According to the calendar it's Fall already, but 'the South' still hangs on to it's Summer. It's still in the 80's during the day, although not as humid anymore.
It's also very dry at the moment, but after the recent floods, nobody complaints too loudly about that!

I've been trying to find some fall colors on my morning walks, and if you look very carefully, and squint a little, you'll see that a few leaves are turning ever so slightly indeed.

I found myself a pumpkin!

And so did others ....

    

Last weekend was the first of a series of three 'Halloween- Weekends' that will take place at our park.

There was apple-bobbing for the kids ....

Also a pumpkin-hunt, bingo for kids and adults, and costume competitions:

I liked this little sweetie ... just adorable!

Other than that things are very quiet around here. Like I said, every day dawns very sunny, no wind at all ...

The river is extremely low (thank goodness) and for some reason it's banks are swarming with Dragonflies :

     

                                

     

I like how this shot came out, ... ready for take-off!

From the truck-front there's still no good news, I'm afraid. 
The TCM that we sent out for testing/repair, did have a problem and came back all fixed, but after installation it still didn't work. (the ECM turned out to be fine) 
It even threw a whole new error-code, and after calling the guy that did the repairs, he told us that with this error the TCM is basically toast, and we need to replace it!
He's actually refunding us the money of the repair, because he would have never attempted to do so, had the code showed up while testing. Sh$#@&t!!
Well, I guess we're getting a new TCM ....

Time for a drink!

Happy hour has the best temperatures of the day, and we have a nice view of the sunset ...

Until the mosquitoes come out, which is about NOW, 

I'm out of here!

Well, here we are, one month later, and back at our 'old' haunt, Hidden Oaks Campground in Hammond/Robert. They've opened up again, although they're still working hard on restoring the office and also their own home, which completely flooded too this time around.

 

We're in B11, one spot over from where we were last year. It's actually a better site since the sewer is in the right spot here, on the back-site, so it doesn't run through our sitting area this time!

 

The beautiful Bayou is still there, right behind us, and I already came across a few of my favorite birds ...

                  

                  

Even my friend the Anhinga, still calls this Bayou home ...

Although it's not as humid anymore, temperatures are still unseasonable high (in the 90's this week!). There are still lots of butterflies around, like this gorgeous Spicebush Swallowtail:

     

And, on the same bush, it's beautiful cousin, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail ...

We can't all be that spectacular, or big, but you might have very pretty eyes, like this 'Common' Buckeye ...

I've not seen too many leaves showing any fall colors, and most summer flowers are on there last legs, so we're looking a little blah at the moment, but I did find a whole field of Pale Meadow Beauty ... and beautiful they are ...

And than there's the 'never-ending-story'. Of the truck, that is ...
We had to be towed here by another (rental) truck, because unfortunately ours is still 'kaput'!
Some progress was made after renewing some wires and it now starts, but the transmission is still not working properly. 

'Our' mechanic from Starkville came over and helped James in trying to fix the problems. They worked under the awning of James boss' workshop. No AC, but at least there was shade!

The problem seems to lie with the ECM or TCM, which are the 'brains' to the 'E'ngine or 'T'ransmission.

So after a day's work, the ECM and TCM have been send to a guy who tests and rebuilds them, which is considerably cheaper than buying new ones, and hopefully they'll be back, in working order, next week.

Don't un-cross those fingers now!

Since it still has been too hot to do much outside, I've finished a couple of puzzles lately. This Nantucket beach scene by Charles Wysocki was a lot of fun:

Well, I can't think of much more to add for now, I'm anxiously waiting for Fall to roll in, and enjoy it's cooler temperatures and fun events. Only 3 weeks to Halloween, yeah!
I DID decorate a little already, I'll better get me some pumpkins next time we go grocery shopping ...

We finally got out of Starkville. Yahoo! It was a rather 'rough' ride back to Hammond though and we didn't end up where we thought we would, but we're back and sitting pretty in another great spot, as you can see in the above picture.

About that rough ride; first of all, due to a missing part for the new air-pump (not enough hose), that was supposed to be overnight-ed to us but took 3 days to arrive, we didn't get on our way until Tuesday.

Secondly, we took a little bit of a risk getting on the road, since after the injectors had been replaced, the truck developed some 'episodes' where it would all of a sudden loose half of it's power while driving. After pulling over and restart, it would be fine again.

But since our savings were getting low, due to the unexpected truck problems, we needed to get back to Hammond and make some money. We also decided to skip the scouting of the gulf coast for now, and drive straight back.

All in all, we didn't do too bad, 'only' had to pull over 4 times, but it was a little nerve-wrecking .... 

Before we left, we'd already found out Hidden Oaks was still closed, so we'd made reservations at Indian Creek in Independence, about 17 miles north of Hammond.

Our site is # 184, all the way up and to the right

With Labor Day weekend coming up and flood-victims taking up the rest of the sites, this was the only campground that had some sites available in the area.

                          

It did also flood a couple of weeks ago, but not as bad as Hidden Oaks and they're up and running already.

It's a nice campground, alongside the Natalbany River, very woodsy and with a creek running through it.

I'm so happy to be back in nature again! I've already walked some of the nature trails that wind all around the grounds.

