What is it with people around here!?

My last post back in early May signed off with us hopeful that we had seen the last of the mean people.  Memorial weekend had been a marked improvement in the clientele and it had been a very pleasant three day holiday to work.  Alas, it did not last.  School let out and wave after wave of campers that said; "we live just down the road" showed up.  There truly were some gems in that bunch and we looked forward to seeing them but the mean and nasty crowd returned in force.  Unfortunately the Corps of Engineers do not have any regulations against being a prick so we just had to deal with it.

That being said, I am going to turn my writing attention to the more positive experiences and the oddities.  Although there are a couple of high drama moments that have played out over the summer that are worth mentioning.  That will be in following posts.

May - June 2017

We continue to get settled in even though it has been weeks since arriving.  The work schedule is pretty grueling and leaves little energy to photograph and write about our experiences.  Hence me writing about things five months in arrears.  Slowly but surely we are getting a rhythm down and recording little tidbits here and there.

Victoria Campground was "remodeled" in 1988 and it was a very well done project.  Whoever did the engineering for upgrading the ancient campsites to a more modern camper (read big RV's with lots of power requirements) knew what they were doing.  It is really, really nice in this campground.  However, they didn't do or were not allowed to give the same attention to our driveway.  We have two skinny lanes for entering the park, one lane to park in for registering and one lane for passing through to the campground.  The registration lane will hold two truck/trailer combinations and then there might be room for a car behind that.  That works okay if your check-ins are spread out over the whole week and the whole day of each week but it never works out that way.  There is usually a rush of campers starting mid-afternoon on Friday and lasting until 9:00 pm.  We'll have them lined up out in the (very narrow) street that serves not only as our entrance but also the entrance to the private marina and the Corps of Engineers boat ramp, day use area and public beach.  The street turns into a jumbled up mess of RV's, trucks, bass boats, giant speed boats, and party boats every Friday afternoon and pretty much all day Saturday.

This little gate house is where we spend 15.5 hours a day.

It is odd that we are located in such a densely populated area yet there is virtually no cell phone  signal.  The Verizon signal is just enough to barely get a text message, a voice call is impossible.  AT&T does just enough better to hold a voice call if you are standing in the right place.  Getting a good enough quality link to get on the web with our jetpack is an exercise in futility.  The Corps has done nothing to bring modern communications to the campground either.  There is a single, traditional land line to the gatehouse that can be used to only dial the headquarters office or 911.  Our computer link for operating the national reservation system is via an ancient HughesNet satellite dish.  Data transmission rates are reminiscent of dial-up modems and we loose our connection altogether when a thunderstorm rolls by to our southeast.

Our internet link is via the big dish on the roof and our TV link is the little dish on the tripod.

 The Corps leaves us little flexibility in what we can and can't do while on duty in the gatehouse.  One concession is that we can have a TV and that was justified on the need to monitor local news and weather.  However, we had to supply our own equipment and since over the air TV signals don't reach here either, it was satellite TV or nothing.  Luckily our partners had dealt with this last year so they were prepared with all the equipment necessary.  All we had to do was help set it up.

Our commute to work.

 There are two teams running this campground, Team A and Team B.  We are Team B and when on duty there is a sign hanging on a post that marks the path to our rig that says so.  From the post to our rig at the other end of the path constitutes our entire "commute" to work.  If you walk slow you might be able to stretch it into a 45 second travel time.  As if 15.5 hours a day in the gatehouse was not enough, the purpose of the sign is to direct middle-of-the-night campers to us to unlock the gates for emergency departures or noise complaints or whatever that can't wait until morning.  So far that part of the job has thankfully been minimal.

We are also getting familiar with the animals that call the campground home.  One morning, walking to work I heard faint squeaking noises as I went by the post that held our "On Duty" sign.

As I approached I noticed that the core of the post had a hollow rotted out and the sound seemed to be coming from there.

It was dark in the bottom of the hollow but once I got some light on the subject, four little black-headed chickadees came into view. 

The nuthatches wasted no time in getting comfortable with the bird feeder.

We have goldfinches but their visitations have been erratic.  Some days we'll have a dozen and then not see one for several days.

There are several mated pairs of cardinals hanging around.  I bet we start seeing juveniles soon.

Animals of the feathered persuasion are not all that we are seeing.  This little lady has been showing up regularly since discovering the bird feeder.  Based on the girth of her belly and the splay in her hips I expect we will be seeing a fawn with her soon.

She is an accomplished bird feeder eater.  She can drain nearly the whole three pounds of seed in just a few minutes.

The Canada Geese have their families well on the way.  We've got at least three mated pairs with about twenty newly-hatched waddling around.

One critter that we have not seen lately is a squirrel that I wrote about in a previous post.  We had even gone so far as to name him.  Stumpy disappeared only days after that post and has not been seen since.  However there have been many to come in his place.  The squirrel-proof bird feeders are driving them crazy and it is very entertaining watching them trying to noodle out a way get those seeds that are so close yet so far away. There is one exception.  Walking home one evening we noticed something on the feeder but it was too dark to make out so we whipped out the trusty iPhones and turned on their flashlights.  Much to our surprise there sat a big-eyed flying squirrel having his way with the bird feeder.  This guy was so small and light he did not trigger the spring loaded doors and was enjoying a leisurely midnight meal.  We had never seen a flying squirrel before, got to put a notch in our journal for this one.

Getting Into Victoria Campground-Life Routine

We are in our seventh 4-day shift (with four days off between shifts) and settling into a routine.  Both of us are wondering what we have gotten ourselves into.  We are feeling the full effect of 15.5 hour days in the gatehouse with no option for either of us to leave the park at any time during the four days on duty.  It pretty much takes the entire four days off to do everything that needs to be done so that you can be on duty for the next four days.  We are working on streamlining this operation so that we can have some fun-time on our days off.

