Our Cross Country RV

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We started on our adventure, Sunday, 11/27 at 7:10 am. Jim is the full time driver and maps out our routes. I navigate the maps while we are driving and keep us on course (i.e., advising of any detours, road construction and re-mapping if need be), and keep track of our mileage, expenses & etc. After 2 quick ‘pit stops’ and a 20 min. lunch, we arrived at the Winchester, VA. Super Wal-Mart at 5 pm, where we spent our first night. It was pretty cold and damp…night temps were in the mid 30’s and it poured all night!
Monday morning still had heavy cloud cover and was quite dark, so we didn’t start out again until 9 am. Again, after 2 quick ‘pit stops’ and a 30 min. fuel fill-up/lunch, we arrived at 7 pm at our 2nd Super Wal-Mart in Knoxville, TN. Would you believe it again poured all night?? At least this night, the temp stayed around 50!!
Tuesday morning we didn’t leave until 9 am (since we knew we didn’t have too far to travel). We arrived at our destination the Nashville, Tn. KOA campground, (again after 2 ‘pit stops’ and a fuel fill-up) at 12:30 pm central time, where we signed in for 3 nights.
Tuesday night we went to the ‘Grand Ole Opry’. I really enjoyed it!! Jim is not really a country music fan…but he does enjoy ‘bluegrass’ and good singing, so he did enjoy the show. For those of you who ARE country fans, we saw John Conlee, Sherrie Austin, Jesse McReynolds, Keith Anderson, Jean Shepard, Buddy Jewell, ‘whispering’ Bill Anderson & Blake Shelton.
Wednesday, we took a bus over to the mall (we decided not to unhook our 5th wheel, since we are only here for a few days), and from there we walked over to the Gaylord Opryland hotel which has huge gardens, waterfalls and a river running all through (inside) it!! There are even fountains (inside), which, on the hour, present a show to music (similar to the fountains at the Bellagio, in Vegas). It took several hours to walk through and view this. Absolutely amazing. On our way back to the campground, we had the bus driver drop us off at a unique restaurant which is within walking distance from our campground. It is called ‘Cock of the Walk’ and is known for its fried dill pickle (which is wonderful!) and pickled onions (also wonderful!). Jim had the fried shrimp and I had the fried chicken…..the servings are so plentiful (served ‘family style’) that we were able to take half of it home for dinner for Thursday. We made it home in time to watch one of our favorite TV shows, ‘Lost’.
Thursday, 12/1, we will be sticking around the campground today, a walk around a couple of times today and maybe chat with a few other campers, here and there. We plan to have the rest of our meal for dinner tonight, then watch ‘Survivor’ and ‘CSI’ on TV, then to bed, as we will be ‘heading out’ tomorrow morning. We are thinking our next stop will be in Arkansas…..hopefully another Wal-Mart on our journey west. ( :
Fri.,Sat.,Sun., slept at Wal-Marts in Forrest City, AK, Weathersford, TX & Pecos, TX respectively. We drove by many miles of cotton fields & oil derricks in TX.
Our original intent was to head to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico from Texas, but all the nights, thus far, have been in the 20’s & 30’s!! (We could have stayed home!!) We decided instead, to try to find warmer weather, (we’ll try Carlsbad in the spring on the way home), and instead found a campground in Tucson, AZ . So, here I am, Tuesday, 12/6, writing this, plugged in at the campground. Unfortunately, all of the campgrounds now have ‘Wi-Fi’ (which I am not set up for), so I have not been able to connect to the internet! At least the daytime temps here are predicted to be close to 70, even though the nights will be cold. Every camp site here has an orange tree, so I told Jim this morning how nice it was for the campground to provide frozen orange juice!! ( :

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