Southern States Adventure Part IV

 

 We left Charleston this morning and drove through North Carolina to a campground just outside of Knoxville, TN.  We have two tours to take in Kentucky and chose to split them up into two days.  We’re staying at a campground tonight and our first attraction tomorrow morning will be the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY and from there we will head to our next Harvest Host destination – Country Boy Brewing.  Then on Monday, June 27 we’ll drive to check out the ARK encounter in Williamstown, KY.

6-26-22:  Just read the second headline of an earthquake from where we passed through yesterday.  There was one near Columbus, SC-3.4 magnitude.  The previous day there was a report of two 1.4 in another area nearby so I did some research and South Carolina has 10-15 quakes each year.  Maybe it is just me, but I didn’t think the east coast had earthquakes that often, if at all.

6-27-22:  We’ve spent the last 2 days touring the Creation Museum & the Ark Encounter.  Both places were fascinating-and the Ark was very impressive, but I highly recommend NOT going in the summer tourist season. There were too many people which somewhat detracted from the experience.  

We arrived at our Harvest Host for the night-Boundary Oak Distillery.  We missed the time for the tour, but Scott and I did do some whiskey tasting while the kids got the trailer set up and settled for the evening.  Our hostess-Linda recommended we check out the nearby Patton Museum and we’re very close to Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace, so we’ve added that to our docket tomorrow morning.  

We’re headed to a campground tomorrow just outside of Nashville to meet up with our friends from Missouri, but we can’t check in until 3:00 so we have time to kill before the 3-hour drive.

 

The kids said they were too old for this

So we showed them that you're never too old!

Harvest Host for the night

6-29-2022:  If you are ever in Kentucky, I highly recommend the General Patton Museum in Fort Knox.  It is a free museum that is not only about Patton but military history in general.  All 4 of us thoroughly enjoyed it and could have spent more time than the 2 hours we took going through it.  We met up with our friends yesterday and the boys are enjoying fishing the lake while the girls catch up.  Tomorrow we’ll visit Nashville and hit some spots recommended by a mutual friend.

Replica of Abe Lincoln's cabin

One of my favorite parts of Nashville was the live music in the different venues.  We had lunch at Rippy's Honky Tonk and then walked around Nashville.  At 4:00 when they opened, we visited a venue recommended to us called the Wild Horse Saloon that was family friendly.

Motley Cru-they were in town for a concert

 

7-1-2022:  We departed Tennessee and our friends today.  We exchanged children and Leah is going home with them to Missouri and their oldest son, a friend of Nolan’s, is returning to Rescue with us.  They fly back to CA on July 8^th in preparation for our annual camping trip with friends.  I decided to cancel our Harvest Host for the night and booked a campground in Alma, Arkansas that has power.  It’s another Corps of Engineer Lake-unfortunately since it is 4^th of July weekend they only allowed a 3 night minimum.  But given that their fee was $16 a night, and all other campground are full, I booked 3 nights since it was close to the same cost at an RV park for the night.   Hopefully it turns out to be a good place.  I’m a bit concerned as they still have 10 spots left for the weekend!

7-1-22:  (Evening):  Whew. Other than mosquitos and the only access to the lake is via the boat ramp, this place is perfect, and I’m surprised there aren’t more people here for the 4^th of July.  

7-2-22:  Today we drove from Arkansas to Kansas via Oklahoma.  Both Arkansas and Oklahoma were on the states needed to check off our lists.  Unfortunately, Leah will have to get those 2 states on her own.  This is the first road trip I can recall where Scott relied 100% on his Google Maps and because of that we were detoured quite a few times to save us time when accidents or slow downs came up and for a majority of our trip we travelled roads that we may not have if we stuck with the interstate or major highways.  

One of the attractions we would have missed occurred in Oklahoma.  We rerouted due to road construction or accident-I can’t recall which one.  As we were driving down the 2 lane country road I noticed a sign with the name 'Drummond' running for some local political office.  I began to think to myself...Drummond, isn’t that the Pioneer Woman’s last name?  Isn't’ she from Oklahoma?  So I looked to see where she was located and discovered we were 10 miles from Pawhuska, OK where she resides. 

