We arrived here in Chattanooga about a week ago. This is the longest that we have stayed in any one place other than at home. We needed to get some rest and there is a lot to see down here. I have driven thru this area countless times on the way the Florida and back, but never stopped here. Besides the obvious things like Rock City and Ruby Falls, there are many areas that are civil war related and there are also party sites like the Chattanooga Choo Choo area which is an area of shops, restaurants, and distilleries. Tennessee didn’t like the feds ending prohibition, so they kept it going. Finally in 2015, the ban was lifted. Now there is the Chattanooga Whiskey and Tennessee Whiskey distilleries among many others. We really like this city. Next stop – the Smoky Mountains.

Yes! And we survived… for the most part. Part of our decision on doing this was thinking: could we live in such small quarters? We realized that when we were home, we were either on the sofa, at the dining table, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, or in bed. This fifth wheel has all of the above, but a little smaller. My tools have been downsized from my big rolling toolbox to five ammo boxes of various sizes. The oven in this thing is crap, but it is the same in almost all of them. The good side is that it comes with a microwave / convection oven and Claudia has mastered cooking anything in it that she could make in the old oven. The big hassle so far is moving day. It starts the night before after dinner as we break things down and put stuff away. Evening checklist is 16 things, morning list is 13. The only bad things that have happened so far were on moving days. Storage is another issue. The rv has a limit of about 2900# of personal belongings – who could bring that much? WE CAN! At the first weighing, we were 300# shy of our max. We have put more into storage but I know we are still up there. Driving this big setup is not to bad, actually not much worse than the Frontier pulling the popup. Just did our first mountain pass – Monteagle, northwest of Chattanooga – 5% down for about 5 miles. I only touched the brake once when cars in front slowed to pass a semi. The truck downshifts and applies the engine brake automatically. Just set the cruise control. I do have one issue – even being short, I continue to bump my head on a regular basis. So, we continue onward.

Nashville is really a nice place to visit. There is as much history here as there is music! Our first day here, we started with a trolley bus tour of the city, with 15 stops where you can get off, explore, and get back on. Our first stop was the Musicians Hall of Fame which is filled with history, memorabilia, and interactive exhibits of music in America. Lots of country as you would expect, but there was way more, like exhibits on Motown, Hendrix, Chicago, Rolling Stones, and more. The Bicentennial Capitol Mall has several war memorials as well as a stone wall with a history of all the rivers in the state. For lunch, we hopped off the bus at Hattey Bs Hot Chicken as I was dead set on some ‘What the cluck chicken’, but so were about 100 others already in line so we had to pass. Did I tell you that it is 20+ degrees above normal down here? Every day since we left central Indiana has been in the mid to upper 90s.

Our next leg south was a short one, traveling only down to Cave City, KY. We visited Mammoth Cave long ago when Melissa was young, so this time we saw things we didn’t see then. The first stop was the National Corvette Museum. As you would expect, the place is filled with stories, memorabilia, and of course, many, many Corvettes! The most interesting story is the on February 12, 2014, eight Corvettes fell into a sinkhole that formed under the museum when a small cave ceiling collapsed and form the sinkhole. All eight cars were pulled out of the hole, and are now displayed in almost the exact places where they originally stood. Three of them have been completely restored to like new condition, but the others are too damaged to restore. They are on display are they were the day they were pulled out, showing what happens when tons of rock fall onto a car. We also visited the Lost River Cave. This is the largest opening to a cave east of the Mississippi, and is always full of water so you ride into the cave on a boat.

Visiting Churchill Downs is almost a spiritual experience. During the spring and fall racing seasons, it appears to be your typical horse track, but on the first Saturday in May of every year, 150,000 people come to watch 20 horses run 1.25 miles trying to win a part of the $3 million purse. Actually the party, called Derby Days, starts two weeks before the race. The history here along with the facts about some of the horses is a bit overwhelming. Only on the tour will you ever get so close to the track or sit only where the owners sit on race day. The restaurant was closed and that was a disappointment to Claudia who really had to have a Mint Julep. We made our own.

