Summerdale, AL - More Excitement Than I Needed

The day began prosaically. Since it was Gary’s birthday (yep, he’s 68 now - as old as I am) we decided to go out for breakfast and then explore a town to the east called Fairhope where we had heard that there were lots of cute shoppes. Now, shoppes are not our style but, it’s a new place and we can explore, get our walk in and maybe walk along Mobile Bay.

Breakfast first and we tried a new place a bit north of Fairhope. I chose an omelet which came with toast and their ‘special grits’. I’ll have to admit, grits is nothing but tasteless corn meal mush to me. I realize that this is a regional taste and, I’m sorry, if I’m insulting anyone who likes grits but, I’d rather have hash browns or country fries (which they did not have, even as a substitute.) So, there’s the bowl of grits on my plate so I thought I’d add a bit of maple syrup to them. Anything to give them taste. Then I heard one of the guys at the next table ask why the grits are ‘special’ and I heard the waitress say that it’s because they add feta to them. He turned them down. OK, now, I’ve got maple syrup on my feta-cheesed grits. Well, maybe Gary will eat them.

At the end of breakfast, as we were paying, the waitress said ‘Happy New Year and we replied that it was a Happy Birthday and a Happy Anniversary too. Ah, that deserves two cookies and we walked out with two cookies: macadamia nuts, chocolate bits, oatmeal and sugar, lots of sugar. Made up for the maple sugar, feta grits.

Nice walk in Fair hope, down to the pier, along the waterfront. We saw a lot for $496,000. A lot, mind you, no house, no shoreline, not even a view of the Bay, For half a million? What do these homes cost?

Next was Walmart to use some gift cards from my brother. Picked them up at the post office yesterday, used them today. Easy come, easy go.

Pretty dull so far.

But the real excitement started when we got home and, after he brought in the groceries, Gary went out to check the propane tank. We knew that we were running on the hairy edge but thought we could make it to Monday when we left here and hit Flying J on our way to our next campground. Fat chance. The edge was hairier than we thought and Gary came into the RV saying - I think we’re out of propane. It’s 3:00 pm, it’s New Year’s Eve - who do you think is going to be open that sells propane? Well, we can try to survive on electric heat but that takes 24 of our 30 amps so we’s have to be really careful and watchful about what we turned on when: the electric water heater takes 11 amps, the microwave takes 13.2, the small electric heater takes 12.5, the refrigerator takes 5.5 and our computers take 7.4 together. Possible but do we want to do this for 2 days? and we’d still have to go out then. Why not just do it now?

So, I ran to the office, found the nearest propane dealer, called to see when they closed but mentioned that I needed propane for an RV and we were off and running. And, I do mean running. We had a short time to get the RV ready to move on down the road. By the time we were ready, I was hot enough that I didn’t need any heat.

We got to the propane store and - they were out - they ran out just after I called. Oh, no. All that and still no propane but there was a Feed and Seed Supply down the road about 2 miles that had propane. Whew. They were open, we got there and we now have a full tank of propane And, yes, we were really empty.

Now, remember, this is winter and the sun goes down really early. Really early. Earlier than it was when we got back to the campground. It was dark, we were coming at the space from the right and our campsite slanted to the left. Hey, we can do this. Well, if we have to jockey around, so be it - it’s not as if people are asleep at this time. And, let’s give them some dinner-time entertainment. I’m sure that they are sitting in their RV thinking, as I would have in their place, ‘Whew, luckily that’s not me coming in after dark.’ ‘Who in their right mind would come into a campsite after dark?’

I got out and put a head lamp on so Gary could see where I was. I stood in back so that he could hear me give directions to him through the back-up camera. And we did it, first try. What a surprise. No jockeying around, right into the slot, between the hook-ups that he had left and the mat we had left out. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, I’m just expressing surprise at how easy it went.

And that was more excitement than I expected.

Happy Birthday to my guy.