When we took this campground everyone that had been around for awhile told us how lucky we were to get such a "good" campground.  Lots of families they said, nice people they said, rarely any problems they said.  Let us tell you, it was anything but for our first six shifts.  People were rude, mean-spirited, obnoxious, cheaters and swindlers.  The parade of society's ills seemed endless and we were on the verge of turning in our park keys and terminating the contract.  Of all the campgrounds we have done and thousands of campers we have met none were even close to as a miserable bunch as these people coming to Victoria Campground on Lake Allatoona.

Plus there was the crush of back-to-back holidays.  We had two weeks of spring break, Easter and Mother's Day.  The campground was essentially booked full for a month and a half.  And if being fully booked wasn't enough, almost every camper was a local, coming 10 miles or less.  This means that they all had family come stay with them and then visitors each day they were camping.  This COE location has the highest number of people allowed per site of anywhere we have worked at 8 people per site.  Sometimes our registered population would approach 400, that's way too many for this little campground.

We hope we don't jinx it by saying something but our last shift, the Memorial Holiday, was a completely different experience.  People were nice, friendly, patient, pleasant to talk to, everything opposite of what we had been gutting out in previous weeks.  If it stays like this things will be pretty good except for the hours.

This post was pretty much a belly-aching session but it is true to our experience.  We hope that things keep looking up and we have more fun things to write about in the next posts.

Learning the Ropes - New Surroundings

We've been getting to know our new campground and its residents, which right now is just us and some critters.  We have about 10 more days before the park opens to the public and it is quiet and serene in here behind locked gates.  The campground has 75 improved campsites but there are only 72 that are available to campers.  The closed-to-the-public campsites are the ones used to house contractors for the campground and day use area that is adjacent to the campground.

As one would expect, we have a large number of squirrels making these thick woods their home.  But we have spotted one squirrel in particular that is distinctly identifiable.  He, or maybe it is a she, almost has no tail.

With it being so easy to identify, we have named it.  Stumpy is a frequent visitor to the cast-off area under the bird feeders.  And it looks like he needs to be, in addition to a highly abbreviated tale he is one skinny squirrel.

This is a lake campground and as such we have a number of campsites that are at water's edge.  One evening I was doing a little walking therapy for my still healing broken heel.  As I stepped out of the interior sites to the lake's edge I was greeted to a sunset I haven't seen since we were in Texas this past summer.

Also while at this spot I was hearing some pretty loud screeching sounds.  It did not take long to find the source - two ospreys were soaring above and then diving down to the water to snatch up fish.  They were then carrying the fish to a nest, a really big nest, and dropping them in to waiting chicks in a tree just above my head.  It is not my best bird of prey shot but I was able to get one of them on the wing when it got high enough to catch some of the fading light.

And while I'm on the subject of birds, I had gone to the back of the camper to get our bicycles out of their cover and off the rack so we could do a little riding.  As I unzipped the top of the cover it exposed Cyndee's bike and her handle bar basket.  To my surprise there was a well formed nest in the basket and a clutch of eggs.

Carolina Wren nest and eggs in Cyndee's bicycle basket.

Somehow a little wren had found its way into one of the drain holes in the bottom of the cover, hopped all the way up to the top where the basket is and had done this countless times to build the nest and eventually lay the eggs.  Whew, makes me tired just writing about it.  Needless to say that there will not be any bicycle riding until those chicks are grown and gone.  I just zipped the cover back up and walked away.

With us being so close to the grand baby now, it is also convenient for them to come to us.  Not to mention there is a really nice playground and sandy beach.  So we had a visit and after a hard afternoon on the climbing panels and slides we took a moment to relax and watch Daniel Tiger.

Since I mentioned watching TV I guess I should say that we found a hole in the sky and were able to put a dish on a pole.  It took about 130 feet of coax cable to get the signal from the dish to the receiver but we now have satellite service.  We are also owners of a second dish, pole mounting kit and SWiM LNB.  I have no idea where we are going to carry all that stuff when we leave here.  I've got until the end of October to figure it out so I'll just let my thoughts simmer on this for awhile.

But at the moment there are more pressing matters.  We have been having some unauthorized feeding at the bird feeders during the night.  In addition to our seed feeders we also put out a suet cake.  The seed feeders are "smart" and will close when the wrong pressure is placed on the perch.  But the suet cake is in a simple wire frame.  Normally one of these cakes will last a couple of weeks but we have been replacing the cake daily for the past three days.  It is definitely happening in the wee hours of the morning but we do not know what it is that is doing it.  It could be deer, we have about a half dozen that frequent our campsite or maybe it is a nocturnal tree dwelling animal, we don't know but we are going to find out.

My DSLR camera has a time-lapse feature on it and I set it up on a tripod on top of the dining table, aimed out our heavily tinted window at the bird feeders.  Not an ideal set up but it should be good enough to identify the culprit.  I programmed the camera to take a 3-shot burst every five minutes all night long.  The next morning a quick review of the nearly 500 pictures told the story of what was happening to our suet cakes.

Not an ideal setup for low light photography but good enough to answer our question.

The pictures were barely discernible, despite using the highest powered setting for low light there was almost no image to see.  After the first scan through the pictures there were a handful that were obvious that something was there.  These were loaded into my PaintShop Pro software and I used all the buttons I could for image enhancement.  Slowly a shape emerged and then distinctive alternating black and white rings on a tail.  We had a raccoon.  And he was not quick about his work either.  He showed up in shots starting at 2:00 am and kept showing up until 5:00 am.  So that is the end of our suet cake feeding.  We'll withhold it for a month or so and see if the raccoon moves on.

