And we're back for the last leg of our trip!
That Sunday morning we weren't much in a hurry to leave since Grand Haven, our next spot, wasn't very far away, so we leisurely packed up, had a relaxed breakfast and went on our way.
Everything went smoothly until we ... Yup, it's hard to believe ... blew another fracking RV-tire !!!
By now, we were so used to it that we hardly blinked an eye and right away went into our 'changing another tire by the roadside' mode. Which means that James changes the tire, I try to watch traffic not coming to close to the RV (people swirl out of the way so much quicker when they see someone standing on the side) and make lunch in between.
Fortunately, there wasn't any further damage, so it didn't take too long before we were on our way again.
We arrived around 3 pm at Camper's Paradise, found our site and
quickly made ourselves at home.
Another fine spot, under the pine trees. The place was pretty much empty, besides some full-timers, so we had no neighbors. Nice!
By now, we were pretty much running out of money, what with another tire that needed to be replaced, and we started to get a little worried if we were going to 'make it' all the way back to Louisiana.
But, for some reason, things seem to have a tendency to work themselves out when we need it the most (and we're pretty good in realizing and seizing opportunities when they present themselves).
Case in point: James had noticed, coming into the campground, that the owners were struggling to get a new fence up and went over to offer his help.
Before we knew it, he had a job and, best of all, he bartered his pay for free rent.
It took about 3 easy days to get the job done and in return we could stay for as long as we wanted. Good deal!
(and it saved our butts!)
We'd ordered some new tires through Walmart, which would take about 5 days, so we took our sweet time to enjoy Grand Haven.
We also weren't quite ready to go south that fast yet, since it was still bloody hot and humid over there!
It so happened to be the Labor Day weekend, and since these were most likely going to be the last days we would spent on Lake Michigan, we spent the beautiful sunny weather at it's beach and waterfront boulevard.
Together with everybody else that was in town of course!
That boulevard was a great place to 'people-watch'!
That silly cat loves his BBQ, especially when there's corn on the cob!
When it got dark we drove back into town for a performance of the Grand Haven Musical Fountain.
A synchronized display of water and lights on Dewey Hill on the north shore of the Grand River, this apparently is the world's largest 'of it's kind'.
Seated in the open air under the stars, in the Waterfront Stadium on a beautiful summer evening, it's an enjoyable half an hour of music and lights, but I can't say we were too impressed.
The Bellagio's in Las Vegas is definitely better!
The town itself doesn't look especially dutch but has a nice main street with many old brick storefronts.
Most of it's 'dutchness' is found in the 'Dutch Village', just outside of town, where you'll find the typical touristy 'authentic' dutch stores tulips, clogs and, off course, a windmill.
Since we go to the 'real thing' (Holland) on a regular base and we've also seen several of these villages before (and the price was over our budget -as in non-budget) we didn't go in, but we did drive to a dutch bakery in town for a coffee and 'krentebollen'.
We also took a peak at the entrance to the Holland State Park. Again, too costly for us to go in at the time, and it also doesn't add much to what you can see for free of the coast.
Holland sits on the shore of Lake Macatawa and the much-photographed Big Red Lighthouse stands by the channel that connects this lake to Lake Michigan.
All in all we stayed 12 nights in Grand Haven and enjoyed our little stay-cation, the beautiful weather and the relaxed beach-vibe of the area.
But all things must come to an end and we knew it was time to go back to 'the south' and start making some money.
So, on Friday the 8th of September, we set sail for Indiana!
Elkhart, to be precise, a small town it the north-east.
Home to the quirky 'RV Hall of Fame & Museum' that we thought would be fun to check out.
And, even better, they allow you to stay for free in their parking lot on the night before and after you visit!
No hook-ups, but again, no complaints.
The museum features a variety of recreation vehicles dating back 100 years and continuing through the 1980s. The oldest vehicle on display is a 1913 Earl Travel Trailer and is the oldest surviving specimen known.
The primary building, Founders Hall, is complete with artificial trees and other plants to create a simulated RV campground.
Mae West's Housecar
One of the vehicles on display is the 1931 Chevrolet Housecar that was offered as a bribe to Mae West by Paramount Pictures, to persuade her to make movies.The oldest Winnebago and the smallest Airstream ever built are also to be found in the museum
This fun, and very detailed, display showed the building of an RV from start to finish.
I would have liked to see a few more 'modern' ones, it's always fun to step into one of the newest luxurious motorhomes, and we also missed any of the modern 5th wheels! What's up with that?
That day we drove all the way to the Walmart Superstore in Scottsburg, about halfway on our way to Nashville.
We'd planned to arrive a little later in the afternoon than we normally like to arrive, since Walmart let's you stay for the night, but doesn't want you to be there much longer.
I didn't take any pictures and for the life of me I cannot remember how the area looked like but it was something like this ... Haha!
The next day we set out early and drove the rest of the way to Nashville, Tennesee!
In doing so, we blasted through Kentucky without even stopping. Too bad, because it's beautiful country, but we'd spent some time in Louisville a couple of years ago, and we will probably come through here when we go north again next spring, so we decided to skip it for now.
Here's a few pics of the hills, meadows and horses along the way ...
Somewhere halfway the day we crossed back from the Eastern Timezone to the Central Timezone and gained an hour!
Oh well, easy come, easy go ...
Somewhere early in the afternoon, we arrived at the Seven Points Campground, just 10 miles east of downtown Nashville, in Hermitage, TN.
This beautiful campground abuts J. Percy Priest Lake, which was one of the first Corps of Engineers lakes to have recreation as part of its justification.