Well, we made it to Charlestown State Park on the Ohio River. Across the river is Louisville and we started today by taking a walking tour of the historic district in Central Park. The entire area is beautifully kept and the architecture is amazing. The young tour guide was a wealth of knowledge of the area and all of Louisville. Then we traveled into the downtown area to find some lunch. What we found was the First Annual Mac and Cheese Festival. Over 40 different ways to make Mac and Cheese. We decided to do the barbecue at Guy Fiery’s while listening to a Celtic trio play bluegrass – wild stuff! On the way back down Fourth Street, we stopped at his and hers shops again: hers was the Fudgery and next door was the Jim Beam Urban Distillery. Really strange here is the way they play corn hole. No beanbags, no board with a hole in it. Each side has six Ace garbage cans. Teams take turns throwing 2 volley balls at the other team’s cans. get one in, that can is removed. You win when you remove all the opponents cans. Proper attire means having multiple tattoos and you must hold an alcoholic drink while shooting.

So the scrapes from the bed rails were not too bad and I knew that the clearance between truck and trailer was 5 inches when it should have been 6 to 7 minimum, so I found a nice Amish trailer shop close by and had them raise the hitch, so that was good. Leaving Raccoon Lake for Patoka Lake was uneventful and the drive should have been a fairly straight shot south. Then the fun started as the phone started to send us off in the wrong direction. After about 30 miles in the wrong direction, we got our bearings and found our way to the park. Not too bad. As we approached the gate there was a canopy over the entrance gate that was not marked and was the only entrance to the park so I ASSumed that I could get under no problem. I missed the 2″ by 12″ sign warning that it was 12 foot high. As I slowed to the gate, CRUNCH – the sound of my front A/C unit being relocated. So the A/C unit was replaced and a patch to the foot square tear in the roof applied, we back in one piece – now that was UGLY. Patoka Lake is the second largest in Indiana and has no private property on the lake. First lake I ever saw with no houses, cabin, or RV’S in site. We did some hiking in West Baden then took a ride on the French Lick Scenic Railway. It was a pretty ride out into the country while we got a history lesson of the area. French Lick was the home to many illegal casinos and was THE place to be until Las Vegas started opening its casinos in 1948. About a decade ago. gambling returned with the opening of the new French Lick Casino.

My last post was from our stop in Michigan City where we stayed for about two weeks. The day after Labor Day I hurt my back early in the day. I should have gone into slow mode then but… duh! After loading four bundles of wood into the back of the truck, it was totally screwed up and I was in a new kind of pain. Luckily, a friend from church is an excellent chiropractor and got me in on Friday and straightened it out. But we did get back to our church for a service, we saw a total of three doctors and one dentist, spent a weekend with Melissa, and learned that an F350 with dual rear wheels should NOT drive thru Chinatown. Sadly, because of my back, I missed visits with several friends and coworkers. So we set off to Raccoon Lake in central Indiana. It is a nice campground, nice beach, beautiful scenery, but at least three-quarters of the sites are on such an incline, I could not get the RV level on my site. We did move to another, but I still scraped the bottom of the RV on a bed rail. Nothing big – hardly noticeable. Not much to do outside of the park, but that beach was great!

My favorite part of the pre-race activities at the 500 was listening to Jim Nabors sing that song, and now I can’t get that tune out of my head as we return to northwest Indiana. While here, we will see Melissa and her new apartment, visit our church, and hit three doctors, after which we will start our migration south. The RV needed to visit the dealership for a few hours on our way in, so we took the dog and cats to the Indiana Dunes to relax. After getting the RV back, we settled in at the Michigan City Campground. Since then, we visited the Lighthouse Outlet Mall where we found his and her shops right next to each other – hers was Lindt Chocolate and mine was the Jerky Shop. Yesterday we took Digger to explore Mount Baldy and then to the beaches west of there where Digger chased sticks into some fairly high waves.

We found a nice RV park just outside of Grand Rapids on the Grand river – they even have their own paddleboat. We are not on the river, but our site is all of 100 feet away from it and it is beautiful and quiet.

Looking for something to do here in the neighborhood, we found the Blandford Nature Center. This small preserve is surrounded by residential neighborhoods and is full of exhibits of the plant, bird, and animal life of this area. The difference between this place and a zoo is the animals and birds in cages here were hurt in some way that prevented them from returning to their home. Katherine, below, was hit by a car. Rather than euthanizing her because her wing was broke, she was brought to Blandford. When she healed, they realized that she could never fly well enough to hunt, so she got a permanent home here. A research facility nearby donates rats and mice to Blandford when they are done with them and the mice die the way they would have in nature at the claws of owls, vultures, hawks, and others here at the center.