Living Our Dream

Nashville to Summerdale, AL

Summerdale, AL - Events of Monday, October 21 to Tuesday, October 22, 2013

On Monday, we continued on our way south to Summerdale, AL where we'll spend most of the rest of the fall before heading into Florida for the winter. Summerdale is a favorite location of ours, and we usually spend a month or so there in the fall on our way to Florida and another month in the spring after leaving Florida.

We scheduled an overnight stop in Montgomery, AL. Even though we got a relatively early start, we didn't pull into The Woods RV Park until about 2:30 because at 5½ hours, it was another one of several drives that we've made recently that was longer than we usually like to make. The Woods RV Park has over 100 sites, all of which are full-hookup pull-throughs. All sites also have 30/50-amp electric, and there is free cable and free Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi was fairly fast, and we had a strong signal. The campground is also in an area where there is a good Verizon 4G signal.

The roads and pads are gravel, there is grass between the sites, and the sites are all nice and big (40' x 80').

Our site at The Woods RV Park

View down our row toward the office

The Woods RV is a Passport America campground. Although they take reservations for regular sites, you can't reserve if you want the PA rate. However, we had no problem getting a site on a Monday in the off-season. The discounted rate for our site was around $22.

On Tuesday morning, we were off again on our way to Rainbow Plantation in Summerdale. Rainbow Plantation is a campground that belongs to the Escapees RV Club. Up until this year, the Escapees never took reservations at any of their campgrounds, but that is all changing. Rainbow Plantation is one of several Escapees campgrounds that are part of the initial, gradual roll-out of their new reservation system. We made our reservations a couple of months ago when they first announced the beginning of the roll-out. They hope to have the reservation system up and running at all their campgrounds by the end of the year.

The Escapees have several different types of parks - some are campgrounds only, some have co-op sites only, and some have a combination of campground and co-op sites. When they're not using them, owners of co-op sites can put their sites into a rental pool if they wish. Those sites will not be subject to reservations and will continue to be first come-first served.

We pulled into Rainbow Plantation around 12:30. The office is still on summer hours and is closed from 11 to 3:00, but since you can now reserve a specific site, we didn't have to wait to see what site we would be assigned and were able to proceed directly to our space. We went down to the office later to register and pay.

The Escapees used to charge extra for metered electric, even for one-night stays. There are new camping fees that now include the cost of electricity at a flat rate. The new camping fee for members at Rainbow Plantation is $20 a night or $123 a week, which is pretty reasonable for a large, 50-amp, full-hookup site. About half the sites have 30-amp electric and cost $1 a night less. There are also off-season specials that are a really good deal, but they're only available on 30-amp sites.

Although there is a dry camp area available for $5 a night, all the regular sites have full hookups. There is also W-Fi available for a fee.

In the past, we had a strong Verizon 4G signal at the campground, but this time 4G seems to fade in and out later in the afternoon and evening. Every time that happened, we got knocked offline, and we frequently had to reboot the modem to get back on. We improved things by going into the setup menu for the modem and changing the automatic setting to manually lock the modem to 4G. Locking the modem onto either 3G or 4G depending what's available in the area in which you are located seems to eliminate the need to have to reboot the modem several times a day. You just have to remember to change the setting back to automatic or to 3G when you move to a different area.

The roads at Rainbow plantation are paved, and the generously-sized sites are mostly grass, except for some bare spots under the live oak trees. We reserved a site that has a tree on the western side to provide shade from the afternoon sun, but it has no tree on the door side so there is nice grass for Freeway.

Our site at Rainbow Plantation

The campground is usually only sparsely populated when we arrive around this time of year; but this year, it seemed emptier than in the past.

Not many RVs in sight

We theorized the low occupancy when we first arrived was probably because the weather has been fairly warm this fall, and a lot of people hadn't yet felt the need to head south. However, the weather up north was definitely cooling off. The lows the last two nights we were in Nashville were down in the mid-30s, and it was predicted to be about the same, or even lower, for the entire following week. There was even sn*w (can't bring ourselves to type out that s-word) in the forecast for some areas in the upper midwest. Our theory about the weather seems to have been borne out because quite a few people started pulling into Rainbow Plantation a day or two after we did. Although the campground was still far from full, within two days of our arrival, there were more RVs all around us.

