I guess I have not had much to write about for the past week or at least time to write.  We took two days to drive from Deer Creek to Rainbow Plantation, the Escapee park in Summerdale, AL.  We stopped at Ochlockonee State Park in the FL Panhandle along the way.  It is a lovely park and if we are in the area we will definitely consider staying there again.  The most interesting sighting there was a white squirrel with a light black stripe on its back, not an albino.  The drive was remarkably without adventure.

At Rainbow Plantation we had a nice site, as they all are, with an oak tree hanging over us.  The sound of falling acorns on the roof was always jolting.  We were stopping there to visit our cousins Ellie and Eddie Holtzman whose daughter and family, Joy and Shaul Antar, live in Fairhope, about 25 minutes from the campground.  Ellie and Eddie were visiting so we planned to make it a family get together for Shabbat and Hanukkah.  We were invited to Shabbat dinner at the house and responded with an invitation to our motorhome followed by Chinese dinner in the traditional Jewish celebration of Christmas.  Hunan’s Chinese buffet was adequate to the occasion. It was not jammed like the Chinese restaurants in Rochester.

While parked in Rainbow Plantation, I noticed that the new LED over the entrance had gone out.  I was quite annoyed as it was expensive and I had been lead to expect 10,000 hours not 10 or 100.  I tried a few things and determined that the LED was fine, but the fixture was broken.  This necessitated a stop at Camping World for a replacement.  While there I picked up a double LED ceiling fixture to replace the ceiling florescent fixture which died last year.  The LED strips that I had been looking for cost $40 to $50 each and it needed two.  This whole fixture was the cost of one LED strip.  This resulted in fun and games as I brought the purchases home and began swapping light fixtures.  The dead fixture, which had been relocated to the driving area, came out to be replaced by a working florescent fixture from the kitchen work area, where I installed the new LED fixture.  That was the easy part.  The exterior fixture was secured with waterproof mastic which had to be carefully scraped off after removing the screws and prying the fixture away from the wall. Fortunately I had thought to buy some mastic for the new unit, I now have enough mastic to redo every fixture on the exterior of the coach.  Other minor maintenance included redoing the silicone seals on a couple of back marker lights that I had made a mess of last winter when I was trying to stop a leak by sealing everything that had an opening, between the rain drops.  As a grand finale, with Carol, I opened the compartment under the refrigerator that houses the major interior wiring harnesses and the converter (converts 120 volt AC to 12 volt DC).  We vacuumed several years of accumulated dust topped by a thick layer of Alaska dust.  I suspect there will be Alaska dust in this coach long after we have sold it.  It is everywhere.

Today we left Rainbow Plantation.  The comment we received more than once was “you’re leaving on Christmas Day?”  Yup, it is also the 6th night of Hanukkah, but few know that.  We decided to stop near Lafayette, LA in Poche Bridge at the Poche Fish ‘N Camp where we have been welcomed a couple of times in the past.  It is not too far off the highway and as a Passport America discount park it is very comfortable with full hookups.  If I haven’t described it in the past, or even if I have, it was originally a fish farm and the grounds are made up of three multi acre fish ponds with campsites around the edges.  It is a shame we are not fisher people as the camping includes fishing rights.  The Poche family have a long history in this region and in addtion to the Fish ‘N Camp they have a restaurant/meat market nearby.  There is nothing there for either of us.  I would really like to try the Boudin, but the main ingredient is pork which is a significant ingredient in all of their products.

Tomorrow we will move on to Livingston TX and the Rainbow’s End Escapee Park where we plan to be through New Years and we are meeting Scott and Deb their for New Years Eve entertainment.