We settled in to Rainbow Plantations in Summerdale AL and watched the weather deteriorate.  We had planned to stay 3 days, long enough for our mail to catch up with us and see family in Fairhope. Our hopes to get together with Joy and family did not work out.  As we thought about moving on west, a check of the weather convinced us that staying put for three more days would avoid our driving into the fierce storm that was blanketing the south to the west of us (and headed our way) and was part of the massive system that was shutting down air travel and roads to the north and east of us. We had already ducked horrendous sleet and ice on the road from Florida to Alabama by being “stuck” near Sanford Fl.  We stayed and endured the rains and (relative) cold in the safety of a comfortable campground.

Our route west took us to a new stopping place, Frog City RV Park. just west of Lafayette, LA.  I would certainly recommend this for an overnight or even a few days even though it is adjacent to a truck stop just off I 10.  The noise did not disturb us and the place was neat and clean with sites more than adequate for us to pull in and stay with our Jeep attached for an easy departure the next day. While there we encountered an extreme example of something I experienced mostly in my work.  We met a neighbor who was new to RVing and offered some suggestions of support clubs they might join such as Escapees.  The men (husband and brother-in-law) went to the casino and the wife invited herself to a tour of our coach.  Over the next 30  minutes or so she unloaded her entire life history from a family of addicted people to her career in counseling  to their abrupt decision to sell everything and take up full time RVing with no preamble.  Carol and I were breathless and speechless when she took her whirlwind of tzouris (yiddish for troubles) back to her coach. I have witnessed this kind of “unloading” as I said mostly in my work as a Financial Planner, but also when meeting new people in campgrounds, but seldom in such depth and such a dysfunctional story.  We were not unhappy that they were headed east as we headed west.

We moved on the next day to Rainbow’s End in Livingston TX.  We had three objectives, pick up mail, get the vehicles inspected and VOTE.  Our first vote in Texas and early voting opens the day we plan to leave.  We hope to vote in the morning before we leave.  Our primary vote will be important as there are very few Democrats in these parts.  The other objectives are already taken care of.  We had a great walk around Lake Livingston State Park and a nice dinner out at Pueblo Viejo.  If you are ever in Livingston (I cannot imagine what would bring anyone not a member of Escapees here) and you want to dine out, this may be best option.  There is an Italian place that gets a better rating in Trip Advisor, but Italian in semi rural Texas?

Tech: Since our travel in the Fall we have become rather adept with Skype Video and Google Hangouts, it lets us see the grandkids and get a tour of the construction at Malena and Dan’s.  We put up with the occasional dropouts caused by variable wireless connection for the fun of the video. We have satellite TV, somehow I seem to always park with a tree between our antenna and the satellite we need.  Right now I am shadowed by one small limb, but it hardly seems worth shifting everything so I see how many channels of nothing to watch I can get.  We bought a Roku to watch Netflix (and many other channels) so we have much more, nothing to watch, and some movies.  Unfortunately bandwidth for the movies is sometimes a problem, we need to be in a place with excellent Verizon LTE and be sure the phone is fully charged and plugged in before starting a movie.  I am also learning  more than I want to know about licensing of programs by item and by geography.