Tag Archives: Marilyn

2014/06/29 (N) Lilly And Company

We said our “goodbyes ’till next time” to Linda H., Ron, and Mary last night as they went off to bed.  Linda and I were up at 7 AM CDT and had the car loaded by 7:45.  Marilyn was also up so we got to visit and say goodbye to her before we left at 8 AM.  We got back on I-270 westbound and headed to Bridgeton, Missouri where my sister lives.  We stopped at the St. Louis Bread Company bakery cafe on St. Charles Rock Road for coffee and bagels first and arrived at Patty’s house a little after 9 AM.  St. Louis Bread Company is the original name of the Panera bakery cafés, and they still use the original name in the St. Louis market where the company started and is still headquartered.

Patty’s house was completely destroyed two years ago April in the Good Friday tornados that swept through the St. Louis, Missouri area.  The outbreak damaged over 700 hundred homes as well as the St. Louis Lambert International Airport.   This was a newsworthy weather event, and Patty was interviewed by The Weather Channel, but little did anyone know at the time that it was just the first of what would prove to be a very bad season of much worse tornado outbreaks across the south.  It took a year to rebuild Patty’s house and she made a few changes in the design that resulted in a nicer, more livable dwelling, a small consolation for everything see lost.

Patty’s daughter, Amanda, came over around 10 AM with her daughter, Lillian Lissette.  Lilly is only six weeks younger than our grand-daughter Madeline, so developmentally they are doing similar things.  Lilly is up on two feet and very mobile.  She is a very sweet little girl who is curious about everything and is verbalizing a lot without actually saying anything.  She has all her baby teeth and an infectious smile.  She walked over to Linda as soon as she saw her, arms outstretched, and gave her a big hug.  Apparently that is not something she does with people she does not know well, so it was a very special moment that surprised her mom and grandmother.

Patty is down to just one dog, Maggie, from the three that she had for so many years.  She lost Bootsie (17) and Rosie (14) last year which was especially hard given that they survived the tornado.  She also lost Angel, a white female cat our mother had adopted and was another survivor of the tornado.

We visited as long as we could, including staying for a light lunch of fresh fruit.  We would have liked to stay longer but needed to get back to our house today.  Although Linda did not have to report for jury duty on Monday morning, she did have to go back to the dentist to have a new mold made for her crown.  We were also expecting our landscape contractors around 8 AM and would need to move the bus out of their way.

We were back on the road and headed for home at 12:30 PM CDT.  We went back the way we came: I-270 E (MO) to I-270 E (IL) to I-70 E (IL) to I-70 E ( IN), to I-465 S (IN) to I-69 N (IN) to I-69 N (MI) to I-96 E (MI) to Latson Road N to Golf Club Road E and finally to the dirt roads that signal we are almost home.

Linda has a nerve in her right hip that is giving her a problem, especially when she sits for any length of time.  She keeps a tennis ball in the car and puts it under her hip to relieve the pain.  Saturday morning she and Mary went for an early morning walk and she pulled a muscle in her left hip.  She was having difficulty sitting comfortably and we agreed that I would drive home in order to allow her the flexibility to change her position as needed.  She also took some pain medication that rendered her unsuited to driving.  On the plus side, she got to nap on the way home.

The trip took almost 10 hours including several rest stops and a stop in Fishers, Indiana for fuel and dinner at Panera.  We brought an assortment of audio CDs with us but did not play them on the drive down as we had a lot to talk about (when I wasn’t napping).  We did, however, play them on the way back to help keep me entertained and awake.  We pulled into our driveway a little after 11:00 PM EDT.  Linda made popcorn while I unpacked the car and brought everything inside.  The cats were glad to see us once they determined we were not scary alien creatures invading their house.  We enjoyed our popcorn snack and then checked the phone messages just in case there was something important.  There wasn’t so we went to bed.

 

2013_10_21 (M) I-64, Do U?

We had decided yesterday that we would try to return home from the Lexington, Virginia area via I-64W across West Virginia to US-35 N into Ohio, branching off on US-23 N towards Columbus, Ohio and eventually getting on I-75 N and following US-23 N through Sylvania, Ohio (by-passing Toledo, Ohio), into Michigan, and home.

