed the filled LP tank and Val put the remaining ingredient in the crockpot for dinner. Then it was off to the house.

We off-loaded all the stuff from the truck into the garage and then headed to Home Depot. First, though, we stopped at Five Guys for lunch. Then to Home Depot to get garage door trim and a few things needed to put the trim up. Then, back to the house.

While Malcolm worked on the trim, Val loaded a bunch of giveaway stuff in the truck and drove it to the thrift store to donate it. She returned to the house to find Malcolm about 3/4 the way through his project. Once it was all done, we returned to the trailer for dinner.

After dinner, we walked around the campground, then back to the trailer. Malcolm took a shower to get the rest of the sawdust and other debris off himself. Then it was time to relax.

Here are some pictures of the door frame replacement. The original frame material was wood. The replacement stuff is PVC. We’ll have to run back over tomorrow to put caulk in all the nooks and crevices. Eventually, we’ll paint the frame and the rest of the trim around the house.

The new material

The new material

One side of the frame

One side of the frame

Rotting at the bottom

Rotting at the bottom

Mid-destruction

Mid-destruction

Putting new stuff up

Putting new stuff up

New frame

New frame

All done

All done

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Work and Errands

Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Yesterday, Malcolm ended up having to jump start the older truck after it sat for a couple weeks. He had noticed back in August that it seemed to be starting a little slower. He thought maybe the batteries were dying (they’re just over 2 years old).

Once he got it started, he drove it to Auto Zone, which is where the batteries came from and they tested out fine. They also restarted the truck fine. Only thing we can figure is that there are enough small items in the truck with a constant current draw to drain the batteries over time. We’ll try disconnecting a few things next time we’re away to see if that helps. Eventually it won’t be an issue once we sell the truck.

Val and David ran a couple errands and did some shopping yesterday. Today, they did groceries and Val did laundry. Malcolm mainly worked. This evening, we had one of the vendors from the upcoming Frontier Days over for dinner. He used to travel with his wife to various events, but she isn’t well enough to travel, so he’s here by himself. He was grateful for the company and the food.

Malcolm and his co-workers packed up the equipment that we’ll be taking to Nashville for work in a little over a week. Malcolm measured the four large boxes and measured the basement of the trailer. We think the best bet is to load the boxes up in the bedroom and the basement. We’ll probably head over there a week from Monday already hitched up to the trailer and get Malcolm’s co-workers to help load the boxes in the trailer.

This weekend has plenty of things on the to-do list to get done. Some at the house and some at the trailer. Should keep us fairly busy.

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Back Home for a While

Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

We tried to get an early start this morning in Kentucky, but it gets light rather late in the morning. Plus, it was raining, which always makes hooking up rather unenjoyable. We got hooked up and pulled out around 8:30 AM.

The rain lasted until southern Kentucky. We stopped at the Tennessee welcome center on I-75. Our son called us on the phone as we were getting back into the truck, so we stayed parked until the call was over, since we had little signal. While we were talking, a state trooper was slowly escorting vehicles up the interstate in the southbound direction (where we were headed).

It turned out that they are doing road construction up on the hills south of Jellico, Tennessee and they were diverting traffic around on US 25W. It was a pretty drive, though somewhat slow. The locals seemed to be interested in all the various vehicles (we were following a couple of Class A motorhomes) traveling down the “holler”. The detour added about 45 minutes or so to our trip.

We were curious how Callie would do today, as we had a 500 mile drive ahead of us. She did rather well. We let her out a couple times to explore around the interior (once at lunch while stopped and the other time about 1/2 way home along the road). She did really well. We get a kick out of the fact that she will burrow under the cushion we bought for her carrier and curl up underneath it.

We rolled into Fort Toulouse right at dark – about 6:00 PM. We set up in a different site this time. After hearing about others fighting swarms of ladybugs, and given the problem we had with them last year, we selected a site that stays shady all day and through the sunset. We’re hoping our shaded trailer will not be so much a magnet for them this year. As we rolled into the campground, our friend Nathan indicated that they haven’t swarmed here yet.

Malcolm is back to work tomorrow. We’ll be here for a little less than two weeks.

 

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Packing and Preparing

Current Location: Fort Toulouse Campground, Wetumpka, Alabama

Yesterday was rainy, so it scuttled our plans to do some work on the exterior of the house. Instead, we went shopping and, between raindrops, Malcolm tidied up some things on the outside of the new truck. Shopping consisted of buying Malcolm some shirts and a new wallet. We also purchased another hitch-mounted step for the new truck like we had on the old truck.

We stopped by Home Depot to check on the status of the measurements that had been taken of the doors we are having replaced on the house. They found the information on the computer so we went ahead and ordered the doors. They should arrive around the time we get back from Washington and we’ll arrange for installation at that point. If we end up working down in Houston, our son will be responsible for overseeing installation and construction work.

David came over to the trailer and spent the night with us Saturday night. He has been trying to get on a more normal schedule and wanted to go to church with us Sunday morning. We blew up the air mattress and he slept on the living room floor.

This morning, the three of us went to church. After church, we ate lunch at David’s favorite sushi place. Val and Malcolm got their teriyaki lunches (not liking sushi). After lunch, we headed back to the trailer. David flopped down for a nap and Malcolm cleaned up the pickup bed cover. He also aired up all the tires on the new truck and installed the tire pressure monitors on the valve stems.

Afterwards, we sent Callie home with David so he can watch her for the next week or so while we fly out to Washington to visit with our daughter and family. We also dropped the old truck off at the house and picked up Val’s car to drive to the airport in Atlanta. The new truck will stay at the campground since we have our good friend and camp host, Nathan, just across the street. He’s great about watching our stuff for us.