Monday, December 17, 2007 - Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL

Sunrise at Site 42, Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL, December 17, 2007 (Brrrr - open the door & shoot)

It sure is nice not having to deal with the snow and ice I escaped this winter.

I wondered why the great little Titan Ceramic Heater with Thermostat #TCM16W-U I picked up at Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago was having a hard time keeping the temperature up in here. When I was looking for a ceramic heater to use instead of propane when I'm hooked up to shore power this one was recommended to me by a friend who has used a couple of them for supplemental heat for his house for years. It's great but won't heat the RV all by itself at 25 degrees so when I got up this morning I supplemented it with my Olympian Wave 6 catalytic heater. Now we're nice and toasty warm.

One of these days I need to figure out what is causing shore power to interfere with the Kyocera KR1 Mobile EVDO WiFi Router I use with a Verizon USB720 USB EVDO Rev A modem for broadband access. To get get the WiFi working I have to shut off shore power and run it off the house batteries. What a pain. For the period I'm online I'm without my ceramic heater and my laptop recharging brick. I end up running 2 hours online followed by 2 hours off line to recharge the laptop. There is a caution in the KR1 manual about setting it up too near a microwave oven or some other source that dirties the power. Maybe it's the old power converter that is causing my problem. I removed the microwave oven before I left on this trip so it can't be that.

Night camp

Site 42 - Foscue Creek Campground, Demopolis AL

This is a well maintained US Army Corps of Engineers campground with level paved sites, most with full hookups
Many sites overlook the water of the inlets off Demopolis Lake on the Tombigbee River
There is good biking on the park roads
The campground is pretty full Thanksgiving week and is generally booked solid the weekend of the Demopolis Christmas on the River festival in early December.
Poor Verizon cell phone service - access is via Extended Network, roaming
No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies is slow but reliable
Only 3 miles to Wal-Mart and other services in Demopolis AL
Find other references to Foscue Creek
List the nights I've camped here
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Crayfish Chimney

Late one afternoon I sat upon my camera case beside the path where it wound through the darkest part of the woods, down near the pond, and watched a crayfish building his "chimney," the land entrance to his underwater tunnel. He had just started to work above the ground when I first arrived. He came up through the moist black earth, carrying a ball of it between his two enormous fighting claws. Using the claws as hands, he spread the soil around the hole to form the base of the chimney. He then backed down the hole and after several minutes came up with another armful.

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