What a whirlwind the last few days have been! Lots of driving, lots of places, another friend joins us!
On Wednesday, after leaving Lake Poinsett Park in Arkansas we had to drive through Memphis to get to our next destination, a winery in Mississippi. I get nervous about driving through cities. I told Christine I was apprehensive. She gave me great advice, which turns out to be pretty great advice for life in general: stay in the middle lane and don’t be distracted by the traffic on either side of you, look forward, don’t look backwards, there’s nothing you can do about what’s behind you. Go at your own pace, people will have to go around you if they don’t like what you’re doing.
We caravanned together and I was very relieved when we were on the other side of Memphis. Christine had to peel off to go get some work done to her rig, so I continued on. We were now in Mississippi, a state I had never been in before. I stopped for fuel. A man pumping gas at the pump next to me told me I had a nice rig. He was with his young son, maybe 10 years old. I thanked him. He asked me about the trailer, and we chatted some. Suddenly I could see that it registered that I was traveling alone. A look of grave concern fell over his face and as if I was his sister, or his daughter, or his mother, he launched into a stream of safety tips. “Trust your gut!” he told me. “If something doesn’t feel right, trust yourself.” He had a look like he didn’t want me to go until he was sure I understood what he was telling me. Helpers everywhere.
I won’t go into the story about how I made a wrong turn just before I got to the winery and wound up in a bunch of mud, and wasn’t sure how to get out. Suffice it to say, the camper was no longer squeaky clean. Another set of helpers, angels even, appeared that helped me get on my way.
The winery was a Harvest Host stop. Harvest Host is an organization that connects RVers with places, like wineries, breweries, really all kinds of places, that want to offer you a place to park your rig. In exchange, you buy something. We tasted some wine, had a quiet nice spot to spend the night, and took off in the morning for Foscue Creek Campground in Alabama, another state I’ve never been to.
Foscue Creek, another beautiful Corp of Engineers Park, was where we would be meeting the second of three friends, Debbie. Bob and I also met Debbie at the event in the Tetons. Unlike Christine, Debbie has a brick and mortar home, but does a lot of traveling in her sweet Class C, pulling her car behind her. She is an amazing wealth of information, curious and interested in pretty much everything, always upbeat and ready for an adventure.
Foscue Creek Campground
Me, Christine and Debbie. Three down, one to go.
Friday was a long driving day. I went a different route than Debbie and Christine to avoid Montgomery. We were headed to Bluffton, GA to visit a farm I had been curious about for some time. I took wrong turns a couple of times and got frustrated. When I was setting up, and working on dumping my sewage, I realized that my sewer hose was full of liquid. It shouldn’t have been. This is a problem that had occurred before, but Bob and I thought we had resolved. In addition, one of my side mirrors had dislodged and was hanging off. Having these problems and not having Bob felt suddenly felt overwhelming to me. I wanted to go home.
I told Debbie and Christine that I was afraid I wasn’t cut out of for this life. They seemed unfazed, said of course you are, talked to me about how this lifestyle is all about trouble shooting, that I will figure stuff out and it will all be fine. Their confidence was contagious enough that I “put one foot in front of the other” as Bob would have said, and continued to get things done.
When I was going to bed, I couldn’t close the door cause the latch was screwed up again. Another wave of discouragement washed over me, but then I remembered what that helper, Jeff, had done to fix the latch. I went out to the truck, found the tools he had used, remembered what he had done, fixed the latch and went to bed.
