Last night, L, Caroline, her husband, and I headed back out to the Indianola Fishing Marina for burgers and a little live music. We had prepared to freeze, but the marina is well sheltered, so we were comfortable and hung out for over two hours.

The marina has a new cook who completely messed up everyone’s orders. L had ordered well before the rest of us and had to remind the kitchen that he’d ordered something. My chicken ranch bacon burger with lettuce and tomato was lacking bacon and tomato and when the manager got wind of this, she offered me a free appetizer. So I got to assuage my curiosity as to what ‘crab poppers’ are (spicy hot and delicious!).

I’m glad we had a chance to hang out since Caroline and her hubby are thinking of leaving today and L is leaving shortly. But we will all see each other again soon as the path through Saskatchewan is straight through their respective cities.

When we got in, Caroline’s hubby asked if I wanted to plug into their generator. We had done that the night before and also a few days ago. The night before, I only needed about 10A to fill the bank, but the computer was discharged, so I was thankful to plug in for a  few amps so that I could start with a nearly full battery in the morning and a full charged computer.

But last night, I had to refuse the offer! I came in to 12.8V, which is FULL, and my computer also had a full charge. There was really no point even though I ended up running the furnace and electric blanket for a bit.

I woke up to 12.59V (99.5% according to the battery monitor) and COLD again, so I’m running the furnace this morning since I have tons of propane. Yesterday, I ran the furnace mid-afternoon for about a half hour, which I’m pretty sure is the only time I ran the furnace during the day this winter. That said, I did run an electric heater almost full-time in Hampton Roads.

Last night, social director S rounded up just about everybody on the beach plus some friends from Port Lavaca and got us all down to the Indianola Fishing Marina for an evening of live music on the pier to sort of celebrate Mardi Gras (I spent two weeks in New Orleans and I got Mardi Gras beads in Indianola, go figure!).

The marina is a tiny building that serves a small menu where you can grab beer ($1.50 a can!) from the cooler. It costs $5 to fish all day (and night) from the pier. I really want to go back there one afternoon. S and I can’t decide which place is cooler, the bar in Chicken or the marina in Indianola. It’s awesome to meet fellow travelers who have been to the same places you have!

Even though it had been kind of wet and gross all day, the temperature on the pier was very comfortable. Our food came quickly and then the music started.

We were being entertained by a local band, Highway 316, and they were good! They had people dancing almost immediately. S got me to join her, then a new neighbour, L, asked me to share a few dances with him. We must have looked like quite the pair, him who hadn’t danced in 20 years and me who has the rhythm of a stick! It was a lot of fun!

Another member of our group were a couple from Germany who had their RV shipped to North America and have been traveling for the past 10 months. They are heading home in March. They said their night in Indianola will make the top of the list of most memorable moments of their trip.

We didn’t stay too late, leaving around 9:30. I somehow got lost on the way home (how you can do that when the marina is literally at the end of the street from which one accesses the beach is beyond me), so by the time my GPS got me turned around and home, it was 10:00.