Travels with Gunther and Kara

Wow…today we actually did some Fun Stuff©…although we had to sandwich it around some other administrivia to get things done.

We had originally insured Big Red with our long time insurance company USAA…after talking back and forth with the policy writer he was fully onboard with it being a better/safer truck than BAT was and wrote the policy after checking with their underwriters to make sure that it was OK…their statement that it was up to him.

So…we thought we were fine there…but then the underwriter shot the policy down since Big Red is technically a commercial truck…never mind that it’s not being used commercially. So since we had already exhausted just about every other option for getting it covered we reluctantly are forced to switch it over to National Interstate via Miller Insurance out in Oregon. We even tried Progressive as they have our house policy…but their agreement with USAA as a partner company prevents them from insuring a 5500. We had already renewed our house policy through June of 17…so we’ll just have 2 companies for a year and then next May will sort out the best option going forward…probably shift everything over to Progressive on a single policy through Miller…who can get coverage for the 5500.

At my last post…we were still in Pocahontas State Park seeing grand baby Alex…then last Thursday we left there and headed over to Longwood State Park on the Kerr Reservoir in southwest VA. We had a beautiful water/electric site #48 there and basically did nothing the whole weekend as Neil is still recovering from his cold. We did eat out Thursday and Friday nights at a couple of local eateries…the Lake House restaurant and pub and then the Lamplighter Pub. Food and beer were great…the Lamplighter had a dozen VA brews on tap and we sampled several of them.

Sunday morning we hitched up and headed for Dawson WV…where we again stayed at Summer Winds RV right off of I-64. Great spot for a day or two…nice breeze and full hookup sites. We did run into an Airstream convention or something…the two previous times we were here there were a total of I think 3 RVs here but both nights this time have been over capacity with several rigs boondocking instead of being in regular sites.

Monday we decided to get out and see the New River National Gorge and River…the New River runs about 400 miles in NC, VA, and WV through a really deep gorge in the Allegheny Plateau…we got some nice photos of both the largest waterfall (Sandstone Falls) on the river as well as the Grandview Gorge Overlook.

Sandstone Falls is a pretty wide falls…probably 300 yards or so and about 25 feet tall. The river bottom is sandstone in this area and it makes a quite striking view. We had to stick with iPhone photos only as Neil thought the real camera was in the truck only to find out when we got there that it was back in the house:-(. The falls is about 18 miles from the visitor center.

From there we headed back towards the visitor center and freeway…stopping in Hinton for lunch at a mediocre Italian place…then once back to the freeway continued on west another 10 miles then 8 miles north to the Grandview overlook which looks out over the gorge from about 1,500 feet above it maybe.

Yeah…it really does loop around like that as it meanders through the mountains.

Looking down at the left side of the above shot we spotted a loaded coal train heading south up the river.

With that…we decided we were done as it was almost 1600 and we were most of an hour away from the house so we headed home for dinner.

Tuesday morning we got underway bright and early for our next scheduled stop at the Buckeye Lake KOA in Buckeye Lake OH…it’s on the eastern side of  Columbus so we’ll work on Wednesday and then head into Columbus to look around on Thursday.

We ran over to Papa Boos for brews and bar food for dinner…it was our kinda place atmosphere wise with open sides…but they only had bottled beer and the food was average…but at least we didn’t have to cook it. We been seeing a lot of Ohio State ball caps here though…Neil will have to wear a t-shirt and cap from Alabama the next time we head out the door.

Interesting things we found on the internet this week.

Irish field sign.

Comic Jackie Mason’s thoughts on Starbucks…this mirrors Neil’s thoughts exactly. Venti is Italian for Six Dollars. Starbucks is overpriced and the coffee is burned and bitter anyway…don’t understand why anybody would drink the stuff. It’s just a status symbol…people like other people to think they have enough money to buy $7 coffee…even though they live in a 300 square foot efficiency apartment and drive a leased BMW they can’t afford.

Cyas.

That’s my story and Ima sticking to it…although she claims that it was actually Neil that attracted him this time but (a) we all know that she’s the one that really attracts them, not him and (b) he only sat next to Neil instead of her because she stuck him with the lousy seat at the corner in the bar with barely enough room to sit his dinner down.

Here’s how it went down.

While we were up in Centreville VA last week we really wanted to go out for sushi to our favorite place down in Fairfax where we used to live. However…since Neil had a really bad cold and didn’t feel well we decided not to drive the 15 miles or so into Fairfax at dinnertime on Friday. We looked out in the Centreville/Manassas area and found a couple of possibilities but most of them didn’t get very good reviews. So after some discussion we decided to head on over to the Bonefish Grill…they have seared Ahi tuna on the menu and while it isn’t as good as sushi it’s at least mostly raw tuna.

We got there about 1730 or so and quickly grabbed the last two seats at the bar…Connie almost always sits on the right side of Neil so her good eye is towards him when they sit at the bar. However…that night she took one look at the two seats and immediately grabbed the good one for herself…the one on the left…and left the crappy corner of the bar seat for him. He came in from parking Big Red out in the back 40 in the parking lot and they ordered a couple of beers and dinner.

Meanwhile the couple on our right left leaving 2 seats open. Almost immediately Paul…at least that’s what he said his name was…slid into one of them next to Neil and he was (a) obviously already well on the way to being loaded and (b) obviously a regular as they gave him two beers without him needing to order. He powered the first one down and after starting on the second one engaged us in conversation.

He was in the moving business and regaled us with his tales of all the famous people and things he had moved…but unfortunately for him he wasn’t nearly as entertaining as most town drunks are. Fortunately for us he headed out after 20 or 30 minutes…places to go and booze to drink I guess…he did offer to buy us a couple of beers but we had already had our planned two drafts with dinner and with Neil feeling poorly didn’t want to stay long enough for another one.

So there ya go…she did it again…and then had the audacity to claim that it was actually Neil that attracted him…but as you can clearly see from the above scenario she was obviously to blame for the entire incident.

The next morning (Saturday) we headed in for an early appointment for Neil’s annual contact lens prescription…he’s got a couple of samples and will coordinate via email with Dr. Herr after he tries them for a prescription once he tries them. After that we headed back to Bull Run, hitched up the house, and hit the road for our 125 mile transit down to Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield VA. We pulled in almost 3 hours later…got stuck in a bunch of slowdowns on I-95 on the way south…dumped our tanks which we had partially filled to slosh around and clean the inside…and got set up in site 116. All of our usual favorite sites at Pocahontas were filled as it was Saturday afternoon. There were still a dozen or so to choose from but 116 was the only one we would have satellite visibility from. 

