Wooster OH

Wow!  I can't believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I haven't even written about our trip to Kim and Barry's farm back in September!  We have been visiting Linda's family in North Carolina since then (next blog) and I have, obviously, been very lazy!  Right now I will try to catch you all up to date.

After we left Asheville, we spent a week in Flat Rock visiting with Linda's sister, Kathy and her husband, Bill.  Then we made our way to Durham for a couple of weeks before we headed out to Ohio to visit our BFF's, Kim and Barry at their farm near Wooster.  We arrived there on September 5th and stayed for two weeks.

The farm is beautiful.  Here are a few pictures of our rig parked in front of the house.

We went for long walks every day.  Usually with the farm dogs, Moxie the doberman, Bubbles the malamute, and Jeeter the border collie. 

Walks often included swimming in the pond!

We always plan our visits to coincide with the Wayne County Fair which is probably the best fair I have ever been to.  It's a big deal in this part of Ohio.  They even close the schools and many businesses so that everyone can attend.  We also saw Vince Gill in concert one evening. 

Linda and Kim getting some Fair Food!

Horse pull.  These were the lightweights and they were pulling almost 10,000 lbs!

I found a little tractor...

The farm is right in the middle of Amish country.  Here are some pictures of the area.

Typical Amish carriage.

The parking lot.

Amish schoolhouse.

Cutting corn with horse-drawn equipment.

Amish phone booth. Really!

More horse-drawn farm equipment.

We had so much fun with Kim and Barry.  They are some of the most wonderful people we know and Pablo loved being a farm dog with Moxie, Bubbles and Jeeter.  The farm is beautiful and is located in America's heartland.  I love the country and the people.  I really feel at home when we are there.  In addition to attending the fair, we got to do some shooting, played some golf, and did some work on the farm.  I was also able to get a window repaired on the coach that had leaked and gotten foggy and wet inside the dual panes.  I'll blog the details of that later for those of you who are interested
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Barry let me do a little mowing with his tractor.  Great fun!

Sunrise from our dining table in the coach.

Sunset on the soybeans.

OK. So tomorrow is Thanksgiving and then on Friday we leave North Carolina to make a quick trek back to California.  I promise I will be better about keeping up with our travels.  Talk to you all later!

Asheville NC

We left Nashville the week before with sadness in our hearts after losing our beloved Amelia, but moved on to happier times in Asheville, North Carolina.  We were there to attend Linda's High School reunion.  I call it that because for her, it was High School.  But there are not enough students who attended her school in Izmir Turkey to have a reunion for a single class.  So this reunion was for anyone who ever attended the school.  It was a good turnout and it was good for her to see some of her old classmates.  I enjoyed meeting them for the first time too!  There are only 5 surviving members of the 12 in Linda's class of 1960, and 3 of them made it to the reunion.  Here is a picture of them from the banquet.

Class of 1960 Izmir Turkey Reunion

We stayed at a beautiful RV Park located just east of Asheville on the mountain above Swananoa, called Mama Gertie's Hideaway.  The panoramic view from our site made it well worth the rather precarious climb up the tight and steep road.  We were also able to wash the coach after paying a minimal $15 fee.  We hadn't washed it since leaving California 3 months ago so it really needed it!  When I asked for permission and paid my fee the lady said she had to check because they had been in a drought.  What??  So I guess it hadn't rained for an entire week!  That is a drought around here!  I liked it because it pretty much rained every day in the afternoon and was very refreshing.  Summers here are nice as the temp is usually in the low to mid 80's with cool nights and thunderstorms.  We actually needed sweatshirts a few times while we were here.

The mountainside location made it harder to get our walking in as we did not want to hike up and down the steep grade.  We were able to get at least a mile in each day by going around and around the level area at the top of the hill where we were parked.  Pablo was kind of bored with that but he was still glad for the exercise. 

