The Great Winter Storm of 2014

We are nearing the end of our winter storm and are very glad to see it go. Most of the local roads have reopened. All the restaurants are open and the snow birds are out of their rigs and wandering around the park. We took a few pictures so we will always remember our 2014 travel season.

Sunrise this morning

 

Behind the trailer

A palm tree by our trailer

 

The sand looks white but it's ice

Butch doesn't mind walking on the ice at the beach

 New signs that popped up everywhere this winter.  

 

Hwy 162 to Orange Beach

Ice on the bayou

The pelicans are confused by the ice

Frozen over

Butch and I know how to handle this kind of weather

Apparently the Weather People Were Right This Time

Unless you live under a rock you know that the deep south is being hit with a rare winter storm. Snow, sleet and freezing rain were predicted but we just didn't believe it would get that bad. Our thought was that we are just a few blocks from the ocean and it is too warm for this storm to reach all the way to the Alabama beaches. We were mostly wrong in our thinking. While it still hasn't snowed in Gulf Shores we are covered in ice right now with more on the way and yes, there is still a chance of snow!

 Ice on the palm tree next to our trailer

Ice on the front of our trailer

Even the car warned us!

Our friends Jim and Bonnie Tebbe visited us Saturday. While the temps were pretty low at least there wasn't any precipitation. We enjoyed a great dinner at Desoto's and compared notes on our Grandchildren.

Even though Alabama is under a State of Emergency, and the media is warning everyone to "Stay Inside, Do Not Drive", we are meeting our friends Steve and Karen who arrived today from Canada, for dinner tonight.  We will most likely be walking to Papa Rocco's, which is right across the street from the RV park.

It's Just A Little Snow.....Maybe

As I sit writing this we are watching a crawl on the TV screen that says we are under a Winter Storm Warning. Schools are closing, government offices will be closed, roads are being watched in case they need to be closed and we are being told to let the water run to avoid frozen water lines! All this is taking place while the outside temps are still 61 degrees. With all the newscasters making dire predictions we kind of hope there is at least a little bit of snow or ice to make all this effort worthwhile!

The sky just might be falling!

Yes, I said 61 degrees. The weather has changed a bit the last two days. Diane and I were finally able to play golf. We heard the Naval Air Base at Pensacola opened their golf course to the public so we went over yesterday to give it a try. We had great time even though the scores weren't so good. The course is under the flight path the Blue Angels and other military jets use.

One of the cart paths at the golf course

 A large jet passing over us, the Blue Angels were too quick

The best woman golfer in our twosome

It's a little disconcerting the first time a jet takes off while you are getting ready to hit a shot but mostly it was fun to stop and watch them go over. The starter told us to play on a Tuesday morning when the Blue Angels do multiple take offs and landings. We plan to be there at least once this winter to watch this.

We ordered some new light fixtures for the trailer from Amazon. We are slowly switching to LED lights throughout our rig but we are doing it slowly because they cost $$$.

Today we went to Foley,Al. to visit friends we made last year. After seeing the park again it really makes us appreciate our choice of Luxury RV Park this year. We got back home this afternoon just in time to FaceTime with our favorite Grandsons.

The best two Grandsons in our lives!

Baby It's Cold Outside!

It's seems that the whole country is colder than normal this winter. We can tell everyone that it is certainly too cold in Gulf Shores. The high point of the day was lunch at Desoto's with friends from Foley. We asked for a table upstairs since heat rises. We actually went to Target today and bought stocking caps just in case it warms a little and we can try to play golf. Give us a little of that global warming we keep hearing about!

Here are a few pictures we enjoy while trying to stay warm.

Getting A Cold Shoulder

Once again we find ourselves huddled in the RV because the outside temps are dropping below freezing. This must be our fault because we have found ourselves in this same predicament in Texas, Florida, and now Alabama. Don't take this as complaining because we know the weather at home is dreadful but when it gets cold outside, these RVs just aren't as warm as a house. The real issue here is that two rounds of golf have been canceled due to cold and the next round isn't looking so good either.  We really need to start looking farther south to winter, to a place we can afford.

We are starting to meet a lot of the people in the park.  There are quite a few people from Missouri and Illinois.  

We enjoy proudly displaying our Missouri flag, especially since we are in the land of the almighty Alabama Crimson Tide.

We took a very long bike ride on Sunday since the weather was very nice.  After we had ridden 12 miles, I got a flat on my back tire.  Mark had to ride the four miles back to the park to get the car.

Waiting to be picked up.  Several people stopped to see if they could help me - that was nice.

Sunday was the first ice cream social.  Since it starts at 5:00pm, we had dessert before dinner.  For $1.50, you can get as big a scoop as you want.  I didn't ask for a large amount, but the guy put in at least 3 large scoops.  Toppings included bananas, hot fudge, caramel, cherries, nuts, and whipped cream.  What more can you ask for?  We signed up to serve ice cream the end of February.  Then we get it for free! 

