The Beginning Of Another Journey!

    Because of the birth of our grandson, Henry last September, Suzanne and I had decided to forgo this year's road trip to Southern California. To say we've enjoyed spending time with the little fella over the past 4 months would be an understatement. We've rarely let a week go by without making the 45 minute drive to Frederick, MD to visit with him and his mom and dad. Life goes on however, and there's never gonna be a good time to spend time away from our kids and grand kids so... upon further consideration and with the knowledge (surprise!) that our daughter & her family will be renting a house in the Scottsdale, Arizona area for a week in April (with a driveway large enough to accommodate a 43' motorcoach) and that my son and his wife will be flying out to Palm Springs in February to spend a week with us, we decided to go for it. The snow storm that arrived in Northern Virginia two days before our departure served as additional motivation.

   Our plan was to leave Thursday morning but Suzanne was finished with her work around 1:30 Wednesday afternoon and we were all packed, so why not get an early start? We had taken our clothes and a bunch of other stuff down to the coach (we store it in Manassas, about 35 minutes from our home in Herndon, VA) the previous week so there was just food and a few other sundry items to be loaded into the car, along with the dogs. One last look at my to-do list... adjust thermostat... turn off water and water heater... take out the trash... ask Jim next door if he'll put the cans back in the garage...

...and we were off!

   Suzanne wanted to clean the refrigerator in the coach before loading it up. It was quite cold out and we only had about 85 miles to go to get to our destination for the night so we decided to leave everything in the car until our arrival at Shenandoah Valley Campground in Mt. Jackson, VA. The coach's plumbing has to be winterized before cold weather storage so our first day out on these trips is usually a short one. I need to get to a park with a water hookup so I can flush the system and fill the fresh water tank in preparation for travel. Everything went according to plan.

   We made the decision to roll on some miles the next couple days. With this weekends NFL playoffs and Suzanne needing to be stationary Monday-Wednesday for work, it seemed a good idea to get a ways down the road.
    Our second night was spent at the Soaring Eagle Campground in Lenoir City, Tennessee about thirty minutes west of Knoxville on Interstate 40 and approximately 420 miles from where we began our day. Nothing special, just a place to park for the night and drive into town to do some much needed grocery shopping. I recognized the campground immediately as I had stayed here about six years ago on a cross country trip in our previous coach. It was just me and the dogs then as Suzanne was still working full-time. She flew out and joined us in Indio, Ca. for a couple weeks and the two week return trip.

   Friday we continued along I40 passing through Nashville. If you've never driven a 43' motorhome through Nashville on I40 on a Friday morning my advice to you would be... Don't! I had to exchange air horn blasts with a guy driving a ramp truck. I was kinda the one who sorta F#$%ed up... but my horn was way louder than his.... so I win!
   We ended our day 376 miles later in Memphis at the Agricenter International RV Park. Kind of a neat place.

The weather forecast was calling for severe thunderstorms overnight with wind gusts up to 40mph. Last year in Matagorda, TX we lost one of our vinyl slide-toppers in high winds so in an abundance of caution I decided to retract the two big slides. In order for our bed to be in the down (usable) position the small bedroom slide has to be out - so I left that one deployed.

Well, I was awoken around 3:00am by high winds (I later learned some were in excess of 60mph), heavy rain and thunder. Good thing I pulled the slides in! I got out of bed, crammed a 150mg Trazodone pill down Travis' throat (he's petrified of thunderstorms... or any loud banging noises for that matter) and turned on the local news.

One big, happy family!

It was a serious storm. Complete with tornado warnings. You may have heard something about it on the national news. A tornado warning alarm began howling at around 5:30 so I hopped in the car and drove the couple hundred yards to the shelter building to see what was going on. There were a couple cars parked outside and I could see three of four people inside milling around. I drove around the RV park and saw inside lights and TVs on and cars parked outside. It didn't seem like anyone was overly concerned, or really paying much attention at all to the alarm. Some of these people were in little teardrop trailers and the like. Many of the residents here are seasonal (here much of the year) and presumably familiar with local weather patterns, what constitutes an emergency situation and what doesn't - I figured if they were cool with staying put in their travel trailers and fifth wheels I'd probably be okay in my 46,000 lb. bus. It wasn't too long before the wind abated to a less intimidating velocity and the doppler radar on the local news channel showed the most intense part of the storm had passed over us. All's well that ends well.

Today we did a bit more grocery shopping and picked up a few things at Walmart... and just finished watching the 49ers beat the Vikings. Yay.

We'll leave here early tomorrow morning and travel just a couple hundred miles or so. Gotta land in time to watch some more football. :)


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