Our Travel Blog

We headed out this morning in much cooler temperatures, it stayed around 22°C until midday then climbed slowly to 32°C. Although it was Saturday the Interstates were fairly busy but for the most part we could maintain 65 MPH, much better than yesterday.

Tonight is being spent in Hagerstown, Maryland and tomorrow we get back on the I-81 direct to to the Canadian border at the 1000 Islands crossing. A short run of 822 km should see us back at home!

I woke up about 50 minutes before the alarm this morning an knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep so I quietly yelled to Lyn “Are you awake yet?”, well of course she was …….. now. So we up packed and on the road by 7:15 bound for Knoxville Tennessee, just over 500 miles away. All went well and we were making good time, the first 40 miles was not Interstate, still modtly 4-lane. There were numerous signed along the way threatening delays due to road-works, nothing ever materialised. Just outside Birmingham Alabama with no road work signs in view for miles we delayed about 5 minutes due to road works!

About 30 miles from destination we started slowing dow, then came to a complete stop. Evidently there had been a major accident about 4 hours earlier, and the Interstate had been closed. It had been partially reopened after the Medevac helicopters had departed but then it seemed to open and close sporadically, as presumably, the wreckage was cleared away. That hold up wasted 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have a better trip on our way to Hagerstown, Maryland.

Wow, this place is both hot and humid, today’s temperature was 92°F with a humidex of 112°F. These are not pleasant temperatures, yet the campground is full of vacationers here for the summer ….. crazy!

Lyn spent the morning cleaning and packing up some stuff, while I removed the spare wheel from the trailer that we had to put on yesterday.

I then headed into town to get an oil change for the truck and to get the trailer’s spare tire switched from the temporary rim to the original. I also needed to get some stuff to close up the RV. Some anti-freeze for the plumbing (ironic given the current temperatures) and a couple of tubs of moisture absorber.

Back at the campground I put the wheel back on the the trailer, I got to see the old tyre and not only was there the visible bubble, there were signs of tread separation around about 30% of the circumference.

After lunch we headed down to see the beach, I thought it would be mobbed but the beach is so large there was plenty of empty spaces.

Back at the trailer it was time to get everything packed and moved out to the truck. All that is left to do is disconnect the water, hydro and sewer lines and drive away. The camp ground owners will move the trailer into storage for us.

For the first time I had a number of titles to choose from. The one I used, “My Biggest Fear”, “Luck was With Us”, That Could Have been Nasty” were all contenders.

We had breakfast at the motel, the standard make your own waffle was available, followed by yogurt and a liberal helping of cinnamon rolls to sustain us in the truck.

Our first “problem” occurred about a mile from the motel, there was a road junction, not too well signed, and the GPS, route instructions I had downloaded and the map could not agree on the correct way to go. We finished up taking the less than optimum choice. We had this battle a few times during the day, culminating in a near nasty in Mobile. The GPS aimed us at a tunnel under the river, at the last second (literally) I saw a height restriction of 12 ft, we were 12 ft 8 inches!! Luckily  I was able to change lanes.

Prior to that we had pulled into to get a mid morning coffee, while Lyn was getting the coffee I did my usual walk around the rig to make sure that the important pieces were still there; they were, but there was an  additional piece that shouldn’t have been there. One of the trailer tyres appeared to be in the early stages of pregnancy! There was a bump about half the size of a golf ball on the edge of the tread. I think, since the day we got the trailer, I have always been concerned with a blow out. With the weight the tyres are carrying it is likely if one blows, the other one on the same side will get overloaded and blow as well leading to a possible loss of control of the whole rig. As it turns out we caught it just in time, and managed to change tyres in the parking lot!

Driving into Mobile we were treated to a couple of good thunder-storms ahead of us with amazing lightning. We also got one very heavy downpour which hopefully washed the trailer.

We arrived in Foley Alabama a little later than expected at 4:45. We spend two nights here then head north.

Forty five minutes after getting up we were on a way at 7:15. The GPS showed 508 miles to destination, and as about 200 miles was on non-Interstate I was planning on 11-11.5 hours, including breaks. In reality the non-Interstate roads were mostly 4-lane with very few towns to slow us down. We arrived at out destination in Lake Village Arkansas after 9 hours 55 minutes; I was impressed, and more importantly I wasn’t tired. The truck behaved perfectly despite the temperature reaching 34C at times, admittedly we started out at 900 ft above sea level, climbed to 1700 ft and back down to 150 ft, so there wasn’t too much hill climbing involved.

Time to get a bit of (hot humid) fresh air and exercise, then some dinner.

Again it was overcast when we woke up and the humidity was still with us. By mid afternoon we reached about 30C with a humidex 5-10 degrees above that.

This morning was spent getting things cleaned up and put away as this is the last day of our long trip as far as touring is concerned. The next few days will just be driving to get home, albeit via a rather circuitous route.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day with just over 800km to drive to Lake Village Arkansas, the following day we head down to Foley, Alabama where we will spend two nights then a 3 day drive back to Ottawa. There may or may not be blogs on that trip, there probably won’t be too much to say, but I will write a wrap up blog, probably next Monday.

This afternoon we braved the heat and humidity and went for a 1.75 mile walk to pick up two more geo-caches. After that it was back to the trailer and more tidying up and dismantling ready for an early start tomorrow.

It rained most of the night, but had stopped by wake-up time. Although it was a lot cooler, around 17C, the humidity was up around 95%+. The forecast for the day was not the best, we had a couple of things lined up but nothing really unique or “must see”. We discussed what we should do, and we both came to the conclusion that we are “traveled out”!

I guess I’ve been feeling this way for a week or so now, but I seem to have infected Lyn as well! I think in general two things have contributed to this, the hot weather and the loss of great scenery since we left Colorado. I think in my case there was a third element, the problems with the truck, for a while I was reluctant to get in the beast for fear of what would go wrong next. Hopefully now we have come down from the mountainous roads and overly hot temperatures that should no longer be an issue.

Today we sat around reading, Sudokuing(!), and for the most part doing very little. I did spend some finalising my list of the stuff I have in the trailer, and what needs to be taken back and forth from home. I also caught up on some banking and other mundane chores.

Tomorrow will be much the same, if the weather cooperates we will head off to the local town for the 4th of July celebrations in the evening (free fireworks!).