Training has started.  We drive about 20 miles to the main office that sits adjacent to the top of the dam in Cartersville, GA.  From 8:00am to 4:00pm (for five days) we are going through the 130 page operations manual line by line.  It is mind numbing and disturbing at the same time.  Mind numbing because each thing on its own is so simple, disturbing because there are so many things that we have no idea how anyone could be expected to remember everything.  We have been doing campground hosting for almost five years at a variety of agencies but never have we seen a campground operation with so many "moving parts".  There are so many steps to checking somebody in that it is a wonder you can get the process complete before their stay expires.

There will be one day between our last day of training and the opening of the park.  It's about to happen.

New Position on Lake Allatoona

It is done.  We have moved from Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area (as volunteer gate attendants) to Victoria Campground (as contractor park attendants).  It will be a couple of weeks before the campground is open to the public so we are just cooling our jets until our five day training session starts next week.

This campground is operated by two sets of hosts.  Our co-hosts are a really nice couple that live in a town west of the campground, almost all the way over to the place where we spent the winter in Carrollton, GA.  They will be living in their motor home in the campground while on duty and driving home (about an hour away) on their days off.  This will be their 8th year as park attendants at this campground so we will have some good, solid experience to draw on as we get through our first few days on duty and learn the routine.

The host's campsites are on either side of the entrance to the campground, flanking the gatehouse.  They are marked as A and B.  We are in the B-site and it is deep (about an 80' driveway) and densely wooded.

PAC (Park Attendant Contractor) Site B.
Nestled deep into some thick woods with lots of space between it and any other camp site.

The sky is not even remotely visible (except in the opposite direction) so there will be no satellite signal making its way to our roof mounted satellite dish.  We are going to have to go to plan B for site B.  The same can be said for cell phone connections.  Even as populated as this place is, cell towers are not close enough to be of much use.  Most of the time our phones are displaying a signal strength of one bar and 1X.  No 3G or LTE at all.  Having a voice connection is not possible and transmitting data is ultra slow or non-existent.  Our jetpack is useless at this point.

Luckily there is a commercial wifi signal blasting our way from the marina across the road.  They offer unlimited data at three speeds.  We are going to try the 6 mbs and see if it is good enough to stream video so that we will have some way to get local news and weather while waiting for the solution to our satellite connection.  We found a satellite dish installer but the closest one is more than an hour away, near our old house in Johns Creek.  Business must be good because he is booked solid.  He has agreed to come out to our location "after hours" in about a week barring no unforeseen difficulties with his existing schedule.  The wifi speed we chose is going to run us $50/month but in addition to being able to do our email, banking, bill paying and streaming video, we will also be able to configure our phones for VoIP (phone calls through the internet).  If the wifi signal holds up we should be pretty well set for our communication needs.

We have a few days to explore our new surroundings before training starts on Thursday of next week (that will be March 16, 2017) so that is just what we are going to do plus get in some time with the grand baby.  She is now only thirty minutes away, it is no longer a major production or diesel guzzling operation, we can just drop in on a whim.  Not sure how our daughter and son-in-law feel about that but we are sure liking it.

Fly in the Ointment

While enjoying our time at Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area our volunteer coordinator's job has changed and now she is the contract liaison for all the campgrounds on Lake Allatoona.  Every since her job change she has been after us to bid on jobs that have come open due to medical issues (most of us campground hosts are old folks and unfortunately medical issues are common).  From our interview for the day use area job she knew that we had been trained in the use of the national reservation system and she was seeing an opportunity to get someone that would need minimal training at this late stage in the process.

We gave in and agreed to place a bid but that meant creating a company, registering the company with Dunn & Bradstreet and cross-registering with the Department of Defense (which is who the Corps of Engineers report to).  The red tape was horrific and took weeks to get certified but we got it done.  In the end we spent a chunk of money to meet everybody's requirements.  Our insurance company about had a cow when they found out that our camper and truck was going to used by someone that was a contractor.  We were required to raise our coverage limits which in turn raised our premium by several hundred dollars.  And on top of that happy news, we are now going to have to file taxes in two states, our home state of Texas and Georgia.

But it is done now and we have submitted a bid to be contract park attendants at Victoria Campground on Lake Allatoona and have been accepted.  We'll stay where we are a few more days until all the paperwork clears the final checks.  For now we have opened Cooper's Furnace and are enjoying light duty.

We are scheduled for a week of training in mid-March and have been given the green light to move into our new park as early as March 10.  The move will be a short one, relocating from the bottom of the dam to a campground about 7 miles up the river channel that forms the lake.  But that is the "as the crow flies" mileage.  To get our cabin on wheels to the new campground it will be a bout a 20 mile meander on arterial roads that feed the neighborhood roads that lead to the campground.

Lake Allatoona is a long, narrow, winding lake.  Our current position,
is Cooper's Furnace, below the dam.  We'll be moving up the lake to
Victoria Campground in a few days.

And that brings up something that is very different about any campground that we have ever hosted, this place is smack in the middle of a densely populated suburb of a metropolitan area.  Our address is associated with the town of Woodstock, GA.  Once upon a time it was a quaint little place that primarily supported a farming community.  But the growth in and around Atlanta since the late 1980's has reached well north of this place.  There are subdivisions pressed right up against the campground property and we share this stretch of shoreline with a COE day use park and a private marina that also has housing on its property.  You would think that that would be a good thing for services like over-the-air TV signals and cell phone signals but noooo.... once again we are in a "dead zone".  It is going to take some work to get connected.

This will be our campground.  Two loops, each with a bath
house and dump station and a total of 75 campsites.

But on the plus side we are within minutes of any kind of shopping and entertainment one would want.  One exception - the local Sonic Drive In is closed for remodeling and probably won't be reopened until after we are gone.  Oh well, it won't be so easy to fall off the diet wagon.

Here We Move Again - Cooper's Furnace

A couple of months have expired since the last post.  Christmas and New Year were spent driving the 1.5 hour trip to the kids house many, many times.  I'm afraid to even calculate all the diesel we burned.  One of the trips was to stay for several days and baby/dog/house sit.  We had a blast doing that.