More RVs two days later

We plan to relax for the next month or so while we're in Summerdale, so our posts will probably be a little less frequent. However, we're bound to find a few things to do while we're here, so stay tuned.

Tennessee State Museum

Goodlettesville, TN - Events of Saturday, October 19 to Sunday, October, 20, 2013

One of the things we found to do while we were in Nashville this time was the Tennessee State Museum. Since Saturday was the day we wanted to do our sightseeing and it turned out to be dreary, rainy, cold and blustery, we thought going to a museum would be a better option than an outdoor activity. Not only that, but the museum is free. The tolls, high campground fees, high fuel prices and our frequent eating out during our travels around New England this summer really put a dent in our budget, so free admission made the choice of the museum sound even better.

Since it was Saturday, we were even able to find a rare, free, on-street parking space about a block from the museum in spite of the fact the metered parking spaces along both sides of the street in front of the museum had "No Parking" signs on them due to a special event.

The Tennessee State Museum was created in 1937 by the Tennessee General Assembly to house World War I mementos and other collections of historical artifacts from the state. It was moved from the lower level of the War Memorial Building to the new James K. Polk Center in 1981 where it has more than 120,000 square feet of space, about half of which is devoted to exhibits. The remainder of the space is archives, storage and offices. The museum traces the history of Tennessee from the first Native Americans to modern times.

Tennessee was occupied by prehistoric peoples as far back as 15,000 years ago. The early people were nomadic hunter/gatherers. Around 1000 B.C., the people began to stay in one place for longer periods and began farming.

Margery checking out a display of early stone farming implements

The museum had some of the best stone implements we had ever seen. They were finely crafted, and some were even polished. The next photo shows stone axe heads (left) and stone hoes.

Finely-crafted stone farming implements

As the native Americans began farming, they needed more permanent dwellings. The houses were constructed from saplings that were placed upright in a trench. The tops of the saplings were then bent inward and intertwined to form the roof. Walls were covered with cane matting and then plastered with mud inside and out. The museum had a display of trowels made from baked clay that were used to smooth the mud covering. We had never seen implements like that before. The use of trowels instead of hands to smooth the mud demonstrates a high degree of sophistication.

Clay trowels for smoothing mud coating

Building mud-covered huts

The Spanish were the first Europeans to reach Tennessee in 1540 followed by the French and the British in 1673. Although the French claimed the entire Mississippi River Valley, the territory went to the British following the French and Indian War.

Some of the earliest frontiersmen who crossed the Appalachian Mountains into Tennessee from Virginia and the Carolinas were hunters and trappers in the early 1760s. The most famous of these frontiersmen was Daniel Boone.

By the way, back in the days of the early frontiersmen-hunters, deerskin was a common medium of exchange. Since one skin sold for $1, the terms buck and dollar became synonymous.

Later in the 1760s, permanent settlers began to arrive. Conestoga wagons were frequently used in the migration from Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas. Conestoga wagons are characterized by an upward curved floor and sloped ends that helped keep the cargo from shifting on rough terrain. Thay are named for Conestoga Township in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the wagons were first built by German Mennonite immigrants in the early 1700s.

Conestoga wagon

There was a display of some of the tools used by the settlers for building cabins. Shown in the next photo are a broad axe, axe, maul, froe and auger.

Tools for building log cabins

Settlers couldn't bring much furniture with them, so most of it had to be made after they got to Tennessee. By the 1800s, furniture making in Tennessee had gotten pretty sophisticated. The next photo shows woodworking tools from the 1800s and includes a hand-cranked lathe.

Display of 1800s woodworking tools

Margery checks out a display of 1800s furniture

Tennessee has its share of famous, historical figures. Andrew Jackson, who became a hero by defeating the British in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, also represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives (1796-1797) and the U.S. Senate (1823-1825) and was the 7th president of the United States (1829-1837). He was nicknamed "Old Hickory" because of his assertive, hard-hitting personality. The felt hat worn at his inauguration is shown toward the left in the next photo.

