500 Miles from Home

Thursday a.m. Kentucky



Park City, KY  RV park

To all the Veterans and active military personnel around the world. THANK YOU!
It is cold here this a.m. – What happened to the shorts and t-shirt weather?
The Internet is working great this morning both AOL and all the search engines.
Yesterday after setting it up couldn’t get on AOL and from both IE and Firefox I couldn’t get the search feature to work. Wonder why it takes overnight for it to get working. Hopefully it has to do with the modem switch and not the location switch. Guess I’ll know this afternoon. Just reread yesterday’s post – sounds like I said the air conditioning wanted to lock me out – it was the computer that was locking me out not the air conditioning. Have the heater running this morning!
We have five clocks in here – not counting the phone and computers and only two show the correct time – the other three are all different - don’t know where they think they are.
Between the time change earlier this week and the time zone change yesterday I could barely keep my eyes open until late enough to go to sleep. Glad the Central Time Zone is such a big area might be able to get used to it in a day or two.

Thursday p.m. Arkansas

Today was a long day – 350 miles.
It got HOT again during the day – especially with the sun shinning in the front window. Had to put on shorts and take my shoes off!
Pretty uneventful day of driving. Did stop at a Flying J and was disappointed to find out their good restaurants are gone and been replaced by Dennys. Bet the truckers miss the buffets! Gas is 40 cents a gallon cheaper in Tennessee than in Indiana – good time to fill up.

The trees still have a lot of their colors along the freeways so made for a pretty drive.

But the trucks – so many down I-65 and then I-40. Felt like a piece of bologna between slices of bread! Glad I wasn’t driving – doesn’t seem to bother The Driver.
Through Nashville, Jackson, Memphis and across the Mississippi into Arkansas.


Crossing the Mississippi

 Saw a big field fire off in the distance.

Big field fire

We are staying in a campground at a Super 8 Motel in Heth, Arkansas. Have stayed here once before. Its okay, has all utilities including WiFi BUT right next to a TA truck stop and I-40. Lots of truck noise – and if I remember correctly it goes on all night. Easy in and out and pull-throughs. There is a little river that runs along next to it – so I see lots of little bugs flying around outside.
Both TV and Internet are working. But it must be the putting up and taking down the satellite dish that fouls up AOL and the search engines as again they are not working. Will have to ask the guy in Vegas who is going to install the piece that needs replacing. It’s not catastrophic but it is annoying. Got two more of the clocks set to the correct time. The last one will stay on Indiana time.
Went across street to eat dinner – there is a Burger King, Taco Bell and a Country Pride (TAs restaurant) The Driver had buffet – didn’t know he could eat so much. I had spaghetti with enough left for tomorrow lunch.

Hitting the Highway

Wednesday 11/10/10 Park City, KY


We are off and running –
Left home around 8:30 after completing packing etc.

Bye

So far I haven’t found anything we forgot. The first couple of miles of the trip were very noisy. All the acorns that were on top of Jennie were rolling around – sounded like we were in a pinball machine. Hopefully they are all gone now.
Stopped in Columbus for breakfast and to tell everyone we know there Goodbye – Then on to I-65 heading south. Freeway all the way to Park City, KY about 180 miles.
Crossed over the Ohio River into Kentucky at Louisville

 – very hazy out today – hard to take a good picture.

Louisville, KY

Saw the remains of one accident with a semi – not bad but boy was traffic backed up going north. Even here in KY the grass is all brown and the trees are mostly without leaves. Every once in awhile there will be a bright orange or red one proudly showing off its colors.
Some of these eastern roads drive me crazy – the ones with the seams every 20 or so feet. We sound like a train going down the road – clackity clackity clack.
I have to laugh – have seen this many times in many areas. On one side of the highway is an ADULT bookstore!?! And on the other a religious billboard. This one proclaimed “Thou shalt not commit adultery” It was a GREAT BIG billboard.

straight up it went

And we saw one other very strange thing in the sky. Made me think about what they saw in California the other day. This was also a con trail of some kind – but it went straight up in the air. It didn’t go across the sky. It was sure big and strange.
We are already in Central Time so we got here pretty early in the day. But that’s fine – not in a hurry.
We have both TV and Internet so all is well. I didn’t have any problems putting the coordinates in the satellite dish configuration (any way not after I tore the file up looking for the directions – found it PHEW.) Then had to switch the modem – that took a while – got so upset I had to turn the air conditioning on to cool me off. For some reason it kept wanting to lock the computer out – But I persisted and won. Glad I only have to do that once per trip.
Speaking of AC – I’m sitting here in shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt – quite a difference from home. Be nice if it stayed like this until we get to Mexico. Dreaming…..
Got a little very light weight clip on light for my Nook so now I can read in bed.
This campground – Diamond Caverns – is affiliated with 1000 Trails so it is only $16 a night so that’s a good deal. All utilities even 50amp if needed. Big pull-throughs too.

SNOW

Monday a.m.


We’ve had a really cold snap for a couple of days. When Bill looked out the window and saw this – he was ready to leave right then.