But now it is near the end of February and we are moving to our volunteer position at Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area.  Generally speaking, we are moving from Carollton, GA to Cartersville, GA, right at about an hour's drive.  The back roads that we have been using to get to the kids' house are not going to work for moving the rig.  They are just too small and draped over with low hanging tree branches.  We'll have to take the dreaded I-20/I-285/I-75 route.  These roads are always choked with traffic even on a good day and lately there have not been many good days because of heavy construction.

The job at Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area is set to be our easiest gig yet.  We'll have a place to stay from the end of February until December with a 4-day on 4-day off schedule.  If we are on during a weekday we only have to be there to open the gate in the morning and close it again at night.  If we are on during a weekend then there are just a few hours in the gatehouse to go along with the gate opening/closing routine.  No maintenance to do, no bathrooms to clean, no mowing to be done (by us).  We just have to be "present" for security and to answer visitor questions about the Etowah River.  Sweet!

Dropping anchor at the entrance to Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area

You can't see it in the picture above but our RV pad is a double site.  There is room for a second rig that will be our co-hosts for the season.  Only right now the people that were supposed to come have dropped out of the program and the volunteer coordinator is scrambling to find somebody to fill in.  Since the park does not open for another 10 days we have the place to ourselves.  We are one mile inside the locked gate and have solitude like never before.

This is a really great set-up.  We are on a large pad with picnic tables, lamp poles and paved patio.  All this is situated alongside the Etowah River but the brush is so thick we can't see it, even with it being winter and all the leaves dropped off.  We can hear it, just can't see it. Cell phone signals are non-existent down in this river valley and our satellite dish is just barely getting enough of a beam to tune in a few channels.  When the leaves start coming in that will be all she wrote for TV.  However I did notice a pole across the road that I am pretty sure the previous hosts were using for their satellite dish.  We'll have to check into getting the equipment we need to go that route.

But for now we're enjoying the moment.  While it is the most solitude we have ever had we are by no means in a remote area.  In just five minutes we can be in the town of Cartersville where they have all the essentials such as Walmart, Publix, Kroger (with attractive diesel prices) and a Sonic Drive-In.  Everything a fulltimer could need.  Plus, we are now only thirty minutes from the grand baby.  I hope they don't get tired of seeing us.

It's Only a Quarter Mile but We Have Moved

Finally!  A spot has come open in the full hook-up section of Little Talapoosa Park.  It is the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend and we have been given the green light to vacate our equestrian site and occupy a paved site with power, water and yes, sewer!

Now the challenge is to get packed, hitched and moved while on crutches.  But it has been nine weeks since the break and John is about to be released for using a walking cast.  He's already been driving left footed for the last month.  We won't be as fast as usual but we'll get it done.

Our new digs for the next several weeks.

Little Talapoosa Park is a very nice park with groomed walking/biking trails, some even paved, and our new campsite fits right in.  It is spacious and level with a view out our rear picture window looking into a mixed woods of conifers and hardwoods.  While the site is mostly clear of trees directly above and to our forward position, there are a couple of trees off to the side that are directly in line of our satellite signal.  Luckily the one that is most in line is a hardwood and it is beginning to drop its leaves.  We got enough of a signal that the dish could align with the satellite but our higher channels are pretty pixelated.  Every time the wind blows and knocks a few more leaves off our picture gets better.  It should be perfect by mid-December.

Our attention is now turning to the coming Christmas holiday and the volunteer job we are lining up with the Corps of Engineers.  We have been accepted as Day Use Park Attendants at a Corps of Engineers facility on the Etowah River.  This river park is literally at the bottom of the dam to Lake Allatoona in north Georgia.  Our duties at this place will be the most minimal we have done at any volunteer position, only opening and closing one gate each day we are on duty (4 days on, 4 days off) and sitting in a gate house for a few hours if our duty falls on a weekend.  We have been told we can move into the park on or about Feb 20th.  While this is about the easiest volunteer duty we have ever pulled, it is even better because we are only thirty minutes away from the grand baby.

In a Holding Pattern

Weeks have gone by since the last posting.  Halloween has come and gone and the days are cooler and there is a faint tinge of color in the leaves.  It is close enough to Thanksgiving to start thinking about the holiday meal shopping list.  Time to scout out where we can get a smoked turkey.

Still on crutches but the good thing is that John's arms and shoulders are getting buff.  Getting out and doing things is a little easier now that some stamina has been built up.  Orthopedist visits have been positive in that everything seems to be healing correctly and that no surgery will be required.  Whew!

Yet we still wait.  Wait for the healing process and wait for a an RV site to become available so that we can move out of the equestrian loop and into the full hook up loop.  We've been told by a gate attendant that after Thanksgiving it was looking promising for some of the long-term contractors to be moving on.  We'll keep our fingers crossed.  This paying someone to come and vacuum out our tanks is getting old, and expensive.  On their last visit the driver informed us that they would be doubling their fee and cutting their schedule in half.  Beginning December 1st they would only be coming once every two weeks.  Lucky for us that we have tanks large enough that we were already at once every two weeks but our fellow campers out here in the equestrian section are not equipped the same.  They are going to have to start practicing some extreme conservation.

Being laid up and not doing any hiking or sight-seeing there are no pictures for this post.  Well, I do have lots and lots of grand baby pics but nobody wants to see those except us.

Maybe the next post will be more interesting.

Big Gulp Bites the Dust Again!

It is October the 10th (2016) and 11 days since I (John) broke my foot.  Thank goodness for comfortable recliner chairs in our RV.  They are an upgrade/present we gave ourselves back in the spring.  There is no way that the factory installed recliners would have tolerated my eighteen hours a day of being leaned back with my leg elevated on a mound of blankets and pillows.

