Then the first of what has become three nights at three different Cracker Barrels in four days. This one was in South Carolina. Last night we stayed at a Cracker Barrel in eastern Tennessee. Tonight it is a Cracker Barrel in mid-Indiana. We had breakfast at the last two…tomorrow we are having lunch with a cousin of Marcias. But WAIT, what happened to the Smoky Mountains???
After getting into camp on Saturday, and my brief adventure to Cherokee to post the last, short blog, we slept all night during a nice, mild rain. Next day I decided to pull out and go back to Cherokee where we had Internet to catch church and so that Marcia could talk to her good friend in Phoenix who was in the hospital, and her daughter who was trying to sort everything out. A phone call Saturday and on Sunday gave us the word that it looked bad…probably Leukemia. So after church we headed out, figuring it was faster to go back to I-40 near Ashville than to travel over the Smoky Mountains in a a motorhome. Hence, the night at Cracker Barrel in Tennessee.
Even that plan did not go well for us. There is a rest area around the 7 mile marker in North Carolina where we pulled over for 10-15 minutes. Got down the road to the 4 mile marker and everything was at a stand still…and remained that way for 2 1/2 hours. Sometime while we were at the rest area, two trucks collided, turned over, and stopped up everything.
It took an hour for this update to hit the NCDOT website. Had we not had the ability, thanks to the new aircard, to sort out 4G and 3G, we might not have even seen this because the 4G, with a signal of 4 bars, was so overloaded you could not get anywhere. EVERYONE was on their smart phones clogging up the cell tower with 4G…but that same tower had 3G, and it was running smooth…so I switched the card to 3G mode and we enjoyed Internet, sitting on the highway, watched people go off into the woods from time to time, watching people walk up to the crash site just to run back when it started raining. For 2 1/.2 hours!!!!
According to a news account, a truck “lost” its trailer. Here is the trailer (left), and the cab slid down the roadway a bit and landed up against the barrier on the left side of the road. Did I mention the 2 1/2 hours wait on the highway????
So our plans are as follows: Visit Marcia’s cousins in Indiana and Michigan. Meeting one at this Cracker Barrel we pulled into tonight for a early lunch tomorrow. Then we move up 150 miles to Michigan to meet with another cousin tomorrow. Then make our way to Cedar Lake Indiana where we will have two nights of full hookups and meeting with the third cousin, one we saw back in 2012, on Friday night. Saturday we head for Arkansas where I have a Doctor’s Appointment on Thursday, and we are having the front brakes and new grease boots put on the front of the RV at the same place that did the work on the back brakes last October. After that we head for Phoenix…and that is as far as our plan goes for now outside of trying to fit another short visit in here and there along the way.
Of course, everything is subject to change…but you have to have a plan. Sometimes you don’t plan to pull over at a rest area…you don’t plan to call your sister’s house…you don’t get smashed by a truck which loses its trailer. It all is in someone’s hands who is greater than us…
