Author: sandcastle

Heading Home

On vacations in the past whenever we’ve turned in the direction of home it has been hard to get the vehicle to stop. Hurry becomes the word of the day. So I figured we’d be home in a few days and I could do one post about the entire trip.

Guess what? We are no longer on vacation. This is where and how we live now. So when the weather forecast ahead of us said severe thunderstorms with hail we just stopped where we were. And stayed stopped for days. In fact, we are still stopped.

So here’s my notes from the first part of the trip home.

We got up at 7 a.m. the day of our departure from Lake Aire RV Park near Hollywood, South Carolina, did a bunch of chores and were on the road by 10 a.m.

The first interesting sign of this trip said “Carpet Baggers.” It was the name of a floor covering store. Given what the original carpetbaggers were I was surprised to see someone advertising themselves that way. I wonder how business is?

We stopped at WalMart for groceries. At least it was once a Walmart. Now it is a Food Lion. With only half the items on our list.  So, guess where we’ll be stopping later?

Once again our engine lost its turbo boost as we were getting on the freeway. This is becoming more irritating as time goes by.

The next sign said, “Instant Grassification.” It was a billboard advertising a sod company. I admire the advertising people who are able to come up with these clever phrases.

For lunch we got tempted by the billboards advertising Maurice’s BBQ so when we found one on our route we turned in. Odd but tasty. I’d never had yellow BBQ sauce before. This one was called Maurice’s Southern Gold BBQ Sauce. You could buy it by the bottle right there in the fast food place. So, I picked up a bottle and read the ingredients. It did not sound like something I’d be willing to eat. So, it’s probably good I ate it before reading the ingredients, huh?

The next WalMart we found had a horrible access so we didn’t turn in.

We drove through a down pour about 1/4 mile past a rest area when it started raining inside! On me! We have a leak! I shoved a bunch of tissues up around the visor until we could stop and check it out. As it turned out only about one tissue’s worth of water came in but it is very worrisome nevertheless. Why is water coming in? Dave’s bed is up there! We DO NOT want to have problems with mold. This needs further research.

The turbo cut out again. Each time today and at least some of the times previously we’ve been going uphill. We do not know if that is significant or not. This needs further research, too.

We camped for the night at Croft State Natural Area. It took a few tries to get level enough–not level mind you–but level enough. By the time we did we were far enough from the electrical box to need to use both our extension cords. But, it was a quiet place to spend the night.

The next morning we were once again up and out by 10 a.m.

Again our engine lost it’s turbo. This time were coming out of the North Carolina Welcome Center where we had, of course, stopped to pick up a highway map.

The next amusing sign said the next exit was U.S. 64 and it would take us to Bat Cave. Suddenly a deep voice said, “Come on, Robin. We need to go.” OK, it was me that said it but it made Dave laugh.

We passed under the Blue Ridge Parkway. Someday we would like to drive that. We tried once before but we were too late in the season; they closed it the day before we got there.

The next sign said, “French Broad River Basin.” Is that “broad river” or “French broad”?

We stopped for lunch just west of Asheville, North Carolina. When we were ready to leave our “check engine” light came on and our Scan Gauge threw a code! So we pulled into a Ford Dealer’s used car lot making a salesman start drooling. I got the job of explaining our check engine light came on so we needed a place to stop while we figured out what that meant. Dave’s research indicated it was something to do with the EGR valve and that could affect our turbo. So we started looking online for a Sprinter dealer who could, maybe, fix it. There is one ahead of us in Knoxville, Tennessee, who has three Sprinter mechanics and it is  open until 8 p.m. We figure even if this code puts us in what known as “limp home mode” which restricts you to driving 30 m.p.h or less we could get to Knoxville by 8 p.m. Fortunately, we got to drive at our regular speed so we got there mid-afternoon. In the meantime, I got a kick out of the fact the code was a 404 error.

On the way to Knoxville we drove through a short tunnel that made our ears pop then we drove out of the tunnel into another down pour. It didn’t rain on me this time, though.

Finally into Knoxville, Tennessee, where the mechanic at Jim Cogdill Dodge replaced our EGR valve. I sure hope that fixed the turbo problem, too.

It was now about 5:00 in the afternoon and we were headed for a SKP park. They tend to close their offices early so I called to see if they had a spot with electrical we could have if we got there in the next half hour. She said yes because she agreed with me when I said it’s too hot to not have air-conditioning. We did not make it there by 5:30 closing but she waited for us, gave us a site, and said come do the paperwork in the morning. We love the way SKPs are willing to take the extra step to help one another. So we are safely tucked into Raccoon Valley RV Park, just north of Knoxville.

We planned to stay two nights but that is turning into many more than that. We stayed here so long we actually had to go into town to buy groceries and pick up medicine today. But we are having great discussions about the implications of buying a car to tow. Maybe we won’t do that yet. Maybe we’ll wait until after we drive the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Natchez Trace. Maybe.

TTYL,

Linda

p.s. Rumor has it the rain problem is a warranty item so we may be able to get it fixed for free.  Maybe we’ll go home by way of the Winnebago Factory.

Being Predictible?

We spend a lot of time reading the forums at Escapees.com learning from people who have been fulltiming for years. One of their bits of wisdom is that people who travel the way we have been usually only do so for a year. Then they slow down. Maybe buy a car to tow behind their RV. Park their RV in one place for a week or more and use the car to visit the sights in that area then move to another area and do it again.

