Big Changes are a Coming

No, not for Gerry and me, but for Belmont, MS.  They had an election yesterday and one thing on the ballot was whether to allow alcohol sales in Tishomingo County.  Late last night the vote was in favor of the sale of alcohol, but they were still counting absentee ballots.  If this were Chicago and the powers to be weren't in favor of the passage, then there would be a good chance that enough absentee ballots would be against it.  I wonder if that applies in Mississippi also?  We shall see.

Note:  Just in!

With more than half Tishomingo County's voters casting ballots, legalizing alcohol passed by 42 votes, while legalizing beer and light wine passed by 73. The county borders Alabama and Tennessee.

Whew, just in time for us.  We are getting low on beer and wine and were worried how far we'd have to go to replenish our beverages.  We have enough to last another week and we should be out of here by then, so that crisis is of no concern.

We've been searching for a good restaurant in the area and it has proven to be a difficult search.  The restaurant in downtown Belmont was closed tonight, so that was a waste of time.  We did find Sparks Drive Inn on the outskirts of Belmont and on the reccommendation of a young couple, we tried it out.  They had a buffet, but it didn't look that appetizing to us, so we ordered pizza and Dr. Peppers.  ( no beer yet ).  The pizza was good and the people in the restaurant were very friendly and talkative.  It's just like other small town restaurants where people talk to each other and have a cheery hello for everyone.  We picked up some dessert for later in the evening and headed back to the RV.

They did have one interesting thing at the restaurant that you don't see everywhere.  Check it out.

   
 Yes, those are flip top lids and most likely are collected for the school district in Belmont.  Could you guess how many flip tops are in those five gallon buckets?  No, I don't know.

We stopped by and chatted with Sharon & Don on the way back.  They have one more repair to be finished, but don't plan on leaving very soon due to it being so close to Memorial Day weekend.  For those that don't know, there are three holidays to avoid camping if at all possible.  Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day.  The parks are overrun with families and lots of well behaved children.  

Steve and Pat are just down the line from Sharon & Don and they think they will be ready to hit the road tomorrow and were calling for reservations at a COE park near Nashville.  The phone service was so poor that she kept losing the connection.  The internet was her next option to make the reservation and she scooted in to try and find a home for the weekend.  Good luck.

It looks like we will be here over the weekend, so there shouldn't be a problem for us finding a spot.  Not exactly a resort, but it does have a full hookup and lots of nice people.     
 

Swamp John's & Slide Repair

We were out of bed around 5:20 am this morning in preparation to drive the motor home to the repair bay here at the Tiffin Service center.  The call came in yesterday and we had enough lead time to prepare for the ordeal.  (getting up that early).

Off we went to the assigned repair bay for the morning's work and we actually arrived early for our 6:45 am appointment.  Of course, the bay doors were closed and I had to sit in the lane waiting for them to be ready for us.  Finally, Gerry went inside the building and asked them if they were ready.  Yep said the worker as he sat there eating his breakfast.  He opened the door and I pulled the MH into the space.  

We should have figured this out, but even if we had, we couldn't really do anything about it.  They said to open the front slides and then take all the stuff out of the cabinets on the slide they were going to repair.  WHAT!  Take it all out and place it on the other side of the MH.  A little lead time on this would have been appreciated, but wasn't volunteered.  Not surprising.

We spent the next 20 minutes or so taking all the stuff out and placing it on the floor, sofa & the sink area.  At least we kept everything in order to make it easier to put it back in the cabinets.  

   
We finished the task above around 7:30 am and were very hungry since we only had coffee for breakfast before going to the repair bay.  The workers all said how great Swamp John's restaurant was for all meals.  Off we went to find the place and I am glad we had a recommendation for the place, otherwise we most likely would not have stopped there.  It was quite rustic and full of locals, so that told us the food must be good.  

Gerry ordered the breakfast buffet and I had a huge omelet.  Neither of us could finish our meals and brought the leftovers back to the motor home.  The food was good and we will go back for their lunch or dinner depending how long we will be here.

   
Since we had leftovers, we headed back to the motorhome to put them in the refrigerator.  This is the sight we saw when we got back to the repair bay.

Drivers side slide.

How do you like the open look?

Putting slide back in place.

Cause of the repair.  One rotten board.

All of the above repairs were on Tiffin's dime, so that helps ease the pain somewhat.  The problem was the floor on the slide had let water in and rot the wood.  It took four technicians four hours to make the repair and get us back on the road; the road back to our campsite and then wait for the next repair.   When that will be is up in the air.

