Saturday, April 25, 2009

Today was another beautiful, hot, sunny day – the high on the truck thermometer today was 87F (29C) – wonderful. I talked to our daughter Kelly late this afternoon, as well as my sister Pat, and both said today had been hot and sunny but then they were getting severe rain storms – just keep those there guys!!

We had a good drive today other than a bit of rough highway south of St. Louis, KY but it wasn’t as bad as we had heard it was and didn’t last too long so no problem – we sure have been on worse roads than that.

Nashville



It was nice to drive through spring with all the trees in Tennessee and Kentucky in their spring finery and lots of lilacs and dogwood in bloom – so pretty.





And We Passed Through Kentucky



It was also nice to see some hills and rolling countryside after almost 5 months of flat countryside!



And We are Now in Indiana



We are spending the night at Woods-N-Water Kampground near Columbus, IN., it is an old KOA campground with lots of trees that created a very challenging course to get to our site. Fortunately, I got out to walk John through a very tight turn and saw that he was almost right against two small trees, had he kept going we would have lost an awning arm so he didn’t complain when I yelled at him to STOP!! A bit of maneuvering and he made the turn and then another tight one before we got to our site; a few minutes after we stopped a fellow came by and said he was behind us coming in and he was impressed with how John had handled the tight turns – nice to hear.

When we were registering the fellow on the desk said there was another couple here from Ontario and they were sitting in the lobby waiting for their laundry to do so we chatted with them for a bit, turns out they are from Sarnia.

Tonight will be another quiet evening and we are hoping for another sunny, warm day tomorrow.

As always, today was another great gift of a day in the sunny south and we look forward to another good day tomorrow.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Today was the start of our trek north and it was a long day, 670 km (416 miles). We are now at Texas T Campground, Cornersville TN.

The drive was good except around Cullman, AL where we did 3 miles in an hour, when we finally got going we saw no evidence to tell us what the hold up was, but we presume there had been an accident. We considered getting off the interstate but decided all the other roads would be congested with cars getting off so just stayed where we were and figure that had been the right move as after about 5 minutes in a rest area north of the stop up two motor cycles came in who we had seen getting off on one of the exits to avoid sitting!

Today was very hot, the high in the truck was 90F (30C) – thank goodness for a/c!!

Crossing the Tennessee River near Decatur, AL



Alabama Welcome Centre



We're In Tennessee



Tomorrow we will have to do some rerouting off I-65 between Elizabethtown and St. Louis as we hear the interstate is a nightmare from ice damage in the winter, just hope we pick a route that wasn’t damaged!!

As always, today was another great gift of a day in the sunny south and we look forward to another good day tomorrow.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Yesterday was a quiet day with lovely weather – hot and sunny.

In the late morning I headed off to Wally World to pamper myself, I got a pedicure and my hair cut so now my toes are pretty and my hair doesn’t look too bad again! I picked up a couple of groceries while there then came back and John and I sat out enjoying the nice weather.

Ginny & Gil came over for dinner and as always there was lots of good conversation and laughs. Shortly after 9 Gil headed home to get things organized as they are heading out in the morning, and Ginny & I did the dishes while John worked on her computer for a bit. I don’t usually let guests help with the dishes but I guess it was a fair trade off while John did the computer.

We walked Ginny home and said goodbye to them knowing that at some time in the next couple of months we will get together at either their place in Kitchener or ours in Kincardine.

Today was another hot, sunny day with highs in the 80’s – a little warmer than I like but still nice. John headed off to Wally World this morning to get the truck filled up at $2.099 for diesel and to pick up some oil for an oil change when we get home.

When he got back he loaded the laundry into the truck for me and I headed off to the laundromat to get it clean again. Today I decided just to use the laundromat here in the park and one of the dryers wasn’t very hot so it took longer to do the drying as I had to put it in another dryer to finish drying – grrrrr!!

John is now getting the truck hooked up and everything set to go so we can get a fairly early start, (for us), in the morning and as soon as I finish this up I will get the inside as road ready as I can for tomorrow.

Dinner tonight will be some of the Royal Red Shrimp we bought on Tuesday in Pensacola so we are looking forward to a good meal.