Monday I tried Zumba classes -- actually, it is Zumba Gold (for seniors).  I really enjoyed this 45 minute class.  Even though I have no rhythm, it was lots of fun. Classes are help every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I'm trying to convince Mark to go with me on Friday.

We took advantage of yesterday's cold start and headed for Pensacola. The NAS has one of the finest museums we have ever visited. Instead of going thru with a guided group we just wandered for several hours and enjoyed ourselves. We drove around the base afterward to find the golf course. It has been opened to the public and Mark and I plan to play there as soon as the weather improves.

This is the interior of an RR-5 Tri-Motor used by the Navy and Marine Corp between 1927 and 1931.

 This airplane has the same amount of leg room as the Southwest airplane that we flew on to get to our cruise two weeks ago.

A small portion of the National Cemetery on the NAS.

After touring the museum, we headed over to McGuire's Irish Pub and Restaurant for a fabulous lunch.  It seems they cater to the snowbirds with blue plate specials for lunch.  We each had the fried chicken special.  For $6.95 we got 3 gigantic legs, collard greens, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, bread, and we also paid the 19 cents for the bean soup. We brought home 3 of the 6 legs.  I'm not sure where these legs came from, but they were almost as big as a turkey leg.  

Forty Already?

It's time to start a new winter season of occasional blogging. We are spending the winter season in a RV park that is very familiar to us but as a warm weather destination, not a winter park. We have returned to Luxury RV Park in Gulf Shores, Alabama. More on this but first some catching up.

We spent ten days on a cruise to the southern Caribbean to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary. We enjoyed the company of our good friends John and Donna Massara, and family members Larry and Cheri Murphy, and Pam and Dennis Ard. 

 John and Donna

Pam and Dennis 

Cheri and Larry

While we had a wonderful time eating, drinking, eating, touring, eating and eating we were thinking about home. The day we left Michael and Angela introduced Henry Bryson Patton to the world. 

Hi, I'm Henry!

This my big brother Matthew!

What a welcome we got from Matthew and we got to meet Henry on the evening we returned. What a guy! Now we have Matthew and Henry to play with whenever we are home!

Butch keeps pawing on my leg...he says we may have been enjoying a cruise but he was left behind in jail trying to pee in snow that was four inches deeper than he is tall. He was very excited to see us on release day but not so happy to find out that now two little guys will be chasing him through the house plus he didn't even get a tee shirt!

After catching up with parents, kids, and watching our grandsons for a few hours, we had the car packed and ready to go by 3:00pm on Wednesday so we left St. Louis, driving until we just couldn't go any further.  That got us to the most disgusting hotel we have ever stayed in, in Grenada, MS.  After a few hours sleep, we rushed out the door and headed to Paradise!

Now for this winter. This the first year in a while that there has been a site available at Luxury for the winter season. We have been looking forward to this for the last three months. When we left in October we decided to leave our fifth wheel in storage a few miles away rather than pull it home just to pull it back three months later. This idea seemed really good but at the time we assumed that there was no reason to winterize a rig that was being stored in the sunny warm south. 

Alas this winter was unusual (we have heard this in Texas and Florida also) and the temps went down below 20 degrees. We  guessed this wouldn't be a problem because you need a couple of cold days for things to really freeze - sadly this isn't true. We arrived about noon on Thursday and hoped to get set up in an hour or two and get busy meeting our new neighbors. All went well until I hooked up the water hose and turned it on. The whole house water filter in the basement immediately broke and water sprayed everywhere. Not a problem. I assumed I would run up to Lowes, pick up a new filter and have the problem fixed in minutes. This ended up taking two hours of driving and stopping at every hardware store only to end up at Camping World forty miles away. Luckily they had the parts I needed and once back at the park I was ready to turn the water on in short order. Water on, all seemed okay, called to Diane to open the kitchen faucet to bleed the air from the lines. All wasn't okay! The faucet had frozen, broken and water was rapidly filling the cabinet. Back to the hardware store to buy a new faucet and all the associated hardware. Two hours later the water was on, nothing was leaking, and we were ready to start enjoying ourselves. 

One thing we have learned over the years of RVing is that you can never really plan for what might happen. You can try to carry everything you might need, you can replace worn parts so that they don't break at a bad time or you can just assume that if you don't winterize a stored trailer regardless of where it is sitting you can always expect expensive hard-to-find items will freeze, break or shatter! Diane does a wonderful job of keeping me calm when these future stories are happening even though she knows that she will have to rehear all this stuff over and over! Actually the unknown is one of the things that make this lifestyle so interesting. We meet great people, we see parts of the country we would never see from a hotel room and we get to see all this while getting to sleep in our own bed and cooking in our own kitchen. Even though we have had tire blowouts, engine troubles and numerous RV repairs we love doing this.

Hopefully this winter will provide us enough new adventures that we will keep all who read this interested.