Day forty eight - Saturday

Up early and off to Memphis today. We left Nashville at about 8:30 a.m. and headed west. As we passed through the mountains, and I use that term loosely, I noticed the first signs of the fall colors. Many of the trees were yellow and red as well as green. Very pretty, but not the dramatic colors as seen in pictures. A local explained to me a week or so ago that its been so dry back here that the fall colors are not developing as they normally would.

We pulled in to the Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis at about 2:00 p.m. It's right on the Mississippi River. We're actually in Arkansas, across the Mississippi river from Memphis Tennessee. We have reservations for two nights but it looks like we're going to extend a couple of nights because we're finding so much to do here. Besides Graceland, there's a zoo with Pandas, the Sun Studios where Elvis recorded his first song, riverboats and other stuff. Unfortunately we're supposed to get rain on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so that may make things a little soggy. We'll see.

I did do some fishing in a pond at the RV park. I fished for about an hour and caught one fish. I'm not sure what kind of fish it was. It looked like some kind of a cross between a bass and a crappie. At least it fought hard.

We had a game of Scrabble and BBQ for dinner. We spent some time on the computer checking out the options in Memphis and watched the Red Sox tie the series with the Indians. It was a good day.

Day forty seven - Friday

Today was a travel day. We left Sevierville and headed to Nashville. At Nashville we found a Walmart and settled in for the afternoon.

There isn't really anything to report. We did some shopping at Walmart and hit the sack early. We went only a little more than 200 miles today and we stopped in Nashville only because we didn't want to drive the whole 400 miles to Memphis in one day. Ann wanted to see the County Music Hall of Fame and Museum but it did nothing for me so we passed on it.

At least we missed the storms. It rained for about an hour this morning but was dry by the time we left. The storms and tornadoes went north of us and were east of us by the time we got up.

Day forty six - Thursday

We woke up to news of tornadoes just west of here. Two people were killed in Missouri by a tornado today. We had gray skies and wind this morning. There were no storm warnings in the area but, still, we worried a little. We put the awning in, just in case and took off for shopping.

Phyllis would be proud. Ann and I went to the Outlet stores in Pigeon Forge. We bought a few things but not much. We had a late lunch at Red Lobster and than back to the coach for a game of Scrabble.

Although we were supposed to have thunderstorms today, our storm fears were unfounded, fortunately. Tomorrow we head west, toward the storms. Hope the storms are over by tomorrow.

Despite the questionable weather, the crew was out fishing as they have been all week. These three guys have been fishing for Carp. They use dough balls on sliding sinkers and sit there all day long smoking cigarettes and eating. Every once in a while they even catch a fish.

Day forty five - Wednedsday

Today was another do-nothing day. Ann did a load of laundry and I vacuumed the coach. We had a game of Scrabble and Ann gave some neighbor ladies a tour of the coach.

We're watching the weather here. About 400 miles west of us there are tornado warnings and, as normal, the weather is coming eastward. We have rain and lightning in the forecast for tomorrow.

We did move today. We extended our stay for two more nights here but had to move to a different site. We moved three doors down. We're still by the river though.

Tomorrow we'll probably do nothing again, especially if it rains. That's okay though. It's kinda nice to do nothing! Time for supper. :)

Day forty four - Tuesday

Today was, for the most part, a do nothing day. I went to the nearby Bass Pro Shops store where I browsed, bought a three-day Tennessee fishing license and an update DVD for my GPS.
When I got back to the coach, I fished for smallmouth bass in the river behind the coach for a little while. I didn't catch anything.

Ann went to the office and extended our stay here for a couple extra days. We won't be leaving here until Friday. The weather is supposed to turn starting tonight with possible rain tonight and thunderstorms tomorrow. We weren't planning on going anywhere tomorrow anyway.

We had dinner at Country Legends. Country Legends has singing servers who take turns going on stage and singing country songs. They were actually very good, if you like country songs. I had the BBQ pulled pork and Ann had ribs. It was a very good dinner and entertaining too.

Parking by the river, under the trees, is nice but also has it's drawbacks. In addition to water and trees, we have squirrels. Okay, no big deal, except the trees have acorns. The squirrels get up early and start running through the trees which knocks the acorns loose. About 6:30 a.m. the acorns start dropping on the roof of the coach. Nobody sleeps when that starts. When I'm up til 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. watching a west coast playoff baseball game, 6:30 comes pretty early.

Pictures are of the sign at the entrance to the RV Park and the view of the river behind our coach. Notice the Trinity Center, Ca. advertising on the name sign.

Day forty three - Monday, Oct. 15

Up early and off to Dollywood! Dolly Parton was born and raised in this area. She came back after she made the big time and created Dollywood. As the story goes, she saw the sign in Hollywood and wanted to change the "H" to a "D."

Dollywood is a theme park with rides, lots of music shows, copious amounts of food and enough stuff for sale to strain Mark Cuban's budget.

The park opened at 10:00 a.m. and we were there just after it opened. First stop was the booth where they get into your wallet. $7.00 for parking a car. As we pulled up to the booth, money in hand, the woman working the booth asked us something with a heavy southern accent. After she repeated her question for the third time we realized she was asking me if I was a fireman. Ann told her yes and the woman handed us our parking ticket and told us to keep our money. I still tried to pay but she wouldn't accept the money. Don't tell the Chief I accepted a gratuity! Free parking was a good start to the day.

