Our plan was to be almost completely packed yesterday with only a few things to load this morning.  It’s good to have a plan as long as you don’t take it too seriously.  Lao Tzu supposedly said that “A true traveler has no fixed plan, and it not intent on arriving.”  I love that sentiment, but I think most people interpret this as “the journey is more important than the destination.”  Or perhaps that “one should not have a plan”, but I don’t think it says that.  I think the emphasis is on not having a fixed plan.  At any given moment you need to have some idea of where you want to go next, or you would just sit in one place and never move.  And having decided to head there, you should have some idea of how you might get there.  But once the planning is done it’s time for the trip.  And it is a certainty that you will have opportunities along the way that you did not plan for and could not even have anticipated.  Whether you experience those will depend on whether you are flexible with regards to your plan.  You may not even make to your original (planned) destination, but if not, it will be the result of a thousand small decisions made along the way, not because you are lost.  As another quote goes “all who wander are not lost.”  I like that one too.

In other words, we woke up this morning with a plan to be on the road by noon but with lots still to do.  We were not in a panic about it, but got at it right away and it was a busy morning.  It helped that Linda had kept a running list yesterday of stuff we needed to load on the bus, and things we needed to do around the house, just before departure.  Although the morning was a bit more intense than I would have like, we pulled out about quarter past noon, so it all worked out OK.

We decided yesterday to divide up the trip to Townsend, Tennessee into three roughly equal segments of about 200 miles each and spent part of the afternoon researching places to stop for the night.  Given that we needed to be at the Tremont RV Resort in Townsend on Sunday, our route choices were basically determined; I-96 E to US-23 S into Ohio and onto I-75 S all the way to Knoxville, and then Tennessee highways from there into Townsend.  Our first leg would ideally put us somewhere just north of Dayton.   We are still learning to “boondock” (camp for the night without hookups and without paying for a site) so we looked for opportunities to do that.  A Walmart is often a possibility, but we always look for Coast-to-Coast resorts, where we can stay for $10/night, and Harvest Host locations where we can stay for free.

Exterior of Fulton Farms Market.

There is a Coast-to-Coast resort in Wapakoneta, OH, but it would have made our first leg about 150 miles.  We decided to head for the Fulton Farms Market instead.  They are located southeast of Troy, Ohio on Highway 202 about 6 miles from I-75 and 20 miles north of Dayton.  The market was still open when we arrived around 4:30 PM, having made a rest stop and a fuel stop along the way, and there were still plenty of customers there even though they close at 5 PM.

Linda talking to Joyce Fulton.

Fulton Farms Market is owned by Bill and Joyce Fulton and is a host location in the Harvest Hosts program that we belong to.  We went inside to let them know we had arrived and bought some apples and a blackberry pie (after reading the ingredients label very carefully).  We also got to meet Joyce and had a nice chat with her.  She was very gracious and glad we had stopped as they have not had very Harvest Hosts visitors in the time they have been a host location.

Interior of Fulton Farms Market.

The Fulton Farm Market is a very nice place with a large, level, paved parking lot that easily accommodated our bus.  I recommend it to anyone passing through the Troy, OH area with or without an RV.  This is the third Harvest Hosts location where we have stopped.  The second one was the Forestedge Winery near Laporte, Minnesota which I wrote about previously.  Same thing; great place, great people, great products, and we were the first Harvest Hosts members who had ever stopped there.  HH is a great program, but I worry that host locations will drop out after a time if no one ever stops, and who could blame them?

We are headed for another Harvest Hosts location tomorrow in Kentucky, but that’s another story for another day.  Our main concern on this end will be repositioning the coach in the morning, without unhooking the car, so we are able to exit the premises after customers start showing up in their cars around 10 AM.  Our drive tomorrow is only about 180 miles and should only take about 4 hours, so we don’t want to leave here too early and Joyce made it clear that we welcome to stick around in the morning.