The dam, just around the corner, completed in 1968, impounds 42 miles, with 14,200 surface acres of water.
There are about 8 sites that are directly on the water and about half of the spaces are on the lake side of the campground which have great views.
Unfortunately ours was neither, but since it was the only site available for the 3 nights that we wanted to stay, we were just happy to have one at all.
The truck fitted easily in front of the RV, something that doesn't happen too often.
One of the reasons we were lucky to have a site was that the campground had taken in lots of evacuees from Hurricane Irma (category 4!) who'd barreled through the Florida Keys with a vengeance and was on it's way up!
We'd kept a close eye on her development and although the predicted pathway was for coming north and west, directly over Nashville actually, it looked like we were going to be pretty safe around here. By the time she would reach us wind speeds would barely reach hurricane strength of the 1st category.
(In hind-side we now know that Hurricane Irma was an extremely powerful and catastrophic Cape Verde-type hurricane, the strongest observed in the Atlantic since Wilma in 2005 in terms of maximum sustained winds.)
Fortunately we had a day to go before Irma would hit Nashville so we had no problems going into town the next day.
After hitting the tourist bureau we were directed to the parking lot of Nissan Stadium for free parking, from where a footbridge over the Cumberland River will take you straight into main street.
Although we were fairly early, and first went looking for some coffee, you could already hear music from every bar and every corner of the streets.
With live music to be heard all across town, 24/7, 365 days a year, 'Music City', capital of Tennessee and center of the American country music industry, lives up to its name!
We walked down Main Street, or 'Broadway', famous for all it's honky-tonks with live music and listened in to a few of them:
We had an excellent lunch at Rippy's Ribs:
It sure is a lively scene!
Besides the music you can also buy everything country, like hats, and boots, LOTS of boots!
Of course we were wearing ours too!
In the museum's core exhibition, Sing Me Back Home: A Journey Through Country Music, you are immersed in the history and sounds of country music, its origins and traditions, and the stories and voices of many of its artists.
The stories are revealed through artifacts, photographs, and text panels, recorded sound, vintage video, and interactive touchscreens.
They have Elvis's 'gold limousine:
And one with a silver dollar saddle between the front seats.
There's a two-story wall plastered with every gold and platinum country record produced in Nashville.
And William Owen Bradley's studio, the American record producer responsable for creating much of the 'Nashville sound' in country music.
The Hall of Fame Rotunda houses plaques dedicated to country music's finest - from Dolly Parton to Johnny Cash
We thoroughly enjoyed this museum! The layout, the music, the exhibits and information, it was all very well done.
If you ever find yourself in Nashville, don't miss it!
Afterwards we drove a little out of town to the Grand Ole Opry. We'd hoped to do a back-stage tour but it turned out that on the days there is a show they only do the tours in the morning. Bummer!
A show was a little beyond our budget, and the one for this night, which featured some big names and was going to be a benefit performance for the victims of hurricane Irma, was completely sold out. Oh well, it was fun to just see it!
Next to the Opry is a big shopping Mall and also the Gaylord Resort & Convention Center which is worth a visit by itself!
The original Opryland Hotel opened on Thanksgiving Day in 1977, on land adjacent to the former Opryland USA amusement park. Itl was originally built to support the Grand Ole Opry.
Through the years it was added on several times and is now one if the largest hotels owned by Marriot in the world!
It contains 9 acres of indoor gardens complete with a 44 foot cascading waterfall. It's the largest non-gaming property in the U.S.
What an incredible place!
Well, we really had a fun time in Nashville but eventually it was time to start our final descend to the south.
We'd split the rest of the way into 2 more days, and that first day we drove down through Alabama to Meridian, just over the border into Mississippi.
We'd booked ahead at the Benchmark RV Park, and were only barely able to snatch up the last space available due to the same problem we encountered in Nashville; evacuees from Irma!
(We almost didn't have a site at all since it was sort of 'double-booked', but the problem got resolved without bloodshed and we spent a comfortable night with the luxury of full hookups.)
The next morning we had about 175 miles to go to be back home at Hidden Oaks in Hammond, our 'go-to' place in southern Louisiana.
But apparently we didn't have enough bad luck this summer yet because when we thought we had almost made it and were 'home-free', with about 40 miles to go ... what do you think ... ANOTHER FLAT TIRE!
This time it was the truck's, unfortunately one of the inner-dualies on the drivers (and road) side, and by de-laminating, it ripped the fill-hose and cap from the fuel tank!
It was over 90F and we were, again, stranded on the side of a busy freeway, but somehow James finagled it all together and after about 2 hours we were back in business.
To say we were happy to finally see the sign of Hidden Oaks, is an understatement!
But all's well that ends well, and we managed to pick one of our favorite spots and wasted no time to set up shop!
Merl' is home anywhere 'his' blue chair goes!
Well, that was it. The whole good and bad of it! As I read somewhere lately, this trip could be summed up as 'mostly sunny' overall, but it sure had it's trials and tribulations!
After talking to James' boss Ronnie, we knew we would be moving again soon, but we had about a week to 'recuperate'.
The pet-stores James might have worked on were a no-go, but the B&B in Amite, that he had worked on before we left, was not finished yet and they would like us to park our RV there for some extra security during the off work hours.
It would also eliminate paying rent and a 45 minute commute. Worked for us!
So, I'm 'kinda' current, since we've been back for 4 weeks and at our new spot in Amite for 3, but this summer's story at least is 'done'.
Done and 'over' as well, because it's Fall! Yahoo! I'll be back soon for more.
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