This was our first back in site since we replaced BAT with Big Red…and we had to jockey back and forth a half dozen times before we were properly in the site straight and over to the left side towards the utility pole. The problem was that Big Red doesn’t have quite the front wheel maximum cut that BAT did…which means that it takes longer for the truck to get straight with the rig again as you back into the site…you get out of line to back the rig into the site then have to take the angle back off as the rig gets to it’s final position. With less front wheel cut he essentially over turned the rig and ended up past parallel to the site sides once it was in. No worries though…he’ll get retrained in a couple of campgrounds and all will be well with it again.

We go this picture of Bryan and Alex this week…obviously Alex is just a clone of Bryan and anybody that knows Bryan knows that he’s a clone of Neil. There they are…immersed in their electronic devices.

The rest of the week has basically been going over to see Alex in the evenings. We’ll continue that and then go over and take advantage of free laundry on Wednesday before we head out on Thursday morning to southwest VA as we generally head back in the direction of Hanna IN for arrival on June 17 for Connie’s next eye follow up appointment.

Interesting things found on the net this week.

Tim has a really good idea here.

Seen outside a wine store.

Domenick must really want his package today.

Cyas.

As noted in my last post…we departed Hanna Friday morning 5/27 on a 2 day trip over to Bull Run Regional Park campground just about 20 miles or so west of where we used to live in Fairfax VA…we have dental, finance guy, and Neil eye appointments this week so since Connie’s free until her next follow up visit on June 20 for her eye we decided to go ahead and keep those plans.

The difficulty in this is that we were traveling Friday and Saturday of Memorial Day weekend…and that means it’s hard to get a campground reservation. We wanted to over night in Champagne OH which is about 100 miles east of Columbus…this would have divided our 712 trip just about in half and 2 350 or so mile days in a row is hard but do-able. Unfortunately we ran into the holiday weekend thing. Sure…we could find plenty of places to park on Friday evening even in Champagne…but they all had a 3 day minimum since it was a holiday weekend and had jacked up the price for the weekend as well. Well…not really wanting to pay almost $200 for a single overnight spot we looked west of Champagne since doing the long day the second day when we would have no hitching to do made more sense. We found a nice spot…well, nice for just an overnight anyway…in Galloway OH on the west side of Columbus. 

We got on the road about 0915 Friday morning and rolled in around 1530 or so…and got set up for the evening, power only and stayed hitched up. We had leftovers for dinner and planned an early departure the next morning. The bad news was that the power in our site was pretty lousy…it was only 30 amps and kept tripping the 103 volt low cutout one our Progressive power management system. We knew it was 30 going in…which means we could only run 1 A/C at a time but since it was only around 89 degrees that would have been just fine if we could have kept the A/C running. After the EMS cut out 4 or 5 times we gave it up, opened the windows and turned on our fans and just resigned ourselves to being warm for the evening. Luckily it cooled down some once the sun set and was only uncomfortable rather than unbearable by the time we went to bed.

We got up early the next morning and were out of the campground by 0615…a quick stop at Denny’s for breakfast down the road 30 miles or so and then we continued eastward. Our GPS wanted to route us to Hagerstown MD from the west then down 270 and the DC Capital Beltway then back out I-66 to the park. Having lived in the DC area for 30 years…we quickly decided to head south on I-81 at Hagerstown and then east on I-66…no backtracking that way and even though it was about 60 miles farther than the GPS route it was certainly faster as we maintained our normal 60 mph all the way in…if we had headed down 270 we would have probably averaged 30 at best with a lot of stop and go around the Beltway.

We pulled into Bull Run 445 miles later about 1620…set up utilities and called it a day. Neil was too tired to cook so we headed out to what used to be a decent restaurant…Sweetwater Tavern. They’ve gone seriously downhill in the 4+ years since we left…the food was pretty awful and even the beer wasn’t to our liking. They used to have a dozen or so drafts for just about any style you wanted…but they built themselves a microbrewery and decided to serve pretty much only craft beer…and all of it was either wheat beer (which isn’t real beer at all) or heavily hopped like an IPA is…and heavy hops are just not our style. (Brief aside for those who don’t know beer…beer is made of water, usually barley for the grain, yeast, and hops. Hops are flowers which give beer it’s bitter notes in the flavor and also serves as a preservative. IPA stands for India Pale Ale and is the beer that was made in England then shipped to India during the colonial days. It was deliberately made very lightly colored as that is generally better for a hot climate and since it had to be shipped around the tip of Africa was heavily hopped so that the beer in the barrels wouldn’t spoil on the 5 or 6 month journey. We usually like amber ales or stout/porter style dark beers…these have more grain flavor and lower hops content so the bitterness isn’t there.) Anyway…suffice it to say that we won’t be going to Sweetwater again…definitely not impressed.

We didn’t do anything the rest of the weekend…just hanging out until Tuesday and our appointments. In the meantime we are making the rest of our plans until we get back to Hanna on June 17.

Interesting things this week…just two of them.

When alarmed the Pope-osarus can spray holy venom up to 25 feet.

And an obituary Neil found on the internet this week.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense ,who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

– Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
– Why the early bird gets the worm;
– Life isn’t always fair;
– And maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better
Treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of
Coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death,

-by his parents, Truth and Trust,
-by his wife, Discretion,
-by his daughter, Responsibility,
-and by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 5 stepbrothers;
– I Know My Rights
– I Want It Now
– Someone Else Is To Blame
– I’m A Victim
– Pay me for Doing Nothing

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

If you still remember him, pass this on.

If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Cyas.

Well, nothing to really report since my last post. After our arrival in Chattanooga last Sunday we quickly got setup in site 145 at the Holiday Trav-L Park Chattanooga…which is actually in Rossville GA across the river, but I digress…then chatted with Bill and Linda for awhile before bed.

Monday was a workday…we fixed a whole passle of stuff on our rig, Bill and Linda’s rig, and Ray Danet’s rig. All were successful but it was a long hard day. After that we jumped into the rally activities which opened with a burgers and hotdogs dinner followed by introductions from all the folks attending the rally…about 32 rigs plus a couple of wannabes who don’t actually have a New Horizons yet.

Tuesday it was seminars all day then dinner in the evening. Wednesday and Friday were pretty much a repeat of Tuesday with Thursday being a free day. The highlight for us on Thursday was eating dinner out with Bill and Linda for Neil’s birthday…we had some pretty outstanding beers and a decent enough steak at Big River Grille over the state line into Tennessee.

Saturday we headed out for our return to Hanna for Connie’s scheduled eye appointment on Monday…we had to do a long day the first day…365 miles…as the NRA convention is going on in Louisville so we had to get 40 something miles past there before we could find an RV park with an open site…we ended up at a Yogi Bear campground in Scottsburg IN…quite nice for an overnight stop. Sunday we did the last 250 miles to Hanna and pulled back into our monthly site at Last Resort Campground in Hanna.