I texted a friend of mine who has been a fan of the Pioneer Woman for years and told me about her bog. She insisted we MUST stop at her Mercantile.  I didn’t even know she had a shop.  So even though we had a booked, timed tour for a missile silo in Kansas, we took a brief detour and visited the town of Pawshuska, OK and stopped at the Mercantile.

7-3-22:  We arrived last night about 30 minutes until our tour of the missile silo began.  This was a great Harvest Host stop for the boys.  After the tour, I went to make dinner only to discover my main ingredients were moldy.  Plan B-we went to town for dinner at a place recommended by our host. Upon arrival, we were turned away due to a wedding party going on that night, but we thought, no big deal, there were 2 other restaurants next to each other, we’ll go to one of those.  Nope-all of them were impacted by the wedding so we were directed to a place down the road called the Snack Shack.  Basically like a Foster Freeze.  It satisfied the teens boys so we filled them up and returned to get a good nights sleep.

We left Wilson, Kansas this morning with the goal to stop in Rawlins, WY for the night.  But we hit a major detour less than 4 hours into our route.  As we were driving, we were talking about how horrible some of the roads were along this trip and which states had the best roads.  The conversation came up because we were on I-70 and the road was really bumpy-sounding as if we were driving on the rumble strip and the boys even accused Scott of driving on it-to which he moved over to drive on it and it actually sounded worse than the road.  After a few miles of this awful sound, we heard a grinding noise, so Scott pulled off at the nearest exit that just happened to have a rest stop. 

After exiting the truck, expecting to see a flat tire on the rim, we saw nothing wrong, but Scott felt the rest stop didn’t have much room to take the tire off to look.  He was thinking the bearings had an issue.  We left the rest stop and crossed the overpass to what appeared to be a gas station that looked abandoned.  The pumps still had fuel but the market had a sign saying it was closed and that restrooms were across the way at the rest stop.  Scott walked around the area to figure out the best place to park the vehicle and we ended up parking behind the gas station, in front of what looked like an abandoned motel but there were several cars parked in front. From the time he left the rest stop until he parked behind the gas station, he’d determined it was probably the bearings and told me that we would not make it to Rawlins tonight. 

While Scott and the boys began setting up the trailer & unhitching the truck, I contacted the campground in Rawlins as well as the campground in Wells, Nevada to move our reservations and praise the Lord both had opening the previous nights (it was 4^th of July weekend after all) and both camp hosts were very accommodating.

As Scott and the boys were setting up, a man came from the motel who had an accent I couldn’t place and began speaking with Scott about the truck.  Then several more men came from the motel and collaboratively they helped remove Scott’s tire and the shattered bearings and told him to call the Napa Auto store 11 miles away.  By the time Scott called the store, it was closed, so it appears we are stuck here tonight, but one of the men said he’d run Scott into town tomorrow for the part.  These men are farm hands that work the farm equipment and the man who first spoke to Scott-Justin-is the main farm mechanic.  So it looks like were camping here for the night in Arriba, Colorado and thankfully we refilled our propane tank for the generator-we’ll need it for the air conditioning.  It’s hot here!

7-4-22:  Whew!  We made it to Rawlins even if we are a day late.  This morning when Scott called Napa-they would not open until 10 am.  We were just grateful they were opened on the 4^th of July.  While we waited for 10 am, our new neighbors, who we discovered were from South Africa, brought us a ice & a bag of bottles of water, soda, Snapple and Gatorade for us.  Then 30 minutes later they came to the trailer with 4 plates filled with food for each of us: some BBQ chicken and pork and a rice dish with some type of sauce.  I wasn’t hungry but the boys devoured it and said it was delicious.  

Just before 10 am Justin took Scott to the auto parts store and they returned and hour later.  Justin and his gang helped Scott install the new bearings and get the tire back on the truck.  We thanked them all profusely for their help and hospitality and off we went with thankfully no more vehicle issues except for losing our radio.

7-6-22: We are home!  We have been gone 29 days, travelled through 16 states (some of them 2x) and travelled 7,615 miles.  I’m so glad I cleaned my house before we left because I’m exhausted.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We took a few days break when we returned home and then we began preparing for our annual camp trip with friends. We returned from that trip on July 17^th and have been slowly getting back into our routine.  That's it!  You finished our trip with us.  For those who stuck it out, thanks for reading.