Dothan, AL to Tallahassee, FL

We were up early this morning. Besides having an 8 a.m. appointment to have the tires rotated on the RV, we were trying to beat the severe weather that was moving in.


While Mike dumped our holding tanks and disconnected the electric and water, I stowed the last minute things away and picked up the throw rugs before bringing the slides in and lowering the antennas. Mike paid W. T. for the electric for our last week and it was time to leave.


It started raining just as we left The Willows and the lightning was getting closer and more frequent. Then it REALLY rained – it was like driving through a tropical storm (not quite hurricane rain). Mike was driving the RV and I was following in the Vue. We would outrun the rain, but would have to stop for a traffic light. By the time the light turned green, the torrential rain had caught up with us – this happened 2 or 3 times before we made it to Bell Frame and Brake.


We had put Tinker in his crate in the RV for the drive to Bell’s and we left him in it instead of taking him out into the rain. We drove over to Flying J to have breakfast. Actually Mike had the breakfast buffet, I had toast since I had an upset stomach and hadn’t been feeling well since yesterday. After breakfast we went by the UPS Store to check our mail and turn in the key for the mail box we had rented.


We got back to Bell’s by 10:30 and they were just starting on the RV. The camber on the front wheels was out of alignment and after talking with the owner about it, Mike had them also bend the axle to bring the camber into alignment. So after having the toe-in on the front wheels corrected, the tires rotated and the camber aligned we were finally on our way at 4:30.


We drove over to the Flying J and had the RV weighed. The last time we had it weighed we were 50 lbs over weight and now we are 560 lbs under. So between what we stored and the stuff we donated, we had lessened our load by about 600 lbs. We hitched up the Vue to the RV and left at 5:30 – in the rain.


After leaving the Flying J we drove south to I-10 and headed east. We had planned on spending the night at the Flying J just west of Tallahassee at Midway. But when we pulled into the parking lot a little after 8 p.m. E.D.T.(we lost an hour when we entered the Eastern Time Zone) we weren’t able to park in the area for RVs. A couple of RVs hadn’t pulled into the parking spots straight and so everyone else who came in was also parked crooked. We decided to go up the road and find the Wal-Mart, but saw a Pilot Travel Center not too far from Flying J and decided to park there.


There were some long parking spaces there (not in the truck area) and after some maneuvering Mike was able to go between some trucks and come around the back side of the spaces and park in the last space. By this time it’s 8:30 E.D.T. and after driving in rain since Dothan, we were just ready to stop for the night (forget about the breakfast tomorrow morning at Flying J we had been looking forward to).


This was our first time driving the RV at night – we’re usually stopped for the night by mid to late afternoon. The high beams on the headlights show up great, but the low beams are LOW. Did I mention it rained all the way here?

Last night in Dothan

We’ve spent the last couple of days preparing the RV for our trip. Mike washed the RV yesterday and I ran some last minute errands.

From Dothan, AL

Tinker made his last trip for a while to For Paws Only on Friday for a bath and grooming.

We’ve also been watching the new mom and foal. Every once in a while the foal breaks into a run around mom and she quickly moves over to make it stop. We’ve seen the foal go from having wobbly legs to running circles round its mother in the last couple of days.

It would be fun to be here to watch the foal’s growth and development, but the road is calling and we’re ready to go.

Surprise!

We found out a little while ago that one of the mares in the pasture next to us was pregnant. Since we’re leaving on Monday we knew that we wouldn’t be there for the birth.

So what should Mike see this morning in the pasture when he got up? – a palomino foal! He called W. T. and told him that the mare had given birth sometime during the night and to let the owner know. She came over after a while to check on both of them.

From Dothan, AL

From Dothan, AL

Preparations for our 2009 Trip

Well, we’ve done something we said we wouldn’t do - we’ve rented a storage unit. We have always been heavy on the rear axle and we wanted to see if we could lighten our weight any. Of course, the generator, A/C and gas tank are all in the rear of the RV, so we can’t do anything about that.
We’ve spent this week going through the interior cabinets and the outside bays deciding what to keep, what to store and what to get rid of. We donated the clothing and other stuff that we’re not keeping to the Wiregrass Humane Society Second Chance Thrift Store.
We’ve made an appointment for Monday morning to have our tires rotated on the RV before we start out on our trip for the year. After that we’re going to weigh the RV at the Flying J to see how much the RV weighs since we’ve taken some of our stuff out of it.

Snow in Dothan

The weatherman was right about today's forecast - snow flurries. Okay - it wasn't a lot of snow and it didn't "stick", but it WAS snow. We are still in Dothan, AL and will probably be here until mid-April or so.

We got up this morning to snow flurries - we put our coats on and went out to take photos of the snow. Well, we hadn't used our camera in quite a while and the battery was dead and so was the extra battery! Tinker didn't seem to be too impressed about the snow (he might have if there had been any on the ground). The first thing we did when we came back in was to charge the camera batteries.

About 3:30 this afternoon we got some more snow flurries and were able to get a movie of it - still no accumulation. You can click on the link above and it will take you to our snow movies.

Last Friday was like Christmas around here. We had ordered from 3gstore.com a Cradlepoint CTR500 mobile router to use with our Verizon mobile modem and it came on Friday. We have 2 laptops and only 1 of us could be on the internet at a time. After installing and connecting the router and plugging in our Verizon modem, we both were able to share the internet connection on each laptop. We were concerned that we would see a slowdown in the speed of our internet connection, but we haven't noticed any.

One of the local retailers here had advertised a Western Digital 500GB external hard drive for $80. I checked prices on the internet and found out that I could get a 1TB (1000GB) external hard drive from Dell for only $25 more! Such a deal - we couldn't pass it up. We already have a 200GB external hard drive that we use for backup. The new hard drive also came last Friday.

We are rapidly running out of space on one of our laptops (it has 64GB) and I need to transfer some files and photos off to another drive. We've decided to use the 200GB drive to store our photos and files that we take off of the laptops and use the 1TB drive for backup of both laptops and the 200GB hard drive. We could have gotten a larger hard drive for the laptop, but I hate having to transfer everything over to a new drive.

January 10, 2009

I had requested visitor guides from the western states & Canadian provinces that we plan on visiting on our trip to Alaska this year & we have started receiving them in the mail.

We've renewed our subscription for U.S. Military Campgrounds Directory software - a good deal at $7.95 a year for renewal.

Everything we have read on driving to Alaska recommends having a spare tire mounted on a rim for the RV & a full size spare for the tow vehicle (toad). We bought a rim & spare for the RV in 2007 while we were in California. Mike located a rim for the Saturn Vue in Enterprise, AL. On Tuesday, Jan. 6, he drove up there & bought the rim & then he stopped at the Ft. Rucker gas station & ordered a tire for the rim.

Happy New Year

We celebrated the New Year at W.T. & Glenda's house (our landlords here at The Willows). After dinner we went over for Irish coffee & dessert followed by some brandy. We discussed politics, the current financial situation, RVing & anything else that came to mind. We opened a bottle of champagne I had bought for the occasion & toasted in the New Year. A quiet ending of an old year & beginning of a new year, but an enjoyable time.