The good early fall weather continued again today. The temperature peaked in the low to mid eighties will very little wind and a bright blue sky. The combination of warm days with cool overnight temperatures is ideal.
As far as productive or adventurous experiences today was a bust. I got lost in the bowels of the internet during breakfast. Between reading obscure articles on a variety of subjects and watching videos, I consumed half the waking daylight hours. It was an enjoyable day despite not producing anything worthy of capturing in this blog entry. Here are some of the pictures from today’s walk around the RV park.
The nice early fall weather continued today. There were a few more clouds during the middle of the day, but the sky was back to cloudless by evening. The temperature peaked a little above eighty with very little breeze all day.
This was the first Sunday that I have been able to watch the NFL games on TV. The first Sunday of the season I didn’t have any TV reception and last Sunday I was traveling most of the day. I am not an over the top football fan, but I do enjoy following the game. Most weekends I’ll catch bits and pieces of games. Today, I watched more than usual to catch up for the lack of exposure over the first two weeks of the season. The local teams in this market seem to be the Tennessee Titans and the Atlanta Falcons. I hoped this area claimed the New Orleans Saints as a home team so I could see their game against New England Patriots. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I didn’t get to see the Patriots loss.
I need to set my alarm clock to get back on a decent sleep schedule. I’ve been getting up at 10 in the morning. At night it is closer to 2AM before I get to sleep. When you don’t have any specific plans it is easy to get out of sync. Today the day felt particularly skewed with the football pregame shows starting before I finished breakfast.
The weekend guests at this RV park departed this morning. A couple more look like they are leaving in the morning. It will be back to the empty during the day and near full at night cycle starting tomorrow. According to my original plan I would have been one of the people departing tomorrow. Yesterday I extended my reservation until Friday, but in my head this has seemed like my last day. Once I don’t leave tomorrow I should be back in mental alignment.
The weather is gradually warming up. It wasn’t as cool overnight, although it was still very comfortable for sleeping. Today’s high temperature was closer to eighty under bright blue sky with low humidity.
My day was filled with lots of little tasks. It was after five before I came up for air and to eat. One of the tasks was making a reservation in the Florida Everglades for next March based on my research earlier this week. That leaves one more five day reservation to make when the six month reservation window opens later this month to fill all the nights between the end of October and the middle of April. The summer of 2022 is the next challenge. Other tasks that filled my day included washing the sink full of dirty dishes and doing a few maintenance tasks around my RV home.
The campground remains full this weekend. When I stopped in at the office to extend my stay until Friday, the host indicated that the business had picked up with the arrival of fall. There isn’t anything specific going on in the area that is drawing people. Fall is apparently a popular time for travel in this area.
The temperature got down into the forties once again last night. By mid afternoon the temperature climbed into the mid seventies. Overall it was a perfect day. It was cool at night supporting good sleep and just warm enough during the day.
This has been a very lazy week. It is hard to believe this is Friday. I’ve been sleeping late in the morning and consequently going to bed late in the evening/night. The result is a very skewed sleep pattern that probably will require an alarm clock set to an early morning hour to break the cycle.
Today was a little more productive than Thursday. I’ve been working on travel plans for the near term and the long term. In the near term I leave here on Monday and have to plan four weeks before my first “winter” reservation in Florida. The long term relates to filling a two week gap next March and the entire summer from mid April forward. On both fronts I’ve made some progress. Next March I’ll head into the Everglades for ten days or so. Next summer the middle of the country from Kansas north to the Dakotas is looking more interesting with each new page click of internet research.
Here in Tuscumbia Alabama, the campground is filling up for the weekend. Each day this week there were new arrivals and departures, but most of the people that arrived Thursday didn’t leave today. As the afternoon progressed more people arrived. I’m surprised. I don’t know what the specific draw is in this area. I’ll have to look around the area some more over the weekend.
The temperature dropped into the forties overnight. The interior temperature in my RV home was in the low sixties this morning. It took until mid afternoon for the outside temperature to get into the low seventies. Fall weather was here.
There were only a few wispy clouds in the sky today.
It was a day without motivation or ambition. I spent the day reading and watching television. The most productive thing I did all day was cook my afternoon meal. Even this blog entry is low on the achievement scale.
I woke up to temperatures in the sixties inside my RV home. The outside temperature may have been in the fifties. Late in the afternoon, after about an hour of full sun, the temperature peaked a little over seventy. There was also a strong northwest wind all day from the cold front that passed through the area overnight. I had to add a layer of clothing to be comfortable. My sweatshirt came out of the draw for the first time in six months or more. The cool temperatures are forecast to last until the weekend. The eighties will be back next week.
Blossom of the day.
The cold morning resulted in a very late start to the day. I rolled over with the covers pulled up a little higher twice before I got out of bed. The laziness continued all day. I didn’t do much more than take advantage of the internet I didn’t have last week. Reading and TV watching rounded out my activities for the day.
It was another day with rain just around the corner. Just like yesterday the sky went from sunny with a few clouds to rain in the blink of an eye. The only difference was the rain was a little lighter. There were no flash flood warnings issued for this area today. The temperature also peaked a little higher in the mid eighties. A cold front is forecast to pass through overnight to break the pattern. The next few days are forecast to be dry and sunny with a high temperature in the low to mid seventies.