Regardless of how comfortable my recliner is, that is a lot of time on one's backside and I am getting a little stir-crazy.  Cyndee was needing to go grocery shopping and I was determined to get out and go with her.  I can manage the crutches getting to and from Big Gulp (our truck) but I am going to make use of the electric carts once we get to Walmart.  The inside of that place is just too many square feet for me to walk on my hands.

It is a bright, beautiful, fall day as we exit Little Talapoosa Park and point Big Gulp in the direction of our destination in Carrollton, GA, about 5 miles away.  We got stopped at the first red light inside the city limits and after a brief wait for the green, Cyndee stepped on the accelerator and....nothing.  Big Gulp kind of sputtered and coughed but there was no rise in rpm's and no movement forward.  Oh boy, here we go again.

The 6.0 litre engine that was put in Ford trucks the year ours was built have been an absolute disaster.  The list of things that fail (again and again) is as long as your arm.  We have had multiple head gaskets fail, multiple turbo-charger rebuilds, all eight fuel injectors have been replaced at least twice each, and the exhaust gas return cooler ruptured once.  With the exception of the turbo and fuel injectors all the other repairs require that the cab of the truck be taken off.  That is a specialized operation with specialized equipment for lifting the cab so the mechanic can get to the engine and so far Ford dealerships are the only place I have found that have the equipment and can do the work.

We know what the symptoms are for a variety of failures and today's failure is not familiar at all.  It would seem something new has found a way to break.  So it's on to our roadside emergency app to summon a large tow truck.  It took our service awhile to find a tow company nearby with a truck big enough to tow us but in about an hour and a half we were getting picked up.

Getting the driver, Cyndee, me and my crutches in the small cab of the tow truck was a pretty good trick but we finally found the right combination of positions to get the doors closed and we're on our way to the Carrollton Ford dealership.  While the driver was dropping the truck in a mechanic's bay we were at the service desk arranging for a rental car.

It was the next day when Ford called to tell what was wrong and get the go-ahead to do the repairs.  It seems that our exhaust gas return (EGR) valve had failed in the open position.  That means no air flow to the turbocharger which explains why nothing happened when the accelerator was stepped on.  Luckily this is a repair that could be done without taking the cab off.  Still didn't make it cheap or quick though.

We picked up our rent car and proceeded to get our grocery shopping done.  For the next week we are going to be zipping around in a small vehicle, burning gasoline instead of diesel.  Sounds like a good time to do a few trips to the kids' house about an hour and a half away.

Lucky Dog

It took five days after John broke his heel to get into to see the orthopedic surgeon.  But it turned out to be worth the wait.  In the those days of waiting with the foot elevated and confined in a half-cast the heel bone settled into a good position.

Another set of full X-rays by the orthopedist showed that the heel bone was intact, completely broke off but intact.  And it had moved itself into perfect position to heal naturally without having to be screwed together.  The orthopedist said I was one of the lucky few that this happens to as well over 90% of these fractures require the placement of multiple screws to pull the heel into proper alignment.  I'll take my luck and run with it.

Not having to have surgery was the end of the good luck.  I was still going to have to wear a cast and absolutely put no weight on my foot for a minimum of 10 weeks.  Being on crutches for almost 3 months doesn't exactly fit in the plans of an active fulltimer, but there is nothing that can be done about it, like I have said in many posts before, the one thing a fulltimer must be good at is flexibility in their plans.  We are going to get a chance to practice that in a big way now.

Traded in the old-school cast for this high-tech boot cast.
It has an air bladder that you pump up and it locks everything in place.

And another thing, the doctor said no driving for me.  I can understand that if I were medicated but I have not taken anything stronger than a Tylenol since they gave me a pain shot the day I broke my foot.  It is my right foot, I can just stick it across the transmission hump of the truck and drive left footed.  I've done it for 22 weeks combined on my last two stints on crutches, I can do it again.  Cyndee is not on board with that thinking.

Something I have not written about in previous posts is our research for a volunteer job in proximity to our daughter's new house.  We found, applied for and got a volunteer position at a day use area on the Etowah River just below the dam to Lake Alatoona.  It was only 30 minutes from our daughter's and was a very simple job, just opening and closing the gates each day and a few hours in an information booth on weekends.  We can move our rig into the host site near the end of February so that is why we had been looking for long term parking upon our arrival in Georgia in September.  John should be walking without crutches by then but the doctor did say that it would be a minimum of a year before the foot would be fully healed.

Now it is just a matter of John sitting with his foot elevated while bones mend.  It is going to be a long, boring winter.

Moving Day - Ouch!

We got ourselves packed up and moved from Chattahoochee Bend State Park in Newnan, GA to Little Talapoosa Park in Carrollton, GA.  The drive took less time than it did to break camp and then set up again at the new spot.  We are in place just one day before we will be very busy with the movers while the kids are doing a double closing down in the middle of Atlanta.

Our campsite in the equestrian section is very large and despite being nothing but dirt and a little gravel, it is pretty nice.  It is spacious and widely spaced from the campsites on either side of us.  It did require a number of boards under our rear jacks to get things leveled out as there was a front to back slope on the whole site.  They removed a huge number of trees to build the equestrian sites so we have a clear shot at the satellites.  We'll have to get after the locating of a septic pumping service, aka honey wagon, since there is no sewer or dump station.

Back to helping the kids.  We will be coordinating the movers at the new house.  The timing on this thing is tight, they are doing the double-close on both houses and the buyers are requiring immediate possession of their old house which means they have a moving truck full of their possessions with nowhere to go for the night but will be at the new house first thing in the morning.  So while the kids are downtown signing about a thousand pages of legal documents we will be at the new house directing the movers on where to put things.

