We went grocery shopping on the 27th in preparation for being locked into our boat for the next two to three days.  We wanted to make sure we had enough booze and HoHo’s to get us thru this ordeal :).  The night of the 27th all was calm.  The cat, Smokie had his eye on something out back

What you watchin Smoke?

I looked out the window

Hank

Oh!  Hank has decided to sit a spell on our neighbors swim platform.  Let hope he doesn’t leave a nasty surprise for them 🙂

We went to bed that night after listening to the weather and the threat of ice and snow.  Luckily, it looks like we will dodge the bullet.  It is only suppose to rain where we are because we are so close to the Gulf.

Ice on neighbors boat

Wrong!  We ended up getting the freezing rain here.  I thought I moved south so I didn’t have to put up with this s@#& again.  Poop, double poop!  So for today we sat inside and watched the freezing rain pile up on things

Ice on our bike cover and the dock

Frozen water on our dingy cover

and listen to the non-stop news about how Alabama, Georgia and Florida were going to handle this ice and snow.  I know they don’t have the equipment or resources to handle this kind of weather but I still got a chuckle out of some of the things that they did.  They shut down the schools, government and business.  They ended up closing most of the bridges.  Some people were actually trapped on the islands they lived on.  They showed tips on how to get the ice off of the cars, some I had actually never heard of.  Who’d a thunk that the southern people could teach the northern people about how to get ice off their windshield.  The news people showed a woman standing on a bridge, hitting the ice on the bridge with her ice scrapper, not a car in sight.  They showed how they put the sand on the streets, a dump truck just dumping sand, without a spreader.  There was so much sand on the street it looked like the beach.  Then they showed another dump truck with two guys in the back, the guys were using shovels to shovel and spread the sand out of the truck.  I felt bad for them but it was funny to look at.  Can you imagine them doing that in Minnesota?  Holy crap, we might as well hibernate for the winter months.  The news station showed one big dude, who was from Colorado, he had a big white beard, a wife beater T-shirt, shorts and tennis on.  He had his truck stopped on the side of the road and he was helping people get unstuck.  He’d either push them or he got in the vehicle and spun it around so they could go back where they were coming from.  What a good Samaritan!

We stayed in the boat for 2 days, drank our booze, ate our Ho-Ho’s, watched the news and watched the ice accumulate on things in the marina

Ice on the gas dock

Ice on our railings

Ice covered Isinglass

Finally, on the night of the 29th

Pink Sky in the night, Sailors delight

By the time we woke up on the 30th, the freezing weather was over but everything was still ice covered.  It was especially bad for the palm trees

Poor Palm Tree 😦

We waited for the ice to melt on the docks before we got off the boat.  Around noon, it was melted enough that we could venture out.  Then we got the heck out of there and headed for the beach

Gary on the Beach

It was still chilly but look……no snow…..no freezing rain…..Oh Boy!

We survived our first, and hopefully our last ice storm, in Orange beach.

Stay warm you people in the tundra, only 40 days till spring.  Hang in there, you can do it!