SAVANNAH, GA. We drove mostly in the rain Tuesday as we left Newland for Lexington, SC for a one-night stay.  The weather was still rainy as we drove here yesterday.  For the first time in our 5 1/2 -month-long trip we are experiencing heat AND humidity.  We had forgotten how oppressive humidity is.  We are parked under live oak trees with hanging Spanish moss in weather that seems like a bayou summer.  We experienced heat on our trip, but had forgotten what humidity of this level felt like.  Hope this passes soon if it is like this in St Augustine. 

Today the sun peeps out from the clouds now and then.  The temperature was 84 degrees at noon.  We may go out today to look around the town, or we may just do some last minute preparation for the end of the trip as we head home tomorrow.  Hard to believe that we actually will be back there.  Wherever we park the motorhome is home for us, except that finding a good church, grocery store, doctor, pharmacy, close friends, etc is difficult on the road.

I had quipped earlier in the trip that we might feel like Lewis and Clark heading back east after their long trip, and the farther east we travelled, the less remote things seemed.  But the farther east we went, the more crowded and congested the roads were and the ruder the truckers who hogged all lanes of traffic as they performed a snail's race with one another.  It will be good to get off the highways.

NEWLAND, NC. We had wonderfully sunny and clear skies today as the Rohrbaughs drove us along the Blue Ridge Parkway and on to Blowing Rock.  We stopped for a very good lunch at one of their favorite restaurants along the way.  It was great having expert guides on this tour.  After lunch we continued on to Blowing Rock where we walked down Main Street stopping off at tourist shops and taking a few photographs. 

On the way back home we stopped off at the Moses Cone Manor Home, the summer residence of a denim textile manufacturer in Greensboro, a beautiful estate.

The autumn colors were so good that I even got some nice shots through the windshield of the car as we returned to Newland. 

Tomorrow we must leave this place where we enjoyed several days with our good friends, whom we shall continue to see this winter, since they leave for their winter home in St Augustine in a few days.

Betty and Steven Outside the Foggy Rock Restaurant

Jo and David Outside the Foggy Rock Restaurant

Artist Sculpture Along Main Street in Blowing Rock

Entrance of Moses Cone Manor House

 

Manor House Angle View

 

Manor House from Back

Autumn Color Seen Through Windshield

Another Shot Through Windshield

NEWLAND, NC.  Arrived here around 4:45 pm today, got situated, then drove the Jeep over to the summer home of David and Jo Rohrbaugh for supper.  It was great fellowshipping with them again and will be joining them for sightseeing in the coming days.

Jo, Chico, and David

   

COOKEVILLE, TN.  Yesterday morning the Tiffin Service Center called to tell us to drive our motorhome to Bay 10 for service.  After we arrived there we were told that it was very likely that only the right front slide would be repaired.  Our three-hour time allocation would be exhausted just repairing that, and it was quite a project.  Fixing that required a very skinny tech crawling into the basement and over the holding tanks, a space about 14 inches high.  Made me claustrophobic to watch. Yet he replaced the hydraulic cylinder, with the help of two other techs, one on either side of the motorhome looking inside the basement as he worked.  It was done quickly enough that most of the other things we needed done also were done by mid-afternoon.  We paid our bill with Tiffin, then drove back to the RV park around the corner to pay for our time there, and were done by 4 pm.  We picked up a supper at the local drive-in restaurant and took it to eat at the customer lounge, where we talked to other customers and watched some TV.  The camaraderie there will be missed.

Today we drove to our reserved site here in Cookeville, TN.  It was a longer drive than the original itinerary would have required, but all has turned out very well, and we are thankful.  Tomorrow will be an even longer drive into western North Carolina, requiring us night owls to get up extra early to accommodate an early departure.  Once there, it will be five nights and four days in one very nice place.

RED BAY, AL (Day 5) Monday.  Things have been slow.  Have met several interesting people who are likewise waiting to have work done on their motorhomes. 

There is a nice customer lounge with Direct TV reception that is good, a very popular place.  We watched a couple NFL games yesterday late afternoon and night (Sunday Night Football).  Getting access to the lounge is more difficult now that we must park in a different RV park and the fact that a tall fence now surrounds the work bay area that includes the lounge.  It seems that last July a disgruntled customer got herself quite drunk and drove her large motorhome full speed into one of the closed service bay doors, mashing it into a brand new motorhome inside the bay that was being prepped for delivery the next day.  Totalled the new motorhome.  The insurance company insisted that a stockade fence be built around the area.  So now we must drive to a new entry gate, and hope it is still open, in order to enter the area where the lounge is located.  No one is happy about this.  When we were here last March we were able to park in the service center RV lot, which afforded a short walk from our motorhome to the lounge with no fence in the way.

On Saturday the 19th we drove to Tupelo, MS to shop for groceries at a full-sized grocery store. We found a pretty nice Kroger there.  It was a fairly long drive, but necessary to find a full array of items.  The local Big Star in Red Bay is rather limited.

Today it is raining pretty hard.  Glad we are not likely to be called to bring our motorhome into one of the service bays.  Tomorrow will likely be the earliest, and we really hope to get started then.  We watch others in this RV park exit and return from service, all of them wearing rain garb and dripping wet.  Nice to avoid that.  Betty is humorously wearing the tee shirt that she got at the Ark Encounter.  The weather tomorrow and the remainder of the week is forecast to be dry.

RED BAY, AL (Day 2).  Today we found out that Tiffin cannot get to our repairs until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, and that is considered early considering the mob of motorhomes that are here and continue to stream into this small town for service.  If we can get everything done Tuesday, we could then continue with our planned itinerary through North Carolina and onto home by Nov 1.  If instead it spills over into Wednesday, we shall need to rearrange everything to proceed a day later, shortening our visit in North Carolina.

The other repair facility next to where we are parked is booked solid through Dec 12th.  It is very good news that Tiffin can see us as soon as they can.   

RED BAY, AL.  Arrived at the Tiffin Service Center early this afternoon only to find out that their parking area was full.  I had naively thought that this might be a slow time off-season, but it turns out to be peak service season for them because all the snow birds from up north are on their way south for the winter, stopping off here along the way for some needed maintenance.  Thus, we are parked at another RV park in town, which is beside and run by a company that also does Tiffin maintenance work and may end up doing some of the work we need done.  Tiffin has a policy that strictly limits the kind of work they will do on older models.  They are selling so many new models that they are giving them priority.  Our motorhome is now six years old, though we have owned it fewer than three years. 

The fact that the service center is so heavily booked right now may mean that we shall have a longer wait for service than we had anticipated.  We cancelled reservations to two places in order to accommodate re-routing ourselves to Red Bay for this service.  We hope to hear by tomorrow when our work can be performed.  If it will be late next week at the soonest (no work is done over the weekend), we may have to cancel yet more of our plans, including our planned visit with friends in North Carolina.  We cannot help wondering if some of our repair needs were caused by the roads in Canada and Alaska. 

We shall pray that we hear good news tomorrow.  We already must find a way to pass the time here over the weekend.