Tag: Alabama

Repair frustrations and more of the Natchez Trace

We are still sitting in the Tiffin Service Center parking lot. Sigh. We got into the paint shop on Friday, and today we had the paint finished up (buffing and such). They did a great job. I drove the coach back to our parking spot, hooked it all up, and 15 minutes later was asked to come to the cabinet shop. We only have one item left – a very poorly finished bathroom door. The very nice young man said the door had to be replaced, not repaired, and it would be two weeks! I nearly died. He saw my face, and said he’d go look to see if they had a spare one sitting around. Luckily, they did, and he said he’d get it put together and sprayed in “a day or two.” Yet another sigh, but not as big this time. We are hoping to get into Missouri on Thursday, but we will see what happens. Thank goodness I allocated lots of time for this trip.

On Saturday we took another trip along the Natchez Trace, this time heading towards Nashville. The pictures are from along the Trace.

This shows the old footpath and how it divides into different paths to go around what became mud puddles as the path as it wore down.

This is the Gordon house from 1818. It is t open for visitors, but it is pretty impressive anyway. The owner had a concession from the local Choctaws to operate a Ferry and trading post. He did just after the house was built, but his wife lived here until 1849.

This is the Inn (known as a “stand” in this part of the country when the Trace was active) where Meriweather Lewis committed suicide. Poor fellow was being stiffed by the US Government on a bunch of bills that he then had to cover from his own pocket. He was looking at bankruptcy, and was depressed. He is buried about 100’ away, his grave marked by a broken column indicating his early death. So sad.

Sunday we just hung around locally. I made some of the wonderful Instant Pot egg bites with sausage and cheddar cheese this time, and I also made an Instant Pot cheesecake. Both turned out wonderfully. I also got my sewing machine set up to get some work done on the quilt for the coach. Hopefully I will have all the blocks done before we go home for Thanksgiving.

 

Scenic south and Tiffin warranty service

We finally made it to the Tiffin Service Center campground on Monday afternoon. We got the call while we were on our way to Tupelo to visit Elvis Presley’s birthplace museum. Oops! Back to Red Bay to make the move.

We did get to drive just over 40 miles on the Natchez Trace on our way to Tupelo though. It is the oddest National Park I know. More than 400 miles long, but only as wide as the road in many places. Here is a view of the gorgeous heavy deciduous forest along most of the route. Obviously it is still late summer in this part of the country.

We did take time to walk part of the original Trace which was just a foot trail.

This section led to a small and lonely Confederate cemetery. There is a tiny Confederate flag someone left.

We also stopped to see the Pharr Indian Mounds, dating from 0-200 CE. Pretty impressive after 1800 years!

Once we got settled in the Tiffin campground, we just relaxed and watched TV. Kevin’s newly installed satellite is working great! This is not a campground for relaxing outside. Not only is it miserably hot here, but it is another parking lot, suitable for waiting for service but not camping.

Yesterday we decided to drive to Meridian, Mississippi to buy me a fold up sewing table. I have one at home, but forgot to bring it! We both figured it would be good to just keep this one in the coach. Kevin feels like death warmed over with his bronchitis though I am beginning to recover. It was 7 hours in the car because we took a “scenic” path. Not terribly scenic though since it was mostly just a road through lots and lots and lots of trees.

We did get with the service writer, and he said we had a couple of days wait to get into an Express Bay. That gives you two techs for two three hours to get most of our warranty items done. The final item will be in the cabinet shop, and that requires an additional wait. Sigh. Luckily the two days wait turned into a day and a half, and we moved into the Express Bay a little after noon today. All of our items were taken care of, but a ladder from the next bay fell against our coach and put a nice big scratch in the paint. Another sigh. They are hoping to get us into the paint shop tomorrow morning, but we will see. We still need the cabinet shop, but I am hoping they put us in the wait line immediately rather than waiting for the pain shop to finish. Oh well, the parking lot is free since we are under warranty, and it is full hookup.

i am also including a picture of cotton fields since they are everywhere around here!

Made it to Red Bay, Alabama

We left Iowa about 1:00 pm on Friday after running a number of last minute errands. We spent the night in the Walmart parking lot in Hannibal, MO. Nice quiet place. We got around Saturday around 9:00 and headed to Jackson, TN. We spent the night again in a Walmart parking lot. Like most small towns on a Saturday night, there were some young idiots in very loud cars cruising the parking lot, but it got quiet well before midnight. Since we only had 100 miles to go, we took our ever loving time getting out. We finally got to the Tiffin Service Center campground by noon. However we found out the campground was already full. Tiffin recommended we go to the Red Bay campground a couple of miles away. It is just a big gravel parking lot, but it has 50 amp full hookups. Cheap at $25 a night, but it would have been free if we were at the Tiffin site. Hopefully we can move in the next day or so. The roads all the way from Iowa we’re divided four lanes with the exception of the last 20 miles or so.