$47.00 each got us in the gate. Inside we got our bearings and found someplace for our first meal. Too late for breakfast, we had lunch instead. Over the next six hours we saw a couple of shows, rode five miles on a real steam train, bought some stuff and had a generally good time. We avoided the roller coaster rides.

This is the kind of place we'd visit once but probably won't go again. 70% of the grounds are vendors. 20% is music shows and 10% is rides. We did see an eagle sanctuary that was interesting.

We left an hour before the 6:00 p.m. closing and drove back to the coach via Wal-Mart. We got back too late for a game of Scrabble because Dancing with the Stars came on at 8:00 p.m.

Pizza for supper!

G'night Y'all

Pictures show the train we rode and a huge pan of potatoes, onions and peppers at one of the food booths.

Day forty two - Sunday

Today was another travel day. We left North Carolina and headed to Tennessee. We pulled in to the Riverside RV Park and Resort in Sevierville, Tn at about 4:40 p.m. and got a campsite by the Little Pigeon River. We're about 25 miles southeast of Knoxville and just north of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We covered about 225 miles today.

The Little Pigeon River is said to hold trout, bass (largemouth and smallmouth) Carp, catfish and Pike. I watched a guy catch a carp. It was probably about 7-8 pounds and he said it was a small one.

After being up til 3:00 a.m. and getting up at 9:00 a.m. this morning, we were pretty tired. We had our game of Scrabble, had some dinner (supper here) and watched some TV.

The picture is an aerial view of the Riverside RV Park and Resort. We are in the trees on the right side of the park. The river at the top of the picture curves around to the right/bottom of the picture and flows right behind our coach. When we take the dogs for a walk, we walk along the river.

Day forty one - Saturday

The first part of the day was spent doing little to nothing. I fooled around putting a few things away since we're leaving tomorrow.

At three o'clock we piled into the car and headed toward Concord, NC. Lowes Motorspeedway used to be called Charlotte Motorspeedway, even though it's really in Concord. We found some back roads and came at the track from the east instead of coming from Charlotte. We avoided the heavy traffic and drove right into the parking lot. An hour after leaving KOA we were parking the car and walking to the track.

At the track we found will-call and picked up our tickets. We walked through the vendor area but didn't buy anything other than a Lowes bumper sticker. For those of you who haven't been to a NASCAR race, the teams don't just show up to race. Most teams also send an eighteen-wheeler full of souveniors to sell outside the track. The sides of the trailer open up to reveal shelves, displays and cases full of team stuff. A lot of the teams and sponsors also give stuff away in this area. We got some race flags and other stuff.

At five o'clock we headed into the track and found our seats. It was going to be a long night so dinner was next. Over-priced food and drink is the norm, just like other sports. Ann had a philly steak and lemonade. I had a polish sausage with green peppers and onions and a coke. We shared a soft pretzel for desert.

The race started at about 7:30 and continued until almost midnight. It was a good race with lots of action. I wasn't thrilled that Jeff Gordon won but Ann was happy.

After the race it took us about 45 minutes to get to the car. We then SAT in the parking lot for over an hour without moving. Once we did get moving we were out pretty quickly and on our way. We pulled up to the KOA at three o'clock a.m. It was a long day.

Picture shows some of the pre-race fireworks. The movie shows the cars crossing the start/finish line and heading into turn one at the start of the race.

Day forty - Friday

Today turned out to be a do-nothing day. We drove nowhere, saw nothing and did little. Ann did some laundry and that's about all we accomplished.

Ann won our game of Scrabble and I watched the Busch race at Lowes motorspeedway tonight. Tomorrow we see the Cup race in person. Our seats are between the finish line and turn one. Not bad seats considering we just bought the tickets a few days ago.


Picture shows Ann standing on the second floor of Michael Waldrip's race shop. Cars in the background (first floor) are Dale Jarrett's UPS cars.

Day thirty nine - Thursday

We moved from Wal Mart to the KOA just south of Statesville on hwy 77. Due to the race being this weekend all we could get was a site with water and electric, no sewer. Even with that, it's still $32.50 a night which is a little high. However, with the race, we're lucky to have found a spot at all.

After getting set up we drove into Cornelius, NC, and visited Michael Waltrip's racing facility. He calls it Racing World USA. Inside we took a tour of the facility where we saw his race shops, toured his motor home, toured a hauler and got to check out where the crew practices pit stops. They had a car and jack in the pit. I got a chance to jack up the car. After a short tutorial I gave it a shot. I'll tell you, I found out it isn't as easy as it looks on TV.

The jack has to be placed under the side of the car in just the right spot and then locked in with a short push on the jack handle. Then, the jack handle has to be pulled upright and then pushed down, HARD, to get the car off the ground. It took me several tries just to get the left side wheels off the ground. I can see now why these guys have to be athletes and have to practice as much as they do.

Back at our coach, we had a game of Scrabble. I finally won, although it was close. After dinner we watched Gray's Anatomy and the baseball game. We have no plans for tomorrow so we'll see what happens.

G'night