<<< Monday, 1 April 1996
(How time flies) - Had our free breakfast in the Casino and then went to find the local shops to restock the fridge. In the afternoon we went to the Vicksburg battleground memorial park where we watched an introductory film and then drove around the area of the Union and Confederate battle.
The azaleas are in full bloom and as we are now moving to the cooler north we will probably have a longer springtime than usual. We will be returning to England on the 5th of May and if the car starts we will go straight to Worthing for Alexandra's Christening. After the Christening our first job will be to book our flight to stay with Doug & Ivy in South Africa for six weeks, much of which will be spent staying on game reserves.
Tuesday, 2 April 1996
Second free breakfast at Casino and again no luck on the slots. Housework and maintenance day.
Wednesday, 3 April 1996
Drove part of the Natchez Trace, which is a trading route used in the eighteen hundreds. It has many historic places but was not very interesting.
| Short drive to Louisiana and washed RV. Tags have still not arrived. Wrote and sent by airmail 10 letters to friends and relatives back home. | |
Friday, 5 April 1996
Waited in for the third temporary tag (arrived 4.00 pm), cleaned the RV inside and then did some shopping.
Saturday, 6 April 1996
Drove 220 miles to Memphis TN. It seems that most of this vast Mississippi river area is as flat as Holland and not very interesting. MS, AL and LA all seem to be States with lots of poverty and high levels of unemployment. The coloured community are worse off, with a lot of run-down housing surrounded by junk and rusty old cars.
Memphis is the home of the blues and Beale street is the heart. However, we did not find anything of interest, possibly it was too cold or too early in the year. Beale street was empty of tourists but there was a number of youths hanging around, one of whom suggested that out-of-state tags get attention - we quickly moved on.
| Visited Graceland which was the home of Elvis Presley. Considering who owned it, Graceland is a relatively small place located along the busy I55 highway (Elvis Presley Boulevard) The house retains most of Elvis's original furniture and possessions, and the display of his 147 gold and platinum records is very impressive. His stage clothes are really superb. | ||
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His private jet contains four rooms with sofas, tables, a music room and a bedroom with a queen size bed (which includes a fitted seat belt). Also on display are his cars, motorbikes and other fun vehicles |  |
.Monday, 8 April 1996
Drove from Memphis to Nashville along the I70, to find more interesting views than that on the I40. For the first time in two months, the very flat land has given way to some slight slopes, which is a prelude to the Smokey Mountains which we will visit next week after doing Nashville.
Tuesday, 9 April 1996
Nashville claims to be the music capital of the World and Opryland is a museum, theatre and broadcast centre for country music. Opryland is also a theme park and within it is the Grand Old Opry theatre, which has been staging country and western music shows every week for more than 50 years. We are going to a live show on Friday. PTC (Prime Time Country) is a national TV programme which goes out live five days a week and takes place at the TNN studio in Opryland. We went to today's show and it was excellent. The show lasted 1.5 hours and included three acts and interviews with the performers. The TV crew were very professional but what was interesting was the noise and constant coming and goings of the audience throughout the show, which did not seem to cause any problems with the quality of the transmitted programme.
Wednesday, 10 April 1996
Washing, ironing and cleaning followed by a long walk around downtown Nashville. Many large modern buildings intermixed with old cotton warehouses and shops selling cowboy clothing, which in the main we considered expensive.
Thursday, 11 April 1996
Valerie decided her hair needed a perm so quickly found a salon called "Fantastic Sams" which had been advertised on TV. Only took one and a half hours and cost $32.50 which is cheaper than back home. Decided to have a look in the Opryland Hotel which covers a vast area and includes two conservatories housing full-size trees and tropical plants; these were reported to cover two acres! Had a nice lunch in the least expensive of the many hotel restaurants.
Friday, 12 April 1996
Decided to stay on the campground and got talking to the couple in the next RV which also happened to be a Kounty Star although a couple of years older. He had worked for the US foreign office and had spent about 10 years working in London. We found out that they were also going to the Grand Ole Opry that evening so we offered to take them in our car. We started with a meal out which they insisted on paying for. The 3.5-hour show at the Opry goes out live on WSM 650, it included about 50 acts and around 200 country and western performers. At the end of the evening they said (the Jones's that is not the performers) we would always be welcome to either visit them or store our RV on their farm in Virginia, which seems typical of American hospitality.
Saturday, 13 April 1996
Left for the next campground in Chattanooga at about 9.30 am, it was an easy route but very scenic once we reached the mountain roads. The campground turned out to be up a steep winding road on which they had posted signs to the campers saying - "don't despair your nearly there". Not many other RVs but there is a group of very "hippie-looking" people camping under tarpaulin sheets!
Sunday, 14 April 1996
Visited the spectacular Ruby Falls which is a 130-foot waterfall inside Lookout Mountain in a huge underground cavern. We then viewed the one-mile-long railway that goes up the steep side of the mountain. There is an enormous aquarium in Chattanooga with over 350 different freshwater fish in a very imaginative layout, it was well worth the visit.
Monday, 15 April 1996
Went for a short walk through the flowering dogwoods before we set off for our new camp - Eagles Nest in Pigeon Forge. One might think a place with such a name would be a nice little town. It apparently was before Dolly Parton made it famous - she was born here and has now built the Dollywood Theme park. Lots of motels, restaurants, pretty little wedding chapels and the inevitable factory outlet stores. However, just a few miles down the road is the Great Smoky National Park where there is plenty of nothing except spectacular scenery.
| Went for a long drive into the Smokys and to Cades Cove which is a valley surrounded by wooded hills, where a few white settlers lived back in the early 1800s. Some of their homes have been restored together with several churches; these are all seen en route during an 11-mile drive. |  |
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Wednesday, 17 April 1996
Drove to Clingmans Dome which is a lookout point at 6,500 ft (the highest peak). Very picturesque drive around hairpin bends and then when we reached the parking lot there was a half-mile walk up another 300ft to a high tower, from which all the other peaks could be seen. It was quite cold, in fact, the road was closed yesterday because of snow. From there we drove to the North Carolina side of the park to Cherokee which is a town owned by the Indians. Lots of craft shops.
