Retired But Still Having To Retire!

We headed out on Labor Day, anxious to get to Gulf Shores.  This was, by far, the strangest (and most expensive) trip down here.  When we left the storage lot at 7:00 am, Mark says, "Well, if anything goes wrong, we know it won't be the tires since we have brand new tires on the trailer and on the truck. 

We pulled into a rest area on I-55 just south of Hernando, Mississippi.  When we came outside, I said, "I think that tire is a little low on the trailer."  Sure enough, 10 minutes later, it was flat!  Luckily we were safe and in a rest area. I called the roadside people - Good Sam, and someone showed up within 45 minutes to change the tire and send us on our way.

We stopped in Grenada for the night in a park we had never stayed before.  It was a nice park, a little farther north than we like to stay.  In was raining really hard when we left in the morning, but quit 10 minutes down the road.

We were now on the lookout for a commercial tire dealer to either repair or replace the damaged tire.  As luck would have it, we found someone less than an hour down the road.  The guy told us to pull around back, back it in, and he'd have us on our way in no time.  $300 later, he was correct!  We had to pitch the other tire that only had 300 miles on it.  It made us sick to do that, but a repair was impossible.  There was a small hole on the inside sidewall.

It was an uneventful trip for the next hour or so.  I had been driving for a while, and we needed diesel, so I pulled into a station.  It's not always clear which direction large trucks (or trucks with large trailers) should pull into stations to get to the truckers spots, so I just pulled in.  Unfortunately, I was going the wrong way.  I get anxious driving in and out of gas stations, so we switched drivers.  There was a large empty lot behind the station, so Mark was going to turn around so we could be facing the correct direction.

All of a sudden he puts the truck in park, and jumps out.

See those streamers?

Yep - we were too tall to turn around in that lot.  He had to get up on the roof and get it all untangled from the air conditioner.  It was a very small used car lot.  Some guy came out and told Mark he would have to put it back up, and he would be calling the owner of the lot.  We somehow got the three strands rigged back up with the string we had in the truck.  The guy came out and said the owner should be there soon, and then he left.  We didn't wait - we boogied out as fast as we could.  We can now laugh about it!

We finally rolled into the RV park in Gulf Shores around 3 pm.  It has been in the upper 90s since we got here.  It's too hot to be anywhere but in the water at the beach, in the pool, or inside in the air conditioning, and the forecast is the same for next week as well.  

After we got set up, Mark had me run a bunch of water into the sink, to get all the old smelly stuff out of the pipes.  Later that night, I noticed that there was a lot of water underneath the sink.  What next?  A trip to the hardware store the next day, and it was good as new.

Some friends we had met last winter, who live in that park, came down for a visit on Saturday, and then we ended up going to dinner with them that night to celebrate Jim's 70th birthday.  It was good to catch up.  Mark and Jim will be golfing every Tuesday until we leave to go back home.  

We've been biking a few mornings, when it hasn't been too hot.  Yesterday we ended up at the fishing pier.  The only thing we saw being caught was this ray.

Except for the weekend, the beach has been almost empty - just the way we like it.  The water is the warmest we have ever had.  The jellyfish are not here, and neither is the seaweed.  Life is good!