Exhibit on Andrew Jackson that includes the hat worn at his presidential inauguration

Ather famous Tennessean is Sam Houston. We usually think of Sam Houston in connection with Texas, but he was born in Tennessee. Sam Houston represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1823 to 1827 and was governor of Tennessee from 1827 to 1829.

Houston traveled to Texas in 1832 and became involved in politics there. After Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, Houston became Commander-in-Chief of the Texas army. He later became president of the independent Republic of Texas, and served as a U.S. Senator from Texas after it became a state.

Sam Houston display

Tennessee prospered during the antebellum period primarily because of cotton. The patenting of the cotton gin in 1794 boosted the demand for cotton and increased wealth all over the South. As we learned when we visited Lowell, MA this past summer, the Industrial Revolution in the early part of the 1800s greatly reduced the cost of fabrics that were manufactured in the North. This increased the demand for cotton even further. To read what we learned during our visit to Lowell about the Industrial Revlution and how it reduced fabric prices, click here for our stop at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum, and click here for the American Textile History Museum.

The wealth in the South meant the plantation owners could afford the finest. The museum had a parlor set up with the plush furnishings of the time.

Antebellum parlor

There were numerous silversmiths in Nashville before the Civil War. The museum has a collection of flatware, tea service sets and trays that line three walls of a good-sized room.

Part of the museum's silver collection

Early in 1861, Tennesseans voted down a referendum to secede from the Union. In fact, opposition to secession was so strong in eastern Tennessee, they wanted to form a separate, Union-aligned state. However, after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor in April, 1861, Tennessee passed a referendum in June to become the last southern state to secede.

There were over 400 battles and skirmishes fought in Tennessee during the Civil War, many of which were Union victories. The museum has a large section devoted to the Civil War that includes uniforms, battle flags, weapons and other artifacts.

Civil War cannon and battle flag

From the Civil War and reconstruction era, the museum moves into more modern times. On display was a steam pumper built in 1900 and used to fight fires in Nashville. Steam from the boiler drove the pump to pressurize the fire hose.

1900 steam pumper used in Nashville

A history of Tennessee would not be complete without mentioning music for which Nashville is so famous. The museum has a temporary exhibit of dulcimers, which are stringed instruments that are part of the zither family. The earliest zither-like instrument was found in China and dates back to around 400 B.C. Other stringed instruments like guitars, violins and cellos have necks, but the strings of the zither/dulcimer family of instruments do not extend beyond the sound box. The sound box is the hollow box that gives the instrument its tone and resonance.

The exhibit includes several early forms of the zither including the ones in the photo below. On the left is a modern zither from the 1900s. The next one is a one-stringed Norewgian psalmodikon from 1859. The third instrument is a multi-stringed Hungarian citera from the early 1800s, and the one on the right is a three-stringed German scheitholt from the early 1800s.

Zithers

Another temporary exhibit features portraits of dozens of country singers. The singers shown in the photo below are (left to right) cross-over pop/country artist Darius Rucker, Chris Cagle and three portraits of Reba McEntyre along with the outfit she was wearing in the large portrait.

Portraits of country singers

As we were finishing up at the museum, we saw hoards of kids in Halloween costumes arriving. We saw signs for a "Haunted Museum" event when we first arrived, and we saw the Halloween decorations that had been put up in the museum (fake cobwebs, a few manikins dressed up like zombies and mummies, and pretend RIP gravestones here and there); but we didn't realize the event was that day since Halloween was still almost two weeks away. We suddenly realized the reason there was no parking on the street in front of the museum was because the Haunted Museum event was that day. Fortunately, we had gone early enough that we were leaving just as everyone else was arriving.

On Sunday, we hung around the campground, watched the NASCAR race and watched the weekenders leave the campground. To our surprise, an almost equal number of new RVs arrived throughout the day to take the places of the ones that left.

On Monday, we continued on our trek south. We'll tell you where we ended up in our next post.