I found some of my favorite wildlife ... birds:

                                               

            

And a lot of very inquisitive little (Eastern Grey) squirrels ...

This is a Luna Moth, a new one for me. It's huge (4") and supposed to be nocturnal. I think it got a little confused, hanging in the dark shade right under the awning.

And this is a Red-spotted Purple. Not the most creative name, but very pretty. That blue (purple?) is almost iridescent!

Like most Americans, we BBQ-ed on Labor Day:

I guess it's a male (bonding?) thing ...

And afterward we walked over to the band that was playing at the campground. It was called 'Monster Crawfish' ..... only in Louisiana!

OK, so far so good, now for the not-so-good ... the truck is still misbehaving and during a side-trip James had to make to Houston, it got worse and worse. 

Eventually, he got stranded on the way back in Lafayette, after he couldn't drive more than a mile or two before having problems again. He made it to a hotel and overnight-ed there, left the truck in a parking lot and came back to Baton Rouge the next day with a Greyhound bus, and from there to Ponchatoula, with a guy I found on Craigslist that provides rides for a reasonable fee.

                                 

His boss Ronny (what a great guy!), loaned him a truck and trailer and the next day we drove back to Lafayette, picked up the truck and brought it back.

As you can see, it only just fit!

Since the mechanic who fixed the truck guaranteed the work (and the parts), James drove the whole shebang back to Columbus (MS) yesterday. 

So while I'm writing this, I'm anxiously waiting to hear from him, to find out how things are going ... cross your fingers!

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Well, I better get this blog going or I won't be able to finish it before we leave, which will possibly be tomorrow!
I really didn't have much to blog about all the time that we've been here. It was just too hot, and especially too humid, to do anything outside, so other than getting groceries and watching the Olympics, or taking a quick dip in the pool in between thunderstorms, I haven't done a thing noteworthy!

James, on the other hand, has worked hard, as usual, and has the store pretty much ready for the grand opening this coming Saturday.

This store got done mostly without any problems, other than that the air conditioner turned out to be too small to cool appropriately and had to be replaced with a larger one.

He's been waiting on one more part to arrive, so he can install it and we can leave.

 

Everything else went just fine:

At home, we also had a few small calamities that needed to be taken care off. The toilet sprung a leak, but after ordering the (small) part, James managed to fix it quickly.

And our washer and dryer didn't want to spin anymore, which turned out to be the lid switch, also a small part that could (fairly) easily be ordered and installed.
Voila, problems fixed!

That is, almost all problems, because the air conditioners are leaking, and we don't seem to be able to 'cure' that! 
Most likely it is caused by the extreme humidity, the super-moist air just doesn't evaporate enough!

Especially the one above the bed leaks badly, so I have the bed covered up during the daytime when it runs. Fortunately we don't need it at night, when the one in the living room is able to take care of both rooms.
 

Time for Fall to arrive, so that humidity goes down!

My baking and cooking has been rather uninspired also these days, I'm too lazy and too hot to do much else than making a salad and grilling the meat on the BBQ.
The dish on the right is Nassi (fried rice), an Indonesian dish, very popular in Holland (Indonesia used to be a dutch colony), and served with saté, which are meat skewers with peanut sauce. Yummy!

       

The pineapples are 'in season', at $1 a piece, so we eat a lot of them! Does everybody have that handy little core-tool? Best invention since the paperclip!

And than there was that one major mishap we really could have done without ... the injectors of the truck went kaput! Again! After only 25.000 miles!
As you might remember we replaced them all in 2014, but during a call to Rush, the previous truck-shop that did the repairs, we learned that the warranty has already expired, being 1 year or 100.000 miles, whatever comes first. Of course!

Any-who, after searching the web we found a truck repair guy (Black's Automotive) in Columbus, about 21 miles from us, who, fortunately, could accommodate us right away.

We crawled, heavily smoking, our way to the shop, me following in a rental car, and after some diagnostics were done that confirmed the bad injectors, we left the truck there to be repaired.

During some Googling I did later that day, I found that Duramex advises the installation of a pre-filter, to avoid the fairly common problem with the injectors in this model and year of trucks!

We called our repair guy and arranged for a filter to be delivered at his shop, after which he will install it.

If everything goes well, everything will be done by tomorrow, which will give us just enough time to return the rental car within a week.

Phew! Always something.

So, we're keeping our fingers crossed that we'll be able to leave on Saturday. We'll be heading for the Gulf Coast, where we will be scouting out some of the areas and RV Parks where we would like to stay for the coming winter.

We will park the RV for a couple of days each in different areas, such as Mobile (AL), Biloxi (MS) and Bay St Louis (MS).

After that it's back to Hammond, since James has some equipment to return and to close of the job properly.

Hopefully, we can stay at Hidden Oaks again, where we have about 10 days left on a monthly rent we've paid for previously, but that all depends if they've recovered enough from the recent floods over there!

The 190 near Robert

The Tangipahoa River, and many others, flooded again, this time to a record high of 27.4', the highest since 1928! Louisiana declared a State of Emergency, but southern Mississippi and Texas are in a very bad shape too.

'Our' campground, Hidden Oaks, flooded also (of course), and everybody had to evacuate. Poor people, they just had everything restored and up and running again ...

Anyways, I'm looking forward to be 'on the road again'! We'll see where we'll end up!

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