50 Amp Power Problem

 

Blairsville, Ga (high 82, low 60)

We’re keeping busy around here, but haven’t been on any hikes yet.  Al has been having problems with both of his knees.  One is bad enough that the doctor is ready to do a knee replacement.  Al wants to see how it does this summer and if he is able to do any mountain hiking. He hasn’t been able to find out because his “good” knee is giving him more problems than the bad one.  It’s been very hot up here this year, so we haven’t been very interested in hiking anyway.  This is the third summer we’ve been here and it’s by far the warmest we’ve seen.  We’re hoping this unusual heat wave will end soon.

We took a drive over to Highlands, North Carolina.  It’s supposed to have some really high end RV resorts and expensive houses.  They must be hidden because the only thing we found was a little touristy town with shops and a lot of people.

This building appeared to be some kind of apartment building.  I loved the beautiful flower boxes.

It’s a picturesque little town, but the crowded streets reminded me a little bit of Key West, without all the fun and interesting people.  There were no bars, so that might explain the lack of interesting people.  :)

The kids seemed to enjoy this fountain.

The ride to Highlands was very scenic and we stopped often to stretch our legs and take some photos.

We came upon this place that appeared to be like a dry waterslide.  The people you see on the right of the picture were standing on some sort of escalator thing that gave them a ride back up to the top of the hill.

Once on the top, they got in an inner tube and rode down to the bottom.  It looked like fun.

We made a stop in Dillard Georgia to pick up some fresh produce at Osage Farms.  Everything is fresh picked, delicious, and reasonably priced.

 

We’ve been going for our morning and evening golf cart rides looking for bears, but have only seen turkey and deer so far. 

Al is always on the look-out for rocks, so if he sees any along the road, he stops to grab a few. He’s using them as borders for our trees and planters.  The recent grading of the road brought up quite a few nice rocks for his collection. 

Most of you know, we have another Rv site just down the street, that we rent out.  On Sunday, our new renters came in in a big Tiffin bus with 4 slides and a tag axle.  It was the largest RV we’ve had in the site, and I was happy to see that they fit just fine.

The problem started a few hours after they arrived.  The 50 amp circuit breaker shut down.  We assumed they had overloaded the circuit because they have 3 ac units on the rig and it was pretty warm outside.   It happened again a few times so we decided we might need to replace the breaker. 

Al doesn’t like to mess with electricity.  Fortunately, one of our friends here is a retired electrician and he agreed to change the breaker.   He thought we might need to pull the meter in order to change the breaker, but as it turned out that wasn’t necessary.  It turned out there was a crack in the breaker, which I’m sure explained the problem.   for my records:   we used a 50 amp double pole General Electric breaker that we found at Home Depot.   

Changing the breaker would have been easy, except for the fact there was a big motorhome that was close to the pedestal and not much room to work.   Our friend Pete had to crawl down under the slide and get on his knees to open the box to be able to get to the breaker.  He has bad knees, so it was pretty hard on his body. Poor guy.  He wouldn’t take any compensation for his work….but we’re going to figure out a way.   Thanks Pete!  (Pete is a long time reader of my blog, which is how we met him in the first place)

 

The other day, we took a drive to one of our favorite shops in nearby Hiawassee.  Al found a cute bear wall decoration that he couldn’t resist.

 

 

We also found a smaller one just like to go with it.

I love the 3 dimensional look.

There are a lot of artists here that do some amazing work.  It’s always fun to visit the shops and see all the art.  

Yesterday, we finally took the time to sit outside and read. 

I found another good book about hiking the Appalachian Trail. This one is called Hiking Through by Paul Stutzman.  He made the hike after losing his wife to cancer.  I am really enjoying it, especially when he talks about places nearby.

I’ve read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, which by the way has been made into a movie to be released after Labor Day.  It stars Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.   If the movie is half as good as the book, it should be a great and funny movie.

I also read Wild by Cheryl Strayed, but it’s about a thru hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. 

If anyone has any other thru hiking books they recommend, let me know.  I’ll be needing a new book soon.

Guinea Rescue

 

Blairsville, Ga (high 78, low 62) cloudy

 

It certainly has not been as cool this year as in years past.  In fact it’s been downright hot with temps in the upper 80’s most days since we’ve been here.  The past two days have been cloudy and we’ve gotten a little rain, so it’s cooled off.

I usually love sunny blue sky days, but here in the mountains cloudy days offer a special kind of beauty and I love watching the clouds forming over the mountains. 

We’ve been staying busy planting flowers and making things pretty.  We have people that mow the grass, trim, and edge, so all we have to do is our own planters.

Our hydrangea is always beautiful every year.

We splurged on some baskets.  This one fits on the deck railing.

 

This one hangs by the hot tub.

Despite the fact that the goldfinch love zinnias, I planted some in the three window boxes.  They are my favorites, so I just have to do battle with the birds.

We’ve also been doing a little trimming and planting at our other Rv lot.  It’s vacant for a few more days then it will be rented mostly through November 2nd.  

We have been looking for bears every night when we take our golf cart ride on the back roads around the campground.  No bears so far, but there have been some reported.  Tonight, we may take a drive by car to nearby Vogel State Park, where many have been seen.

We did see a flock of geese though.

 

We went to the library yesterday.  I got a few books on through hikers on the Appalachian Trail.  I’ve read a few books about through hikers and enjoyed them both, so I thought I’d check out a few more.  Today might be a good day for reading.   Nice and cool and cloudy.

We were outside working yesterday and kept hearing some sort of bird squawking.  It kept getting louder and louder and finally it started to sound like it was in distress.

We got a little concerned, so we jumped in the golf cart to look for it.  We quickly found the bird sitting on a roof on one of the cabins behind us.

At a distance, it looked like a bald turkey, but when I zoomed the camera in, this is what I saw.

Then I remembered Al telling me one of our neighbors lost a Guinea chicken.

Yep, that is what it was.

 

We ran over to tell Chris we found his Guinea and he rode back with us.  We chased it around and finally herded the bird back towards his property, but not before it stopped on our Rivers Edge Rv Park sign.

He tried to use feed to entice it back into it’s pen, but with no luck.  It was safe on his property sitting high in one of his trees.  We heard later it found it’s way back to the pen.  So it was a happy ending.  At least I hope so.  Hopefully he has them for eggs and not meat. 

It looks like it’s going to be a lazy day in the Blue Ridge Mountains.