Of course, the 20 minutes it took to remove the stuff from the cabinets took hours to put back.  We decided to go through everything and cull out some items we don't need or use anymore.  We managed to free up some space and organize the cabinets better.  It's been a year since we dealt with all the stuff in the cabinets.  It was almost a year ago that we transferred the stuff from our old motorhome.  

There is a local Mexican restaurant in Red Bay and we tried it out for dinner this evening.  After having so many great Mexican restaurants in Tucson, this one didn't measure up.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained though.   

Tiffin - Red Bay Day 7 Into the shop

We got up early today and went to the work bay assigned to us.  The guys were waiting for us and once again went over our job list.  Third time we had to do that.  They immediately started work on the slide problem and said it was going to take a while.  It did.  They fixed the slide, door handle, jacks, and a couple other repair items and we got out of there around noon.

Then we had to go back to the service desk and get on the schedule for two more tasks that have to be done.  Both are covered by Tiffin and they highly recommend these upgrades.  They scheduled us for 6:45am for the first job and then put us on a list for the other.  It doesn't look too promising for us to get out of here before Memorial Day since the Tuesday after is the first day we can get in for the work.  I am going to do what I can to get in Friday, but that doesn't look too encouraging.

We sat in the lounge and met three very nice couples and had long chats about retirement, fulltiming and Tiffin motorhomes.  One couple went to order a 43ft Allegro Bus and found out they
could get a 45ft Allegro Bus for the same money.  It is beautiful, but huge.  They are parked next to us and it dwarfs our mh.  

We've been watching the news about Moore, OK and the terrible tornado there today.  Our son and his family lived a few miles south of Moore before they moved to NC a couple years ago.  We were happy to see them move out of tornado alley.  My heart goes out to all those poor people there and can't imagine what they are going to do to get their lives back in order.

That was it for our exciting day.  How was yours?   

How Do We Get Out of Here? Tiffin - Red Bay, AL Day 6

No, we aren't ready to leave here yet as we still haven't gotten in to have the repairs made.  The first of the repairs will be on Monday and the recall work done later in the week.  

It looked like they announced an evacuation this weekend and forgot to tell us.  The campground thinned out a lot and there were many spaces available.  That is, until this afternoon when a whole new crowd joined us for service.  Hopefully, they will only have minor problems and clear out fast.

I was plotting our route to Charlotte, NC from here and it directed us to take Rt 24 East out of Red Bay.  The only problem with that is Rt 24 is blocked to all but local traffic.  I checked into alternate routes and we tried one today and ruled it out quickly.  We would have been on a narrow country road barely wide enough for the motorhome.  We came back a different way and found the new Rt 24 East of Red Bay.  They are working on the road and it's down to two lanes with a lot of construction taking place.  I'm still not sure we can take it far enough east to get on another highway.

We took a little ride west of town and ran across this nice home on the highway.  We were too close to the home to get a wide angle shot of the front yard, but it was full of statues and nic nacs.  The picture below only captures about 1/4 of what was in the front yard.  

 

 We picked up a few geocaches today and two of them were in cemeteries in the area.  The graves are decorated for Memorial Day and there was a lot of color out there.  It seemed that most of the flowers were artificial, but looked really nice.

A little farther down the road we ran across a huge Tiffin Motor home facility in Belmont, MS industrial park.  They had many new motor homes sitting on the lot and they all looked shiny and beautiful.  I stopped at the guard house to ask the attendant about the buildings and he said it was where they sanded, painted and polished the new motor homes before delivery.   We saw an especially nice 43ft Allegro Bus that was begging us to buy it, but we had to decline.  

The guard house was new but designed to look like an old time gas station with old pumps in front of it.  Gas was 17 cents a gallon on the pump and I tried to buy $2.00 worth, but it wasn't to be.   The factory has another guard house there that mimics the one here.

We capped off the day with another trip to the smooth ice cream place in Belmont, MS.  A woman had pulled into the entrance way to the parking lot at an angle and was just sitting there until Gerry got out to get two cones.  Then the lady moved very quickly to get ahead of Gerry, but left her van sitting there blocking the entrance.  I pulled around to another entrance and parked only to have an older man pull in parallel behind me.  I don't understand why they didn't just park in the proper spaces, but they didn't.  I thought I had seen everything, but I was wrong.

On the way home we saw a man washing his horse in the car wash and was using the jet spray on the horse.  It must have felt good to the horse as he was just standing there.  Now I have seen everything.  ....  Until the next time, that is.

Gerry was checking where the nearest Catholic Church was and the closest she found was 30 miles away.  This really is the Baptist Bible belt down here.

