Rolling on down the road and mooch docking

oh it’s a frightful morning.  The alarm clock woke me up at 6.30 AM!!!  YES .. I agree I’m RETIRED, i don’t get up to those anymore .. well I'm not suppose to!  Oh Man, it’s one cold morning.   Temperature is 35 degrees!  Mr. Winter has definitely found me :(

I have everything but the computers ready to roll .. I’m dressed and hubby is struggling to get himself outside to finish his job.  We’d wait it out another day but their calling for low 20’s tonight!  360 miles ahead of us .. Yep one very long drive so we have to get moving as we still have to dump the tanks .. well hubby does :)  I will be staying in the truck. 

As you can see I didn’t stay inside the truck, instead i went potty and took a couple pictures .. yes hubby is doing the dirty deed on the other side .. snicker

Were sad to be saying goodbye to Fort Pickens as we’ve really enjoyed our stay here.    
Me O My .. leaving at 8 AM has us in rush hour traffic … Yikes!

Once we got onto I-110 the traffic let up
 
More bridges to pass and Oh My the wind is horrible and blowing our rig all over the place.  This is the first time the wind has ever been a factor in this rig.  The Motor home was horrible and if the wind blew much we had to stay sitting still but this is our first experience with wind being a factor. 
I-10 traffic wasn’t bad at all we had a pretty smooth ride.  Of we had to stop at several rest areas for me to potty and stretch.

several hills .. as we just kept going up

the police were out in full force as we tend to see them quite often

It was a beautiful day for a drive.  The sun was out even though temps were only in he high 40’s ..Inside the truck we were nice and comfy .. getting out to go potty was another story. 

We stopped in Marianna to get diesel we pulled into a station that advertised diesel for $3.55 if you paid cash so we went over to it .. ugh i go inside to pay and am told they don’t have diesel .. grrrr i asked why they had the sign on advertising it then?  So we fought the traffic across the street and went to a TA where we got it for $3.58 with cash.

Finally we were getting close to our destination .. less then an hour to go and i was glad because we’ve lost an hour already.  Yep .. we’ve gone from Central to Eastern time therefore we’ve lost an hour.

Once we got on I-75 the traffic increased big time .. just thankful were not on the other side as it was almost bumper to bumper.

Our exit is getting closer … Yeppie

I love this sign

Once we turned off of I-75 and onto 441 the traffic wasn’t too bad
 
Once we got into town it started picking up as it was 3.30 PM and school is out but once we got through town the traffic let up and we enjoyed the scenery of the open

We finally arrived at our destination and i tried to call Eric to let him know we were here .. no answer and there is no way we can get into the parking lot behind the building where we were told we could park at.  Oh NO!!  We have the street blocked as there was no way we could go forward any farther nor could we turn around, we couldn’t continue to go down there street.  The only way out is to go backwards the same way we came in .. Ughh .. hubby put the flashers on and i stood on the street directing traffic around us.  Hubby went to find someone or to see if he could find where the hookups and parking was. 
  
Hubby returned saying there was no way we were getting into the parking lot.  A gentleman stopped and helped me direct traffic and directed hubby on backing up into the road.  We had to back onto a busy street and then we had to jump a curb and fight a tree to get into the grass parking lot.  The gentleman said that is where he thought the campers parked at when visiting. 

Once we got pulled in off the street hubby went looking for hookups, while he was doing that Eric called me back and said we were in the wrong place we were to park behind the building.  I explained there was no way and I wasn’t even sure how we were going to get out of where we were now.  Eric came over and when he saw our rig he realized our dilemma .. he took hubby around the back of the building where he thought we could park to see if there was any possible way but once they got to looking, the sewer is one side of the building, the water hook up is on the other side and there was no electrical hookup at all for us behind the building.  Hubby went over where he saw a light and found 4-15 amps plug ins .. at least we’d have electric if they worked.  He got out his electric drill and plugged it in and checked all 4 outlets .. yep they worked .. great we back onto the huge concrete slab and hubby dug until he found 2 of his heavy duty cords and went to work on making them fit through the hole on our slide out.  We got setup and unhooked from the truck, out came the walls and so we are now using one outlet to run a electric heater, another has a 3 way plug plugged into and i am running the computers and freezer off it and then hubby dug out the plugs to go from 50 amps to 30 amps and then to 15 amps and our camper is plugged in.  We are running all LP appliances off LP and we will be using a electric heater and our furnace to stay warm tonight with as they are predicting temps to drop down to 25!  It’s good that we are prepared for those just in case.  If all else failed we could of dug out our generator and used it for electric for the night. 
 
The downside is we only filled our fresh water tank yesterday to 1/3 full as we thought we’d have water hookups, a good side i did fill all of our water jugs up for that just in case day.  We emptied our tanks before leaving this morning so for now we will have to find a way to get water.   We can take showers across the street in the building if we need to .. although I'm spoiled and enjoy using my own shower.  For tonight we are parked and tomorrow we research our options and decide what we will do. 

When you are mooch docking I guess you really can’t be picky and have to appreciate what ever little bit you get.  We had planned to be here a couple weeks as of now we are not sure what will happen.  Guess that is why we are so flexible in this lifestyle.  We are content with a nice level parking spot on concrete, we do have electric (cords running in the inside .. snicker ) and are finally nice and warm inside the comforts of home.  We are in a well lighted area and our parking spot is in a really neat place .. (the dogs have a wonderful place to play and potty) i will take pictures tomorrow (it was getting dark by the time we got finished working) we have several TV channels with the local TV (we never even attempted to setup our satellite) and our phones and internet work great .. we are thankful to be parked for the night after a long exhausting day .. we are grateful for the free place to park and will adjust I'm sure.  We know Eric feels bad as he was missed inform on the hookups but it’s okay Eric, we can manage and we plan to still have a great time and are looking forward to church services tomorrow night .. i will save that for another post.  Good night all .. I'm going to get a really quick and I MEAN QUICK shower .. i was so looking forward to a nice long hot shower tonight :(( and then it’s off to bed for me as the long exhausting day and the cold weather is getting the best of this back.  NO heating pad tonight .. ughh something may have to go if this back doesn’t let up once i get a quick hot shower.  Night all!!