Sonya's Blog - Day 220 - Moving to Birmingham, Alabama

Sonya’s Blog - Day 220 - January 28th - Moving to Birmingham, Alabama

We are on the move again. We got up early and got prepped to be out of the campground by 9:30 AM. It is a long drive to Birmingham, almost 6 hours, so we want to get an early start. No point in messing around as it is raining outside and we cannot really do much anyhow.

We managed to get out by 9:30, but Blake forgot to fill up the truck last night, so we spent 20 minutes messing around getting fuel. It is always more difficult with an RV at smaller stations. Now we are all fuelled up and on our way.

We had a pretty drive beside Tate’s Hell State Forest. The water came right up to the road though and we went through several areas where there was a threat of the highway flooding. We managed to get through, so the water wasn’t too high.

We crossed over into Alabama after about two hours. We also crossed a time zone, so we are now in the Central time zone. So we gained an hour, which put us ahead of schedule - nice! We had no idea we were crossing a time zone, so it was a little bonus.

As we continued to move North the price of gas continued to fall. By the time we filled up again the price was down to $1.89 per gallon (about $0.49 per litre US or $0.71 per litre Canadian) for diesel, most of Florida was around the $2.19 per gallon price. The price for regular unleaded was $1.52 per gallon, so super cheap. We filled up and were pretty happy and then drove about a KM down the road and a station there had diesel for $1.79 - seriously!! This is certainly a place where we are saving money as we had budgeted far more for fuel costs. When we first started the trip our truck was about $100 to fill up in Canada and $60 (American) to fill up in the States. When we just filled up last time, the tank was almost empty and the price was $39. Even with the exchange rate the price of gas is very cheap in the States. I understand from the CBC news app that fuel costs have not come down in Canada, but they have certainly come down in the States.

There really wasn’t much to see in Alabama, it just got more hilly as we headed north. We stopped at one more rest stop to walk around, use the restrooms and give Kizmet a walk.

Isaac showing me the pinecone he found, which he then threw down and Kizmet picked up. That is our RV in the background - we pretty much had the place to ourselves:

The campground we are staying at is in Pelham, Alabama which is a suburb of Birmingham. We are staying in Oak Mountain State Park. This is a very large State Park with lots of different activity areas. Mountain biking area, horse trails, archery ranges, fishing lakes and a lake for wakeboard tricks and jumps with a separate beach area and marina. I am sure there are other things, those are the things we saw. The campground is deep in the State Park and is lovely with lots of forest around. We also have a fire pit, so Blake is very excited as we haven’t had a fire pit since Georgia.

Isaac goofing around on our walk:

We took Kizmet for a long walk around the campground and Blake called his parents to check in. We had supper and then Blake built a fire. We had been carrying around our Christmas tree since Georgia, so we finally had a chance to use it as firewood. It burned perfectly, but the wood from the campground was a little damp so it took awhile for the fire to get going. We enjoyed the fire for an hour or so and then went inside as it was just too chilly out. It is a little cooler here and tonight we are going to have a low of 2. It will go up to 15 tomorrow and be sunny, but chilly at night.

When we got back in the RV we just got ready for bed and I started reading So, Anyway…by John Cleese. This is a memoir of his life. I am only one chapter in, but it promises to be good.

Sonya