bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday-  We woke up around 6 AM and the dogs were both doing well. The electric wasn’t. It kept going on and off. We were afraid to leave the dogs in the motor home, but finally the electric stayed on for an hour, so we left for a tour of Savannah.

We stopped at Office Max, since I had bought the wrong ink cartridges. Then we stopped at Camping World to replace the drivers side fan in the motor home. The old one had died a painful and noisy death.

We continued on to Old town Trolley Tours. They have free parking at their little visitor center. We bought our tickets, and started the tour. The first stop was the  Savannah Visitor’s Center.  We started with watching the 18 minute movie about Savannah then toured the museum.

This is a replica of Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin. He did not invent the Cotton Gin, he improved upon it making it easy to use, making lots of money for the plantation owners.

Juliette Gordon Low, who founded the Girl Scouts, was from Savannah, so they had a display dedicated to her life, since it is the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts.

After touring the museum, we hopped back on the Trolley. The Trolley is not air conditioned, but as long as we were moving, it was comfortable. The Trolley moved so fast through the city, that I was not able to get a lot of pictures. Here is one that came out- the first African American Baptist Church. This was also a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Here is Juliette Gordon Low’s House:

We jumped off  the Trolley to have lunch. We had nice sandwiches at a little restaurant, then jumped back on the Trolley to complete the tour. We stopped the Savannah Candy Kitchen and bought some pralines. A must in Savannah!

We jumped back on the trolley, and returned to the car. We drove back to Statesboro, took a cat nap, with the dogs, and went over to Bob and Jackie’s again for dinner. We watched the movie Hunger Games with them. The movies very good, we are going to need to read the books.

Sunday- My birthday. Bob had made reservations for us at Paula Deen’s Lady and Sons restaurant in Savannah. So we drove to Savannah. We had a problem finding parking,. We finally gave up and parked in a garage and walked over to the restaurant. 

Here I am outside the restaurant. Our reservation was for 11 AM. We walked up to find two guys outside calling names. I asked one of them  if this was for the reservations. He said yes, so we started to walk towards the crowd to wait, when  the second guy called Bob’s name. So we went right in. There was a crowd waiting to have their names called.

The restaurant only serves a buffet on Sunday’s and they are not open for dinner on Sundays.

The meal is Southern Country cooking. Y’all!

First they come around the serve you the biscuit ( rivals Red Lobster’s cheese biscuit very good!) and a cornbread cake, which is a pancake with syrup. On the buffet was fried and baked chicken, green beans, mash potatoes, rice, gravy, corn pudding and pulled beef BBQ.  There was also a salad bar. Of course it wouldn’t be Paula Deen’s without a lot of butter!

Dessert was brought to you by the waitress ( ours was named McKenzie). You had a choice of a piece of butter cake(me), banana pudding(Bob) or peach cobbler. The meal was excellent.

After lunch, we wandered into the Paula Deen store, conveniently located, next door to the restaurant. Nothing of interest to us there. We walked over a block to the City Market and wandered through the stores. Can’t you just visualize me strolling along with the parasol? Bet you have always wondered where to buy one….

Across from the Market, there is a park with a statue of native son Johnny Mercer ( wrote Days of Wine and Roses) and a lot of other songs.

We returned to pick up the car.. Our plan was to drive the route that the Trolley took to get some pictures, but  we ran out of time. We did stop and take pictures of various sites. We stopped at Juliette Gordon Low’s birthplace, here is a better picture:

This is the Cathedral of John the Baptist, built in 1831.

We could not go in since there was Mass going on…

We returned to Statesboro, picked up the dogs, and ran over to Bob and Jackie’s to watch RG III and the Redskins beat New Orleans! Hail to the Redskins! We ate dinner and celebrated my birthday.

Monday-  We had a rough night. Karlie came down with the ‘doggy virus’. She had not eaten anything except grass yesterday, and that had come back up. She kept us up with dry heaves and bloody diarrhea most of the night.

Bob, while up with her at 3 AM, looked up Vets, and found one who opened at 7:30. So we went to head over there, but this time we called first. It was no longer in business! So we went to our second choice, Gateway Vets. We arrived just after 7:30. They were open, but the Vet would not be in until 8:45. So we returned to the motor home, started working on getting ready to leave and returned to the Vets at 8;40. We were taken right in. The Vet was nice, and they gave Karlie a shot, which hurt, poor baby, then oral medication and sent her home on Flagyl for the diarrhea.

Since I was not feeling well, the dogs had been sick, and Bob was tired, we re-routed our trip. Originally, we were leaving, early this morning and heading towards Birmingham AL. We were planning to stay just east of Birmingham. Then we were going  to Memphis for 1 night, then Little Rock and  to stay two nights, then one night in Branson, heading into Sedalia MO on Saturday morning. So we changed to being able to sit for two nights twice on this leg of our travels.

We left Parkwood  RV Park at 10 AM driving southwest on Rt. 301 to I-16 north. We joined I-75 at Macon.  I was  really not feeling well, so Bob drove most of the day. I slept for  most of the day. At 2:30 I started feeling better, so I drove the rest of the way. We also had entered the Central Time Zone.

We pulled into a Pilot Truck stop off I-285 outside of Atlanta. What a circus! First, there was a truck broken down, just outside the truck stop, blocking the exit. Trucks were backed up all over the place. We parked and used the facilities, walked the dogs, then joined the line to get out of the place! That took us about 30 minutes, just to get out of the parking lot!

Atlanta traffic is awful. You go from 4 lanes to 8 lanes to 5 lanes(each way) with people acting like fools! We luckily made it through the area before rush hour was in full bloom.

