Day Six - Year Two

Today we visited Sloss Furnaces – this is considered one of the top 100 most haunted places in the United States.  Sam and I like to watch shows like Ghost Hunters and the Ghost Adventures, and the Ghost Adventures team did an investigation at Sloss Furnaces last season.  In other words, Sam was really excited to visit this place!

It was an awesome place to see, just the because of the sheer immensity of the machinery!  Everything was super-size!  It was easy to imagine the men working at the plant, breathing in all the fumes from the furnaces and dealing with the intense heat.  It makes us realize how far this country has come along the evolutionary path in industry and production.

While we were touring, we actually found one of the places marked with an “x” for a “hot spot” by the Ghost Adventures team – Sam was thrilled!  J  I took several photos of the area and actually caught an orb on one, so we now have ghost pics!  It was an awesome day and really cool.

We did a Ghost Walk Tour of Birmingham at 8:00 pm – our guide was really cool and enjoyed himself immensely!  He was actually moving to Port Charlotte, FL  in a few days, and said he would be researching that area to set up his Ghost Tour biz down there.

We walked around a two or three block area of Birmingham, starting at the Linn-Henley Research Library at Linn Park.  We received a cool history lesson of the area, and saw the original churches of Birmingham (minus one that had been demolished), along with such icons as the Lyric Theatre, and the Alabama Theatre, along with the old site of the Tutwiler Hotel and the newer version of the Tutwiler.

I took several photos along the way, and after reviewing them, found energy orbs on a couple of different photos!  There were two different orbs on some photos taken of a garden outside a church rectory where our guide said several people had captured orbs in photos.  Also one orb in a photo taken of the Lyric Theatre.  Cool!

Day Five - Year Two

Birmingham Zoo – half price with our FL Aquarium Membership – yay!  I had seen online that they were having half-price Tuesdays and $5 weekends, so going on a Thursday was the bomb!  No crowd at all!  We got to see lots of cool animals, and their birds seemed especially friendly.  Inside the Lorikeet aviary, I had a special friend on my head and I didn’t even have any food for him!  J

Some Lady Ross’s Turaco’s were really curious, and came right over to look me over when I talked to them.  I was beginning to wonder if I looked like their zookeeper since they were so friendly!

The predator house had the usual lions and tigers, but also several feline species we had never heard of before, so that was interesting.  We saw the presentation with their resident “ham” lion who showed off his teeth and his growl while being fed.  Sam really wanted to see the sea lion show, so we made sure to attend that one, as well.

One of the really cool things we were able to witness was the young giraffes running around their pen.  A light rain storm blew up, and they started loping around their enclosure – it was amazing to see these tall animals taking those super long strides!  They were so beautiful and frisky!  The zebras next door were running around as well, and kicking up their heels.

Day Four - Year Two

Of course, it was sunny this morning when we decided to leave!  J  We were going to get an early start, but Jim discovered that the auxiliary batteries were not charging, so he had to work on that for a while.  He charged the batteries for a while so we could close the awning and close the slides, so we got out around noon.

We drove to Birmingham, AL and it was a nice drive, not much interstate driving.  We saw a lot of small town America along the way.   Our campground is Birmingham South, and used to be a KOA.  It is a nice campground, not as spread out as the last one, but clean and comfy with the amenities we like.  It is only 20 miles from Birmingham, so it is close enough for us to drive into the city each day for sightseeing.

One of the activities I found online was a night hike - Full Sturgeon Moon - at Ruffner Mountain Nature Park tonight at 8:00 pm, so I called and booked us in!  We got to hike through the woods at night for about two miles under the full moon over to their wetlands area.  What a frog chorus!!  I really wish I had taken a recorder to capture the hundreds of frogs singing their songs.  We got see a few of them with flashlights, and the green tree frogs were especially cute!  Even though the temperature wasn’t too bad, the humidity was around 95%, so were soaked at the end of the hike.  It was a good one, though!  Sam really enjoyed it.