One of the blogs I follow is:  Our RV Adventure   Today his blog jogged my memory of our first new car which was a Red 1960 PV 544 Volvo.  It looked like a 1946 Ford and probably was modeled after one.   We paid $1620 for the car and financed it for 3 years.  Hey, money was tight in 1961.  We didn't have the car for more than a month when our young daughters decided it would be fun to poke pencil holes in the naugahyde seat covers in the back seat.  Ouch, that hurt.

The car got 36+ MPG on the road and was fun to drive, however I was stuck with a 1952 Chevy while Gerry drove the Volvo.  We kept the car for a few years and traded it in on a Mercury Meteor which was a big mistake.  Live and learn. 

PV 544 Volvo

 

That was our day, how was yours?    
  

Piney Grove COE & Tishomingo State Park, Mississippi - Bagel run

I woke up early this morning and had a craving for a bagel and knew the store across the street from us had them.  Luckily, I asked to see them and then ask for the price.  The owner of the establishment looked me in the eye and said $3.50 each.  What?  They were just bagels that came 6 to the bag and couldn't have cost that much for the whole bag.  No, I didn't want a bagel that bad and thanked him and left.  He also said he could wash and wax my motorhome for only $320.00.  I declined that generous offer and beat a hasty retreat from his store.

The local mini mart didn't have any bagels, but they did have sausage patties on a biscuit and were two for $2.89.  That was more like it and I bought four.  We couldn't finish all of them and have one for breakfast in the morning.  Later in the day we found a Piggly Wiggly that had bagels 6 to the bag and bought them for $3.25.  I think I may buy about 60 of them and sell them to the campers here at camp Tiffin.  $3.00 each sounds like a good price.

There is a campground at a COE Park and another at a State Park nearby to Red Bay.  We took a ride to both of them today and had mixed results.  The Tishomingo State Park in MS was built a long time ago and has small sites that not only are short, but narrow.  Of the 60 or so sites we could possibly get the Allegro Bus in 3-4 of them.  That's after driving through low hanging branches on a narrow road.  There were a few campsites occupied, but it was mainly empty.  We wrote it off as a destination for us.
 
The park is named for one of the last great Chickasaw leaders, Chief Tishu Miko, born not far from here in Lee County, Mississippi, c1735. Modern Chickasaw occasionally make pilgrimage to the park to visit the areas where the famous Chief fished and hunted.

Chief Tishomingo (the modern form of his name) served a brilliant career in the US Military, distinguishing himself in such actions as the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the  Red Stick Rebellion and the War of 1812. His influence became powerful and extended into Washington, DC. He was a principal signatory to a number of important treaties, including the Treaty of Pontotoc in 1832 (negotiated at great length with Andrew Jackson but never ratified by the Senate). His most momentous and perhaps most difficult signature was put to the 1837 Treaty of Doaksville, which he affirmed only under heavy political pressure. This document, in large part a lease agreement with the Choctaw Nation. Incidentally compelled the removal of the last Chickasaw from this area to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. It is believed that, in May 1838, Chief Tishomingo succumbed to small pox at the advanced age of 104, near Little Rock on the Trail of Tears. His burial site is unknown.

It was on to The Piney Grove Campground on Bay Springs Lake, along the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in northeastern Mississippi. It's ideal for families and groups of friends looking for lots of water recreation.
:
The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway extends 234 miles from the Tennessee River to the junction of the Tombigbee River in Alabama. The man-made waterway connects the nation's midsection of commercial water transportation with the Gulf of Mexico. 

The gate attendants gave us a pass good for 15 minutes to check out the campground.  There are 141 campsites there and we found a number of them that we could park the Allegro Bus.  The interior roads are narrow in places and vehicles parked in the road would make it difficult to drive through the area on the weekend when the park is full.  We would camp there during the week if we wanted to chill out and not leave the area.  The lake is beautiful and it looked like it would be a good fishing spot.  In addition, they have a beach area that looked really nice.  I would give it a thumbs up.

On the way back we stopped at a roadside restaurant called Rita's and ordered their seafood buffet.  They had catfish, two kinds of shrimp, frog legs, chicken, crab cakes, and fried quail.  I'm not sure what sea the quail came from, but it was good.  Gerry said it was something to eat one time to say she had done it.  I don't think it was her favorite item on the menu.  The meal also included a salad bar and a dessert bar.  It is only open from Wed-Sat and seemed to be a favorite of the locals.  For the most part we enjoyed the meal, except Gerry's breaded shrimp which wasn't cooked enough.

We managed to pick up one geo cache at the entrance to the Tishomingo State Park.  There were other caches in the area, but we didn't take time to find them.  The ground was soaked from days of rain and I didn't want to take a chance on getting stuck.

We had a great day and wound up tired and worn out and are ready to hit the hay early.  

Good night all.