Another Good Day at the Beach

We got out to the beach around 9 am today and Chuck was fishing by about 9:05.

It was cloudy this morning but no rain.  The sun peeked through a couple of times this morning making the water glisten in places.

Yesterday, we noticed a small sandpiper running around looking for food in the surf.  He was back today.  I named him "Gimpy" because he had a hurt leg that he would not put his full weight on.

But Gimpy moved around as fast as the other little sandpipers so I had a hard time getting a clear picture of him.

We had also discovered this skeleton of a catfish on the beach and were reminded of Ken and Bonnie telling us about how the skeleton of a catfish looks like the cross of Jesus.  Can you see it?

While Chuck was fishing, I decided to walk down to the eastern point.  I saw this stingray in the surf,

a small horseshoe crab,

and this hermit crab that had washed up on the shore.  His shell looked very old and green and had very sharp spikes toward the top of it.

I turned around at the point and on the way back I noticed this plastic chair sitting back closer to the dunes in a little more desolated area of the beach.

It had the words "Please Leave Here" written on it.

With tranquil views like this...

it's easy to understand why someone would want to leave a chair there so they would have a place to come sit and enjoy the views.

The fishing was kind of slow today, but one of the fish Chuck caught was huge!

Oh, all right, that's a little bit of a "fish tale."  But the fish was one of the biggest catfish he has caught since being here.

Later that evening, we played SkipBo and Sequence Dice.  Chuck won the most games of Sequence Dice but I won the most games of SkipBo.  So we both went to bed with winners!  :)

Rainy Days at Carrabelle

We woke up to a light rain on Sunday; but around noon, the rain stopped long enough for us to go for a walk on the beach toward the east point.  Since it was low tide, we had a wider beach to walk on.  And there is a big difference between low tide...

...and high tide (this is what it looked like when we walked out to this point a few weeks ago).

After our walk, we went to Dollar General and IGA to get a few more groceries.  It started raining again but much harder this time.  Chuck had checked the slide to see if there were any leaks earlier and everything was dry.  But later that night, after all the hard rain, we discovered the carpet at the front of the slide was wet.  :(

Chuck went outside to see if he could determine where the water was coming in but couldn't see anything because it was raining and already dark outside.  He got the fan out from underneath to help dry out the carpet and the bracket on one of the fan legs came loose.  When it rains, it pours!  Literally!  :)

Chuck fixed the fan.  After it ran all night, a good portion of the carpet had dried by morning.  We went outside to see if we could determine where the leak might be coming from now that it was daylight.  We think the problem is they forgot to caulk along the edge of the metal flange on the front part of the slide-out.  We could see the fresh new caulk along the flange on the rear of the slide-out...

...but not on the front part of the slide-out.

We decided to bring the slide in to examine it further and to keep it from leaking more because it was supposed to rain all day.  We called our service adviser at Alliance and they said that they would fix it and were sorry it had been overlooked.  Of course, this means we have to cut our stay here at Carrabelle short and head back to Wildwood next week but we wanted to get the leak problem resolved as soon as possible.  Plus, we were heading toward Orlando Thousand Trails to meet Ken and Bonnie in a couple of weeks anyways which is near Wildwood.

Again, today, the rain stopped a little after noon, so we headed to the beach to see if Chuck could get a little fishing in before it started raining again.  The tide was out again...

...and the shrimp boats were trolling back and forth in front of us again today.  They didn't seem to be catching much because we didn't see them emptying their nets very much like we had a few weeks ago.

Chuck caught a few catfish and what we think was his first bluefish.

Since it was overcast and breezy, the weather was very pleasant.  And the sun even came out a few times.

It was so nice, we ended up staying out on the beach about 4 hours.  A seagull stayed nearby watching Chuck fish.  We named him Jonathan.  (You know...Jonathan Livingston Seagull?)

Jonathan kept hoping Chuck would throw him some bait.

When it started sprinkling around 5 pm, we decided to go back to the motorhome.  Chuck took the bait off his hook and tossed it to Jonathan who was on it in a flash. 

A rainy day turned into a very nice day at the beach!  

First Day Back at Carrabelle

Although we really enjoyed visiting family in Nashville and Atlanta while the motorhome was being worked on, we were so glad to be back home which is right now in Carrabelle.

We ate a quick breakfast this morning and then headed for the beach.  It was cloudy and cool this morning which was a lot different from the hot sun a few weeks ago.

Chuck began fishing as soon as we got to the beach...

...and within about 20 minutes, he caught his first and only fish of the morning:  a catfish.

Even with my hot coffee, I couldn't seem to get warmed up so Chuck suggested I go for a walk to try to warm up.  I walked west toward the stumps.

The tide was at a very low tide and the big stumps look a lot different now...

...than the islands they looked like a few weeks ago.

Around noon, we went back to the camper to eat some lunch, do some laundry, and watch some college football.  Our Tennessee Volunteers almost beat those Georgia Bulldogs.  Almost!   :(

After the football game, we went back to the beach.  It was still kind of cool and overcast but Chuck had a little more luck fishing.  He caught 2 whitings and 3 catfish.  The whitings are supposedly very tasty but they weren't big enough to keep.  We didn't keep the catfish either because most people we have talked to said that the catfish are not very good to eat.

There is a flash flood watch out until 8 pm tomorrow night so we may be inside most of the day tomorrow.  It has not started raining yet.  Good thing we enjoyed the beach today!

The Wait is Over!

19 days later, the wait is finally over and our slide-out repaired!  Alliance Coach was good about taking care of our "punch list" items and seemed to want to be sure we were satisfied with the job.  Because they didn't get finished until about 2 pm on Thursday, we stayed in their campground one more night but we were very happy to be leaving there Friday morning!

