We had planned to spend yesterday showing my son Travis and his wife Geli some more of our area, but when we got up yesterday morning nobody seemed all that energetic, so we changed our plans and hung around the house instead.
Travis’ 40th birthday is a week from today, and last year we went to Tuscaloosa and surprised him for his birthday. While we were there, Miss Terry made him a vegan carrot cake, which he absolutely loved. When they told us they were coming down for a visit, and I was telling him about the different places we could go and the things we could do, his one request was that Terry make him another carrot cake. So that’s what she did yesterday. And even to a meat and potatoes guy like me, it was absolutely delicious.
Just because we stayed home didn’t mean we didn’t accomplish something productive. In a blog post titled We’re Connected a couple of years ago I shared how we purchased a Wilson We Boost directional antenna to help us get online when we were staying at Whalers Rest Thousand Trails preserve on the Oregon coast.
We mounted it to a mast made of metal conduit and were able to get a good signal, when before that we could not pick up anything at all.
Last year the folks at WilsonAmplifiers.com contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trying out their weBoost 4G RV Cell Phone Signal Booster Kit, which I wrote about in my blog post We Got Boosted. We found it easier to use, and that’s what we will be taking with us in the motorhome when we start our summer travels.
Since we are in a dead area for Verizon reception, even though there is a tower a mile away, I have wanted to mount the first directional antenna to an antenna pole already mounted on the side of our house, so we can get better service here. But I never got around to it. So yesterday Travis went up on the roof and attached it for me. I still need to get an adapter for the coax cable before I can set everything up. I didn’t think to take a picture of it until after it was already dark.
Our friend Jim Lewis came over to join us for dinner, which was delicious, and later on we went down to a short canal that backs up to our little community and is full of manatee. I’ve been told people have counted as many as 70 of them in the canal, and while I don’t know how many were there yesterday, it was a bunch of them.
Then we went over to our boat dock and private fishing pier and spent a couple of hours watching the manatee swim by there, the different birds that hang out around the dock, and the boats going by on the water.
I brought along my Fitec EZ-Throw cast net and managed to catch three or four tiny little minnow-sized fish, as well as quite a few jellyfish. Travis gave it a try, and he’s a natural. On his very first cast the net opened perfectly, and he had fun tossing it for a while.
It’s always so peaceful down there on the dock, and Travis said he understood why it was such an important selling point for us when we bought our house. I think he would have been perfectly happy to spend the rest of their visit sitting right there. Here is a picture I took of Travis and Geli while we were on the dock.
Today is their last full day here, so I think we may brave the holiday crowds and go to the beach. Rumor has it that there will be women dressed in very skimpy bathing suits, but I’m going to try my best to avoid looking at any of them. Wish me luck.
Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an audiobook of After The Fire, book nine in my pal George Wier’s popular Bill Travis mystery series. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn this evening.
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Nick Russell
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Nick I recently purchased the WeBoost Drive 4G-X RV kit. I did a blog post on how I mount it to our RV and did some testing with it. You might get some ideas for mounting at: https://gonebyrv.blogspot.com/2017/05/purchased-cellular-phone-booster.html
When you visit your son and decide to head north of Tuscaloosa, we now own a home less than 8 miles off I-65 west of Cullman, Al and about a 100 miles from Tuscaloosa. We are out in the country on 4 acres with no other houses in sight. We have 2 RV sites on the property. One FHU, the other water and 50 amp. Would love to have you and Terry as our guests. That’s if we are home. We, too, still travel a bit. After 8 years on the road, can’t give it up completely. Right?
We really enjoyed ourselves this weekend! Already looking forward to our next visit. 🙂
We love you guys!