It is hard to believe that tomorrow is the first day of my favorite season. Starting the year in Florida makes summer seam very long. The temperatures and other weather patterns turn summer-like in April. That makes for about six months of summer. The good thing about this location in northern Alabama is there is some foliage. A few trees are already turning, but the majority will be much later in the year. Once I get back to Florida, the season will just blend into a Florida winter. The leaves on the deciduous trees fall off, but they don’t really turn color first. Having lived most of my life in New England, the fall colors are one of the things I miss most.
Today was a chores day around my RV home. Dust and dirt really show up in the small space. I know my former fixed residence was probably just as dirty or even more, but I didn’t see it. In the RV I see it everyday and need to do something about it on a more frequent basis. Today was one of those days dedicated to cleaning up some of the accumulated dust and clutter. My RV home is cleaner tonight, but the clutter is just in new locations.
Today was filled with random quick and heavy rain storms. Every hour or so the weather would quickly change from patchy clouds with a little sun to dark menacing clouds filled with heavy rain. The temperature peaked around eighty with plenty of humidity.
Blue sky and dark clouds in same picture summarizes the ever changing weather today.
Today started with finishing setting up camp for my weeks stay. I also needed to get used to having usable internet, full TV service, cell phone service and enough electric power that I didn’t have to be concerned about how many things I turned on at time. I enjoyed my stay in the woods at Piney Grove Campground, but the low technology was a bit frustrating at time. It was hardly “roughing it,” but I am used to the comforts of the modern age.
This campground is interesting. It is about three quarters long term and the rest for transients. Last night the transient area was almost full. This morning by 9:30 it was almost empty. It hasn’t filled to the same level tonight. There are clear signs that a lot of work has been put into the park recently. I’m not sure if it is a refurbishment of an older park or a completely new park. There is new sod between the sites, young trees planted between the sites, new gravel on some sites and in the roads along with fairly new utilities. Management also seems very focused on keeping the park cleaned and well maintained. They were pressure washing the charcoal grills this morning.
Puddles in the road.
After almost two weeks in the woods I needed to restock. I found a Walmart in nearby Muscle Shoals. This area has four rather large towns of Sheffield, Tuscumbia, Muscle Shoals and on the other side of the Tennessee River is Florence. Some of them may even be considered cities. The Walmart was busy, but I found it better stocked than the last couple I’ve shopped. One observation is that this area isn’t big on mask wearing. The majority of the customers were not wearing masks.
The day began cloudy with a forecast of rain. I got a few of the outside travel preparation tasks completed before breakfast. After breakfast, while I was working on some of the inside tasks, it started to rain. Checking the forecast on the internet and the weather radar the rain would end in the afternoon well before the 3PM checkout time.
I spent two and a half hours slowly getting the inside of my RV home ready for travel and generally killing time. Around 1PM the rain let up and sunshine started to arrive. I began the outside tasks. I got a little wet from the remnants of the rain and the big drops falling from the leaves in the trees. Today I had one extra outdoor travel prep task. My Honda CR-V needed the air in one of its tires topped off. The low pressure indicator came on yesterday while I was driving back to the campground. The drivers side rear tire has a slow leak that is triggered by big temperature changes. The hardest part of topping off the tires is getting the compressor out of the storage bay. It takes ten minutes to get it out and the tank filled. Putting the air in the tire along with checking the others takes less than five minutes followed by another ten to get the air out of the compressor and loading it back into the storage bay. Just another dust speck of a bump in the road.
The other gotcha getting ready to leave was hooking up the car. There wasn’t a level area nearby that didn’t completely block all traffic. I found an area with only a slight up hill slope before a big downhill stretch. The trick was making sure everything locked in place before I started downhill. Going downhill before the tow bar locks into place can be disastrous. A solid manual application of the auxiliary brake helped assure everything lock into place in a short distance. Of course the location I chose meant I had to drive around the whole narrow road of the camping loop to get out of the campground. After a stop at the dumping station I was out of the campground by 2:30pm. I think that is the latest I’ve started my days travel.
Site 72 at the Heritage Acres RV Park in Tuscombia Alabama.
Sixty miles and an hour and a half later I arrived at my destination for the next eight nights. The sun was out and the roads were dry for the entire drive. When I arrived at the Heritage Acres RV Park in Tuscumbia Alabama, the park roads were filled with water puddles. It was clear that they had received more rain than I experienced. Not long after I was setup more rain arrived.
The threat of rain dominated the day. It was cloudy and humid when I started my day this morning. A few patches of blue sky arrived in the early afternoon, but didn’t last. Around 4PM the distant sound of thunder was in the air. A few light showers passed through over the next few hours. Since darkness arrived the precipitation has ended. The temperature peaked around eighty.
A few blue patches of sky during the early afternoon.
The campground isn’t as full this weekend. There are more empty sites than last weekend, but I don’t think there are any less boats. The parking areas are all filled with empty boat trailers and the banks of the lake around the campground are lined with boats. This weekend there seems to be a preponderance of pontoon boats. They are popular as party boats and the once with oversize motors can really move.
Some of the many pontoon boats.
This is my last full day at Piney Grove Campground. I usually don’t move on Sunday. I prefer to avoid all of the traffic departing the campground and on the roads. It was a mistake to book my departure for tomorrow. At least the 3PM checkout time gives me plenty of time to get ready to travel. I’m moving about sixty miles to the east. I’ll correct my Sunday departure issue, by staying eight nights. I should be back in civilization with a cell phone signal and good satellite TV access.
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 