While in Auburn we spent time at the mobile home we bought
for our sons to live in while attending college. It always seems to need cleaning and fixing. We do enjoy our time visiting with them and
even had a chance to celebrate Chris’ 20th birthday. Of course, our food budget for the month was
blown taking them out to eat, but that is to be expected.
In Tuscaloosa, we spent most of our time with Mom helping
her around her house while her toe healed from minor surgery. We celebrated my brother-in-law’s birthday
and were able to spend time with extended family. We also celebrated our 29th
wedding anniversary with a nice dinner out.
During this time, the Washington, D.C. area where we last lived was hit
with heavy snow. I took a picture of the
snowfall in Tuscaloosa and sent to my friends there to show them we also got
hit. Look close and you can see a few
flakes falling.
We left Mom’s place after the doctor told her she was doing
fine and headed south toward Houston, TX where we plan to have our AquaHot
system (a new replacement system installed at the time we purchased The Bus) repaired
by Rudy Legett a specialist recommended through on-line forums. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch as we
passed through my hometown of Greenville, AL.
While we were eating, I said to Pattie that it had been several years
since I was here and that I wished I had time to stay and visit some old
friends. She gave me a duh sort of look
and said, “Then just do it! We are making this up as we go.” I thought for a second then placed a call to
Sherling Lake Park to see if they had a space for us for…uh…three nights. They had space and after lunch we were met at
the office and escorted to a nice pad with full hook-up.
We took a drive around town seeing all the changes that have
taken place over the years. It was good
to see many of the old landmarks and businesses still in place. We visited my father’s gravesite and met with
the funeral director. I made contact with some old friends and we were able to
visit with a few of them. Pete and Merle
Newton are good family friends and Pete was my Sunday school teacher during
those critical teenage years. They are long time RV’ers and were excited to
hear about our adventures and plans. They told us about several of their
favorite places to visit and we exchanged notes. Roger Nicholas was my best
friend in high school and he invited us out to his farm to practice our shooting
skills. Roger and I shot competitively
on the high school rifle team back when they had such things. Later, Pattie and
I explored some back roads in the Jeep enough to get it covered in red clay
mud.
After our three days, we resumed our trip to Houston heading
south to Mobile, AL and then west into Louisiana where we stopped for a single
night in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The Bus
is fully self-contained, so if we only need to stop for a single night along
the way, it saves a couple bucks to stop at one of the many places that will
let you stay free for one night. The
AllStays app is great for locating these places. However, there is certain
etiquettes that should be observed when staying overnight such as: ask
permission, park with a minimum footprint (no slides protruding into parking
lot, no awnings out, no grills and chairs out), don’t lower jack stands that
may harm pavement, always patronize the business. We like Wal-Mart because we can pick up
supplies and their parking lots are covered with security cameras and frequent
police patrols.
Thanks for keepingupwiththejonesrv!