Big Red continued to do the job…pulling the rig with it is just no drama at all as the cruise control, long flat torque curve, and exhaust brake easily control speeds both up and down grades. We were never really worried even when we had BAT…but for any downgrade over about 4% we were careful to downshift early and get the speed down at the top of the descent and even then we had to periodically brake pretty hard to knock the speed down…even with the downshift we would accelerate to 70 mph then brake to 50 and repeat the process all the way down to prevent overheating. With Big Red…even on the 6% grade we ran into it was a matter of  leaving the cruise control on, let the transmission downshift then our Cummins diesel would kick the turbo boost pressure up to 40 psi or so and generate 120-150 horsepower of braking energy and the speed would just stick on whatever the cruise control was set to. No muss…no fuss.

Monday we headed up to Michigan City again for Connie’s latest followup…good news is that she’s healing nicely and was told to come back  in a month…so we’ve got another appointment scheduled for Monday June 20. In the meantime…we are going ahead over to Fairfax this Friday/Saturday to do our previously scheduled finance/dentist/Neil eye doctor appointments. After that we’ll head down to Richmond for some grand baby Alex time then we’ll come back here in 4 trips, over to SW VA and Dawson WV for a couple days each and 3 days in the Columbus OH area before arriving back here in Hanna on Friday June 17. After her next appointment…we’ll see if it’s 1 or 3 months and then make plans from there.

Neil took our 2006 Mazda 6 in for oil change and to get the dreaded check engine light repaired this week…and our service was terrible…I won’t identify the dealer (yet) as we’ve emailed the general manager to see if he is going to make it right and deserves a chance to respond before we give our review. Neil had already checked the code on the check engine light and cleared it a dozen times…keeps coming back about 5-10 miles after you clear it and it’s always code P2187 which troubleshoots to most likely a bad O2 sensor. Well…they told him there were other codes (there weren’t) and put in $541 worth of parts and said it was fixed. Drove away from the dealership…5-10 miles later it came back on. Returned to the dealership and they did more troubleshooting and decided it was a fuel pump…despite no code for low fuel pressure. Left without getting that fixed and checked the code himself again…still P2187 so at this point it looks like incompetent service techs or just over charging a passing through the area customer. Needless to say…we won’t be back.

They haven’t decided yet…but considering the fuel pump is almost $700 and the blue book value of a 10 year old 170,000 mile Mazda 6 is between $1,200 and $1,800 maximum…I doubt they’ll get it fixed. Since Connie can’t probably drive for another couple of months and we were going to have to store it anyway it’s probably time to just donate it to a worthy cause and replace it once we get back to Seminole in the fall. Not sure yet though…but for the 3 weeks we’re going to be gone this time the owner here at Last Resort Campground in Hanna offered us a corner to park it in.

Interesting things of the week.

The internet is really just the modern day version of ancient Egypt.

The most pointless bridge ever.

Coincidence…I think not.

And what would have been an important safety notice if we had actually made it into Canada this summer…although I’m not really sure there are any grizzly bears in eastern Canada.

And finally…Aladdin parks like a jerk.

Well…figured I should let ya’ll know what’s going on. Saturday morning (May 14) we headed out early on our 575 mile trip down to Chattanooga to attend the New Horizons Owners Group (NHOG) rally. It was Big Red’s maiden voyage pulling the house and after hitching up…which required a few modifications to our previous standard procedure as things are just a tad different now…we hit the road shortly before 0900.

We pulled into Elizabethtown Crossroads RV in Elizabethtown KY about 50 miles south of Louisville 320 miles later. Since we were just staying overnight we put some water in the tank before we left so all the setup we had was power and slides…didn’t even unhitch. We had some leftover stir fry that Neil made Friday night…good thinking there…and went to bed early. We woke up Sunday morning to 40 degree weather but were on the road out of the park by 0800. After a stop at Iron Skillet for some breakfast we hit the road and rolled into the Chattanooga Trav-L Park about 1415. We quickly paid and got setup in site 145. Once we were setup we headed off to Mass about 15 miles away and after Mass we scored 80 gallons of diesel at 1.889 per gallon…haven’t seen prices like that in quite a while.

Dinner was a couple of Burrito Supremes from Taco Bell that we picked up on the way home. Tomorrow we’re (Bill and Neil) doing a couple of projects on our rigs…then we’ll check in for the rally in the afternoon and kick things off with some grilled burgers tomorrow night. I’ll let you know later what else is going on…but wanted to give you a quick report.

We’ll be here until Saturday morning…then a 2 day run back up to Hanna for Connie’s eye follow up visit the following Monday.

I can say that Big Red pulled the house wonderfully…with pretty much no drama. Even on the 5 and 6 percent downgrades we hit in TN today…the exhaust brake kicked in and easily maintained speed with just a couple of touches on the brakes. Uphill we dropped off to about 50 and the turbo boost kicked up to keep our Cummins diesel in the middle of the power curve and just powered up. Quite a nice ride and lots less stress than we had with BAT. Although we never really felt out of control going downhill…we had to use considerable braking to keep things from running away…but with the heavier weight that Big Red has…bigger brakes…and most importantly the engine exhaust brake (like the Jake brake on 18-wheeler trucks) really make driving it a breeze. Neil’s still not quite used to the different road feel…but that will come with time. Turning radius for maneuvering around campgrounds is pretty much the same as we had with BAT so all is good there.

A couple of  quickies for ya in the Interesting Things of the Week category.

Non stick pan…right.

The reason you should always keep chalk in your car.

And one should always practice good hygiene of course.

Cyas.

Ya know…an oft used saying in the RV world is that our plans are set in Jello…and not very firm Jello at that. This has definitely come true for us this summer…details below. 

Other than plans changing…not really anything going on since my last post. On Friday Neil went out to start packing stuff into the storage compartments and to verify that the brake controller, cameras, and hitch compressor that were transplanted from BAT were installed correctly.

The first thing we noticed was that it wouldn’t crank…dead battery…after some thinking and talking to Tom Martin who owns Classy Chassis it was just a matter of the truck being delivered to them in early January and although it got driven over to Elkhart about 50 miles away for the bed installation it returned in early February from there and hasn’t really been driven since. Moved into and out of the shop a few times but that’s about it and with the combination of not being driven, testing all the equipment as it got installed, and the demo when we did the delivery the batteries just ran down. Tom brought over a battery charger and Neil left it on for 15 hours which got the batteries up to about 75%…then on Saturday he and Connie went on a drive…about 60 or so miles at pretty much highway speeds and all appears well now.