Yes that's SNOW

Temps were down around 20 at night for a couple of nights. We had to put antifreeze in Jennies tanks and keep the water inside dripping and the heat on in her. She’ll be glad to get out of here too. So we are moving our departure date up a week or so. Will have to contact campgrounds for reservations later today. AND will have to change the one reservation I did make….never fails. Always all our plans are written in Jell-O.

Little by little we are getting ready to go – I have lists all over the house of last minute things to do.

Last night was warmer and by tomorrow it is supposed to be up in the 70s again. Right now I’m so hot. There is a furnace vent right under my computer desk where I can’t get to it to close it off. The rest of the house is still pretty cool though.

Our friend who is staying here the winter is almost all moved in. He had quite a shock when the power went off in the middle of the night a few nights ago. Until he moves his own TV over here he is using our older one – the one that comes on by itself when the power goes off and comes back on. It’s kind of startling when suddenly there is light and someone is talking in your room. Certainly woke him right up.

Saw the fawns a couple of days ago they are almost all grown up now and their coats have turned a much darker brown.

Went to buy coffee the other day – EGAD! $10 a can for Hills Brothers ½ Cafe. When did that happen? Guess I’ll start looking for sales or bargain brands. We stock up before going to Mexico ‘cause it’s harder to find there. Lots of instant but very little ground.

And yesterday gas was up to $3 again. Glad Jennie is full.

Tuesday p.m. 
Have loaded almost everything into Jennie - will take off tomorrow a.m. Will be a short day just to Park City, KY.

Till then......

Storm and Company

Tuesday a.m.
It’s funny – sometimes I feel like writing and sometimes I just don’t – this has been one of them “just don’t” times. But really hasn’t been too much to say either.
We are experiencing winter like weather – about 20 to 15 degrees below normal. Down to freezing at night. Have to leave the heat on in Jennie to keep her warm enough.
The Driver noticed that there are “snow flurries” in the forecast for later in the week. He is more than ready to leave. We have set a date and even made reservations for the first nights campground. We’re waiting to leave until the 14th cause by then our house sitter will be back from his vacation in Mexico and settled in. That’s only two days later then we left the last two years. Planning on spending Thanksgiving in Vegas.
We got lucky with that bad storm that passed through the Midwest last week – the worst of it was north and south of us – it kind of just went around the hills. It rained really hard for about 20 minutes and the wind blew for a couple of days.

View of the storm

At the very beginning of it we lost one big branch off a tree in the woods behind us. Gave off a heck of a loud CRACK! and THUMP! Except for losing power for four hours that was it. While the power was out I was cooking…yep cooking. Had to light the stove with a match other than that all worked fine. I made empanadas – we’d had the dough in the freezer so wanted to use it up. Made about four dozen. Turned out pretty good. Froze a lot of them to take with us. More on the storm – as we’ve been out and about I have noticed a few barns with the roofs peeled back (metal ones) and some trees down – but all of that is in the low lands.
Not long after the storm passed through we got company. Beth, the lady who started the Women RV forum I am active in, came by for overnight.

Beth's RV

We met her before a couple of years ago in Texas. Last winter she and another lady spent boon docking in Baja. Anyway had a real nice but short visit. She was on her way to Kentucky where she is going to work at Amazon dot com for the couple of months before Christmas.
The storm finished the fall colors completely around here. In fact at one time during the windiest part of the day it looked like we were in the middle of a yellow blizzard so many leaves were flying through the air. Now we are left with nothing but brown grass, dead weeds and bare trees.

Looking out back

Not too pretty. Last weekend, even without the colors, the little town was wall to wall tourists. It’s kind of funny during the week one of the parking lots there displays a “$3 Parking” sign – on weekends it is $5 – and it was full.

Just driving through I saw three different corners with someone playing an instrument and singing.

This has been a bad year for the stores down there – the city in its mindless thinking decided to rip up the streets right downtown all summer long. No parking, no sidewalks – people didn’t know they could get to the stores in those areas. And the excessive heat didn’t help much either. The streets are nice now though – just in time for the freezing weather.

I’m a little disappointed with the nook system. The actual Nook itself is great – I’ve managed to read several books already. BUT… I think I mentioned that new hardcovers are a little cheaper than buying the actual book, but older paper backs are more expensive then buying them. One of there big advertising touts is the number of free books available. Well yes and no. Books you never heard of and don’t want to read anyway are free. But I downloaded a couple I thought I might like. One of them was 24 whole pages another only seven pages long….what is that? Call them short stories not books. Then some of them are just the first couple chapters of the real book. But nothing says that when you are looking at them to download. Kind of irritating, to me anyway. And then from the Nook itself you can’t delete them – but I found out by going online using the computer I can delete them. Eventually I’ll get it all figured out and I think it will work nicely while in Mexico.
I was looking in one of my cook books the other day and discovered a couple recipes for squirrel. Fricasseed squirrel no less. Nope I’m not going to try it. But I’ll send it to anyone who is interested. I did cook some chicken breasts in orange juice last night with onions and mushrooms - yummy
Just as a final thought – I’m so glad this is election day. So sick of e-mails and TV crap, oops I meant ads. Spell check wants me to capitalize election day but I don’t think it deserves it anymore.