March 30, 2006

March 30, 2006

Kinards, South Carolina through North Carolina to Knoxville, Tennessee

YEAR 2 DAY 286

 

Today was sunny and warm.

We prepared for departure this morning, and drove over to the park's dump station to empty the bathroom grey water tank. While I drained the tank, Joanne went over to the office to pay. Last night when we arrived, the office was closed. This morning it was still closed, so we had a free night. We departed heading northwest on Interstate 26. When we crossed from South Carolina into North Carolina we stopped at the Information Centre to pick up a map and campground guide for North Carolina. The RV parking lot at the Information Centre was small, and full, so I had to do some tricky manoeuvering to get the rig parked in the car parking lot. We were going to have lunch there, but changed our minds because of the crowded parking. We drove north and northwest through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Quite a challenge for Dee-Dee who hasn’t had to climb mountains since California.

We stopped for lunch just before reaching Asheville. After having lunch, the truck starter failed to engage. I turned the key to start the truck, the starter began to crank, then it froze. It had never done that before. I was certain that it was not going to start, even with a whack from my starter whacker bar. I whacked the starter, and it engaged. Whew ... close call. That’s the third “failure to engage” on a starter that’s now 2 months old. At Asheville we turned west onto Interstate 40, heading into the Great Smoky Mountains. For some reason these mountains always seem to be hazy at the higher elevations, hence the name. At mile marker 24 we stopped at a Pilot Travel Centre to fill up with diesel. We could see from the map that there was going to be a long stretch through the mountains where fuel would not be available.

When we crossed from North Carolina into Tennessee we stopped ( yet again ) at the Information Centre to get a map and campground guide. We changed drivers and Joanne drove almost to Knoxville. When we got close to Knoxville and the traffic got heavy, we changed drivers again. We drove through Knoxville, and got onto Interstate 75 heading north. A bit north of Knoxville we found our way to Raccoon Valley Escapees RV Park. Raccoon Valley is the 18th Escapee park we’ve been to, of the 19 Escapee parks. We registered and set up in our site.

We took Bo for an obedience training walk. We met Karl and Sandy Jacobsen, a couple of Ontario Chapter 18 members. We chatted with them for awhile then returned to the trailer to prepare supper. While Joanne prepared supper I did today’s accounting. After supper we watched Survivor, then I worked on today’s journal entry. I also did my monthly backup of all my computer files to CD. I wonder if I'm doing that correctly ? It seems to take a long time to do backups, and each month I have to erase the backup CD's before copying all the files. I can't seem to copy over existing files on the CD's.

We were hoping to meet Tom and Ruth-Anne Huggard here, but they left this morning. Darn !

DSK