Life's Good!

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

So here we are, a new post, and although it's hard to see, and maybe you need to know where to look, but if you look closely you might be able to detect the results of James' hard work of this last week!

It was a job already 3 years in the planning, which is when we bought the spray paint, but life/work etc got in the way, and it never happened ... until now.

We finally did it, we painted the bottom part of the RV green!

See, doesn't that look fantastic?!

Most 'modern' RV's aren't all white anymore but a beige or grey with a darker color at the base. It just makes sense, it doesn't show dirt as much and in our case it also breaks up all the white a little.
Since it's not a huge area, James thought he could do it himself, and make it look good, with simple spray paint.

Prepping was the most time consuming, but the painting itself went very fast!

Most campgrounds don't like you to do too much work or maintenance on your vehicles, so he prepped and sprayed small areas at a time, and worked when nobody was around.
(Fortunately this campground is only really busy in the weekend.)

One side done!

The master at work ...

And the other side! Isn't that pretty, I think it's a masterpiece!
We're so happy with the result.

Before ...

And after ...

OK. One big job finished! While he was at it, he also re-painted the wheel hubs, which got busted up somewhat here and there ...

See? Much better!

And some of the striping on the truck started to peel off, so he re-did those too:

As you can see Merlin kept a close eye on him!

He loves to hang out with James while he's working on the truck,
and than he likes to join him for a nice nap in the afternoon ...

He takes the nightstand while James takes the bed ...

I've been working on cleaning the mold of all our window frames. This climate turns everything green in the blink of an eye!
And to keep up our energy doing all this work, I baked some cinnamon rolls:

I try to take a short walk every day in the morning, while it's still somewhat cool.
Walking the hiking trail through the forested swamp there's always lots of butterflies that flutter out of my way ...

Most of them are Pearl Crescents, but a couple of days ago I came across this rather unusual Checkered White:

The slough, at the end of my walk, is definitely turtle territory! So far I've seen three different species.
Off course there was my exiting encounter with the Snapping Turtle and this next one is a Musk Turtle:

Much smaller (8-10") and not as feisty, although the male will bite when cornered! They also release an offensive smell hence their nickname 'stink-pots'.

And there was this cute little Mud Turtle, only about 5". He played possum in it's carapace (shell) for a while when he saw me approach, but continued his way when I walked out of his eyesight:

Ha! He (she?) doesn't know the incredible zoom capacity of my camera!

Got-ye!

As far as the truck goes, our mechanic Greg has determined that the problem is indeed (again) injector-related and he has started the 'under-warranty' procedure.

New ones have been ordered and will hopefully arrive soon so he can install them. Unfortunately, he is not his own boss anymore, and now works full-time for somebody else, so he can only work on the truck in his spare-time. This means of course that we'll be here for at least another week ...

Fortunately we were able to extend the rent for another week and if necessary can do another one, although we will have to move sites if that comes about.

In the meantime we've returned our rental car and retrieved the truck, since it doesn't make sense to pay for a rental when the truck isn't worked on!

Oh well, we have a lot more on our to-do list, so we won't be bored, and this campground is a very pretty place, so we'll just have to wait it out ... and enjoy the sunsets over the river:

There are worse places to get stuck!

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Almost two weeks have passed, high time for an update!

Quite a lot has happened in the meantime, first and foremost the fact that we finally moved out of Hammond and Hidden Oaks!
I know, it's nothing but a miracle, but there you have it, we did it!
After talking to Greg, who's the guy that's going to work on the truck, we left for Columbus, where he lives, at 8.30 am on Saturday the 10th.
It was an uneventful drive, which we like, we had some coffee (with homemade chocolate fudge cookies that I made for the road) ...

... and lunch along the way and arrived at the Wayne Hayes Campground around 2 pm.

This very nice COE campground has only limited sewer connections, but we managed to snatch up one of the two 'drive-up' (versus reserved) sites that were left.
There's a 2 week-stay limit but we hoped that we only needed one, which we know by now will likely become 3 or even more ... sigh, those best-laid-plans again!
But lets not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?

Once again we got a very nice site, it sits on the river's edge although unfortunately we don't have much of a view of it. They've let the bushes grown too tall for that ...

Otherwise it's nice and large, with a concrete pad for the RV and a gravel patch as a sitting area.

On this map you'll find us a little right of the bottom half, that pink dot that says 73.

We're all set up and already appreciating the slightly cooler temperatures and less humidity around here. Especially the mornings are really nice, and now James doesn't have to work anymore, it feels very 'vacation-y' to have breakfasts outside every morning!

Eh, let's see, that's scrambled eggs, cheese omelet with salsa and avocado, and fruit waffles

Oh, and this little something happened while we were setting up. With the living room slide half out, because the awning has to fit over it before we can fully extend it, I stubbed my toe on the teeny little edge of carpet sticking up.

Initially I didn't feel much but holy smokes that changed to excruciating pain, I kid you not, in the hours following. Gawd, it HURT!

