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| This is the full moon rising at my last campsite at Whitetail Ridge. It was nice. Definitely a top 10 campsite. |
My current campground is the first campground I escaped to when avoiding the heat of southern Alabama while waiting on my new air conditioner to be delivered. On that stay it worked really good because my campsite was completely surrounded by trees and very shady. Almost too much shade because with a little rain it became very humid like a rain-forest. But, I've guess I've become spoiled by my last two great campsites. They each backed up to the lake with complete afternoon shade to keep the temperature manageable during the day. With nighttime lows in the mid to upper 60's, it was ideal.
So, with those in mind, I saw this campsite when I was looking for a campground before heading towards the Mobile area. It looked similar, in relation to the lake, but I needed to check the afternoon shade. From one of my computer apps, I looked up the angle of the setting sun and plotted that on Google Earth from the location of the campsite. Wow, the sun would set behind a group of 4 big trees providing complete shade from about noon to sunset. This process has worked for me many time in the past so I confidently made the reservation while patting myself on the back for finding another great campsite. I was Wrong. I was only a little wrong, but still wrong. I'll have to add another item to the list of "Close only applies to horseshoes and hand grenades". The item I need to add is "angles of the sun". You see, the sun missed that group of trees by only a couple of degrees which was enough to allow the sun to hit Liberty broadside all afternoon. It got warm and I had to go to town until it cooled off some. As to my campsite chose,,,,the Knight said it correctly in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ,,,,"He chose poorly". It doesn't really matter now since today is my last day here.
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| It's a nice campsite but only with a good air conditioner. |
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| That group of 4 trees on the left are the ones I had counted on to provide me shade. |
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| I don't get to see the setting sun, but I do get to see the afterglow. |
My surge guard protected me and Liberty again. When I plugged into the campsite electrical pedestal the surge guard indicated a "High Ground, 4 volts". Since there wasn't a 50 amp receptacle for me to "dogbone" to, I called the campground hosts and one of them came to my site to check it out. He was not an electrician. He simply checked the voltage and said it was wired correctly. I asked him to check the voltage between the ground of the 30 amp and the ground of the 20 amp, but he said he wasn't comfortable doing that and called the COE ranger. She showed up quickly and called their contracted electrician who also showed up quickly. He removed the panel and you could clearly see the cracked receptacle and burnt wire. This allowed some voltage to bleed over to the ground wire which my Surge Guard identified and prevented power from going to Liberty. Between bad pedestals, nearby lightening strikes and power surges, my Surge Guard has protected me at least a half a dozen times or more. All's well that ends well.
Tomorrow (Monday) is moving day and I'll be making a long tow of about 250 miles to get back to Meaher State Park in Spanish Fort, Alabama (near Mobile) to get my new A/C installed on Tuesday. I plan to arrive at the campground between 5 and 6 o'clock to avoid most of the afternoon heat. Hopefully, tomorrow will be the last day I worry about hot temperatures for a while.
I haven't done much exploring around the area this time. I did drive by the dam to see if they were generating power since the lake level is so low. I was surprised to see one of the three turbine outlets going since the last time I was here, it didn't seem like any power was being generated. Maybe some rain will hit this area to fill the lakes up before winter.
This is probably the last picture of a dam for awhile.
Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.
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