It's good To Be Back in Gulf Shores

We began our fall trip this year at 4:45am Wednesday morning in a torrential downpour.  Fortunately it quit by Farmington.  It was an uneventful trip when we finally got off the road around 5:00pm that evening.  We stopped in a park we had never stayed in before because we were looking for something that got us past Jackson, MS on the first day.  We would never stay here again, only because it required making U-turns to get into and then back out of the park the next morning.  This is not fun while pulling a 38' trailer and doing this on a 4-lane road. Also there was a tent in front of the park where they were selling rebel flags. We had never met anyone who sold these flags at a roadside stand and now we have. We did have a great view from our spot though.

Thursday morning we got up and headed to Gulf Shores.  As always at this time of year, the RV park is once again mostly empty.  Instead of heading directly to the beach after setting up, we had to do some repairs on the trailer.  The second air conditioner didn't work.  Luckily Mark can now add A/C repair man to his resume.  After cleaning out about 5 lbs. of muddaubers, it started working just fine. While on the roof, a guy stopped by in his truck with his Mobile RV Wash trailer looking for business.  While we didn't really want to spend the money, Mark's back wouldn't allow him to wash and wax the trailer, so our new friend Chris and his employee got the job.  Chris is a Gulf Shores policeman and has this business on the side. (Mark justified hiring Chris because he saved so much money fixing the a/c himself!)

Early Friday morning, Chris and Beau showed up to do the first washing.  The total job is two washings, and a final wax just before we head home in October.

Beau doing all the work on the roof.  The trailer looks a million times better now.


Mark has now started removing the defective purple decals on the one side of the trailer.  After much research and advice from fellow RV owners (Big Dennis included), and several different cans of chemicals, he finally removed the worst of them.

On our visit to the water on Friday, we saw lots of jellyfish and most people were on shore instead of the water.  We were told by the guy running the jet ski booth that those jellyfish won't sting, it's the small ones that get you.  An hour later I got out of the water with the back of my leg on fire with jellyfish stings.  Yesterday Mark got stung on his stomach, but didn't get the red rash. 

Upon opening this morning's newspaper, the front page had this story:

My favorite line of the article, "While the moons don't sting, feeling their heavy, gelatinous bodies brush against arms and legs as you swim through a cloud of them ranks among the least pleasant sensations to be had in the Gulf of Mexico."  I couldn't have said it better myself!  With this in mind, we headed back to the water this afternoon to play in the big waves.  We saw a few jellyfish, and we still "yelled like a little girl"; however, we didn't get stung.