On Thursday Linda's sisters, Bobbie and Micki came up and spent the night with us.  I barbecued some steaks and then we had a campfire complete with s'mores.  It was great to see them again and catch up on each others life events. 

Later when it was time for bed, I was taking Pablo out one last time.  We came out of the rig just in time to see a black bear about 50 feet away.  He stopped and watched us so I opened the door to the coach and I called everyone over to see him.  After watching us for a minute he continued on his way down the hill.  We found out in the morning that he had ravaged the trash dumpster down by the office.

The view out our living room window.

Afternoon walk.

One of the events planned for the reunion group was a visit to the Sierra Nevada Brewery.  Yeah, I wondered "what is Sierra Nevada doing in the Blue Ridge mountains??".  I'm not really sure, but they have built a beautiful facility in Mills River right behind the Asheville airport.  It was fun too see the whole place even though I don't drink (16 years sober in November).  We had an interesting lunch at the Tap Room restaurant on-site with unusual  dishes like Ham and Cheese with béchamel sauce and gruyere, chorizo verde and white beans, and a burger with fontina cheese, bacon, hot sauce aioli.  It was good and we had a nice visit with some of Linda's Izmir friends.

Some of the Izmir crew. On Linda's right is her good friend, Ida and on her left is her sister Micki.  On the far right in yellow is her sister Bobbie and next to her in the blue shirt is sister Kathy's husband, Bill.  Kathy was still busy taking care of banquet plans and didn't make the brewery tour.

Nashville TN

Last time we were in Nashville it was in the fall and we stayed at Nashville Shores right on a lake.  It was really nice but they also have a water park there and we thought that it might be a little crowded and noisy in the summer.  So we stayed at the Nashville East/Lebanon KOA which is only about 10 minutes further from downtown.  It was a nice park and they had a lot of really big grassy areas for the doggies. 

One day we ventured downtown and visited the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.  It was very interesting even if you're not a Country Music fan and you know that Linda and I ARE big fans!  We had a great time there and then strolled a few blocks over to the Goo Goo store where we scored some yummy Goo Goo Clusters.  We also made a visit to the Christie Cookie Company to get some cookies for Linda's sister, Kathy.  Oh no, we didn't sample any or buy any - of course not!

An example of some of the stuff on display

A fancy cowboy Cadillac (actually a Pontiac)

A small portion of the gold and platinum records.

Goo Goo Clusters are made in Nashville - we got a handmade one called "Rocky Road Kill".

Another adventure took us to the Belle Meade Plantation.  This was the home to the Harding-Jackson family from 1806-1906.  Many famous horses cane from here including Bonnie Scotland whose bloodlines are still very prevalent in modern horse racing.  After the tour, we ate lunch at the restaurant here and had some wonderful southern food.  My shrimp and grits were delicious!

Main house - they did not allow pictures inside.

The dairy - it was actually much larger - this is a small part of what it was originally.

Smokehouse

Carriage house and stables

The original cabin they used before the mansion was built.

Slave cabins

Saturday night we sent to see a baseball game at the brand new First Tennessee Park.  This is the home of the Nashville Sound which is the AAA team for the Oakland A's.  Really nice park which will be even better once they complete the parking structure.  We had to park 5 blocks away at the courthouse and take a shuttle but it wasn't too bad.  It was a fun night and the home team won.

 

Unfortunately our visit to Nashville ended in tragedy.  We lost our sweet little girl, Amelia on Sunday morning.  Pablo woke us up at 4:30AM by sitting on the bed and woofing at us (something he never does).  Linda got up and found Amelia in the kitchen panting heavily and in distress.  She showed no symptoms the night before but that is how these Malamutes are - they show no sign of discomfort at all and then suddenly they're gone.  We took her to a local vet where they ran blood work but by that time it was clear that she was ready to say goodbye and we let her go.  We are devastated and Pablo is confused and lonely.  We knew the time was not far off but we were still totally unprepared.  This really hit us hard and we still can't believe she is really gone.  We are consoled in knowing that we gave her a wonderful life and we are better for having had her in our life.  Run free little girl!  We love you!