But for this afternoon we are going to explore our new environment and do a little shopping.  Again we sample some local fare, a Bar-B-Que dive.  Yes, it was good and no we have not been able to get back to clean eating.

Walmart, Kroger and Publix were all located and our fridge is now crammed full.  We're set for at least two weeks.  It's off to bed and an early rise tomorrow.

September 27, 2017

Moving day.  We are trying to find our way to Marietta, GA via back roads because using I-20 to I-285 to I-75 is simply not do-able.  Those roads are so crammed with throngs of vehicles and accidents that it is impassable a great deal of the time.  We are going to figure out a way to thread our way through the rural towns and suburbs.  It is going to be a lot of turns and a lot of lights but we should arrive alive.

Our first attempt got us there in an hour and fifteen minutes, less than half the time it would have taken if we had stayed at Chattahoochee Bend.  We're good with that.  Now we have to get that moving truck unloaded.

The new house came with a small barn/large shed in the back yard.  Our son-in-law custom makes knives and he has forges a hammer mill plus an anvil and a large assortment of hand tools for metal and leather working.  We're talking lots of equipment.

I was inspecting the shed and putting together a game plan for where to put everything.  The shed had hip roof that allowed for the rafters to be sheathed and used as a second floor, so long as you don't need to stand up straight.  There was a make-shift ladder that the previous owner had left in place.  I suppose for getting down his stuff on the move out.  I wanted to see if everything was cleared out and just how much room there was for putting the kids' stuff in.  I put my right foot on the second rung of the ladder and was in the process of lifting my left foot up to the third rung when things went crash, bang, boom.

The next thing I knew I was picking myself up off the floor, a little dazed but okay except for that searing pain in my ankle.  Well, crap, I've twisted my ankle.  It is not the first time, it will be inconvenient for a time but I'll get along.  But right now I need to get back to the house and get some ice on this thing to keep the swelling down.

Funny thing, as I hobbled back to the house the heel of my foot felt "squishy".  I thought maybe the swelling was already setting in so I made my way to the house and got it elevated and iced.  I set myself up in the driveway in a lawn chair with my foot propped up on the back of another chair and directed the movers between the shed, basement and house.  Once a load got in the house Cyndee took over on placement. After a couple hours of elevation the pain and swelling were getting worse.  It seems that I may have something more than a sprained ankle.

Cyndee called our son to come over after he got off work so he could take me to the local urgent care office.  She would have done it but someone had to stay with the movers, plus I needed somebody strong enough to be a crutch because now I could not let my foot touch the ground.

Long story short, the medical term for my injury was a displaced calcaneus fracture.  The simple description is that I broke my heel clean off!  The X-rays looked pretty gruesome.  They spent two hours after getting the X-rays deciding whether to have emergency surgery to put pins and screws in it tonight or if it could wait till the next day.  Ultimately they decided it could wait.  They put me in a half-cast, gave me a set of crutches and sent me home for the night.

A half-cast and wrapped in Ace bandages will
hold me until I can get to the orthopedic surgeon.

This is not my first time on crutches so I was able to motor right on out of the urgent care office and negotiate uneven surfaces and stairs without a lot of angst.  But because of the injection I got for pain there was going to be no driving for me.  Looks like Cyndee and I will be reversing rolls for awhile, she'll drive and I'll navigate....just as soon as my eyes quit rolling back in my head.

Georgia - Are You Kidding Me?!

Our trip from Alabama to Georgia today (about Sept. 21, 2016) maps out to be right at 4 hours.  We have picked a campground that takes campers by the month.  We are anticipating that we will be around for awhile helping the kids with the move to their new house.  Once they get settled in then we will head out on the I-95 corridor for some Fall leaf-peeping and then return again for the Holidays.

We turn onto the road that leads to our campground and are greeted by large signs saying; "Low Area, Prone to Sudden Flooding".  We move ahead thinking that perhaps the campground is built on elevated ground but were shocked to find that it was even in a lower spot than than the warning signs.  We pulled into the campground and found no obvious office and after sitting in the entrance for some time, were not greeted by anyone either.  We did our own drive-thru and saw that this campground was not suitable for our purposes and that it was time to execute plan B.

Cyndee placed a call to the state park that we were camp hosts for, Chattahoochee Bend, and asked if they had any spots open.  The reply was; "Surrrre, come on down".  It was not ideal as this location was going to be an hour and a half further south than we needed to be but at least we knew it was a good place and we would be able to use the the free-night passes we had earned as volunteers.  We'll set up camp there for a few days and see if we can scope out a different campground in the north suburbs of Atlanta.  The goal being to get into a campground that allows extended stays, is in the northern arc of Atlanta and has full hook-ups.

Chattahoochee Bend State Park

What we thought would be a fairly easy thing to do turned out to be nearly impossible.  We could not find a single campground with more than one or two nights anywhere.  We drove nearly 300 miles trying to find something, anything but it was not to be.  The story was the same everywhere we went, with the construction of a new football stadium, a new baseball stadium and the massive road improvements being done to accommodate those giant venues, everything was bursting at the seams with contractors.  There were waiting lists a mile long at all the campgrounds north of I-285.

Okay, time for plan C.  Again, from our time at Chattahoochee Bend we knew of a campground in Carrollton, GA that we would recommend to people when our campground was full.  Little Talapoosa is a county operated park and allows long-term stays during the off-season.  It appeared ideal for our purposes with the exception that it was almost all the way to the Alabama/Georgia state line.  It will still be over an hours drive to our daughter's new house but at least we won't have to drive through the city to get there.

Little Talapoosa County Park

Little Talapoosa is a relatively new park.  It's 256 acres of campground, trails, woods, lake and river.  The campground is divided into two loops, one for full hook-up RV's and the other for tents with the tent loop having a large bath house and laundry facility.  It is a gorgeous park and if it were not so far away from where we wanted to be, it would be perfect.  But only minutes after arriving we discovered that even campgrounds more than an hour commute to all the construction, they too were full of contractors.  After some discussion we were at least put on a waiting list, which was way better than anywhere else we had been.