South to Nashville

Goodlettsville, TN - Events of Thursday, October 17 to Sunday, October 20, 2013

We extended our stay in Amish Country by three days because we really like it there and because the weather was fairly warm longer than we expected it to be. However, the forecast was predicting lows in the mid to lower 30s and even down into the 20s for the next week in Berlin, OH, so our departure on Thursday following our three-day extension turned out to be pretty good timing.

We expected to have about a four-hour drive to our overnight stop at the FMCA camping area in Cincinnati on our way to Nashville. The morning started out sunny in Berlin, but by the time we hit fog, a detour that took us about half an hour our of our way, rain, and stopped at Flying J for fuel and propane, it took us almost five hours.

The detour was particularly frustrating because we hit the same detour on our way north in the spring, so we went online before we headed south to try to find out if the road was open. A small bridge was being replaced, and it was supposed to have taken 45 days starting sometime in the spring. There was no mention of any delays, so we erroneously assumed the bridge was open. Had we known it wasn't, we could have found our own alternate route that would have been more direct or would have at least been on a better road than where the detour took us.

We finally arrived at the FMCA camping area located at their mail sorting facility on the eastern side of Cincinnati. There are 15 or 16 full hookup campsites plus about 15 more electric-only, overflow sites. Camping for FMCA members is free for up to two nights and $20 a night after that.

FMCA recommends calling ahead to make sure there are sites available because they occasionally have special events there. When we did that a few days prior we found out the FMCA Executive Board meeting would be going on when we planned to stop, and most of the full hookup sites would be taken. There would likely be plenty of electric-only sites available, but we wanted to arrive early to make sure we didn't miss out. As it turned out, several of the board menbers had opted for electric-only sites, so there were still two full hookup sites left when we arrived.

All the sites at FMCA are back-ins. The overflow sites are lined up close together on a parking lot.

Electric-only overflow sites

The full hookup sites are fairly widely spaced. There are wide, paved pads and nice grass between the sites. Electric is 50 amps, and there is free Wi-Fi that is nice and fast. The camping area also has a strong Verizon 4G signal.

Our full hookup site at FMCA

View down the road past our site

The free campground is a nice perk for FMCA members. The down side is all the sites are back-ins, so you have to unhook your toad. They apparently didn't have quite enough room to make the sites pull-throughs. The other minor negative is the campground is located in a light industrial area, and there is a lot of traffic noise from trucks during the day; but the good points far outweigh the bad - especially since it's free.

On Friday morning, we unhooked the utilities, hooked up the toad and got going shortly after 9:00 a.m. The drive to Nashville was a little over 5 hours, but we gained an hour going into the Central Time Zone, so we arrived at Nashville Country RV Park shortly after 1:00 local time. Our preference for camping in the Nashville area is for one of the COE campgrounds, but with the government shut-down that was in place when we made our travel plans, a COE campground was not an option this trip.

Nashville Country RV is located about 15 miles north of Nashville in Goodlettsville, TN. There are about 100 sites, and about half are pull-throughs and most of the rest are back-ins. We got one of the 5 sites in front of the campground that are "head-ins." They are for motor homes and you pull into the site frontwards. We ended up there because those are considered their "satellite-friendly" sites.

Our "head-in" site at Nashville Country RV

View of our row from the rear

Most of the sites at Nashville Country RV are full-hookup, although there are a few that are water and electric only. About half the full-hookup sites are 30 amps and the rest are 30/50 amps.

The roads are paved, but they are very narrow as are most of the sites. Ours was supposedly a premium site, and we still barely had room to park our car between us and the motor home next to us. The pads are gravel, and some sites have wood-deck patios. A few of the pull-throughs, like the ones shown in the photo below, were a little more roomy than ours, but satellite reception was a little iffy because of trees.

Other premium pull-through sites

Nashville Country RV also has free cable and free Wi-Fi. Even though we were near the office and had a strong signal, the system was pretty slow most of the time because the campground was full for the weekend. Fortunately, there is a very strong Verizon 4G signal in the area, so we used that when the campground system bogged down.