Anyway…after he did the packing he backed around and got the rear of the truck close enough to being hitched so that the 7 pin cable which provides brake and light control to the rig and the camera cables would reach and verified operation. Brakes and lights are perfect…cameras are almost perfect. They all work…but the display normally shows all 3 cameras but switches to just the left or right one when the turn signal is engaged. This part worked as well…but unfortunately when you put on the left signal the right camera displays and vice versa. He put in a call to Donnie…our Classy sales rep…and asked to have someone come out this week to fix it…would be better to do it here at the park where the rig is available so that testing can verify the fix. They’ll either have to reverse 2 sensing wires in the under dash portion of the wiring or figure out which two connectors to switch back in the bed. 

Our drive was nice…although we hadn’t figured out all the various controls for the truck instrumentation and truck control system yet. There are two display screens in the cab…the first one is over the steering wheel between the tach and speedometers and has about 15 different screens to show you various sets of information. It also includes 6 user selectable locations where you can choose what you want to see. Here’s a photo of this screen…although this one was actually from our friend Bill Napier’s 5500…I didn’t see any point in taking another one. We’ve currently got different options selected for the 4 circled areas but we’ll have to see what we really want to have there. The two on the left (turbo boost and engine braking horsepower) I think we’ll leave that way. As of now I have current and average mpg as well as outside temp and range until empty in the 4 small areas.

Rather than the trip odometer shown in the above photo we’re using the engine parameters one as shown in this photo.

We ate dinner at this local bar on Friday night named The Other Place…in beautiful downtown Wanatah IN…not much there but the Guinness was cold and the bacon cheeseburger (Neil) and fried perch dinner (Connie) were both excellent.

Saturday we went on a drive up north to the southern end of Lake Michigan…mostly to put some highway miles on Big Red to finish charging the battery but also to get out of the house as both Connie and Neil were getting pretty stir crazy just doing nothing. We did get a nice shot of downtown Chicago across the lake…you can just see the tall buildings in the photo below along with the really big waves rolling onto the beach…it was pretty windy Saturday afternoon…probably 25 knots directly from the north and pretty cool as well.

Those are probably 2 foot high waves rolling in…darned big for a lake.

Speaking of weather…I think the weather guesser folk in Indiana forgot that it’s May and it’s supposed to be warm…it hasn’t been. Our warmest day so far has been maybe 75 and all the others just in the 60s with overnight lows mostly in the 40s but down to 39 one night. Brrr…that’s enough of that stuff.

Monday we had another appointment for Connie up at Retina Specialists in Michigan City…Doctor Vyas did a little bit more laser work but still has a small amount to do. Unfortunately the last piece is behind her bubble so she’ll have to wait until it’s gone to get that part done. Luckily it’s not where the actual detachment was but is just an area she wants to tack down to hopefully prevent a recurrence. Her next appointment is in 2 weeks…and then most likely another 2 weeks after that at a time until the bubble is gone…then it will be 3 months for the final follow up.

The 2 week followup allows us to go ahead and depart Hanna on Saturday morning and head 2 days down to Chattanooga where we’ll attend our previously scheduled New Horizons Owners Group (NHOG) rally with our friends Bill and Linda along with 30-something other New Horizons owners. Our original plan after that was to head over to VA to see grand baby Alex then up to the DC ‘burbs again for dental/eyes/finance guy appointments but instead when the rally is over we’ll come back up to Hanna where we have a site on a monthly rate…arriving a week from Sunday for her appointment on Monday. Assuming that goes OK…we’ll head over the following Friday to our old haunts in Fairfax VA…not sure at this point whether we’ll take the rig or just drive over…it’s only a little farther than Chattanooga is and we do have paid reservations at Bull Run Regional Park for that week already. After that we’ll head back here for her hopefully final 2 week followup then we will be free until about Labor Day.

Looking at our schedule…we’ve decided to cancel our Canadian Maritimes trip…what a bummer but with the potential for further eye issues then being out of the USA would make medical coverage much more difficult/expensive so we’ll have to regroup. We haven’t made any firm plans yet…but Connie would like to head up into the east side lower peninsula of Michigan for a bit then maybe over into western PA and NY…we’ve never been in those areas of the country. We’ll work in an earlier stop in Elkhart IN to get the rig wheel bearings done rather than waiting until late September for that…then assuming that all is well with her 3 month checkup we’ll head generally south and east. Our hope at this point is that we can just reconnect with our original scheduled stop in VA for grand baby Alex time in early October then southwards through our other already scheduled stops. Time will tell on that though. Assuming she’s still not cleared to drive…we’ll just leave our Mazda here in a storage yard…we toyed with the idea of Neil driving it over to VA to leave with Bryan and Jen then flying back but it’s significantly cheaper to just put it at one of those U-Store-It places for a couple of months since we have to come back here anyway. She’ll likely need a new left eye lens prescription…but until all settles down with her eye it’s pointless to get one. Actually…Doctor Vyas told her that she was legal to drive right now…but with the bubble in her eye it makes her perceived vision worse and she doesn’t feel safe to drive even though she’s technically legal. We ran into a guy at the second local dive bar we’ve been to last night who had a detachment as well and he said his bubble took 3-4 weeks to disappear. We’ll evaluate her driving capability before we head out for an abbreviated set of travels of course…but at this point we’re figuring that storing the Mazda will be the right answer.

Neil’s been madly cancelling Canada park and ferry reservations this morning…we’ll have a nice credit balance on our Visa card later in the week as he just paid the bill this morning as well. 

OK…I guess I owe you a report on Hanna area dive bars…there are a total of 4 and we’ve been to two of them. First up was The Other Place over a couple miles west in Wanatah…food was actually pretty decent there and while the beer selection was less than optimum at least they did have Guinness although not on tap. Last night we went over to Rumors Restaurant and Bar…maybe a half mile from the park entrance…and we pretty much won’t be going back there. Beer selection was even less optimum…we ended up drinking a draft MillerLite and then a bottled Miller High Life…which are (predictably) cheap lager brews with not much taste. Connie had a taco salad which she said was excellent…Neil a bacon cheeseburger that was mediocre. One thing I can say about the places up here though…they give you enough fries to feed a family in Bangladesh for a week…there’s absolutely no way we could eat all of those even if all we ate was the fries. We’ve still got the Hanna Hub to try…which looks like a biker bar since it had a dozen or so parked outside…and I’m not holding out a lot of hope but we’ll try it anyway; as well as the Whitehorse Saloon which is up in Union Mills.

Interesting Things of the Week.

The Church of the Confused Chicken

Little known facts about wind chimes

I always wondered what diapers and politicians have in common

What the Mona Lisa looks like on Monday morning after a party weekend

I see the French have landed on the moon

And finally…the perfect 7 course Irish meal

Cyas.