I don't usually like to put my picture in the blog as I don't usually take a good one but this is one Ginny gave me that she took at Flounder's on Tuesday and I actually thought it wasn't bad.



And I finally got around to taking a picture of our trailer here at Gulf Breezes



Tonight will be a quiet evening of TV or reading and early to bed so we can be up and at it earlier than usual in the morning.

As always, the last two days have been great gifts here in the sunny south and we look forward to another good day tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Today was another sunny, warm day – we are treasuring these days as in another week we will be back in Ontario where we expect to find much cooler temperatures - we are not looking forward to that!

We picked up Ginny & Gil at 7:30 this morning to head over to Pensacola to watch the Blue Angels practice. They practice every Tuesday & Wednesday morning during their stay at Pensacola and these practices are open to the public, as well as the Air Museum, and it is all free – how good can that be!!!

We all thoroughly enjoyed the show, they are amazing and at times they were flying only 18” apart at speeds of over 500 mph – wow!! John and I had seen their practice back in the spring of 2000 but today was a much clearer day weather wise so we had a better view of them coming by the bleacher area and doing their formations.

The Blue Angels









After the show we toured the museum, it is very interesting with lots of good displays.

Presidential (JFK) Helicopter - 1962



Other Vintage Helicopters





From there we drove out to the beach area between Pensecola Beach and Navares Beach, the white sand and blue/green water was beautiful. It was quite windy on the beach but we did stop and spend a bit of time there and dipped our toes into the gulf. It wasn’t exactly warm and the water was very rough but it was oh so pretty.





Gil & Ginny on the Beach



We stopped at Flounders



in Pensacola Beach for a late lunch, John & I had had lunch there a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it and we weren’t disappointed as it was every bit as good today as it was then. Flounders is right on the beach so we could see the water and John & Gil could watch some gals in bikinis playing beach volleyball – LOL!

On the way home we stopped at Joe-Patti’s, a fish place that Barb & Jack had told us about and John and I bought a couple of pounds of headless, cleaned Royal Red Shrimp to bring home. Joe-Patti’s has every kind of fish & seafood you can imagine, as well as baked products, various sauces and even gelato. Gil treated Ginny & I to some gelato, John has will power and passed on Gil’s offer to buy him some, and it was very yummy!!

It clouded over on the way home and started raining as we came into Gulf Shores – what, this wasn’t forecast!! Fortunately it didn’t last long, about ½ hour, and at one point it really poured but that was fine as we had enjoyed a great day and the weather was beautiful until after we had done everything we wanted to do – what more could we ask for.

Tonight will be a quiet evening of TV or reading.
As always, today was another great gift of a day in the sunny south and we look forward to another good day tomorrow.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Well, here I am playing catch up again, we’ve got to stop having so much fun so that I can get back to routine and keep things up to date!!!

The weather forecast for yesterday was for rain, with severe storms possible, so we decided it would be a good shopping day. It turned into a nice day, mainly cloudy but no rain, so we were quite happy as severe storms just aren’t fun.

Gil picked John up about 11 and they headed off to Mobile to tour the battleship USS Alabama and a submarine, by all accounts they had a good time and were fortunate that it didn’t rain as it wouldn’t be fun touring a battleship in the rain. Jack opted to stay home so didn’t join them.

Barb, Ginny & I headed out shopping about 11:30 with our first stop being the Old Time Pottery which I have never been in before – what a huge store with everything imaginable for home decorating, lots of fun wandering around there. From there we headed to the Outlet Mall and our first stop was for something to eat - a pizza slice filled the void. We then checked out Fossils as Ginny wanted to look at their watches, then a kitchen store, then the Corning Store, oh yeah, now we need to check out some clothing stores so we did that, with our final stop being Fresh Produce (yes, that is a clothing store) where we were told it was closing time – bummer!! Not really as I think we were all three shopped out by then!!

Ginny & Gil had asked us all to dinner at their place and I had put a pork roast in the slow cooker first thing in the morning to make pork pull, so we took that for dinner and Gil cooked some pork chops and Barb brought asparagus and Ginny did some potatoes so we had a great dinner with good company.

By the time we got home the evening was pretty well done and another great day had come to an end.