The one thing Nashville Country RV has is plenty of traffic noise. It is sandwiched between busy U.S. Highway 31 in front and I-65 behind. Our site was in the front, and U.S. 31 ran about 20 feet behind our rig. Fortunately, 31 quiets down somewhat after dark, but the trucks on the interstate whine all night.

The nightly price for our three-day stay for a premium 50-amp site was around $38. That included tax and a 10% discount (Good Sam, AAA, FMCA, AARP).

When we scheduled our stop in the Nashville area, it wasn't because we had any major sightseeing planned there. It's just that we don't like to travel more than two days in a row, and we don't like to travel on weekends if we don't have to. Nashville happened to be conveniently located about the right distance from Berlin, OH for a two-day drive, so we stopped there for the weekend. Just because we didn't plan our stop around sightseeing doesn't mean we didn't do any. We'll let you know what we found in our next post.

Winding Down in Amish Country

Berlin, OH - Events of Friday, October 11 to Wednesday, October 16, 2013

As we neared the end of our time in Ohio's Amish Country, we wanted to have the breakfast buffet at Der Dutchman one more time, so we headed there on Friday morning. The weather forecast was calling for beautiful weather through Saturday, and we could already tell it was going to be a busy tourist weekend in Berlin because the campground started filling up around Wednesday. The restaurant was also more crowded than it was when we were there on the previous Friday, and that was another sign it was going to be a busy weekend.

Margery was tempted to have the pumpkin pancakes that were on the menu for October, but we both ended up having the breakfast buffet.

Paul ready to dig in

After breakfast, we needed to make another stop at Walnut Creek Cheese to pick up some chicken we forgot to get when we were there a couple of days prior. We also stopped again at Winesburg Meats for more smoked sausage patties and beef snack sticks for the freezer.

After that, we made our way to the Holmes County Flea Market, which is the closest of the two area flea markets. It is so close we can see it from our site at Scenic Hills.

View of Holmes County Flea Market from Scenic Hills RV Park

Both the area flea markets have mostly new merchandise. There are a lot of decorative items, most of which have a country theme, and quite a few hand made crafts. Paul especially liked the cane shaped like a hand saw shown in the next photo. He hopes he never needs a cane, but if he does, he wants one of these.

Cane shaped like a hand saw

After the flea market, we headed back to the motor home to relax the rest of the day. On Saturday, we went to Walmart to stock up on a few groceries prior to our scheduled Monday departure.

There is an antique mall, a craft mall and an assortment of other small stores in a shopping area right across the main road from the campground. One of the shops is Ms. Gadgets, which sells kitchen accessories. We need new place mats, so headed over there after lunch to see if they had anything we might like. The main road was wall-to-wall traffic in both directions, so we decided walk.

Ms. Gadgets kitchen accessories

Unfortunately, they didn't have any place mats, but Margery enjoyed looking at some of the kitchen gadgets. Some were very clever, but many were also very specialized. When you live in an RV, you need to make do with things that serve multiple functions to save weight and space, so we escaped without buying anything.

Margery checking out kitchen gadgets

Our original plan was to leave Berlin on Monday and begin heading south. The reason for that was we expected the weather to be turning considerably colder by that time. Having been born and raised nearby in Pittsburgh, we knew there is a good chance there will be at least a light frost by the first week of October. However, this year, the highs have been in the 60s and 70s and the lows have been in the 40s and 50s the whole time we were in Berlin. Late Sunday afternoon, the warmer than usual weather combined with how much we like being in Berlin caused us to to rethink our plans to leave on Monday. We decided to stay in Berlin a few days longer - even if it meant we had to change sites at the campground.

We headed down to the office bright and early on Monday morning. Fortunately, our site was available for three more nights, which is exactly how long we wanted to stay, so we didn't even have to move.

Around mid-morning on Monday, Paul decided to drive down to Keim Lumber in the nearby town of Charm just to have a look around their huge selection of hardware, tools and specialty items.

Keim Lumber

Keim Lumber is a big home and building center that caters to DIYers and professionals alike. Paul especially likes to look around their selection of exotic hardwoods.

