Happy Thanksgiving!

Our time here in Georgia is winding down.  This turkey day will be quiet for Jan and I, a far cry from all those years of having 20-30 people together.  But, as they say, life marches on.  Still a lot to be thankful for, and I hope all of you reading this have many blessings in your life as well.

This campground here in Ellijay, GA, Talona Ridge is absolutely one of the best places we've ever stayed.  Clean, well taken care of, all paved roads, all concrete sites and patios, nice amenities, garbage pick up, and unfortunately one thing they can't control, people and their lighting:-(  I have mentioned this before that over recent years there is a proliferation of people that love light, now I don't mean soft, amber light illuminating their sitting area, no, I mean Walmart intense LED's bright white, that THEY LEAVE ON ALL NIGHT!!  These people turn them on, then go inside their rig, close all the blinds and never come out again while blinding all their neighbors, why?  Well, we don't have a clue, are they afraid, are they insecure, do they get up every 15 minutes all night long to walk their dogs? Why?  And then if we're really lucky they will also have bright LED ropes of light turning every color of the rainbow all night long as well.  Okay, I'm done, almost got out of that Thanksgiving mindset:-)

Our very nice site

Need I say more?

We had our dentist and dermatologist appointments and unfortunately were surprised by the results, I found out I needed a crown, to be taken care of this spring, and worse the dermatologist found another questionable spot on Jan's lip that had to be biopsied.  

So what to do while waiting, go find a new pizza place, Ellijay Wood Fired Pizza, which was fabulous!

Started with this incredible burrata plate

Then the pizza

Our good friends, John and Diane live about 50 miles from here, we had planned to see them several times, but on a beautiful day they called and suggested we meet at a brewery nearby to us in Ellijay, Cartecay River Brewing.  Turned out great, delicious beer, great friends, and we could even have a cigar!

So after a nice day, we came back and Jan made a delicious dinner.

Kung Pao Shrimp

Another thing on our list was to go to Blue Ridge for our favorite of all time Cuban sandwich at The Rum Cake Lady, it is amazing!

The bad news came in that Jan's biopsy was positive, but the good news was it looked very small and could most likely be frozen off rather than requiring Mohs surgery again.  It worked out beautifully, we had planned to go down and visit John and Diane and spend the night and the dermatologist was able to squeeze Jan in the next morning.  We had a wonderful visit, a great cigar with some bourbon, then an awesome filet mignon dinner, followed by clearing weather letting us to go outside for a fire and another cigar.  We had a wonderful time, thank you John and Diane!

Diane checking out the Sweet Jane cigar I brought

After breakfast and good byes we headed for the doc who was very confident he was able to treat Jan's lip, and now for our little turkey, and our tiny gathering.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

North Georgia Now, Docs and Dentist

Every year both in the spring and in the fall we need to come back to Georgia.  Even though we have moved most of our docs to Florida, we have kept our coveted dentist, and our dermatologist there.  We may have to finally change part of this as our dentist is talking about retiring, God forbid:-)

So I left you as we were leaving Nashville and from there we headed south to Guntersville, AL to a new to us campground, River Ridge.  We liked it, there weren't very many people there, it is near the water, the Tennessee River system, and is situated on hundreds of acres where an old Monsanto plant was.  Quiet and dark, two of our favorite things.

Our big site

And view of the water

We were only there for a couple nights, but managed to find a good lunch at nearby Wintzell's Oyster House.

We shared this delicious combo,
hush puppies, crab cake, oysters, shrimp, scallops, and catfish!

Mostly we chilled there, walked around, enjoyed the fire pit, the surroundings, and of course cooked.

The old pier, I guess for Monsanto

Steamed soy and ginger cod, with sticky rice and broccoli

Next we moved over to Murphy, NC and one of our favorite campgrounds, Peachtree Cove, small, private, like being in our own park.  It also let us get something done that is so challenging while traveling and that is washing the coach and the truck, which desperately needed it. 

 

Unfortunately the weather didn't really cooperate with us too much, cool and cloudy, and unbelievably we were immersed in smoke from several forest fires not too many miles away.  This is definitely not something we see in the east very often, conditions are very dry and lightening started at least a couple of them.  But luckily it wafted in and out with the wind.  The extreme dryness also affected the Nantahala River to the point it was too low to fish:-(

So what to do?  Go to one of our very favorite BBQ places, Rib Country for lunch.

And enough brisket left over for lunch the next day!

Jan took advantage of a no rain and slightly warm day and pulled all the window screens out and washed them along with the windows.  And I went and got some mundane maintenance done on the truck, an oil change and a tire rotation.  Sometimes it's a bit challenging getting the normal every day items done as you travel around, but we have gotten pretty good at it after all these years.

So after all that brisket we figured we needed a little lighter meal:-)

So with the fishing not available we decided to drive into Asheville, go to a favorite cigar shop, and have lunch at a very favorite Vietnamese place, Wild Ginger, even though it was more than 100 miles one way, and then we decided since we weren't doing anything else we'd make it a big loop and come back through Brevard, Cashiers, Highlands, and Franklin, 250 miles in all!  

Spicy beef salad

Superb pho!

And on yet another cool rainy day we headed to Blairsville, GA to another favorite place, Nani's for Cuban.

Picture doesn't do it justice, but this is one of the best Cuban sandwiches
we've ever had and the beans, oh wow

Shrimp creole with more of those amazing beans

We took advantage of the down time and made a lot of new plans for next year.  As I have mentioned before, it is now necessary to make reservations way, way in advance especially in popular places.  I won't get into this right now, but next year is going to be a year of big changes for us, if our plans pan out.  I'll get into this much later when we actually have some kind of feel for it.

So now we have arrived at our base of operations for the next week or so, Talona Ridge, an exceptional RV resort to see friends, dermatologist, dentist, and a bunch of other errands to run while near Atlanta.

Somebody's ready:-)

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:-)