Today was a beautiful, warm sunny day with a high temperature in the mid 70’s – my kind of weather!!

This morning John and I had a couple of returns to do then we drove down to the beach, the water was rolling in pretty good so although there were a number of people on the beach no one was in the water. We then drove out to Fort Morgan, which is at the end of the road on Mobile Bay. You can take a ferry from Fort Morgan across to Dauphin Island, then there is a bridge joining Dauphin Island to the mainland at Mobile, this is a lot shorter than driving around Mobile Bay to Mobile but it is also very expensive.

Mobile Bay Drilling Rig (There are a lot of these rigs in the bay as well as the ocean)



Fort Morgan







We couldn’t believe all the houses built along the intercoastal waterway on the road to Fort Morgan, I can’t imagine building a house there with the constant threats of hurricanes each year. There are huge areas of dead trees along there from Hurricane Ivan which hit Gulf Shores dead on in 2004 and then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the storm surge brought in so much salt water that there were thousands and thousands of trees killed.

Just A Small Beach House



Dead Trees



Beach Houses



We had invited Gil, Ginny, Barb & Jack for happy hour at 5 so got home just in time to do some veggies and dip to serve at happy hour. The Blue Heron kindly came to the pond beside us while we were sitting out on the patio so we had fun watching him stalking his dinner.

Blue Heron By The Pond





Jack, Barb, Gil & Ginny



Around 7 we all headed out to Lulu’s for dinner, Lulu is actually Lucy Buffet, Jimmy Buffet’s sister, and Ginny & Gil are Jimmy Buffet fans so wanted to go there for dinner. The restaurant is right on the intercoastal waterway so has a great view and we had a great dinner with lots of chatter and laughs.

It is now pretty well bed time and we have to be up early tomorrow morning for our planned event so do come back and check out our next adventure.

As always, the last two days have been great gifts here in the sunny south and we look forward to another good day tomorrow.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Time to catch up again, yesterday wasn’t a real exciting day so I didn’t bother to do my blog. It was a hot, humid day and the first thing on the agenda was laundry, Barb had said there was a nice laundromat down on Fort Morgan Road so that was where we went to get that job out of the way. Once we finished with the laundry we went to Wally World to do some shopping and we ran into Ginny, Gil, Barb & Jack there, they had planned on a walk on the beach in the morning but they said it was too windy so they had gone out for lunch and stopped for some shopping.

When we got home we unloaded the laundry and groceries then John drove up to Foley to try and find a bracket for the slide on the bathroom drawer which had broken, having no luck at either Lowe’s or Home Depot he came back and managed to make do with the broken one until we can find a replacement. By the time he finished that it was time to start dinner – where oh where do the days go!!!

Today John & I decided to drive up to Fairhope which is a beautiful little town on Mobile Bay. We took all the back roads to get there and once we started driving up the bay boy did we see some gorgeous homes. Fairhope is a quaint little town with lots of neat stores but we have done the stores before so didn’t bother doing any today as it was very busy there.

Nice Sculpture in Park at Fairhope



Mobile Bay at Fairhope



Beautiful Flower Beds in Downtown Fairhope



Fairhope Traffic Calmers



Roses in Garden at Fairhope Park



Fountain in Rose Garden



Now This is a Stretch!!!



I Don't Think I've Ever Seen Pretty Shrimp!!



From there we drove up to Spanish Fort as Kelly had asked me to get her some stuff at a Bath & Body Works if we were near one and at Fairhope we were only about 12 miles from Spanish Fort, where there was one, so figured we had nothing better to do. What a huge shopping mall there, one could have a really great time if they were really into shopping!!

We again took the back roads home and found a brand new Wally World out in the middle of nowhere so stopped and picked up a couple of things, then on home.

This Guy Was Standing at the Pond Beside Our Trailer When John Went Out to Barbecue



Last night we got caught up on phone calls – talked to M & M, my sister and my friend Janet – it’s always nice to get caught up. I also talked to my brother in Australia for a bit on Skype but again the internet signal wasn’t great so I am looking forward to trying it when we get home.

As always, the last two days have been great gifts here in the sunny south and we look forward to another good day tomorrow.