We needed a place to stay this evening, and I needed to order some parts for the coach from Prevost Car, Inc. so Linda researched campgrounds while I looked up part numbers on the Prevost CatBase Viewer.  I got the parts ordered and she identified two possible fairgrounds: the Gallia County Junior Fairgrounds near Gallipolis, Ohio and the county fairgrounds near Chillicothe, Ohio.  She called the phone number for the Chillicothe fairgrounds but never got an answer.  A woman answered when she called the Gallia Country Junior Fairgrounds and said they had 50A full hookup sites and we were welcome to stay there for $20.  Deal!  Gallipolis is only a few miles into Ohio on US-35N and the fairgrounds were only a mile or so off of the highway with good access from a major road.  She also found a listing for a Good Sam RV Park near Chillicothe, but the listing said their season ended on October 15.

L-to-R, me, Linda, Marilyn, Mary, and Ron.

L-to-R, me, Linda, Marilyn, Mary, and Ron.

After a light breakfast we prepared the coach for travel and helped Marilyn gather and move all of her stuff back to Ron and Mary’s mini-van as they got their A-liner ready to travel.  Checkout time was 11 AM, and we had both planned 5 hour travel days, so we were in no hurry to leave.  We were all packed by 10:30 AM, so we took a few group pictures, had our goodbye hugs, and made our exits just before 11 AM.

Welcome to West Virginia!

Welcome to West Virginia!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather was perfect today, with clear blue skies and temperatures climbing into the 60’s.  I-64 through Virginia and West Virginia is a designated scenic route, and it should be.  On the trip through western Virginia and into W. Virginia we often had the highway to ourselves.  This is mountain country and the road is rarely straight or level.  We had numerous long grades (up and down) and several that were marked 7% for up to 5 miles.  Reminiscent of our travels through the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, I was downshifting manually a lot, and on one long uphill had to drop into 2nd gear to keep the RPMs around 2000.  Unlike the trip over the Bighorns, I knew better how to drive mountains and the engine coolant temperature never climbed above 198 and the exhaust pyrometers stayed below 1000 degrees, typically 900 degrees or less.

I-64 joins up with I-77 in central W. Virginia and becomes the West Virginia Turnpike.  Traffic got noticeably heavier from here on.  We paid two tolls of $3.25 for a motorhome towing a car.  The WVT has toll booths staffed by real people, no tickets to take, no machines to feed money into.  Nice.  We tend to avoid toll roads not so much because of the cost, although that can be excessive, as the unattended mechanisms make it very difficult for us to pay tolls.

Welcome to Ohio!  (The bridge over the Ohio River was being resurfaced and down to one lane in each direction.)

Welcome to Ohio! (The bridge over the Ohio River was being resurfaced and down to one lane in each direction.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We found the Gallia County Junior Fairgrounds easily and pulled in around 3:40 PM.  The place was deserted except for one car and a “campground” was not obvious.  Linda called the phone number she had used in the morning and did not get an answer.  We both walked around, peered in windows, knocked on doors, but nothing.  She eventually found signs with trailers and arrows and followed those to what might have been a campground, but no evidence of 50 A full hookups as we had been told.

The stop gave us a chance to rest and nibble, but after about 45 minutes we decided we needed to make other plans.  Remember, a true traveler has no fixed plan…  In looking at our (out-of-date) Trailer Life Directory (2010) we returned to the listing for Sun Valley RV Park near Chillicothe, OH (a Good Sam Park).  It said they closed October 15, but we called anyway.  They were still open!  And they had space!  And they were only another hour up the road!  And that was the direction we needed to go anyway!

Sun Valley RV Park near Chillicothe, OH as seen from the driver’s position in the coach.  Our site was ahead to the left but we had to circle around to the right get lined up so we could back in.

Sun Valley RV Park near Chillicothe, OH as seen from the driver’s position in the coach. Our site was ahead to the left but we had to circle around to the right get lined up so we could back in.

So that’s where we went.  It was less than 2 miles from an exit off of US-23 which was only 4.5 miles from the junction of US-35 and US-23, so it was not out of our way to come here.  We arrived around 5:45 PM.  Although the sun had disappeared behind a thickening cloud cover it was still daylight.  We opted for a back-in full hookup 50A site as the pull-through sites did not have sewer connections and getting to the dump station from those sites the next morning would be more difficult than we wanted to deal with.

We unhooked the car in front of the office where the road was widened for large RV to pull over while they registered.  I walked the route from the office to our site to check for adequate turning radii and an absence of encroaching tree limbs.  It all looked good, and we were got parked and leveled easily.  After hooking up the electricity and sewer line and making the interior ready for use we went for a walk around the park, as we often do.  Sun Valley is mostly seasonal trailers and park models, but it was in nice shape (which is not always the case).