We have all our forms filled out for our warranty work, and some time tomorrow a Tiffin SC rep will come out to evaluate the time needed to complete our list. That will decide how long we have to wait our turn.

I admit this is a short post without pictures, but I should have more to post when we can get out and about. It is, unsurprisingly, very, very green here. It was also ridiculously hot today, almost 90 degrees! Should be better tomorrow, but I still miss my cool, dry mountains and deserts. All those folks who retired and moved to Florida – good for them! I can’t even imagine it.

We are ready for the road!

We finished our 2 day RV driving class today. It was very helpful. The saleswoman at the dealer had done some quick instruction, but we found out quickly that it didn’t work for all situations. The instructor (Jimmy Johnson from RVDrivingschool.com) showed us all kinds of methods to doing turns, backing, and just moving around in traffic. Both of us feel much more confident in traffic now, so I think it was well worth the money.

One nice thing about being with a local is finding all kinds of good places to eat. Yesterday at lunch we ate at Fiesta Mexican in Tuscumbia, AL which was very tasty. Last night we ate at Swamp John in Florence, AL, a hole in the wall fish place. I had a nice meal of fried catfish, fried okra, and hush puppies along with sweet tea – a truly southern meal like I grew up with. Today at lunch we ate at Smokin’ on the Boulevard in Florence, AL with the best smoked chicken I had ever had. Wow! A whole smoked chicken was $10, and it was worth every penny. Kevin got a smoked pork loin that was also good. We were disappointed they were out of brisket and ribs, but we can try them if we ever get here again. I ended up buying a second chicken that I will piece apart and freeze for later.

The motorhome is doing great. We closed the bedroom area off and ran the generator so we could have the air conditioner in the “living room”. The dahs air is cold, but there is a lot of space to cool down, so it is common for motorhomes to drive with their generators running when AC is needed. It was well into the mid 90s with a dew point of 70+, so I was quite pleased at how comfortable the coach was.

We head back to Iowa tomorrow morning. We plan on staying at a state park in Missouri tomorrow night then being home on Monday. It turns our Mississippi only gives 7 day temp tags, so we won’t be legal after that. It will be an expensive trip to the DMV!

More about the new motorhome

We made our first drive in the motorhome successfully. The Jeep followed behind us just fine as a “toad”. My toe was killing me since I stubbed it badly on the raised section of the floor by my side of the bed, so Kevin drove here from the dealer. I did drive about 20 miles with the saleswoman we had though including rural highway, town, and interstate so I am not worried. We are at a small campground in Tuscumbia, AL until Sunday morning.

We can successfully hitch and unhitch the Jeep using a Blue Ox brand tow bar and a AirForce One air brake system (installed on the Jeep). The instructions for setting the transmission correctly in the Jeep are complicated enough that Kevin wrote them on an index card. We bought this particular Grand Cherokee (Trail Hawk model) because it could be towed “four down” – all four wheels on the ground – but it takes some fussing with. The OTA television antenna works fine. We didn’t bring enough cabling to try the cable TV at the campsite. I even ran three loads of laundry in the washer and dryer! I really like the Splendide brand washer and dryer we have.  The guy doing our PDI (Pre Delivery Inspection) warned me that they took a long time to wash and dry, but it wasn’t terrible. The washer on PermaPress took 1 hour 28 minutes after I added a second rinse, and my big washer at home takes 58 minutes for the same thing. The dryer certainly is slower, but I dried 5 pair of Kevin’s heavy jeans in about 100 minutes. The dryer only runs on 110 v instead of the 220v at home, so I wasn’t surprised it took longer. The washer and dryer are also smaller. The five heavy jeans was a full load whereat home I wash 7 pair at once.

I even used the convection microwave to make brownies. The oven itself walks you through the button pushes which was handy since it took a series of them. The brownies turned out nicely though. I also used the convection oven to roast potatoes for dinner and to brown the boneless country ribs I cooked in the Instant Pot. I am definitely “RVing”, not “camping”!

Not everything is good though. Lily is not happy with me. She has a tendency to hide under the bed, and she hasn’t come out for her normal lap time with me. Kevin says it is because I didn’t bring a lap quilt for her to lay on, and I hope that’s what it is. I was the one who put her in her crate a lot on the trip though, so I worry she is mad.

Tomorrow and Saturday we have an instructor from RVDrivingSchool.com, Jimmy Johnson, coming out to take us through our paces. There will be a total of 12 hours of instruction, and we should be very confident with driving the 40 foot beast when we are done. I have no trouble remembering his name. It is the same as an Oklahoma State University football coach when I went there who later became coach of the Dallas Cowboys. The coach Jimmy Johnson was an ass, but I have heard good things about this instructor. Guess I won’t hold his name against him. 😁