Friday, March 27, 2020
As we begin our trek back towards Texas we arrived safely at Three Flags in Wildwood, Florida. We will only be here for three nights before heading off to Alabama. This campground is a Thousand Trails preserve, but is not in our membership because they acquired the site after we upgraded in 2008.
The campground is okay, but the sites seem awfully close. We did not see the pool, but later found there was one. Of course none of the amenities were open, so it really didn't matter. There is a large community fire pit that would be a lot of fun for colder nights. It appears they have a group of long term snow birds at this location too. We met one such fellow and he seemed very nice.
Saturday, March 28, 2020 - Happy Birthday to my dear friend Pat Franklin! Miss you and love you bunches!
We spent our days under the awning reading, walking or cleaning house, except one today. I insisted we see what is in the area in case we ever decide to come back to this campground. We had heard they have a group of communities in the area called The Villages. Apparently there are about a million golf courses and they usually have live music every day of the week. It is a very nice area, but of course, little was happening. We haven’t golfed in decades and Dennis is not a big fan of live music anyway.
Monday, March 30, 2020
We left at 7:45AM this morning It is gonna be long drive today to get into Alabama. There was a high fog until around 10:00 this morning. I am grateful it was not sitting on the road.
We saw a turkey just walking along I-10, and there was a trucker driving a flat bed with a little Tonka dump truck strapped to the end of the trailer. Dennis said it was “undersized load.” LOL - he is so funny!
Our truck seems to be struggling this morning. I kept telling Dennis that it sounds so much louder than usual. We are gaining a lot of altitude as we go north through Florida, but I really think it is more than that. When we pull over at a rest stop for my next pit stop, Dennis got under the hood and sure enough, there is a blowout in the turbo exhaust. Dennis was able to MacGyver it with a metal hose clamp and we got back on the road. She sounded normal again, but we have an appointment for an oil change in Alabama tomorrow. We are hoping they can fix this as well.
As we are approaching the Alabama border we notice that all opposing traffic coming into Florida is being diverted into the Eastbound Pensacola Weigh Station. There must have been at least a dozen state troopers in and around that weigh station. The entire interstate was closed down. They are trying to discourage travel into Florida from Louisiana. It seems that Florida has also set up checkpoints on I95 to deter travelers from New York from entering the state. I checked the maps to see how traffic look at the border between Texas and Louisiana since they are requiring all people traveling by road from Louisiana into Texas to self quarantine for 14 days, but it looks like the traffic is not being delayed there. Maybe they haven’t started that yet??? I guess we will see.
We made it to the Wilderness RV Park east of Mobile around 1:30PM Central Time. We really made good time because the GPS said we would take five and a half hours and we only took one extra hour! WooHoo, traffic was very light! I wonder why?
We pull into our site and this guy from the site across the street walks up to me and starts telling me what we need to do. I listen to him for a second and politely (I hope) turned back to my cell phone to tell Dennis how things looked and we got all set up before 2:00PM. What, I ask you, makes someone interrupt you while you are pulling into a site. I had only just gotten out of the truck, we were not struggling, not being indecisive, nothing. The guy just came over and decided to school us. I was not having any of it, but then I put the leveling blocks under the wrong side of the RV and made it worse instead of better. Maybe I really should have listened to the guy. NOT! Easy fix and we were done.
This place has a real rustic feel to it. I guess the name, Wilderness RV Park, fits. We had lunch and walked around the park to check it out. There are many trees on most of the sites, but there is one section that has none. In the woods at the end of that row it looked like there was a homeless person set up on the ground in there. There are many other parks around here and when we went to get fuel we drove past two or three. We may choose one of them if we ever stop in this area again. 😏
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Our appointment to have the oil changed in the truck was at 9:00AM. We needed to leave by 8:30 to get there in time. We decided not to try to get up and fix breakfast, we would just pick something up in town. Next door to the dealership is a Chick Fil A, so Dennis checked out the menu and we decided to get something there. When we got there, all they were serving was a big biscuit with chicken or some little biscuits with chicken. WTH! I know this probably makes things go faster in the drive thru line, but only two things to choose from that are the SAME except for their size and quantity? We both agreed it was a lousy breakfast. Then we noticed the Cracker Barrel across the street. MAN!!!
The good news is they were able to fix the exhaust leak in the turbo of the truck and change the oil. So not a really bad start to our day at all.
We do have an eighty percent chance of rain today - big change from the endless sun we have been enjoying for the last month and a half. I figured, no worries, I am gonna have to give myself some self love (mani-pedi) anyway, so if it rains it will not change my day much.
BUT, on the way back from the dealership the PSA squawk comes on the radio and starts telling us about tornado warnings in the area. Yes, I said TORNADO. Not what you want to hear while living in an RV. So we listen to them tell us what counties are affected and all. We don’t have any clue what county the RV park is in. So I start looking at the map then at the radar and I am getting a little antsy! Yes, we are in one of the affected counties. I searched to remind myself the difference between ‘warning’ and ‘watch’ in hopes that I was remembering them incorrectly. No such luck. The warning is the bad one after all. We get to the RV and I lay down the chairs and table and hope they will not become projectiles in the storm. We try to find some weather on the TV and we don’t have very good reception here, but what we can tell is that there are a couple of tornadoes north of us and one prior tornado that has already been confirmed and damage being reported. We start looking at the radar again and it looks like we may just get the tail end of this mess, so we sit tight and wait.
Thank the Lord! The storm passed with little wind and NO TORNADOES hit our area.
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