Thursday, 18th April 1996
Decided to rough it for a period so we moved to the National Park campsite on the other side of the Smokies, which entailed a climb of over 5,000 feet. As it was our first mountain climb in the RV (we had not seen any other RV's climbing this mountain!!) and did not know how it would handle the climb, we decided that on this occasion Valerie would follow in the Suzuki. The RV handled the climb very well and hardly got any warmer. The camp is $8 a day which compares to an average of $20. The camp has 250 sites but at this time of the year, only about 10% are being used, mainly by tent campers. As we arrived a herd of deer were climbing the hillside after drinking in the stream next to where we were pitching.
Friday, 19th April 1996
Explored some of the Blue Ridge Parkway which is a roadway stretching for 200 miles or so, mainly along the mountain ridges and is closed to commercial traffic. On the stretch, we explored the traffic was very light and one could almost imagine finding bears around the next bend. Spring is arriving but there is a very marked contrast between the lower levels where most of the flowers are out and the trees are in full blossom, as compared to the mountain tops where the leaves have only just started to show.
| Decided to go to a Museum of "unbelievable things" in Gatlinburg which is about 30 miles from the other side of the Smokies. We had only been there about one hour and as forecast, the heavens opened and it rained solidly for about 4 hours. | ||
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We returned to our woodland campsite and in the evening had a BBQ sitting around the campfire until late. This is our first-time boondocking? Boondocking is the term for a site without any services, so we arrived with a full (40 gallons) fresh water tank and empty grey and black tanks. We could run our generator for mains power, but as there is no TV signal in the valley and we are just using our house battery for lighting and the water pump. It is what you may call five-star rough camping<grin>. | |
Sunday, 21 April 1996
Left Cherokee and drove 340 miles east over 5000-foot-high mountains. The RV performed very well considering the rig weighs over 11 tons, but it needed a lot of first gear work - hate to think what the gas consumption was. Splendid views for the first 100 miles, which then gave way to flatter plains but much warmer. It was like leaving London in the spring and arriving in Spain in mid-summer. Needless to say, Valerie has wilted and wishes she was back in the mountains. The forecast for tomorrow is even hotter!!
Monday, 22 April 1996
Spent the morning catching up on washing, ironing and cleaning. and then drove to the nearest town of Smithfield to restock the fridge and cupboards. Had some new neighbours when we got back - a very expensive coach pulling an Audi convertible. Turns out they live in the Florida Keys - he has just retired from owning a Land Rover dealership but also still owns another business in New Jersey; they do like telling you all their business. The campground has a phone hook-up so George rang his Mum and Valerie phoned Lesley from inside the RV, everyone sounds as if things are going okay in the UK. Very hot and humid tonight so ran the air conditioning - Valerie felt like a new woman!
Tuesday, 23 April 1996
Suzuki day. Went to the dealer in Raleigh and purchased the spare wheel and rear compartment cover, also had all the wheels re-balanced under the 12-month guarantee. Valerie completed the washing and George chased the tags for the car and obtained information about better/cheaper car insurance.
Wednesday, 24 April 1996
Left for new campground Barefoot RV Park at Myrtle Beach SC arriving at 10 am, for what should have been a very straightforward trip down the 70l. However about ten miles down the road we came to a detour since the 701 was closed ahead; the detour seemed to take us about 15 miles off the route through some extremely narrow roads which got a bit worrying. We did see some lovely gardens all covered in the very prevalent azaleas for which this area is famous. Barefoot is a very large campground with room for 500 rigs - we are just a few yards from the long and wide beach, so we will be able to do some more walking. Television this evening was full of people moaning about the fact that gasoline has gone up by an average of 18 cents during the past three months (just our luck), however, it is still less than £l a gallon.
Thursday, 25 April 1996
Went for a long walk on the beach at 7.00 am! It was lovely
walking one way but hard work when we turned round and faced the strong wind. Loads of very large jellyfish seem to get
stranded on the beach as the tide went out, so we don't think we
would like to swim in the sea, even if it was warm enough.
Started looking around the local campgrounds with a view to
storing the RV whilst we return to the UK. Eventually,we ended up
deciding on a storage location recommended by our campground,
which is where we leave it when we return for two weeks.
| Another early morning walk along the beach, however, we are certainly not alone as lots of joggers and other walkers there well before us. As planned we set off to see Brookgreen Gardens which is about 30 miles south of here.. The area covers 9,000 acres and has the largest outdoor exhibition of sculpture in the USA. The area was originally a rice plantation which employed hundreds of slaves to work in the fields, amongst the poisonous snakes and alligators! Apart from the sculptures, there is also a wildlife park and a chance for a boat ride on the river, which we did mainly to get a breeze and get away from swarms of horse flies which were biting like mad. A storm later in the day cleared the air. We had a meal out at an excellent Cracker Barrel restaurant. |  |
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Tuesday, 30 April 1996
George went for a walk along the beach at 7.30 am, however, after about one mile the heavens opened and he came home like a drowned rat. As it rained most of the day we spent the time spring-cleaning the RV and getting it ready for storage. A couple from Philadelphia spent at least 3 hours (while it rained) writing out a 10-page tour guide for us. It will be very useful as it gives information on what to see, what routes and recommended campgrounds. It really is surprising how friendly and helpful everybody is over here. >>>
