Settlin' In....

Gulf Shores, AL     High:  67    Low:  48

Sparky REALLY wants to go swimming in the huge Olympic size pool here at Gulf State Park, but it's too dang cool outside and in the water-- both still about 64 degrees...The weather is not supposed to warm up till Friday, temps in the low seventies, maybe she can go swimming then.

In the meantime, it's take care of business today--laundry and some errands...Ever see so many machines available in a campground laundromat? Two dollars to wash, 1.25 to dry...a common price in campgrounds that we have been in.

Next we headed up to Camping World to get a zero gravity chair, one of those chairs where you push back on the lower bar and it moves back into a nap position :-). It's a little pricey but nice. We looked them all over very carefully and this one was the most well made, the most comfortable, had the best locking levers and seemed like it would hold up the best. We purchased the warranty with it for two years..normally, we don't do that, but sunlight really does a number on fabric chairs even with protective UV stuff in the fabric. The grommets start to pull away from the fabric as the UV rays beat down on the fabric, weakening it, the elastic starts to give and shred after awhile. After rethreading our last chairs twice, and the grommets ripping, we were ready for a new chair. Why not paid a few extra dollars for the protection plan and get a new chair if something goes wrong? Eldy goes through his rocker chair about every two years, so it's been well worth it to get the warranty plan. Sparky loves the chair and will be spending more time relaxing in it...(HA! We'll see if that happens, but that's part of the reason we got the chair, to make Sparky slow down a bit, explains E.)

We've been riding our bikes around the park...It's so big that if you go around all the streets in the park, you get about 6 1/2 miles for a bike ride just riding in the park! It's one of people's favorite things to do here in the park....We like riding around seeing if there are any fellow "Hoosiers" here (that's people from Indiana). There are a few, but not as many as you would think in a park this size. Tons of Michiganders, lots of people from Illinois, LOTS of Canadians--Ottowa, especially, and smattering of Kentuckians, Vermonters, Illinois people, :-)  and of course Alabamians. Eldy enjoyed  riding around so much yesterday, he says he might try to ride the park every day. You heard it here, first, folks..(Great...says E., with a BIG sigh..) Nothing like a little loving, encouraging pressure to help our guys stay in shape, right, ladies?

Love the little animals around the signs in the park....

There are definitely quite a few walking trails within the park....

And quite a few alligator warning signs, "DON'T FEED OR AGGRAVATE THE ALLIGATORS"--REALLY? Like somebody would be dumb enough to aggravate an alligator? (Uh, Sparky?.......) Who, me? Naw......I'm not THAT crazy....

But Sparky hasn't seen a single alligator in the park....Just lots of birds and this little tree frog, if that's what he is.

Hope he stays outside and doesn't want to come in, like the last little dude Sparky encountered staring at her from the bedroom floor while going down the road a few months ago. That last little frog, no, wait, he was BIG-- jumped onto the fridge with his sticky little webby feet, and Sparky just about had a heart attack and screamed, and Eldy just about slammed on the brakes with all the commotion going on in the back of the rig. That was the "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON BACK THERE??!!" story in case you missed it. The little hitchhiker was safely disposed of by trapping him in a paper cup and let outside as soon as it was safe to do so......

That's it for now.....see ya later.....