Okay…and update on Connie’s retina separation first. As you know she had a bubble injected into her good (left) eye on Monday and we went back on Wednesday (May 4)…at this visit Dr Vyas told her that the bubble had done it’s job and it was time for the laser treatment to seal the edges down and finish the repair. While she was going to be at it…she went ahead and lasered some additional areas around the retina that are thin…most likely due to her high diopter numbers. Once that was done…we headed home and things at this point are looking up…she’s not out of the woods yet or completely healed but she’s definitely on the mend.

Our immediate plans are to extend our stay here in Hanna for another month at least…cheaper campground rates that way ya know…but we’ll probably head out on a couple of short trips in the meantime between her followup visits…down to the New Horizons Owners Group rally in Chattanooga TN the week of May 16 and then over to the Fairfax VA area for our already scheduled dental/Neil eye/financial guy appointments the last week of May. Our trip up to Canada looks to be not in the cards for this summer…but we’re waiting a bit before we cancel anything past the NHOG rally to see what her exact follow up visit schedule is.

On to the Sad News…well, it’s not actually sad news for most of us…it’s actually good news for everybody in our immediate family…with the sole exception of BAT.

Some of you who might have looked at our planned route this spring based on the destinations I talked about in earlier posts might have wondered to yourselves…just what the heck are they doing going from Florida to Indiana then back south to Tennessee before heading for grandbaby Alex in Midlothian then north to Canada. The Canadian part of the trip makes sense looking at the map…but why did we go so far out of our way?

Today I have sad news to report…BAT is no longer with us. Some of you may have figured this out already…since Connie is really lousy at keeping secrets and despite Neil telling her NOT TO TELL ANYBODY YET she kept tweeting about it.

As our regular readers know…our New Horizons 5th wheel gets towed behind our 2012 Ford F450 pickup named BAT (Big Ass Truck). We knew on delivery of our rig that our rear axle capacity was getting sorely tested…every other specification for load we’re well within but the rear axle on Ford pickups is under-rated…deliberately by Ford so as to sell more expensive commercial trucks to plumbers, welders and the like.

As a recovering engineer…Neil well knows that there’s some safety margin built into the numbers and we were all ok with that…BAT towed nicely and stopped the rig just fine. We slow down a bit going up hill and speed up on the downhills but downshifting and using engine braking solves that just fine.

Then life happened. We’ve added a little weight to our rig since taking delivery but not much…so our pin weight is just a little more than the 5,450 pounds we were weighed at back in 2013. Add into that the aux fuel tank we added to the truck to extend our driving range…another 600 pounds almost of fuel and tank…and we were getting up towards 18% over maximum load on the rear axle. We’ve also had a couple of oopsies due to not having enough clearance between the side rails of the bed and the bottom of the bedroom on the house…nothing serious but enough that it was a pain in the rear. There’s also no dry storage in the bed…BAT has a roll up cover for when we aren’t towing which keeps the bed reasonably dry but it’s rolled up and if you tow in the rain then all the bed contents gets wet…so it’s really only storage for things that can get wet.

So…here is a last photo of BAT just before we put him out of his misery…don’t feel bad for him because I’m sure he’s got many years of outstanding towing service left…just not for a house as heavy as ours.

I mentioned earlier in the blog that we are visiting Valparaiso, IN…I just didn’t mention what we were actually here for until now…mostly because I didn’t want to give it away early.

Allow me to introduce you to the new and improved version of the Big Ass Truck…a brandy spanking 2016 RAM 5500 HD commercial cab and chassis truck with a custom built hauler bed from Classy Chassis here in Valparaiso. His name is…drum roll please…Big Red. Note the really nice two tone paint job that has red and tan colors that almost exactly match the color scheme on the house. Here’s Connie doing her best Vanna White imitation (again, and Neil made sure she was posed in a more feminine like manner this time:-).

So…what can Big Red do that BAT couldn’t do? First off…he’s a commercial truck with bigger brakes and suspension parts so we seriously just cannot overload this truck. I don’t think there’s a fifth wheel made that would over load it’s rear axle or towing capacity. Second…we sprung for the upgrade to the Cummins diesel and heavy duty Aisin transmission along with some other “pull heavy stuff” options. Thirdly…the Cummins includes a real exhaust brake just like a big 18 wheeler truck has…which means that when you want to stop…you stop. The bottom line is that from a towing and braking standpoint we’re far better off and we’ve now got a rear axle that doesn’t care what we add to the house.

The drawback…is that as a commercial truck it doesn’t have as much get up and go as BAT did…so we’ll probably climb hills and pull away from stop lights a little more slowly. We’re not going to drag race off with the house in tow anyway so that’s not much of a problem.

Then there’s the storage. As you can see from the photo…there are 2 storage compartments on each side and another one accessible from the top over the rear wheels. The front storage compartment door is 21×27 and plenty of deep…you could even stow a body away in there if you really needed to. The rear one is 14×17 and the one over the wheels is 12×23. All have doors that are fully watertight so there is storage space that will stay dry. All 3 compartments are about 15 inches deep. You could actually put Connie inside the forward storage area with room to spare if you needed to…except that she doesn’t really bend the right ways to make maximum usage of the available space.

In addition…the top of the hauler bed is just about level with the hitch plate on our hitch…in BAT the hitch was 3-4 inches lower than the bed side rails. The bed also gets lower as you go rearwards to also assist in clearance to the bottom of the house. Bottom line is that instead of about 4-5 inches of clearance we now have almost a full foot. This will ensure that we don’t have any more oopsies where the bottom of the bedroom bounces off of the truck bed denting both of them.

The bigger truck gets a little worse mileage of course…but that’s just part of the price of living in an RV. Fuel costs just go along with the territory…luckily we mostly won’t be using Big Red for our daily driver since we intend to continue having a car in addition to the truck.

I’ll report later on how it drives once we’ve towed a bit with it…but based on our friend Bill’s experience with his almost identical truck/bed combination with a very similar weight/size trailer to ours…I’m sure we’ll like it just fine. It does drive really nicely solo (i.e., without the house in tow) and the real exhaust brake on the Cummins diesel we sprung extra for will make stopping much more safe and effective.

We especially like the two tone color combo…both the red and the tan metallic lower portions match the paint scheme on the rig almost perfectly.

Interesting things of the week

Saw a tweet that said “Idea: Eat a whole bag of popcorn kernels before you die to make cremation a fun experience for everyone.” Really liked that one.

This picture is so true.

The true reason why it’s really, really smart to keep chalk in your car at all times.

Another one in the parking meme…Aladdin parks like a jerk.

Wanna non-stick pan?

And finally…that escalated quickly.

Cyas.

Okay…and update on Connie’s retina separation first. As you know she had a bubble injected into her good (left) eye on Monday and we went back on Wednesday (May 4)…at this visit Dr Vyas told her that the bubble had done it’s job and it was time for the laser treatment to seal the edges down and finish the repair. While she was going to be at it…she went ahead and lasered some additional areas around the retina that are thin…most likely due to her high diopter numbers. Once that was done…we headed home and things at this point are looking up…she’s not out of the woods yet or completely healed but she’s definitely on the mend.

