Rockets, Birds and Stink Bugs – RV Life!

This has been an exciting week full of wonderful experiences. Let’s see if what happens in the catio really does stay in the catio!

Saturday at Piney River RV Resort

The autumnal equinox is here! I wonder if fall will matter as much to us now that we are traveling? We are used to experiencing four seasons and would normally be anticipating beautiful fall colors and crisp temperatures soon. We’re slowly headed south, so it should be a different fall experience this year.

Weekends at campgrounds are entertaining. Wildlife gets scarce as the weekend warriors pack as many family members, bikes, ATV’s, fancy grilling tools and other accessories into their campers and head into nature. I always get the feeling that there is one adult who is not relaxing as much as the rest of the family. That person probably drinks the most around the campfire.

Sunday at Piney River RV Resort

Today is a lazy day doing some cleaning, reading, movie watching and swimming in the river one last time before we move on tomorrow. If you like to birdwatch, do you know about the free Merlin app? It has many ways to identify birds, but our favorite is the sound recording feature. It’s like Shazam for bird sounds. It tells you what birds are around you based on their sound! Here are screenshots from a recent recording we made. Look how many birds it picked up in such a short amount of time!

Monday Moving to Redstone Arsenal

Nemo is the only one who got in a morning workout when he gave his feather toy a serious run for its money. After a week at Piney River “Resort,” we are packing up and heading further south. Today’s destination is Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. Two to three hours on the road is our goal, because there is really no reason to stress ourselves out more than necessary. And our gray cat, Cleo, is not a fan of her cat carrier or even the slightest bumps in the road (literally, not figuratively…she’s not THAT smart).

Checkout time is 11 am, so we get rolling, eat something simple and break into our individual pack up tasks. I start at the rear of the trailer and put away anything that could fall. Most things go into the sinks, shower and on the bed. Coffee pot, toaster, air fryer in cabinets. Microwave turntable in the pantry. Wall hangings on the bed. Vacuum on the bed. Half-eaten cat food gets foil and goes in the fridge. Trash can gets put on its back on the bathroom floor. Roll up the area rug and put it under the table (so it doesn’t get stuck under the slide when we bring it in). Make sure all the cabinets are secured. Lock the glass shower door and bathroom sliding door in place. Cats in carriers and in the truck. Windows closed. Steps up. Door locked. Blinds down. Blah, blah, blah, we prepare the inside of the trailer for the ensuing two-hour earthquake.

Greg handles most of the outside and also is the one responsible for our safe travel. His trailer handling skills are truly the stuff of legend. We have a shared checklist on our phones so that we can check up on each other’s progress and make sure nothing gets missed. Awning in. Drain and disconnect sewer. Disconnect water and filter. Disconnect electricity. Everything has to be put away properly so we can set up again with some level of sanity intact. Climb on the roof and to make sure nothing has fallen on top of the slide before we bring it in. Check tire pressure and lugs on trailer. Bring in slide. Retract stabilizer jacks. Attach sway bars to hitch. Connect truck to trailer and make sure everything is properly connected there. Remove chocks and X-chocks. Drive off the levelers and put them away (these are plastic rocker levelers). Check trailer lights and brakes. Blah, blah, blah, we prepare our house on wheels for safe travel.

After 2.5 hours of driving and being treated to a nearly continuous stream of Cleo’s complaining, we arrived at Redstone Arsenal’s RV Park. Nemo is a traveling champion, by the way. Gold stars are filling his chart. We proceeded to set up everything, EVERYTHING, (including releasing the cats back into the camper) in the wrong spot, 18. We were supposed to be in 19. OMG! We were one spot off and they told us we had to move! Sooo, the lesson there was that the site number was on a post that was in a slightly confusing spot, but the important place it was displayed was on the electrical box. Deep, cleansing breaths.

Tuesday at Redstone Arsenal

We didn’t really have a preconceived idea of what Huntsville would be like, but we like it! The people are super nice. There seem to be a lot of really important companies and jobs related to NASA and rockets. Space Camp is also here along with the Marshall Space Flight Center. Redstone Arsenal is quite extensive and has many buildings that look intimidating and are off-limits to most people who are even allowed on this post. There is even the International Space Station Payload Operations Center right on the post! There must be a high concentration of brilliant minds in the Huntsville area (aside from us, lol).

We’ve been training ourselves to run (yes, if you know us, that image might be funny) using an app. Our goal is just to be able to run for 10-20 minutes nonstop. That’s harder than it sounds when you are of a certain age! There is a beautiful, shady multi-purpose path that starts right near the campground. We always feel good when we are done, but it starts with us talking about how our knees feel funny. We are enjoying it here so much that we are going to stay an extra day.

Wednesday at Redstone Arsenal

There is even more to Redstone Arsenal than we thought (including a persistent hoard of stink bugs)! If you have military base/post access and like to camp, there are three camping areas: The main RV Park is right near the commissary and PX and is easily accessible via gate 8. It is a parking lot of level concrete pads, gravel roads, full hookups, bright lights at night, no fire ring…a safe place to camp, but no personality. There is a laundry room that is being renovated and is closed until sometime in November-ish. Someone told me that there is a laundromat nearby, but to avoid it at night. So, I’m going to wait until our next stop to do laundry.

Just beyond that same area there is a charming, woodsy camping area of level, gravel sites with full hook-ups and fire rings. We ended up there in site 75 after our debacle, and it was dark at night and quiet. There are a few longterm campers who we rarely saw. We heard and felt a couple of distant explosions from all the testing done on this post, but to us that adds excitement!

About 11 miles away along the Tennessee River you will find an older, slightly neglected campground at the Easter Posey Recreation Area. It is more of a state park vibe with lots of trees. It appeared to have a bath house and water/electric hookups with a dump station nearby. There is a boat ramp and a playground down there. I don’t think you can see the river from any of the campsites, but it is right across the road. This campground is pretty far from everything.

The Carroll D. Hudson Recreation Area is also along the Tennessee River and part of Redstone Arsenal. There is no camping there, but it is an area where you could spend all day! There are many individual, covered picnic tables along the river with stunning views. There are ball fields, a dock, boat ramp, a playground…it’s amazing!

Tomorrow is travel day. Let’s hope Cleo does better with this trip and enjoys her newest catio view!