Time for Camp Taz

Once again, it is time for me to make my semi-annual trek to Mississippi to join my Weight Watchers friends for a week of exercise, eating right, and having a great time.  This time, we are based at Birmingham South Campground which is actually in Pelham, Alabama.  Jim will be able to get around while I’m gone, thank goodness he has his own Droid with the navigation feature!

We traveled yesterday from Shepherdsville, Kentucky to south of Birmingham, Alabama, a trip of about 360 miles.  We averaged around 9.0 mpg fuel for the 7-hour trip.  We did have one rather major mishap, just proving that mistakes can be made by anyone!  Our friends, the Wishnies, admitted to some recent “newbie” errors, but this one of ours is a pretty big one.  Part of our usual “getting ready to travel” procedure calls for us to double-check each other after the car is hooked up to ensure that the car’s steering wheel is loose, the emergency brake is off, and the transmission is in neutral.  For whatever reason, we didn’t do that double-check yesterday, and yes, you guessed it – one of those critical pieces was not right.  The transmission in our 2006 Saturn Ion is manual, and it is not always easy to immediately tell if it’s in neutral, and it wasn’t.   We towed the car less than 2 miles with the car in first gear, but that was enough to ruin a perfectly good engine!

Luckily, we have friends in the neighborhood of Pelham, Alabama where our campground is located.  We got a recommendation for a good, honest mechanic and had the car towed over there yesterday afternoon.  Our Good Sam Emergency Road Service paid for itself with their fantastic response to our call when we arrived at the Birmingham South Campground.  A tow truck arrived in less than 30 minutes after I placed the call.  The campground manager here was also very helpful, she let us park in a vacant site to drop the car so it would be convenient for the tow truck driver to pick up.

At first, we thought we might just buy a new car and let the Saturn go, but Jimbo at Barrett Automotive here in Pelham found us an engine with fewer miles on it than we  currently have on the Saturn, at a pretty good price.  We won’t know if the transmission was damaged until he gets the engine in, but at the price he quoted us, even if we have to replace the transmission, we’re still going to be OK.  We are feeling very blessed that we were able to get going on a resolution to the damage we caused without further, even more serious trouble.  Whether we’re sitting in a house or living our dream on the road, “stuff happens” and we know there will almost always be something we’ll have to fix.  No one was hurt, our home on wheels is fine, and our “newbie” error will be overcome, with a lesson learned!

So, we’re moving on, a little poorer in cash, a lot wiser in following established safety procedures, with a rental car to use while the Saturn gets it’s “heart transplant” and I go off to Camp Taz tomorrow.

While I’m gone, blog updating may be delayed, or not, depending on what’s going on!  Stay tuned for more of our adventures, Justravelin!

Bourbon For Breakfast?

Not exactly, but it was pretty early in the day when we completed our visit to the Jim Beam distillery and stopped in at the tasting room for our 1 ounce samples.  At  this distillery, there isn’t an actual tour, just a film and a short talk about their history.

In the history room, they have this life-like distillery model on display.  We were told that it can produce 1 gallon of bourbon per batch, but because of licensing and so forth, it isn’t currently working!

About 30 miles down the winding Kentucky roads, we finally found our next destination, Maker’s Mark.  This is a more recent addition to the market, although the Samuels family has produced bourbon for many generations.  The current recipe was developed in the 1950’s.

We did get to tour this distillery, although in comparison to our tour of the George Dickell distillery a couple of years ago, we didn’t see as much as we did there.

Maker’s Mark is known for it’s wax-dipped bottles, and Jim has been wanting to dip his own bottle for quite a while now – yesterday was his chance.  Here he is, getting suited up after signing his bottle.  The blue triangles in the picture below point to his signature:

  

He’s dipping his bottle in the 350-degree wax:

Now that he has that special bottle, I wonder how long it will be before he gets into it?

When we’d completed both visits, it was time for a late lunch and return trip back to the Castle.

Today is football and relax.  Jim has just lit the grill, we’re eating at home today!

Tomorrow is travel day, we’ll see you from Birmingham.

Through The Windshield

The 50th Escapade is History!  It was a great experience, and we’re both very glad we did it, but we’re also glad to be viewing our world through the windshield once again!

True to form, neither of us slept through the night.  I kept waking up, wondering if it was time to get up and get ready to travel.  We somehow did manage to delay getting up until after 6:30, a luxury after the past few days of waking up to an alarm going off at 5:15!

It was probably a little after 8:00 when people were out and about, telling each other “See you down the road”.  We had one more flash drive to deliver to the Escapade office and we did that in conjunction with the last dog walk before taking off.  I know we missed saying goodbye to several people who didn’t make it over to see us before we left, so “we’ll miss you until we meet up again!”

In spite of the number of rigs getting on the road at about the same time, we had no problem getting out of our space and out on the road at 9:00.  We took the long way out to go south, we took Highway 33 to Highway 6 East to I-69 South near Fort Wayne, Indiana.  That took us to the loop around Indianapolis and I-65, which we followed all the rest of the day.

After we got on I-69, I took my turn at the wheel:

And Jim found an old barn to photograph:

We stopped at a Love’s Travel Stop along the southern portion of Indiana, and pulled in to the truck lanes, where we usually go.  Even though we sometimes pay a higher price when we use the truck lanes because we’re not a commercial vehicle, we feel it’s worth it to not hassle with the car lanes at most gas stations.  Today we had a new experience – the Love’s “could not” turn on the pump at the truck lane unless we have a DOT number.  Hmmmm….there was a Pilot across the street, so rather than try to maneuver into a too-small car lane, we just drove across the street and pulled in to the Pilot Truck Stop.  No problem there!  Yes, we did have a to pay a few cents a gallon more, but we now have a full tank again.  It’s strange, we usually have had much better luck at Love’s than Pilot, but I guess you just never know.

Otherwise we had a smooth travel day and made our way to:

Yes, we waved when we drove through Louisville:

 

We’ll spend a few days at Grandma’s RV Park south of Louisville.  Jim wants to tour some area distilleries, and I’m sure I saw a sign for a winery around here someplace!

We traveled 325 miles in 6.5 hours today and got about 9.5 mpg.

More windshield time coming up!

A Quick Update

How’s this for a twist:  Jim and I are taking an average of 500 to 600 pictures between us every day, and I don’t have anything ready to post for the blog!  Every morning, I get up way too early to be ready to turn in my flash drive to the Escapees Director so she can go through them and prepare a slide show for that afternoon.  So, later on down the road, after we catch our breath, I will catch up with our own pictures!

Our days are full here at the Escapade, making sure we get to each location we’ve been asked to photograph.  It’s a good job for us, even though we have several places to be, we get to pop in and out!

I’ve attended the beginner’s session of line dancing for the past couple of mornings, but I still can’t convince Jim how much fun it is and that he should try it too.  Maybe one of these days…

We still have time to visit with our friends, and even got to spend a few minutes catching up with Linda and Howard Payne of RV-Dreams, who surprised us by showing up here, even though they were not expected.  They arrived Sunday evening and had to leave early Tuesday morning, but it was great to see them!

One of our readers asked if I could provide the model and ordering information for Jim’s new recliner.  Since the company that made it is Amish, they don’t have a web site, but I can provide a link to a company who does carry the Lambright “Lazy Relaxor Swivel Wall Hugger Recliner”.  Check out Bradd & Hall’s web site, they do have contact information as well as a description of this and other Lambright pieces.  They are a family business located in Elkhart, Indiana and they do carry several brands of RV and marine furniture.

I’m off to another seminar session to take more pictures!