We moved out of our house May 14, 2008.  Since then the map of our travels looks like this:

visitedstatesmap

We are tired of running all over the country.

So we are headed to our domicile state of South Dakota to see about buying a car we can tow. Then we plan to spend the summer slowly, very slowly, exploring the Upper Midwest. I’m embarrassed to admit that after living in Minnesota for 45 years there are places there I have never seen. It’s about time I do so, don’t you think?

TTYL,

Linda

Hiding Out

We are in Lake Aire RV Park near Hollywood, South Carolina, where it is raining. We are parked across from the pool but there is no one in it today. There are lots of people here but they all observed the 10 p.m. quiet time last night. I didn’t even hear the train whistles once I went to bed. We do get a lot of people walking through our site, though, since we are on the route to the bathrooms, laundry room, and pool.  I know people like to take the most direct route when it is raining but they did it yesterday, too, when the sun was out and they were on their way to the pool. It always surprises me when people walk between our RV and our picnic table. I wonder if they’d still do that if we opened our awning? 

We have good internet here using our aircard in our router again so I am content if somewhat frantic. I discovered last night I have done very little research on North Carolina which is, of course, the next state up the coast so I’m glad to sit right here for the holiday weekend doing more research.

TTYL,

Linda

No Place to Go

One of the challenges of being retired is keeping track of time. We knew we couldn’t stay the weekend at Skidaway State Park but we forgot that the reason was Memorial Day Weekend. For those of you who don’t camp, Memorial Day Weekend is the unofficial season opening. I suspect ninety-nine percent of people who camp will do so somewhere on Memorial Day Weekend. Having forgotten that, we blithely set off as usual this morning without any reservations for Friday night or any other night. Oops!

Just in case we had forgotten we couldn’t stay where we were, the park ranger at Skidaway came and took our camping permit off the post at our campsite this morning. I had called the park office to see if there was any possibility we could stay but they had no cancellations so they had 57 reservations for their 57 campsites. They will fill the sites on a first arrived gets first choice basis but even the handicapped sites will be filled whether or not the people in them are handicapped. Oh, well.

I had been having an email discussion with Oak Plantation Campground near Charleston, South Carolina, about coming there this weekend since that is where our next set of sightseeing stops are. I had been assured they had room for us. But when I called them this morning to confirm, I got voice mail and no one returned my call. So we set off with no place to stop for the night. But we had options according to my list of potential places.

The next option down the road was a private RV park in Hardeeville, South Carolina, so we drove there. At least, we drove to where is was supposed to be. We found lots of sales lots for new, upscale subdivisions instead.

So when Dave stopped to buy fuel, I called the nearest state park, Hunting Island State Park. The woman who answered the phone there said they had one spot left for Friday but none for Saturday. I said we’d take Friday. She put me on hold a couple of times while she did what she did then gave me a confirmation number and a campsite number.

We were only about 30 minutes from the park but it was too early to check in so we drove back into Georgia and crossed into South Carolina again this time using I-95 instead of US 17 so we could get a South Carolina state map at the Welcome Center. If you come this way, don’t take US 17 even if you already have a map. The bridge is high and so are the winds across it; I-95 is MUCH better. Then we headed to Hunting Island State Park.  

Dave thinks I am a GPS system. He counts on me to tell him when and where to turn. But he occasionally decides to turn somewhere else because it feels right to him. It often is a good decision. However, he then expects me to know what he should do next. When you are using a real GPS and you make an unscheduled turn it says, “Recalculating,” then a moment later tells you what to do now that you are in a different place than the original plan. I don’t recalculate so quickly. Sometimes, by the time I figure out the implications of what he did I want to say, “Turn right at the corner you passed Ľ mile back.” Which means I now need to recalculate again. It helps if I can persuade him to stop somewhere while I recalculate.

But we did get to Hunting Island State Park at a reasonable time of day and got in line to check in. They didn’t have us on their list. We didn’t have a reservation. But, we had a reservation number. So they put that into their computer and told us our reservation is at Table Rock State Park. We’d never heard of that park. It turns out to be about as far from here as you can get and still be in South Carolina.  Wrong! So, they found us a spot here for one night and we all set out to figure out what happened. 

Fortunately, I had made the original call from Dave’s cell phone so it had records of what happened. It seems every time the clerk put me on hold then came back his phone registered it as a new call. So his records showed I called Hunting Island State Park. Seconds later, the first time she put me on hold then came back, it registered as another call to Hunting Island State Park. The second time she put me on hold and came back it registered as a call to Table Rock State Park which is where she made our reservation. But, I never hung up. I never called Table Rock at all, let alone made all three calls within two minutes.

So Ranger Kyle made arrangement for us to get a refund from Table Rock State Park. He was very apologetic for the glitch and said if the refund didn’t come through be sure and call him so he can follow up on it. He wished the payment I made to the wrong park could just be transferred to the right park but Reserve America’s system, the people who do all the reservations for most state parks in this country, don’t seem to be able to do that either. Plus, it may take up to ten days for it to show up as a credit on our account. Have you ever noticed how much longer refunds take than charges do?

And we still don’t know where we are sleeping Saturday or Sunday nights.

TTYL,

Linda