We had leftovers for dinner, but really, Linda’s leftover meals are still a treat.  She was very tired and went to bed early while I stayed up and worked on photographic image post-processing, redoing the picture of our coach on our website home page, and catching up on writing blog entries.  I also had a long conversation with Joe Cannarozzi, our mobile mechanic, who will be working on the coach starting on Wednesday.

2013_10_18 (F) Not Our Best Day Ever

Today was a travel day for us.  We were not in any particular hurry to leave this morning and yet seemed pressed to get on the road as we had about 300 miles to travel.  We also figure an average travel speed of 50 MPH even when traveling routes that are mostly Interstate Highways.  We don’t usually travel more than 62 MPH and often slower due to traffic.  The 50 MPH average also seems to make an adequate allowance for surface roads, stop lights/signs, rest areas, and truck stops for re-fueling.  We try to avoid major cities whenever possible, and to go through them at off-peak times when we cannot.  We also like to be where we are going before it gets dark.

We had a wonderful time this week participating in the SKP Photographers BOF workshop/rally at the Tremont Outdoor Resort in Townsend, TN.  The resort itself was OK, although marginal for our motorhome.  I was able to get us in, parked, and leveled last Sunday but not without adding some scratches to the upper body paint.  I got us out of our site this morning and onto the entrance road where we hooked up the toad.  All was well until I made a right turn onto TN-73 and cut it a little too tight to avoid a car in the oncoming lane, and clipped the body on the passenger side.

We did not know the extent of the damage until we pulled into a rest stop on I-81 northbound (still in Tennessee) to switch drivers.  I clipped the lower panel of the last bay on the passenger side just in front of the drive tires, damaging the panel, a smaller body panel just behind it, and part of the wheel well trim.  Ugh.  Getting paint scratches buffed out just became the least of our problems.  The rest of the day went fine, but this sort of thing tends to put you on edge and take some of the joy out of the lifestyle, at least temporarily.

Linda took the driver’s position and continued on I-81 N towards our destination in Virginia.  She test drove the bus when we first looked at it, and did just fine, but had not been behind the wheel in the four years since then.  She drove for about 150 miles, getting us to a rest area at MM109 in Virginia, and she did great.  We still had 70 miles to go to get to Natural Bridge, VA and needed to stop for fuel, so I moved back into the driver’s seat to finish the trip.  We stopped at the Pilot Truck Stop at exit 150 on the northwest corner of Roanoke, VA.  This particular location was smaller with more congested access than we usually encounter, but we got in and out just fine.

We pulled in to the Natural Bridge / Lexington KOA around 4 PM, so we averaged just about 50 MPH for the six hours between “wheels up” and “wheels down” (aviation lingo for takeoff and landing).  We do not generally seek out KOA facilities for a variety of reasons, cost being number one, but this particular KOA had a nice look and feel to it.  It is built on hilly, wooded terrain, but the roads were wide enough for us to get through and the trees were trimmed up high enough that we didn’t scrape.  The sites are cut into the sides of hills, but are close enough to level that we had no problem leveling the coach.  Part of the reason KOAs are pricier than other RV parks are the facilities, which are designed to make them attractive to families with children.  That often means congestion and noise.  The campground is near full, but so far has been very quiet.  There are campfires burning, as there were at Tremont Outdoor Resort, which reminds of our tent camping days many, many years ago.

The reason we are here is that KOAs accommodate everything from large motorhomes to tent campers, and we are meeting up with family here for a weekend of camping.  They are camping in an A-liner in a site close to ours.

For dinner Linda improvised a quinoa-based dish with potato, squash, bell pepper, tomato, mixed dark greens, and Cranberry Thokku, a spicy/hot Indian relish/sauce.  Earlier in the week we installed the WP Ultimate Recipe plug-in on our website/blog and started playing with it.  Linda plans to add the recipe for this dish as her first entry.  She is preparing a Farro dish on Sunday and will add that as well.

Linda’s sister (Marilyn) and brother (Ron) and his wife (Mary) arrived at 7:30 PM, got their camper parked and set up, and then came over to visit for a couple of hours.  We discussed options for tomorrow and decided to make those decisions after breakfast.  Ron and Mary returned to their trailer for the evening and Marilyn stayed behind as she is sleeping in the coach on the pull-out couch.