Day Three - Year Two

Rained ALL night, and ALL day!  Everything in the area is flooded.  One of our jacks even sank into the ground and we had to relevel the coach.  If we had looked harder, I am sure we could have found something to do inside somewhere, but we were too lazy so we just chilled inside.

Day Two - Year Two

Rain, rain, and more rain!  We were planning to do a little sight seeing, but it rained buckets all night with thunder and lightning, and it rained most of the day.  We managed to walk over to the beach for about 30 minutes before ANOTHER thunder and lightning show came in, and we got wet walking back to the coach.  The sky was wicked black and scary looking!  Sam was quoting tornado statistics the whole way!

When we checked into the campground, the lady at the desk was warning me about the really bad rip tides at the beach, saying that three people had drowned last week trying to swim.  So, no swimming at the beach this trip!

Day One - Year Two

We are on the road officially!  Woo hoo!!!  We made it to Panama City Beach, FL and we are staying at the Raccoon River Campground, about a block from the beach.   I wanted to stay at St. Andrews Park but it was full.  Only staying for a couple of days of r and r before heading to Birmingham, AL.

Sam made good use of the drive to finish one of his K'Nex projects!

The campground is nice, lots of trees and a little pond with a bridge over it.  There are remnants of some sort of amusement park, so it must have a past.  It is also located right next door to a water park.

We were worried that something wouldn’t work in the rv or we would screw something up since it’s been so long since our last trip.  J  When we got to the campground, we found the car battery to be dead because we left the headlights on the auto setting instead of turning them off, so they must have been on while we were towing it.  Oh well, one mishap under our belt!

Year Two - Introduction

As you can see, our blog ended abruptyly after day 83 with no explanation.  Most of you know the reason for that - at 1:30 am on the morning of day 85 we got a phone call from our hotel that a tornado had just ripped the roof off!  Needless to say, our trip was over for the year.

We drove to Buffalo, NY so I could fly home that day, and Jim and Sam followed behind in the rv.  I got to the hotel around 2:30 pm, and it was a circus of people and equipment everywhere!  Fire department, city officials, television reporters, restoration companies, and curious onlookers.  Seems we were quite the attraction!  We made national news, and Sam was really excited when he called to say we were on Fox News!  :)

The entire top floor of the long wing was a shambles.  The front part of the roof including the whole veranda overhang was gone on about half of that wing.  It was still raining, off and on, and everything was soaking wet and covered with debris.  A huge section of our roof was torn loose and dropped onto the roof of the condo building behind us, and it was sticking out of their roof like a spear.  I heard reports that some of our roof was in the bay behind the neighborhood!

I got a crew of cleanup personnel started immediately and had them tarp the roof to try to save the rest of the building.  The next few months went by in a blur - a parade of contractors, construction workers, insurance adjusters, and officials.  Jim was onsite day and night for about two months because of the constant rain, fighting to keep our bottom floor dry.  Finally in November the rains let up, and we got the place under roof in December.  Our greatest concern, and driving force, was to have the place open by the beginning of the winter season, which was February.  We pushed and pulled, harangued, and argued, and pestered and pleaded, and worked our tails off, but we had every room open by February 15th (except our 2 bedroom, which was ready by the end of February).  It was a LONG winter, but we had a record breaking March, so it was fantastic!

Unfortunately, we had to replace our hotel management team, and it was at the end of the winter season when it is CRAZY busy, so Jim moved into the hotel and ran the business until we contracted with a new management company.  He was there for about six weeks before he finally got to spend a night back home.  I was also over there most every day during the day working the laundry and managing the housekeeping, so Sam got to see his share of the place, too! 

Our new management team came on board in June, and after some training, moving, and assimilation, they are on board and running the show!  The hotel has had a really busy summer season, so they have had PLENTY of OJT!  :)  They are really good folks, and all of our customers like them!  We greatly appreciate all their hard work - and we finally managed to get out of town at the end of July!  LOL