GCH Atanik Graeagle's Born to Fly (Amelia) in her prime

The last picture I took of Amelia at 11 1/2 years old - chillin' on the couch in Branson MO

Branson MO

They say Branson Missouri puts the "show" in the "show-me state".  This is where we spent last week - at the Branson Lakeside RV Park.  Our good friend, Gary Stellpflug recommended this place and we appreciate the tip!  Right on the lake and a short walk to Branson Landing where there was lots of shopping and a great water fountain.  Check out my post on Facebook for a video of the water fountain show.

Not a bad site - just one row back from the lake.  Weird that they park the rigs facing one another instead of all the same direction.  Makes you meet your neighbor and share the space!

Looking the other direction you can see the lake and the bridge in front of our rig.

The doggies loved swimming every day and it's a good thing as it was hot and humid.

Every evening the fog would form over the lake.  Kind of spooky...

Returning from a morning walk to the Landing.  You can still see the fog over the lake.

We didn't see any shows but on another tip from Gary, we did discover the Dobyns Dining Room at the College of the Ozarks.  What a wonderful place!  We went there for lunch one day and then went back again for dinner when Tom and Megan came for a visit.  Tom is Linda's nephew and Megan is his beautiful bride.  They are expecting their first child in a few weeks so we were very glad they were able to make the trip from Waynesville to pay us a visit.  This college is also called "Hard Work U" as there is no tuition.  All students work at a campus job to defray expenses.  The restaurant is part of the hotel/Restaurant Management school.  They raise their own pigs and have a dairy.  Everything is fresh and  wonderful.  Service was excellent.  If you are ever in the area, make sure you stop in and check it out!

Dobyns Dining Room at the Keeter Center, College of the Ozarks

Our deserts!  We all had some of the 10 layer chocolate cake and took half of it home as well!

Linda and Megan at the entrance to the Keeter Center.

Here are a few pictures from the Landing.  It was a nice walk from our RV Park along the river to get here.  They have a great water fountain and do a show every night at 9:00.  On Friday they had a live band and the fountains and fire were working with the live music.

Sunset at the Landing

Moon rises over the Landing

Water fountain show at the Landing

Water fountain show at the Landing

We weren't the typical tourists while we were here as we didn't see any shows or anything.  We noticed that they probably have at least ten mini-golf parks in town and some of them looked really cool.  They also have a big theme park called Silver Dollar City and a few pretty nice water parks.  We just hung out with the doggies and tried to keep cool as it was really hot and humid the first part of the week.  It did cool off and was pretty nice the last two days we were there. 

So, speaking of humidity - we had a small flood in the bedroom due to all the runoff from the rear air conditioner. This is a new unit that we had installed in Flagstaff back in March.  I guess they didn't torque it down tight enough so the water came back in through the seal in the roof instead of running off.  We first discovered it when Linda walked into the bedroom and noticed water dripping out of the ceiling light!  I first climbed on the roof and took the cover off the unit.  It was all fine and the drain lines were clear.  Back inside and disassembled the unit from the bottom.  That is where we discovered that the water was coming back in through the roof opening and going into the vinyl padded ceiling.  It had soaked through it all the way back to the ceiling light and was dripping out there.  I dried as much as I could and torqued down the whole unit so it was no longer leaking.  Then I used a rolling pin and squeegeed the water out of the foam in the ceiling.  This process took a few hours of waiting for the water to run down and then squeezing it out.  In the mean time, I rebalanced the coach to lean a bit to one side so the water on the roof would run off instead of pooling in the center.  After a few days of drying with fans blowing on it all we put it all back together and it has not been a problem since.

No other issues with the coach, except it really needs a bath!  I hope to get that done this week while we are in Nashville.  This coming Sunday we will finally be arriving in North Carolina where we will attend Linda's Izmir reunion in Asheville.