I was sure I broke it, at the very top, and started icing and elevating immediately. There's really not much else to do with a broken toe than all that and taping it together, 'buddy taping' it, with another toe.

It's a week later now and I think I'm gonna live, and my toe too ... Actually, I think I just bruised it, I took the tape off and the pain is almost non-existent. Unless I bump it, and of course, Murphy's law, that happens quite a lot right now!

As you might be able to make out on the map above, there's a (short) walking trail on the north side of the campground that takes you an overlook over the Cypress Slough:

It's my favorite place to hang out here so far. It's so very peaceful, nothing but a lot of birds, mostly swallows and a gazillion of blue and green Dragonflies ...

This young Tree Swallow was waiting patiently for over 5 to 10 minutes (and so was I), until one of his parents showed up for chow-time!

Even in the evening hours there are NO mosquitoes here (which is nothing but a miracle), which is the time to watch tenths of Great Egrets fly in to their roosting spots, in a group of Bald Cypress across the slough.

I wonder if they all have their 'reserved' spots or if they just come in randomly?

I was REALLY exited to see the following creature crawl out of the swamp. It's a Snapping Turtle!

Normally they hang out at the bottom of murky waters, and only come out to lay eggs in the drier parts of the swamp. Which makes me think this is a she ...

She's about 15" (shield only), distinctive saw-toothed keels on her long tail, a huge head and a powerful bite.
Seriously, these turtles can bite off your toe!

That's one scary looking mamma!

As I said, our site doesn't really have a view, a few little peeks only, but 2 sites over is the boat launch, and by walking over there in the evening, we've enjoyed some nice looking sunsets ...

Well, I think that's a nice end for now. I'll start another post for everything we've been working on lately, because we've been pretty busy!

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Wow, we sure had a busy week here at the camp ground.

Last weekend was the weekend of the 17th Annual Memorial Day Swamp Pop Music Festival!

The campground was booked solid and since our spot was reserved as well (about a year in advance) we had to move to a different site.

(We'd actually already moved last week because we didn't know if we would have the truck available.)

Preparations on the grounds and at the office were in full swing, everything was looking good, and than ... it started to rain!

... and rain ... and rain ... and ....

The flooded H-section in the back

Pfff, well, we all know the story by now .... of course the dang river started to rise ....

And so, we all flooded again ...

This time we crested at 16.4' on Thursday morning, after which it started to recede quite fast, as usual.

But with people already planning to come in on Thursday night, it meant they had to cancel all the reservations for the H-section, which by that time was still under water.

For some reason we actually were fine, we seemed to have picked the one spot in C that was situated on a little bit of a 'rise', so we just, but only JUST, stayed dry!

Any-who, as anticipated, people started to 'flood' (pun intended) in on Thursday afternoon and by Friday evening pretty much every dry spot was filled.

Lots of people meet friends and family here every year, it's a hugely popular event, and throughout the weekend people gather at different campsites for private parties and reunions, potlucks and BBQ's.

The weather was absolutely beautiful, and at 7.30 the evening entertainment started up ...

Now, I'm not a big fan of loud music and feared we would be blasted away, being fairly close to the music pavilion, but because we were enclosed by so many RV's the sound was thankfully somewhat muted.

Also, this type of folk/country/Cajun music is really not the loudest and actually something we rather enjoy.

Even better, and something I'm rather puzzled by (but not complaining!), is the fact that at all the events we've had here, the music stops at either 10 or 10.30 pm.

Certainly not what I'm used to from parties I've been to in the past!

On Saturday morning vendors set up shop in front of the pavilion ..

And a huge crowd of day-visitors filled up the parking areas ...

People filled up the benches under the tents at the pavilion or brought their own seats, or simply set up in front of their sites:

The day got really hot and humid (92 and 88), but if you're real swamp people, you don't mind ... or you just sit in your chair, drink your beer and don't move ....

Bands attending were the Aaron Foret Band, Ross Grisham, Ryan Foret & Foret Tradition, Travis Thibodaux Band, La Rouge, Natural Satisfaction, and Tet Dur.
Two of them I'd heard before, the rest were new to me, and although I'm not too much into music, I enjoyed listening to a few of them for a little while.
I really only can stand music for a short time, and was happy to be able to escape into the RV where the AC was doing a nice job keeping me cool!

Most people braved it outside though. Like I said, it amazes me how they can stand it. Let alone dance!

You have to be born here I think, ...

... or cheat and bring a big fan!

To say we're not much into music, or any of these busy and noisy events, is somewhat of an understatement I guess.

James wasn't even there for the day (we're such party-poopers), he was working some more on the truck at Ronnie's (his boss') place.

It's still not running very well and we'll keep on monitoring it for a little longer, but he's now basically doing maintenance, changing oils and filters, shocks and what-not, just normal 'stuff' and small repairs.

The fact that Merlin's deaf has it's advantages.
He was totally unfazed by all the noise around him, and believe me, it was NOISY! He spent the weekend mostly conked out because of the heat ...