Four Cracker Barrels in a row...and a farewell to longtime friend

Tonight we are in a Cracker Barrel just above the Indiana state line in Michigan.  We have had two lunches in a row with Marcia's cousins, each at Cracker Barrel.  In fact, this is going to be our fourth Cracker Barrel in row...but two nights in  RV park starting Thursday.  We had AWESOME visits with cousins of Marcia on her mother's side.  I have come to learn a LOT about her upbringing, her Greek Heritage, and oh, the list is long...  Sure glad to have met Byron and wife Jennifer yesterday in Indiana, and Connie and Jim today in Battle Creek, and especially for the latter two for driving all the way over from the Detroit area today to meet us!  We had a great time and great visits with all.

Today as we started up the tire pressure sensor to leave Cracker Barrel after lunch, we immediately got a low tire reading...this time the inner tire on passenger's side. We were a mile from Discount Tire, and this Discount Tire had brass tire valve stems for inner dually tires!  I told the manager that the shop in Sacramento and the shop in Tennessee did not have them.  He said he got a stock of 30 of them a year or two ago just for situations like I faced.  At $4 each it was a deal, and no charge to put on since I had bought my tires from Discount Tires two years ago.  Not wanting to wait too long, and because work on the breaks is going to take place a week from today in Little Rock, I had him just put on the one, and the other will go on in Little Rock.  And I don't need any extensions for these inner tires any more!  Our tire problems are behind us!  And it only cost $8 and 90 minutes of our time!

We have had lots of communications with Phoenix, and today's text telling us that Joyce had passed away was expected...but still the news was a shock.  She walks into the Hospital on Thursday, and finds out for sure it is leukemia on Monday, and today she is gone.  We will miss her, but our faith tells us she is happy, in no pain, with her Lord and Savior, and with friends, family and loved ones who passed on before her.  Our prayers are for those she left behind that morn.  We plan to be in Phoenix for the service in a few weeks.

In Indiana – HUGE change of plans

First we were going to go up the coast…got to Savanah and realized winter is the time to visit the southern east coast.



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…

Family Time

I was so tired yesterday, I failed to say where we were staying.  In Peculiar Missouri there is one RV Park called Peculiar Park Place.  There are many monthly or long-term stay RVs, but they are all in good condition, many with underpinning to keep them from freezing during the cold winters.  There are 14 sites in the back which do not have water year around, and don’t have sewer.  This is where we were, but that is good because it is further away from the noise of the Interstate.

   

It is a nice park, and if I was to have business in the KC area, I would probably stay here…except my Aunt and cousins are in Blue Springs.  Since my son is in Overland Park, Kansas, this was a good place to stay, and kept us from having to drive through heavy KC traffic when we leave on Monday.

    

Around noon we headed over to my Aunt Vera’s house in Blue Springs.  She married my mother’s brother, Harold, who passed away 14 years ago.  Her son (my cousin) Donald, who is my age, and his wife Sheri were visiting from California (along with one daughter, son-in-law and three grandkids).  Her oldest daughter, Cassie and her husband Rick, were there, but they also live in Blue Springs.  Vera’s oldest child, David, has a daughter who lives in Independence, and this was the first time I had met her, or second if I met her when she was a young child.  David is my oldest brother Jim’s age, and that was the name mom and dad were going to give him until Vera named her first child David, who was born just a few months before Jim.  So “I” got the name David three children later.

We took some indoor Tulips over, and came back home with some freshly baked bread that Cassie had made…she learned from the expert, her father, who was a master bread maker…as is she.  In fact, former KC Chief’s running back Kimble Anders lived just a few houses away from Harold and Vera, and every time he scored in a game, Harold would take freshly baked bread over to them. 

We now have 1,200 miles to go to get to Phoenix by Wednesday.  Not sure how far we will get tomorrow, but hope to make it at least to the Texas/Kansas boarder…perhaps as far as Tucumcari, New Mexico.  Either way, Monday and Tuesday will be long travel days, with a shorter day on Wednesday.  I just hope we don’t have any more  new weather events, because we have faced humid warmth in Florida, rain in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, hail in Arkansas, and sustained wind and cold in Missouri.  Although it did not snow where we are, it did snow in parts of Blue Springs Saturday night.  Outside of “heat”, about the only new weather left are fog, tornadoes and hurricanes…none of which sounds very good to us.