We stopped for the night in Adairsdville, north of Atlanta on I-75. The park was Leisure Time RV Park. We paid $15.25, the PA rate, for 50 amp, full hook up with cable. We almost went to the park next door, which looks nicer, but cost double. It was a Good Sam Park. This was a nice park for an overnight stop.

Tuesday-  We left the park at around 8:30 and continued north on I-75 to I-24. We followed I-24 through Nashville. We took SR 12 to Cheatham Lake, Lock A COE campground. SR 12 was a nice drive until we were north of Ashland City, then it became a 2 lane road. We had to pass over 3 bridges which were under construction and narrowed to 10 1/2 ft. The motor home is 8 ft. wide, so it was a very close situation. I was glad that Bob was driving at this point.

Once we turned onto Cheatham Dam road, the road narrowed, with no shoulders for 5 miles. Towards the end, there was a steep hill. I have skied down steeper, but never in a motor home. At the bottom of this long, steep,hill was the Garden of Eden. It was so beautiful! Crisply manicured grass, asphalt road, flat, concrete, huge sites! This was the nicest COE park we have been to so far. 

When we stopped at the ranger hut, Santa Claus greeted us. He was not dressed in red and white, but he sure looked like Santa. Portly, white hair, white beard. A very nice guy. I asked for a site on the water, and since we were only staying 2 nights, he granted my wish! ( I’ve been a ”nice “girl so far this year!). We had, as Bob described it, the flattest site we have ever had, right on the Cumberland River, with 50 amp and water.  What a little piece of heaven, for $ 23 per night, no taxes or fees. 

Before Bob even had the water and electric hooked up, I had the recliners out and was ready to settle in on the huge patio!

Here are the dogs playing:

Around this time, Bob started feeling tired. Uh oh! So we took a nap. He was miserable from this point on. Obviously, he had what I had on Sunday into Monday. Fortunately, we were sitting for 2 nights.

We tried to ride our bikes after dinner. Bob was having a very difficult time between feeling so tired and having a flat back tire. So we returned to the motor home. Bob promptly fell asleep on the sofa.  I read my book and walked the dogs.

We went to bed early, with the windows open and the roof vent fans running. The temp had dropped into the 60’s at bedtime, and the 50’s overnight, with no humidity!.

Wednesday-  We had breakfast and I  worked  on two more articles, 3/5 done. I  went to pay for my CCM certification, and the website had made over half of the CEU’s non-approved. I called CCMC about this and was told that I had to mail or fax in copies of the CEU certificates. What a joke! So Bob and I worked on getting those together. At least I had made sure that I had all of the certificates in the motor home. I had pulled them out of storage, just in case!

Bob took another nap.  I went for a bike ride to the end of the road. This is a pretty long ride, but fairly flat. My front tire ended up being low on air, and with the wind in my face, the ride back was a lot longer than the ride out. At least it seemed that way!

Here is the lock:

Here is the swimming area complete with life vests:

Here is the stream entering the river with a fishing pier:

I returned and we ate lunch, walked the dogs,and Bob had another nap.  I sat out, enjoying the river front.

Here is our RV site, you can barely see the picnic table on the left.:

We ate dinner out on the picnic table, same as last evening, enjoying the pleasant weather and awesome view.

Again, we slept with the windows open.

Thursday- We were up early and hit the road about 7:45.  Here is a picture of the sunrise on the river.

Bob was back to normal today.  We would have been on the road by 7:30, but Bob had to add air to one of the motor home tires. We have a long day ahead. The drive up the hill was no where near as bad as the ride down. When we were back on SR 12, we headed north to Clarksville, ( take the last train Clarksville and I’ll meet you at the station….. brought you by the Monkees) We picked up I-24 here, continuing north on I-57 to I- 64 west to St. Louis.  There was a lot of construction on I-64 near St. Louis, and the GPS gave us wrong instructions. Fortunately, she was able to re-calculate, and get us out of the mess that she had gotten us into, but we ended up driving on some city streets, until we were able to get onto I-44 west.

We continued on I-44 west to SR 50 west. We were supposed to turn right ( north) on SR Y, but Bob had checked out the road ( on Google Earth)and decided not to go to the RV park that way. We continued on SR 50 to SR 19. We followed that to SR ZZ. We took SR ZZ for 5 miles to Lost Valley RV Park( an RPI Preferred park, $ 10 per night).

We arrived a little after 4 PM. This park is very pretty when you enter and the place is huge, with 2 large lakes, several ponds, and every amenity you can think of… but our site is not all that great, and there is a lot of up and down hills here. At least it is 50 amp, FHU.

There is a little café, so we decided to go to dinner there. Bob had an open faced roast beef sandwich and I had veal parmesan, 1/2 order, which was a perfect size.

We took a drive around the park, as it is so large, and very hilly. We can see why people would want to stay here in the summer. It would be a great place for kids.

We went to bed really early, as we were tired, after only doing one load of laundry.

Friday- I woke up at a little before 5 AM, to a heavy rain. I had left the window open,  next to the drivers seat, so I got up to close the window. I did not want to electronics in this area to get wet! So I was awake.

After breakfast, I finished the updates on the last two articles. Now all I have left is to update my seminar for Tuesday, and write my profile and the handout for Sunday. Plus we did lots of laundry!

We looked out the window and there were some deer in the site across from us.

We ate lunch, watched a little TV and took a nap. It was not raining, but it is cold and dreary. The high is supposed to be in the 70’s but it never made it past 65 degrees.

We ate dinner and went to bed.

Filed under: Uncategorized |