Before heading back to Chattahoochee bend we made a pit stop at the tent loop bath house where maintenance people were doing the daily mopping, cleaning and disinfecting.  It turns out that the "workers" were county jail inmates, black and white striped pants and all.  One of them was a chatty fellow and had obviously been doing work at the campground for awhile because when we told him of our dilemma he immediately told us that we really needed to talk to the park manager.  It seems that they had just completed work on installing 10 RV sites in what was to be their equestrian loop.  Everything was dirt and gravel and there were no sewer connections but they did have 50 amp power and good water.

Just as we were getting in our truck to go back to the office, the chatty fellow saw a vehicle in the distance and started waving it over to us.  It was the park manager and he went out to her and had a short conversation upon which she got out of her truck and approached us.  After introductions she said that while the equestrian loop was not finished, we were welcome to a long-term stay while we waited to come up on the wait list for a full hook-up RV site.  Sold!  We jumped on the offer like a chicken on a June Bug.

The caveat was that in addition to not having a sewer connection, the park also had no dump station.  We were going to have to find a honey wagon service and pay to have our tanks pumped out.  We crossed our fingers that there was such a service in the area and put down a months rent starting the next day.  We made a bee-line back to Chattahoochee Bend and started prepping for the move tomorrow.

Just Passing Through

Our kids have firm closing dates for the house they selling and the one they are buying.  We are needing to get ourselves to Georgia so we can help them out on moving day.  So today we are going to cut our distance in half between where we are and our destination in Georgia.  This will land us in Cottondale, Alabama for the night.  No sight-seeing to do but we will probably sample the local fare instead of cooking for ourselves.

We've been sampling the local fare a lot lately and it is taking its toll.  Shirts are tight, pants won't button.  We're going to have to get our eating back on plan or it won't be long before nothing but sweatpants will fit.

We are coming up on the end of September and it is still hot.  Luckily our campground for tonight (Sunset Travel Park) is another one with good power.  Both A/Cs are going full blast trying to keep things cool.  This summer has been one for the books, everywhere we have been all summer long local record high temperatures were being broken every day.  We are not ones to want to rush into winter but this year's heat does have us fondly thinking of temperatures that require coats.

The little berg of Cottondale is an unincorporated community southwest of Birmingham, Al.  Its reason for existence is the cotton mill.  Just not much here except for our campground.  We're turning in early with our anticipation of getting to Georgia tomorrow and seeing the kids.

Crossing the Mississippi River and American History, mid-19th Century

On our outbound journey from Georgia in June (2016) we skipped our planned stop in New Orleans for some tours of historical interest because of all the mechanical issues we had associated with two blow-outs on the trailer.  The days spent on getting repairs done ate up our time we had planned for New Orleans not to mention our desire to "play".  Our destination for today gives us the opportunity to make up for this a little bit.  We are going to call Vicksburg, Mississippi home for the next couple of nights.

We didn't plan it but it is working out that to get to today's destination it fits perfectly within our four hour per day driving window.  We have another private campground picked out because of its convenient location to things we want to do.  Magnolia RV Park Resort will be home for the next couple nights.

And a favorite thing for John is that we get to cross a Mississippi River bridge today.  Not so much for Cyndee.  Essentially all bridges are too narrow, too high and too long for her.  But she does like seeing them from a distance.

Interstate 20 crosses the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, MS

Our chosen RV park for this stopover is Magnolia RV Park Resort.  After our very pleasant experience at Shady Pines in Texarkana we had expectations for Magnolia RV.  After being RV campers for the past fifteen years we should have known better.  And sure enough, it was not what was advertised.  In addition to writing this blog we also write campground reviews on RVParkReviews.com.  Rather than re-hash it, here is an excerpt of our review:

"This is no resort. However it is a an okay RV park. Park owner?/manager was very accommodating and made himself very accessible. To get my Escapees discount the payment for my one night stay was cash only. All sites are packed gravel with a thin strip of grass between you and your neighbor. Your "patio' is your neighbors utility connections. Power was solid with no voltage dips despite the campground being packed full and temperatures above 90 degrees with A/Cs running full blast. Water pressure okay and sewer connection was in good shape. Wifi was good until late evening when everybody was online, their system just couldn't handle all the traffic and connections were dropped and not able to be reaquired. Verizon signal was good for jetpack and voice calls. My site was a very convenient pull through, fairly level with no tree obstructions for satellite. However it was not big enough to hold both my 5th wheel and truck when disconnected. I asked, and got permission, to park my truck perpendicular across the driveway in order not to hang out into the very narrow road in front of me. If a campground in the Vicksburg area was my destination I would probably pick one of the nearby state parks or COE facilities for a multi-night stay or camping experience. But if passing through as I am, this RV park works."

Vicksburg is Old South.  The area has been settled by Native American tribes for thousands of years with the Natchez being the primary tribe since the beginning of recorded history.  The French built a fort in 1719 and conducted trade and fur trapping but by 1729 they were mostly killed out by Natchez raids.  But after allying with the Choctaw, traditional enemies of the Natchez, the French were able to defeat and dispurse the Natchez and their allies, the Yazoo.  Regardless, the French colony never recovered and the Choctaw took over the area by right of conquest and controlled the land for several decades.

A permanent settlement took hold in 1798 and things were pretty copacetic until the American Civil War.  Vicksburg was the epicenter of a battle for control of the Mississippi River, this was the last game piece for the Union to have complete control of the river.  But Vicksburg had a near impenetrable defense atop a high bluff on the river.  So instead of taking on an impossible battle the Union Army laid siege to Vicksburg with the intent to starve them out.  And on July 4, 1863 they achieved their goal after 47 days.  With the surrender of Vicksburg and the defeat of Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg the day before, historically marked this as a turning point in favor of the Union.