We decided to go back to Carrabelle Beach for a week or two.  We had really enjoyed our stay there plus Chuck wanted to fish some more.

When we had driven from Carrabelle to Wildwood, the front of the coach got covered in love bugs.  For the first half of our drive back to Carrabelle, the windshield stayed pretty clear.  But then we started running into them.  The view out our windshield looks like some birds flying out in front of us....

...but no, it's not birds, its love bugs and we don't love them!

Chuck always washes off the front of the coach every time we stop for a few nights.  That job took a while today.

I helped him a little bit by changing out his water that kept filling up with dead love bugs.

We got the same site we had previously at Carrabelle Beach RV Resort and after a hour or so of setting up and washing off love bugs, we just sat outside and relaxed for a while.

More Waiting at Wildwood

Because Chuck was sick with some kind of sinus infection, I drove the six hour drive from Atlanta to Wildwood.  We were again blessed with good weather and not too much traffic.  We checked back into Sleep Inn Sunday night hoping we would be there for only one night.  However, we got a call Monday morning from our service adviser saying they needed one more night to let the urethane dry on the bottom of the slide-out before re-installing it back in the motorhome.  So one night at Sleep Inn turned into two.

We rode over to Alliance Coach on Monday to see how the repairs were coming.  It was kind of scary seeing that big slide-out laying over outside the coach.

How do you like our big new picture window?

I like a lot of light but this is a little much.  After two weeks of being "homeless," we are ready for the slide-out to be fixed and be able to move back into our home.

On Monday afternoon, we went to another movie, The Maze Runner, in the Villages.  Chuck and I had both read the book and thought the movie was pretty good.

While we were waiting at Alliance Coach, we ran into Frank and Jo whom we had met here a year and a half ago when we were here at the same time getting our coaches worked on.  They started full-timing a year before us and we enjoyed talking with them and getting caught up on each others' families and where all we had traveled.

By Tuesday afternoon, Alliance had gotten the slide-out re-installed and working so we could sleep in it overnight at Alliance's campground.  It was nice being able to sleep in our own bed again.

But it also gave us a chance to find out what things still needed to be fixed (like making the electric night shades work again).  This morning, we showed them the things we found to be fixed and they began working on those things and hopefully will be finished by tonight.

Waiting in the waiting room has given me a chance to get caught up on the blog once again and Chuck got in a little nap!  :)

2nd Week of Waiting on RV Repairs

We got a call from Alliance Coach while we were in Nashville that they had been delayed in getting their lift machine back from the repair shop.  When we found out it was going to be another week before they thought our slide-out repairs would be finished, we decided to head back south on Tuesday, Sept. 16th, and stop and visit our daughters and their families for a few days.

On Wednesday, we decided to go see the new College Football Hall of Fame that had just opened in Atlanta in August.  The facility is very nice and very interactive.  The ticket you receive when entering the facility is a plastic card with an I.D. number that you wear around your neck.  As soon as you enter the Hall of Fame, you enter your name and favorite college into a computer.

We were met by Terry LeCounts as we entered the Hall of Fame who assisted us in getting all of this done.  Terry was the 2nd African-American quarterback for the University of Florida.  He gave us a lot of good information about the Hall of Fame and we enjoyed talking with him for several minutes about college football before beginning our tour.

After you enter your information in the computer, the helmet for your college choice (University of Tennessee) lights up on their wall of helmets and stays lit up the entire day.  (I put a circle around the Tennessee helmet.)

Several of the electronic displays you walk up to, read your plastic I.D. card and then show pictures or items of interest as you walk through the Hall of Fame related to your college choice.  At the displays, you can also choose to look at the same information related to any college.

One of the most fun areas of the Hall of Fame was related to all the fun college football fans have on game day like getting their faces painted:

We weren't very good at electronic face painting.  So we tried singing Rocky Top, the fight song for the UT Vols:

We weren't very good at that either.  I hope the University of Tennessee doesn't disown us as fans.  :)

Then, I tried being a guest commentator on Game Day:

I wasn't a very good commentator.  I didn't know where to sit and it looks like I'm nearly sitting on Chris Fowler's lap!  After watching me, Chuck decided to give it a try:

I think he has a much better chance of getting a job on Game Day than I do!  :)

We spent about three hours in the College Football Hall of Fame and really enjoyed it.  I really liked it because not only was it very interactive, it also explained a lot about what goes into preparation and the actual game itself.  There were several good videos that really get you fired up and ready to go out and either tackle somebody or go watch a college football game.  :)

The last part of the exhibits was several electronic displays where you could see all the Hall of Famers from your college or any college and information about why they were chosen like Coach Phil Fulmer from the UT Vols:

After going through all of the exhibits, we walked back downstairs where they had an partial indoor football field where kids could try going things like kicking a field goal, passing a football, and running through several tackle blocks and then jump up and catch a pass.

Adults might could do this too but we only saw kids participating.  As we left, we looked up at this huge collage painting on the wall with the history of football and famous football players and coaches.

We really enjoyed our visit and would recommend it to anyone who likes college football.  It is best to go during the week like we did if at all possible.  Terry told us that the place is packed on the weekends -- particularly when there are games going on.

The rest of the weekend we thoroughly enjoyed spending time with both of our daughters and their families.  Little Ruby, our youngest granddaughter, had just celebrated her one month birthday.

She is getting so big and even smiles at her Pa and MiMa.  :)

Hannah, who has just recently learned how to roll over really likes exploring all the toys in the jumper.

Avery and I walked down to the playground near her house.  She can get in the "big kid" swings all by herself now!

And our five little granddaughters nearly fill up a Sunday school class almost by themselves!

After church on Sunday morning, we visited for a little while longer...

...and then headed back to Wildwood because the motorhome was supposed to be ready on Monday!