Our immediate plans are to extend our stay here in Hanna for another month at least…cheaper campground rates that way ya know…but we’ll probably head out on a couple of short trips in the meantime between her followup visits…down to the New Horizons Owners Group rally in Chattanooga TN the week of May 16 and then over to the Fairfax VA area for our already scheduled dental/Neil eye/financial guy appointments the last week of May. Our trip up to Canada looks to be not in the cards for this summer…but we’re waiting a bit before we cancel anything past the NHOG rally to see what her exact follow up visit schedule is.

On to the Sad News…well, it’s not actually sad news for most of us…it’s actually good news for everybody in our immediate family…with the sole exception of BAT.

Some of you who might have looked at our planned route this spring based on the destinations I talked about in earlier posts might have wondered to yourselves…just what the heck are they doing going from Florida to Indiana then back south to Tennessee before heading for grandbaby Alex in Midlothian then north to Canada. The Canadian part of the trip makes sense looking at the map…but why did we go so far out of our way?

Today I have sad news to report…BAT is no longer with us. Some of you may have figured this out already…since Connie is really lousy at keeping secrets and despite Neil telling her NOT TO TELL ANYBODY YET she kept tweeting about it.

As our regular readers know…our New Horizons 5th wheel gets towed behind our 2012 Ford F450 pickup named BAT (Big Ass Truck). We knew on delivery of our rig that our rear axle capacity was getting sorely tested…every other specification for load we’re well within but the rear axle on Ford pickups is under-rated…deliberately by Ford so as to sell more expensive commercial trucks to plumbers, welders and the like.

As a recovering engineer…Neil well knows that there’s some safety margin built into the numbers and we were all ok with that…BAT towed nicely and stopped the rig just fine. We slow down a bit going up hill and speed up on the downhills but downshifting and using engine braking solves that just fine.

Then life happened. We’ve added a little weight to our rig since taking delivery but not much…so our pin weight is just a little more than the 5,450 pounds we were weighed at back in 2013. Add into that the aux fuel tank we added to the truck to extend our driving range…another 600 pounds almost of fuel and tank…and we were getting up towards 18% over maximum load on the rear axle. We’ve also had a couple of oopsies due to not having enough clearance between the side rails of the bed and the bottom of the bedroom on the house…nothing serious but enough that it was a pain in the rear. There’s also no dry storage in the bed…BAT has a roll up cover for when we aren’t towing which keeps the bed reasonably dry but it’s rolled up and if you tow in the rain then all the bed contents gets wet…so it’s really only storage for things that can get wet.

So…here is a last photo of BAT just before we put him out of his misery…don’t feel bad for him because I’m sure he’s got many years of outstanding towing service left…just not for a house as heavy as ours.

I mentioned earlier in the blog that we are visiting Valparaiso, IN…I just didn’t mention what we were actually here for until now…mostly because I didn’t want to give it away early.

Allow me to introduce you to the new and improved version of the Big Ass Truck…a brandy spanking 2016 RAM 5500 HD commercial cab and chassis truck with a custom built hauler bed from Classy Chassis here in Valparaiso. His name is…drum roll please…Big Red. Note the really nice two tone paint job that has red and tan colors that almost exactly match the color scheme on the house. Here’s Connie doing her best Vanna White imitation (again, and Neil made sure she was posed in a more feminine like manner this time:-).

So…what can Big Red do that BAT couldn’t do? First off…he’s a commercial truck with bigger brakes and suspension parts so we seriously just cannot overload this truck. I don’t think there’s a fifth wheel made that would over load it’s rear axle or towing capacity. Second…we sprung for the upgrade to the Cummins diesel and heavy duty Aisin transmission along with some other “pull heavy stuff” options. Thirdly…the Cummins includes a real exhaust brake just like a big 18 wheeler truck has…which means that when you want to stop…you stop. The bottom line is that from a towing and braking standpoint we’re far better off and we’ve now got a rear axle that doesn’t care what we add to the house.

The drawback…is that as a commercial truck it doesn’t have as much get up and go as BAT did…so we’ll probably climb hills and pull away from stop lights a little more slowly. We’re not going to drag race off with the house in tow anyway so that’s not much of a problem.

Then there’s the storage. As you can see from the photo…there are 2 storage compartments on each side and another one accessible from the top over the rear wheels. The front storage compartment door is 21×27 and plenty of deep…you could even stow a body away in there if you really needed to. The rear one is 14×17 and the one over the wheels is 12×23. All have doors that are fully watertight so there is storage space that will stay dry. All 3 compartments are about 15 inches deep. You could actually put Connie inside the forward storage area with room to spare if you needed to…except that she doesn’t really bend the right ways to make maximum usage of the available space.

In addition…the top of the hauler bed is just about level with the hitch plate on our hitch…in BAT the hitch was 3-4 inches lower than the bed side rails. The bed also gets lower as you go rearwards to also assist in clearance to the bottom of the house. Bottom line is that instead of about 4-5 inches of clearance we now have almost a full foot. This will ensure that we don’t have any more oopsies where the bottom of the bedroom bounces off of the truck bed denting both of them.

The bigger truck gets a little worse mileage of course…but that’s just part of the price of living in an RV. Fuel costs just go along with the territory…luckily we mostly won’t be using Big Red for our daily driver since we intend to continue having a car in addition to the truck.

I’ll report later on how it drives once we’ve towed a bit with it…but based on our friend Bill’s experience with his almost identical truck/bed combination with a very similar weight/size trailer to ours…I’m sure we’ll like it just fine. It does drive really nicely solo (i.e., without the house in tow) and the real exhaust brake on the Cummins diesel we sprung extra for will make stopping much more safe and effective.

We especially like the two tone color combo…both the red and the tan metallic lower portions match the paint scheme on the rig almost perfectly.

Interesting things of the week

Saw a tweet that said “Idea: Eat a whole bag of popcorn kernels before you die to make cremation a fun experience for everyone.” Really liked that one.

This picture is so true.

The true reason why it’s really, really smart to keep chalk in your car at all times.

Another one in the parking meme…Aladdin parks like a jerk.

Wanna non-stick pan?

And finally…that escalated quickly.

Cyas.

Ok then…lets see what other stuff we did in the Louisville area.

Connie continued to work a bit every day and then we went out on a little hike on Thursday afternoon. Our destination was within Charlestown State Park where we were parked but we drove over to the picnic area parking lot where we headed out on Trail 2 which was about a 2 mile or so hike downhill to a couple of little waterfalls and then back up to the parking lot. Connie was a bit freaked out by the tent caterpillars…but with her hat on to protect her head from them she just didn’t look up and figured if she didn’t see them then they just weren’t there. 

