Time to Move Again

Yesterday was really windy, gray and cold. It never did get above 65 degrees. That didn’t stop some people from wearing shorts and t-shirts. I had my fleece on all day. We attended the ‘choosing a campground’ and ‘working on the road’ seminars for any new information from last year. They were good choices, but the favorite was On the Road to Alaska by Bill and Linda Napier. He took 14000 photos (of which we only saw some) but the preparation of the rig and what to expect weather-wise and road-wise was really informative. We hope we can talk Linda and Howard into going with a bunch of us. We’ll see…maybe in 2013.

Saturday night was the party from the 70’s. We had a DJ and dressed in tie-dye shirts, long wigs and granny glasses. This is Howard and us.
The caterers provided a chicken and rib dinner and then we danced the night away. Even the conga line was fun. Gary entered a “Name That Tune” contest, but couldn’t guess even one. When those contestants were replaced with new ones, he knew the first three new songs right away.

The whole evening was lots of fun and ended with a great song by the Rascal Flats called My Wish and some the appropriate lyrics for RVers, especially full-timers, were:
My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,
Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold,
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,
Yeah, this, is my wish.

A great song.

Anyway, we collapsed into bed at 10:30 but finally relaxed enough to fall asleep at 11:30. I had to set the alarm because we needed to get up at 7 am for the Rally’s end breakfast. It was so hard saying goodbye to everyone- there were lots of hugs and handshakes and photos. Here's Dennis and Susanne White from Marshalberg, NC.

We finally got on the road around 12 pm and the traffic was outrageous. We had to make a left across three lanes of traffic and get across two more to the far side of the highway. Gary finally had to just go out into the highway and people waited for him to get into traffic going south. Whew.

We found our campground in 15 minutes and Billy was there to greet us. We knew our spot and Gary drove up and turned to back in. Now, usually we do this very slowly and it’s just him and me. But Alvin decided to help, and Gary wasn’t watching me telling him to avoid the fence at the right front bumper. OUCH. There goes the fence rail and Bella got some scratches. We did get parked, but Gary was pretty embarrassed. Alvin told us to not even worry about the rail, but we offered to fix and paint it. There was mostly paint on Bella, and I thought I’d try toothpaste to get it off (slightly abrasive) and it worked. Unfortunately, the scrapes did go down to the fiberglass, but I used my fingers to cover them with our touch-up paint.

It’s not too bad, but poor Bella. What did we learn from this experience? To ONLY park her ourselves and to go slowly.

Here we are all set up and enjoying the beautiful weather. We had some firewood delivered and will enjoy a campfire tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain Tuesday through Saturday with pop-up showers, but hopefully no severe stuff. We’re really exhausted tonight, but I made some Speedy Eggplant Parmesan which was delicious.

Thank you, Linda and Howard, for another memorable experience that we can add to our story of ‘Life on the Road’.