The memorial of the siege is what we have come to see.  The National Park System operates the memorial, actually the Vicksburg National Military Park.  

Entrance to the 16 mile driving tail at Vicksburg National Military Park.

This place is pretty big, encompassing 1,325 monuments, 20 miles of historic trenches and earthworks, a 16 mile tour road, and a 12.5 mile walking trail.  We didn't have an endless amount of time so we focused on a few of the more prominent memorials.  One of the first that got us out of the truck was the Illinois Memorial, a large Romanesque structure.

There are 47 steps leading to the Illinois Memorial, one for each day of the siege.

Seal in the floor of the rotunda.

Cyndee gives a little scale to the place.

The Wisconsin Monument also caught our eye.

Lots of action in this bronze sculpture.

Ulysses S. Grant

Recently the park has added an exhibit of the ironclad U.S.S. Cairo.  It was reclaimed from the muddy waters of the Mississippi and what was left after more than a hundred years of being submerged was reassembled in a permanent dry dock on the grounds of the Vicksburg National Military Park.  

U.S.S. Cairo Exhibit

The museum is built into the side of a hill, adjacent to the exhibit.

You can't see it from my pictures, but the exhibit can be entered.  You can go onboard and explore the main deck and look into below-deck areas.

Our home state of Texas has erected monument with bronze statuary.

 As mentioned in previous posts, we have been doing genealogy on both of our families for many years.  As we have developed deeper and deeper connections in each of our blood lines we have been amazed at the similar migratory path our ancestors took as they landed on the east coast and moved west over a century's time.  Not only did our families pass through the same states in the same years, they also lived in the same or adjacent counties.  We keep joking that if we continue our research we might find out that we are cousins.

A prominent figure in Cyndee's line (prominent in regards to there being quite a bit written about him) is her 4X great uncle, Arthur Exum Reynolds, Colonel 26th Miss. Infantry.  He was a commander of a brigade during the Siege of Vicksburg and is one of hundreds that has an individual monument erected in his name.

Much of the historical ground of the siege is outside the National Park boundaries but places are set aside and monuments erected none the less.  Col. Reynolds' monument is one that is on the outside.  We got a map of monuments from the park service and found our way to a road just outside the park boundaries.  Finding the monument was easy, finding a place to park not so much.  But we did find a spot that was almost big enough for the truck and pulled in long enough to walk to the monument and get a couple of pictures.

That's Col. Reynolds' monument in the distance as seen from our parking spot.

Arthur E. Reynolds
Col. 26th Miss. Infantry
Commanding Brigade Loring's Division
Red Granite with Bronze Plaque

Seeing all the history, especially with a family connection, was pretty nice.  But we are heading back to the campground and start preparations for travel on the morrow.

Two Days of Driving and Still in Texas.

Two days of driving and we are still in the state of  Texas.  Okay, so we only drive four hours a day, but in eight hours of driving you can cross most states and then some.  And we are not even close to crossing the wide part of the state.  That would be El Paso to Orange, Tx on I-10 at a little over 12 hours in perfect traffic through San Antonio and Houston,,, not likely.

It's September the seventeenth 2016 and our goal for the day is Texarkana.  Literally, as far as you can go on TX-82 and still be in Texas.  Since we were going to end our day in a little more populated area we searched for a park last night and have called ahead to be sure there is space available.  We'll be staying at Shady Pines RV Park on the southwest side of Texarkana.  It will be our first privately owned campground since Bartlesville, Ok back in mid July.

We were pleasantly surprised upon our arrival at Shady Pines.  The park appeared to be almost new and looked to have been designed by someone that knew what RV'ing was all about.  The roads were wide, the sites were level and comfortably spaced.  The park had trees but they were strategically planted so as not to interfere with getting in or out when fully mature.  There was a very nice small lake for catch-and-release fishing and there was a grand meeting room that was custom built for accommodating rallies.  All the utilities were great plus they had a strong WiFi signal.

Shady Pines is well done.  Great sites - wide, level, easy in-easy out.  All driving surfaces paved.

Big Rigs welcome at Shady Pines.

We're a little road weary after several weeks of packing up, moving and setting up again every day or two.  We are going to get the air conditioners going and call it a day.  Put on a little mindless TV to nap in front of until it's bedtime.

After sleeping in the next morning both of us are not exactly ginned up to get on the road.  And this campground is so inviting there is no motivation to leave.  The beauty of full timing is that we can choose to extend our stay, if space is available.  And since it is, we are.

We do have some pressure to press on though.  Our daughter's family is moving soon.  They have a contract on the one they are selling and the one they are buying.  Things are starting to happen, packing has commenced and movers have been contracted.  They need us there by move day to take care of the grand baby while they do the juggling act of a double closing.

EVERYTHING is getting boxed up for the move.

Sticking with the theme of being lazy for today, we are not really in the mood to do any meal preparation.  On the way into the park we saw something that caught our attention.  It was a sign that said; "Oak Creek Amish Furniture and Pantry".  Cyndee wanted to go there to look at the furniture no matter what but we were both curious about the pantry part.  It turned out to be a great find.

The pantry had all kinds of staple foods such as flours made from a variety of grains and nuts, a huge variety of fresh made jams and jellies plus fresh made sausages and cheeses.  We picked out a few flavors of cheese a couple sausage blends and some of the freshest crackers we have ever had and went back to the camper and nibbled on what were essentially horderves the rest of the day.

The pantry at Oak Creek Amish Furniture.

Outside of the Amish furniture store we did no exploring in the Texarkana area.  Just hung out at the campground and nibbled.  We also knew we would be in another populated area tomorrow so we did a little online research for campgrounds and have one picked out to call once we are on the road in the morning.