Catch Up Post, A Lot's Been Happening

A lot of movement has happened since I left you in Lubbock, this was our repositioning eastward.  We had a cool surprise soon after we left Lubbock through the panhandle of Texas, we stumbled across a famous ranch, and if you are a Yellowstone fan, the show that is, you'll recognize this immediately.

The weather was not very pleasant, we drove mostly through rain and wind to our stop in Ardmore, OK.  We were taking our time so we spent 2 nights at a very nice park, By The Lake.

And since we had one day to kill, what better way than finding some excellent catfish for lunch:-)

Then Jan capped off our stay with a delicious stir fry with chicken and tree ear, yummy!

Our next stop was Hot Springs, AR, a place we'd never been, the weather still was not cooperating, in fact one day we were there they had 4 inches of rain!  But we had a nice spot in a small campground right on the water, Treasure Isle.

And when it's raining, what do you do, you go out to lunch, one to another catfish place, yeah we were on a roll, and a Vietnamese place for pho.

We did get a break here and there with the weather and we had an added bonus in there was a pavilion very close to our site that we used a couple times at HH as it was would not stop raining:-)

We even found a pretty little 2 mile hike while we were there.

One of the biggest mushrooms we've seen

Then Jan tried a new dish, Beef Bulgogi, which turned out excellent with either lettuce wraps or a small tortilla, spicy and good.

Our next move was what we planned to be a short visit to Nashville, where we planned to try to contact a friend of ours, but unfortunately blew up because Murphy decided to raise his head up to confound us and eat up 2 whole days, but we plan to come back here, and further explore and hopefully we can put something together then.

We obviously had to cross the Mighty Mississippi on our way and we had heard it was terribly low, which was definitely confirmed as we went by.

So the first thing I should mention is concurrent with our arrival in Nashville came an unusual cold snap, really cold, high 20's at night and into the 40's and low 50's in the daytime, oh well, but after the first day, at least it was crystal clear out.

The campground, Elm Hill, was nice with a caveat, our site was lit up like a Walmart parking lot, but we were able to move after our first night.  

Right on the lake

Dreary, wet, and cold

Our light!

And we moved.

So the next night was better:-)

Our time was taken up by our Murphy issue which I will get into in a minute, the other thing we had planned for and bought tickets for was a behind the scenes Grand Ole Opry tour, so we took some time off from our "fun" to do that, very cool.

We found out most of the performers use Gibson guitars, 
and this is a display of $90,000 of Gibson guitars

These are the Opry members mailboxes.  You can send a note to any member at their name,
Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, TN and it will come to their box.
The interesting thing is no one other than the member himself can pick it up

These are the members plaques, there are two walls of these,
and each member has to mount his or her plaque themselves

A few icons of Country

All the dressing rooms are shared, but this was Minnie Pearl's

This is the circle.  It is a 6' circle of wood that dates back to 1902 when it was part
of the stage at the Ryman Auditorium and it was installed front and center in the
stage of the Grand Ole Opry when it was built in 1974!
We all got to stand in it.

So back to our problem.  I have had some other posts on this issue before, but our galley is built into one of our slide outs, so the drain hoses, as well as water supply, heating hoses, wires, etc had to be built to go in and out when the slide moves.  The drain hose being larger and less flexible, and honestly poor design by Monaco, is prone to failure, in fact this was the third time for us.  We found out it was broken when we stopped for lunch on our way to Hot Springs when water poured out on the floor when Jan washed the dishes.  But luckily, when the slide was out the hose came back together and barely leaked at all so at least it didn't have to be an emergency repair, that is until we started the repair.

Access is a challenge

The break

So all this is fine, or so we thought, because since it is a weak spot, no problem, we carry a spare hose.  Ha!

So first of all you have to get the old hose off the barbed fittings and it is so tight the only way to do it is cut the old hose, no big deal, we have a Dremel which makes short work of it.

Now all we have to do is cut the new hose to length and pop it on.  Well, it won't go on, too tight and too stiff, maybe it stiffened while we stored it??  So we try hot water, a little more pliable, lots of vaseline and poof, it won't go on all the way and almost won't come back off.  Our 1 hour job is looking grim.  Okay, let's try boiling water.  We let it simmer for a couple minutes, and Jan yells.  That can't be good.  Sure enough for some reason the hose has failed completely, it popped apart!  Now we are in trouble, and just so you know washing dishes in our bathroom sink is a real challenge!

So okay, I'll just go get some new hose, and that's where it all went to hell.  Over 24 hours later, almost 100 miles in the truck, about 10 different stops, all that said they had it, all our plans to get together shot, I finally found new hose.  And with the new hose in hand the repair took about 30 more minutes, but now we were almost out of time.  One good thing about all the running around, may as well combine some of that with lunch, right?

So we had an Irish lunch and cried in our Guinness's:-)

And no, we did not each have two!

And since it went over into the next day, Thai food seemed appropriate.

A collection of appetizers

Calamari, it was actually very good

Tom Yum

Tom Kha

And spicy Thai Beef Salad which we ordered at a 4 out of 5 on spice
Even Jan thought we might have overdone it:-)
But delish!

But the hose finally got fixed.

We had some great views.

And found another, what we think is even a better campground, still on the lake, all paved, and cheaper:-)  Four Corners.  We will be back, maybe sooner than you think:-)