Onward to Michigan! Days 1-4

Saturday, May 31, 2014  

The day has finally arrived!  We finished with all the last minute details, consulting many lists, checking things twice.  After putting the majority of the last minute “ might as well take this with us too” items ( of which probably all shoulda-coulda been left at home, we headed out for our Big Adventure.

Ready to take off!

After about a 5 hour drive, we arrived at Fair Harbor RV Park in Perry, Georgia and met with 14 other rigs from The Villages RV club, for that all-important “happy hour".  A dinner of pulled pork sandwiches was catered by the local Oakwood Grill.

We met a lot of new people, and we all called it a night.

Sunday, June 1^st,2014

The first week's travel is all about the destination. Michigan. We have heard how breathtaking it is, so we are excited to get there.   I won’t bore you with a lot of details regarding our days of just driving, but will enter some information in order to jog our ever-declining memories for our own personal musings.

Today’s destination was Best Holiday Trav-L-Park in Chattanooga, TN.  which took another 5 hours or so.

Chattanooga was never on my “ Places to See “ radar, but after a brief web browsing, I found there were some very interesting things to see and do.  Since it was after 2PM when we arrived, choosing which one was tough. Exercise was definitely in order .So many options. Would it be the Aquarium?   Lookout Mountain? ( we LOVE lookouts )  Check out the Underground City?  The Underground waterfall?  Oh my- Paragliding!  Now that definitely is on my bucket list! I will eventually, someday, risk life and limb for that experience, but not at the BEGINNING of a trip! How dumb would THAT be?

Internet photo.  I would love to come back to mountain bike
these trails! Awesome!

With the help of the receptionist at the campground, we decided on Raccoon Mountain.  We were told it was only 10 miles away, and had trails with some views (although she admitted she had never been there). We quickly grabbed our gear and jumped into the car. It was much further than we were told, but the ride to the Visitor's Center was pretty neat with it's steep, winding, heavily wooded roads.  

Raccoon Mountain, we found, is more about being a huge electrical power plant.  The Raccoon Mountain project is TVA’s ( Tennessee Valley Authority ) largest hydroelectric facility. During low demand, water is pumped to the reservoir on top of the mountain. Then when the demand for electricity is high, the water is dropped 990 feet via a tunnel drilled though the center of the mountain. This drives the  generators in the underground power plant creating the electricity.

.I had never seen such huge transformers up close!  Nor did I ever have the desire to bombard my body with such an electromagnetic field. ( some folks told us it made their hair stand up. I wonder if that is true. ) While in the woods we came across signs warning against walking on the high voltage cable trays buried underground. Plus, the “hum” of the transformers diminished the “out in nature” experience. Probably not the "healthy experience" we were looking for.   Nevertheless, it felt fabulous to get the body moving. There was a lovely breeze, and the 4 mile hilly hike was a great first trip!

By the time we returned we had missed happy hour, but had a late dinner and took our tired bodies to bed.


Monday June 2nd and Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014

Everyone gathers at the end of the day

We spent each of the next two days driving about 5 hours.  Monday night we were at Renfro Valley RV Park in Mount Vernon Kentucky and today we are at the KOA Campground in Wapakoneta Ohio. At  4:30PM sharp we gather for appetizers, drinks, and conversation with our fellow travelers.

Nothing much happened other than our braking system for the car malfunctioning, which set us back a couple of hours.  With fantastic support from the manufacturer of this tow car braking system, a new unit will be shipped to our Thursday's destination FREE OF CHARGE! Boy, RVibrake really stands behind their product!  It was out of warranty, and at a retail price of $1350 this was a big deal.  We could have used the brakes going up down the Appalachian Mountains, but with Norm utilizing the engine brake we were fine.

Tonight we were able to enjoy the Happy Hour and then cooked dinner on our grill. Afterwards we started to play a board game outside when one of our travelling neighbors walked by so they joined us for a couple of hours of game playing.