We had a bit of trouble finding the correct path to go down…there aren’t any blazes to follow…we headed down the trail from the entrance sign and it was a nice grassy path…that portion continued on into the woods but after a hundred yards or so down it we didn’t think it was going the right way…so we looked at the trail map on our All Trails app and figured out we needed to turn right at that rocky path we had crossed awhile back. So we headed back up there and down the rocky path…and after a few hundred yards determined we were on the right path and continued on. 

Connie spotted some flowers so Neil got a shot for her.

And then we got to the first waterfall…about a 5 or 6 foot drop but it was a nice burbling sort of falls and we kinda liked it.

Continuing on down the hill another couple hundred yards we spotted the second one…and Neil got some shots after climbing down into a little gully to the junction of the stream with the waterfall and the second stream that joined it. This one is taller…20 or 30 feet in total probably but again it was just a nice gentle falls on a walk in the woods.

That was the low point in the hike…about 120 feet or so downhill from the parking lot according to the app on his iPhone that Neil uses to figure these things out. I guess he could also use it to figure out how tall the fall was assuming he could get right next to both the top and bottom (I just thought of that…I’ll tell him to do it next time for ya’). After the shot above we continued on the trail which was essentially straight to the left from this shot and after another mile or so of wandering around the ridge as we climbed we got back to the parking lot. The only other thing we saw interesting was this little green bug…it has a quite striking bright metallic green color…but we have no idea at all what it is other than a bug.

Friday we had 2 visit scheduled for down in Louisville…first up was the Bulleit Distillery which makes…of course…Bulleit Bourbon. To refresh your memory…in order to be labeled bourbon you need to make whiskey in the USA out of at least 51% corn and then age it in charred, never before used white oak barrels for at least 2 years. Otherwise you can call it whiskey but not bourbon. It’s made pretty much the same as any other whiskey…but the grain mix and aging process are what make it bourbon. Is it any better than Scotch whiskey or Irish whiskey or just plain old whiskey? Not necessarily…they all taste subtlety different and it’s just a matter of what you like.

Here’s a shot of the small still on the current premises…they have a larger country property about 50 miles west of Louisville where they make the majority of their product.

And the obligatory shot of us in the tasting room with our samples.

The one on the upper left is their standard stuff…upper right has a pretty decent percentage of rye so it has a different flavor. Lower left is the 10 year old stuff (same as upper left but just older) and lower right is barrel strength of the upper left…it comes out of the barrel at 120 proof or so and is normally diluted to 80 or 90 proof for sale. Strangely enough we liked the original better. The rye was much less flavored, the old stuff didn’t taste as good to us and the barrel strength was just too strong to really enjoy past the alcohol taste.

We had some extra samples as the young ladies next to us had extra…one of them didn’t drink (no idea why she went on a tasting tour then) so she gave hers to us.

Second stop was the Copper and King brandy distillery…again for those of you who don’t know what brandy is it’s just distilled wine…they buy a product in bulk from wineries called low wine…which is essentially just non aged, never barrel stored wine. Think of it as Two Buck Chuck but only cheaper and worse tasting as it is. Anyway they take this low wine and feed it through the stills below to get brandy.

So what’s the difference between brandy and cognac ye ask? Well…cognac is just brandy that is distilled from champagne instead of wine and the champagne must be from the Cognac region of France…other than that it’s just brandy.

Copper and King adds various flavorings to their brandy and they also make Absinthe…which is licorice flavored brandy.

These folks are pretty much modern day hippies…they’re interested in Monarch butterflies, cats, and drinking and have what most people would call a picnic area but they call it the courtyard space which…according to the tour guide…is used as a multi-purpose space to allow one to commune with their fellow man.

Whatever. Anyway…their brandy pretty much sucked. Well, there was one that sucked less but it mostly was.not.very.good. We drank it anyway as it was included with the tour but it certainly wasn’t worth the 30something bucks a bottle they wanted for it.

Sunday morning we got up early, dumped tanks, stowed, hitched and were on our way for our 260 mile trip up to Hanna IN shortly after 0900. On the way up Connie’s vision got noticeably worse…as you know she pretty much only has one fully functioning eye…her right one is B/W only and fuzzy and pretty much hazed over in the daylight due to some issues when she was young…but she gets along pretty well with just the one good left eye. Anyway…she had noticed Saturday evening that it was blurry but figured it was due to looking at the computer all day. Sunday it got much worse with lots of floaters, even more blurry to the point she couldn’t read road signs, and she had a brownish rocket shaped thing sticking into her visual field and it appeared to be growing.

Since…as previously noted…she only has one fully functioning eye…these symptoms meant that it was time to seek medical advice. We found a local in-network Tricare ophthalmologist and we called them for advice. They told her that since she wasn’t a patient already to go to the emergency room. After calling to find an ER with an ophthalmologist on call we headed there…they looked in it briefly, consulted their on call MD, and referred us to Dr. Buck the ophthalmologist on call with an 0800 appointment Monday morning. We went there…turned out they don’t open until 0830…he took a look and told her he had a threatened retinal detachment and referred us to Retina Specialists…who in the perfect circular trip through the medical system turned out to be the ones we had originally called. So we headed out for our 3rd doctor in 18 hours for this problem and had an appointment with Dr. Vyas. She dilated her eyes, examined them and determined that it really was a retinal detachment…at the edge next to a pigmentation spot that our original optometrist back in Fairfax had been following the progress of for years. Luckily it was pretty small and only slightly lifted so as retinal detachments go it’s not to0 serious but was made more so due to her having only 1 fully functional eye. 

The treatment was to inject a gas bubble into her eye…this increases the pressure and pushes the retina back down into place. Once it’s in place they use a laser to glue it down. She got the injection…which she says makes her vision look like an oil bubble floating on top of water…and we headed home with instructions that she can’t lay on her back and must keep her head pointed down and to the right almost all the time…which means she has to sleep sitting up in the recliner…and we got another appointment for Wednesday afternoon.

All of the above was on Monday…on Tuesday she was having some flashing lights so we called to check with the retina specialists…who immediately told her to come back in…they dilated her and checked it out and nothing new was amiss…but they were concerned that the flashes could have meant more detachment. As it turned out…the flashes are sort of normal during the bubble treatment…and as a bonus we got a progress report that the bubble was doing it’s job and that our originally scheduled follow up on Wednesday Dr. Vyas would probably be able to do the laser thing.

We’ll head over for that follow up in a bit as I’m writing this on Wednesday morning…and hope to know more after that. At the minimum we’ve cancelled our plans for the weekend and next week until we know what is going on. We may be here in Hanna for awhile…and then again we might be here for just a month or so before we can head out again…she’ll have a couple of 2 week follow ups then another one in 3 months so hopefully we can do some traveling during the 3 month period. We’ll let ya know.

