Are we home?

You can just see the Amazon building in the background

I thought I was waking up at 7am, but it was really 8am......we knew we were going to lose one more hour when we hit Campbellsville, but our phones had already adjusted for the time change, even though we were still in Indiana.  Along with the time change we also awoke to clear skies.....a nice change from our travel day on Tuesday when it rained most of our drive, and we saw the forecast was for clear skies through Friday afternoon. We'll need a couple of clear days to get set up for our approximate 10 week stay.

After a cup of coffee we walked over to Cracker Barrel for breakfast.  As we sat down we realized we had not eaten at a Cracker Barrel since the middle of May....almost 5 months ago!  While we were still mulling over that realization our server, Lynn, came to take our order.  I don't usually mention servers names in my blog, but Lynn is special.  She is bubbly, entertaining, and very efficient, and has a wonderful Kentucky accent that just drips with texture, and warmth.  As usual, we enjoyed our breakfast as we glanced around the dinning room enjoying all the "rusty gold" (American Pickers) that is displayed on the walls and ceilings of every Cracker Barrel.

By the time we finished breakfast it was after 9:30 and we still needed to "pay the rent" at the local BP fuel station, which, conveniently, was located just outside the Walmart parking lot.  The lowest diesel price in Corydon was $4.05, and it appeared we were down under an 8th of a tank (we hold 180 gallons of diesel, and an 8th would be about 22.5 gallons), but you just never know with that 30 year old analog fuel gauge.  We gave the cashier $600 cash expecting to pump at least the 148 gallons that would buy, plus a little more.  This BP had a "high flow" diesel pump like the larger truck stops which means it takes less than half the time it would take at a normal automotive pump.  Before I knew it the pump clicked "off" at the 126 gallon mark.....what?  I was expecting at least 30 more gallons. I was able to squeeze in another 6 gallons to top off the tank, but that was still far short of my expectation.....always nice to get $60+ back.....in my mind it was spent, but now it's in my pocket.....like found money!  So, instead of having around 22.5 gallons left we had 48 gallons left, or slightly over 1/4 tank.

We finally rolled the wheels on to I-64 eastbound into Louisville, KY around 10:30.  The road was smooth and dry!  As we approached the interchange to take the bypass around the west side of Louisville down to pick up I-65 I got confused (normal huh?) and took the wrong exit and we ended up adding about 8 miles as we skirted around the east side of Louisville.  That was my first minor mistake of the day....a much bigger one was soon to follow.  We only had 111 miles to go at the beginning of the day, and I expected to be in Campbellsville before 1pm.  When we had traveled north from Campbellsville late last April my GPS routing software had taken us on a nice wide, albeit 2 way highway, all the way to the Interstate.  I "assumed" it would do the same taking us south on the same Interstate, but that is what I get for "assuming".....you would think I would know better....I've been had by "Miss DeLorme", as we call the software, before.  Within a few minutes of exiting I-65 I realized we were going a different way, but so far it seemed OK, so I just thought "what the hay" we'll just keep going.....famous last words.....what we should have done was stopped, and checked the rest of the route "Miss DeLorme" had in mind for us.  By the time I realized this was not a good route we were committed.  By committed I mean there was no place to turn around.  The 2 way road, and I am being very generous in the use of that term, was very, very narrow.  The lane was no more than 102" wide most of the time.....our coach is 96" (8') wide.  For 30 miles my left wheels were either just to the left of the yellow line (when there was no opposing traffic), or right on the yellow line when there was opposing traffic.  It was like driving on someone's long, long, long driveway for an hour.  By the time we reached Campbellsville I was a lump of quivering, sniveling flesh.  "Miss DeLorme" you done me wrong!  We finally arrived in Campbellsville around 1:45pm.

As you can see all 25' are in use.....

Fortunately, I am blessed with a wonderful wife.  Normally I do all the outside setup when we reach camp, but TLE sensed my fragile state of mind, and was right there helping me hookup all 25' of my sewer line, which ended up being 4 inches longer than I needed......I am really glad I thought far enough ahead to buy the extra 10' from CampingWorld, and then the additional connectors just recently!  We unloaded the T-Bird, put out the awning mat, got out the lounge chairs, hooked up the water, and the electricity for both the coach and trailer, lit the water heater, and then got a couple of beers out and enjoyed them with some snacks TLE's loving hands prepared.  It took a while, but I began to relax, and was even able to joke about our harrowing experience on the back roads of Kentucky.

Our home sweet home

As nightfall approached we went inside and watched 4 episodes of NCIS.....we had not been able to watch the last three episodes of last season, and, of course, as we found out, the last three episodes were leading up to the season premier for this year.  It was nice to see all four episodes in one evening, without commercial interruption, because the season ending episode was the typical cliff hanger where you thought one of the characters had died......of course they didn't, as it turned out.  At least we didn't have to wait the entire summer to find out.

Amazingly, after 12,000 miles of almost continuous travel, with Spokane being the 5 week exception, we are now parked in one spot for the next 10 weeks.  Our "home" is parked within view of the 1,000,000 square foot Amazon.com building, and we will be spending a lot of time there, and walking back and forth over the next 2+ months.

Our site is around 65 feet long and about 20 feet wide.....not too bad

Overall, our first 8 months has far exceeded our expectations.  Most of our mechanical issues occurred in the first few weeks of travel, and with the lone exception of the trailer tire flying off in Boise, ID it has been a mechanically pleasant trip, not to mention all we have seen, and done, and all the people we have met, friends we have re-acquainted with, and family members visited.  In a way we're kind of looking forward to sitting in one place for a while before we shove off on new adventures in late December.  Naturally, I'll be blogging about our Amazon adventure, but we'll also be doing site seeing on our days off.....a weekend down in Nashville is being planned, as well as Knoxville, we'll visit the Jim Beam Distillery, and we'll travel over to West Virginia to visit some more Newell friends, so stayed tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!