Paul checking out some of the exotic hardwoods

In addition to woods from all over the world, they also have special slabs of burls and other highly-prized, figured wood. The slabs in the next photo are 2 to 3 inches thick and 5 to 6 feet long. The cheapest Paul saw was domestic walnut for $700, and prices ranged all the way up to to around $6,000. The one in the front of the stack in the next photo is curly koa from Hawaii. It was $4,600.

Slabs of highly-figured wood

Slabs set up to demonstrate their use as tables

We relaxed around the campground on Tuesday. Wednesday was a dreary, rainy day, but we ran a few errands. Afterward, we relaxed around the motor home and did a few of our pre-daparture chores prior to heading south the following morning. We'll tell you where we went in our next post.

Relaxing in Ohio Amish Country

Berlin, OH - Events of Monday, October 7 to Wednesday, October 9, 2013

On Monday, we ran a few errands and then hung around the motor home most of the rest of the day. On Tuesday, we ran a few more errands and drove some back roads on the way back. Even though it was a little cloudy, we enjoyed seeing the many picturesque farms like the one shown below.

Amish farm

A lot of the farms in the area are dairy farms in keeping with the Swiss heritage of many of the early Amish and Menonite settlers. Also in keeping with that heritage, there are several places that make cheese. We ended up driving past Heini's Cheese, which is one of the local cheese houses, where we saw empty milk cans being loaded into a truck. Although we didn't stop in at Heini's this time, we have stopped many times in the past. Not only can you sample almost every kind of cheese they make, you can also watch cheese being made during the week. To read one of our earlier posts about cheese making at Heini's and to see photos, click here.

Loading milk cans at Heini's Cheese

Although we had already stopped at Walnut Creek Cheese when we first arrived in Berlin, that stop was just a quick one to pick up some cheese curds and a small bag of sugar-free candy for snacks. By Wednesday, Margery had time to come up with a fairly long shopping list of bulk spices and meats she wanted to get at Walnut Creek Cheese, so we decided to head there in the morning. We had a couple of stops to make along the way. The first was at Der Dutchman Bakery for some cream-filled donuts for an after-breakfast breakfast.

The clouds from earlier on Tuesday had cleared, and a fellow was buzzing overhead in an ultralight taking advantage of the beautiful morning.

Ultralight buzzing overhead at Der Dutchman

In addition to scrumptious-looking pies and cookies on the shelves in the bakery, there were rows of breakfast pastries in the display case. The donuts we like are called cream sticks. They are the long ones on second shelf up from the bottom in the next photo. They are filled with a light, fluffy cream filling that's not overly sweet and that is never gritty. They are topped with different flavors of icing, which are (left to right) peanut butter, caramel (our favorite), chocolate, vanilla and strawberry (not shown).

Breakfast pastries

After we finished our cream sticks, we decided to be extra bad and split an apple fritter. They are about 8 inches in diameter and chocked full of apple chunks. Yum.

Apple fritter

From the bakery, we headed along back roads to our second stop at Sugar Valley Meats in Sugar Creek. Sugar Valley Meats has a delicious ham loaf mix that we were hungry for, so we picked some up for the freezer.

Sugar Valley Meats

We then headed back to Walnut Creek Cheese.

Walnut Creek Cheese

Walnut Creek Cheese has an excellent meat department. We do most of our shopping at Walmart, but the one thing we are unhappy with at Walmart is their meats, so we usually take advantage of an opportunity to stock up when we get to a place like the Berlin area that has so much variety available at reasonable prices.

Walnut Creek Cheese also has an extensive selection of bulk-packed herbs, spices and dry mixes. Prices are a fraction of what they are in the regular grocery stores.

Margery checking out the selection of herbs and spices

Now that the weather is cooler, we frequently take Freeway along on our outings, especially if we will be out of the car only for short periods. We also like to let Freeway get out to stretch his legs and experience new smells once in a while. After he got to sniff all around the parking lot at Walnut Creek Cheese, we stopped for him to pose for a photo on a small farm wagon that was sitting along the edge of the parking lot.

Freeway the farm boy

After Walnut Creek Cheese, we headed back to the motor home where we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We had a few more outings planned while we were in Berlin, so look for our next post.