Interesting things of the week.

In the “You can’t make this stuff up” department…this is a guy named Philly Jesus who was arrested last week in a Philadelphia are Apple store…according to the original news post he “denied a request to leave 3 times.” Sort of bordering on sacrilegious I’m thinking…strange but true.

This is Preikestolen Cliff in Norway looking out over one of their fjords…it’s 2,000 feet straight down from where these people are standing. Connie says she’s not going up there.

The last known photo of HMS Titanic as she left Ireland on her maiden voyage.

Lazy Floating Thing.

Who knew…turtles can climb…like a boss.

And finally…Happy Star Wars Day to ya…as they say “May the Fourth be with you”. Strange that Connie might have her eye light sabered back together this afternoon. I’ll let ya know later what her eye status is.

Cyas.

**Updated later Wednesday afternoon.

Went over to Connie’s follow up this afternoon and the doctor said her retina had reattached. So she had some laser treatment to weld the edges down since they are weak and thin and said that Connie was an excellent patient and the results looked good. She has another follow up on Monday and might need a little more laser treatment but the doctor needs to examine her first. Once that’s done we’ll have…hopefully…a better idea of what happens next. But it’s looking good and with the sealing all the way around it should lower the probability of recurrence. Her rocket shaped shadow is gone…but that’s probably because it was in the area that was separated.

Cyas.

Well…I sorta guess you can call it that…although it’s not up to our usual standards for fun.

Anyways…on Monday evening Neil decided at the last minute he didn’t feel like cooking so we headed south back down IN-62  a couple of miles to a place called Mack Daddy’s we saw on the way up here on Saturday. Both of us thought it looked like an interesting dive bar so he decided to give it a try…and it turned out to be a pretty decent place. They had AmberBock  on tap for $2.25 a pint so we quickly ordered a pair of those then took a perusal of the menu. Connie quickly decided on fried oysters…Neil briefly considered the steak which one of our neighbors at the bar recommended as being excellent but wasn’t that hungry for a 14 ounce slab-o-beef so went with the Philly Cheese Steak and Onion Rings instead. His sandwich was quite tasty…as were Connie’s oysters…even though they wuz ruint by being dipped in batter of some sort instead of cornmeal…really the only thing that seafood should be properly fried with. We had another brew before heading back to the park for the evening.

Tuesday (Apr 26) we had a day planned down in downtown Louisville…so about 1000 or so we hopped in the car and headed down that way…we stopped by a nail place to check it out for a Wednesday drop in for Connie and picked up a cable for Neil at Radio Shack…he likes to hook his iPhone to the radio in the car to listen to music or podcasts while traveling and the cord he has won’t go into his iPhone 6s+ with the case on it…he needed one with a skinnier end.

On the way out of the park we spotted the juvenile Cooper’s Hawk sitting on a limb near the road and got a quick shot before it flew away…we’ve seen 3 or 4 wild turkeys but haven’t gotten a shot of one of them yet.

We also got this shot of the campground…you can just barely see our house in the far back center…there are only about 6 or 8 rigs here during the week but I’m sure it will pick up again on Friday afternoon.

Once we got parked in downtown we headed by the visitor center to get a map and see what there was to see on a walking tour…there’s this area called Whiskey Row which we figured would have neat shops and such…but as revealed later in the post it turned out to be a bust. Our first priority though…lunch. We first checked out this place named Gordon Biersch Brewery and Restaurant…looking at the menu it looked like a nothing special restaurant but we wandered in to check out the beer selection…only 5 on tap and not one of them made on the premises or even made locally…so much for the brewery part of the name. We decided to press on to a place we had seen on the way to the parking garage…it was on the way to Whiskey Row named Bluegrass Brewing Company Restaurant and Brewery…it was sort of in a half basement/half street level part of the building, the entrance is to the left of the photo below.

We quickly bellied up to the bar…it looked much more like our kinda place over Gordon Biersch…where our excellent, friendly and knowledgeable bartender Kyle briefed us on the current in-house brewed draft selections.

After he ran through the 7-8 selections…Neil looked at Connie and said “you had me at bourbon barrel stout” so we ordered a couple of pints of it…which turned out to be an excellent brew although due to the strong bourbon barrel flavors it was one of those only one pint ones. It used to be full…Ima tellin’ ya it was…dunno what happened to the rest of it. Somebody musta robbed us while we weren’t lookin’.

Connie ordered a Caesar salad with grilled salmon on it and Neil had a pot roast sandwich with grilled onions and mushrooms, cheese, and roasted garlic aioli. Both were outstanding but by the time we got our food his pint was gone. They decided to get another pint of the BBC (Bluegrass Brewing Company) Nut Brown Ale…which was just about as dark as the stout was but was brewed in the ale style vs being a stout so it was not as heavy. They were astounded because it was even better tasting than the stout was.

By the time they finished the Ale and their lunch it was time to head for Whiskey Row…which turned out to be a complete dud…really nothing to see at all. They wandered a mile or so through the area before heading back out. The only redeeming feature on the walk other than the exercise was this pub…there’s a bridge across the Ohio River in the background of this picture and they thought it was a great name for a pub.

They got back to the car and headed home. After a siesta in the afternoon they were both still full from lunch…so Neil baked up a single turkey pot pie that they shared for dinner along with the last couple glasses of wine from the bottle we had Sunday night with our steak.

Afterwards…there was a serious line of thunderstorms coming through…the weather radio went off almost constantly from about 1800 to 2200…there were reports of quarter sized hail, 80 mph wind gusts, and torrential rain. We kept checking the radar map to see if we needed to head for the storm shelter in the bathhouse but there were no tornado watches or warnings posted and it looked like the worst of it would pass us both north and south. About 2000 we had 10 minutes or so of really strong winds…dunno if they were 80 but they were definitely enough to get the house a-rockin’ even though we’re pretty sheltered on 2 sides by the trees in the park and partially sheltered by those across the road behind the opposite sites. Very strong rain as well…but no hail and after 30 minutes or so it settled down to on and off medium heavy rain until 2200 by which time it had pretty much petered out. More thunderstorms forecast for Wednesday evening as well.

Wednesday (Apr 27) Connie headed off about 1110 for a hair appointment…when she got back we had lunch then went out again for nails (her) and laundry (him). Once that was done…dinner will probably just be pasta with walnuts, onions, and garlic as she has an online meeting with her students at 1900.

She’s got more Fun Stuff© scheduled for Thursday, I’ll report on that later.

Interesting Things of the Week

Another claim for the Greatest Pie Chart Ever.

Neil’s favorite of the week…they’re not wrong.

We’ll keep tryin’ for the turkeys. Cyas.