Home

We arrived home yesterday afternoon, safe and sound (well, I think we're sound).  No incidences at the border or anywhere else.

Thank you to all who have read this blog.  I do appreciate it!

Toledo

We're staying just outside Toledo, Ohio, tonight.  We could have made it home, but it would have been a really llllloooooonnnnnngggggg day.  We don't need that.

We ate at a restaurant near us, and we couldn't help but note the item in the bottom right corner (sorry for the shadow).  And only people who attend our wing nights would get the "joke".

We will be home tomorrow, barring any unfortunate circumstances.

Into the North

We've arrived in Louisville, Kentucky.  We're done with our RV for this trip.  Even though it's not as cold as it was in Texas, it's very difficult to find RV parks in the north that are open, for obvious reasons.

And yes, we're now officially in the north...sort of.  Kentucky is considered central, but we're in the north part of Kentucky at the Ohio River, meaning we border the states to the north of Kentucky.

We've been in 3 states today...we left Alabama...then...

...then...

Guntown Mountain?

And, we are back in the eastern time zone.

Snow piled up!  Eek!!!

With a very long drive, we could make it home by tomorrow night, but it's not worth it.  We expect to be staying around Toledo, Ohio, tomorrow night.  That makes 2 easy days of driving.

U.S. Space & Rocket Center

The 2nd reason we stayed in this area was to go to the space museum in Huntsville.  NASA used this space center as one of their bases.  Wernher von Braun, who developed the Saturn V rocket worked here and guided President Kennedy through the center.

This Space Shuttle, called Pathfinder, was used as a test vehicle for the shuttle program.  It's sitting outside the center.

 Part of the museum is dedicated to all the human inventions that have made a real difference in human life.  Wikipedia, invented by Jimmy Wales, is one of those inventions - and he's a Huntsville native.

A whole section is dedicated to the Apollo program, of course, since the Saturn V rocket was developed here, and that's what made the Apollo program.

 This is a Saturn V rocket - in sections - fully contained on its side in this building.

This is the actual space capsule of the Apollo 16 mission.  It's missing bits of the exterior tiles from the atmosphere burn.

And this is the parachute that helped it land safely in the ocean.

Here is a real moon rock and its specs, not a pebble like what was in the Pima Museum.

We also saw an IMAX movie about the journey to space and a bit about the Orion program, which is all about getting a human to Mars.  They're working on it and expect it to happen in the 2030s.

It's a terrific museum and a great facility for education.  There were lots of kids there with their classes, but we expect that's the case pretty much every day.  A nice find in Huntsville, Alabama...who knew?

Who Lost Their Luggage?

It is absolutely unbelievable what some people leave on airplanes, or what the airlines lose.  I read about this place in an RV magazine not long before we left on our trip.  So we thought we would check it out on our way home from Arizona.

As the sign below says, it's the Unclaimed Baggage Center.  This place has deals with the airlines to ship all found baggage/items to them after the airlines have made a 3-month attempt to find owners.  A lot goes on sale here, some is given to "3rd world" countries, some is thrown out, and some is given to charity.  And possibly some used to be yours!  You can probably read all about it on their website.  It's the only such place in the country, and it's right here in Scottsboro, Alabama.

 This troll guy was in a movie.  He's not for sale, but you encounter him when you walk into this place.  He was left on a plane.

I didn't walk through this area, but it's the formal wear section, including wedding dresses.  How do you leave your wedding dress on a plane?  (Or maybe it was just lost?  Or maybe it was on purpose?)

It is quite the place...like a huge department store.  You can find anything from underwear to formal wear, electronics (bought an iPad 1 for $60), cameras galore, some sporting goods, jewellery (both costume and real), sunglasses, and on and on.

We were there so long (after buying a bunch of stuff), it was 1:30 when we left.  We were starving.  I got out my phone to check on TripAdvisor for a place to have lunch in Scottsboro.  The #2 rated place was this one, called Sky Toppers.  It was way out of town, but hey, we had nothing else to do.  Supposed to have very good pizza.  And the reason for the name is because it is on top of a big hill.

Well, the pizza was good.  They had Chicago style deep dish as well, but we didn't want to wait that long (35-40 minutes) for the pizza, so we just got the thin crust.  Beforehand, we had ordered a spinach dip.  Probably the best spinach dip I have ever had, and the home made chips to go with it were so yummy.  I think they were made from corn flour, and deep fried.

They had a special on Monday where an appetizer, pizza and dessert were $20 (and we shared it all).  The dessert was this "piece" of cake.  Even if for 2, it was humungous!  That's a regular size take-out carton - 8x8 and maybe 4" deep.  There's no way we could eat it - we couldn't even finish the pizza since we devoured the spinach dip and chips.

Tomorrow we head into Huntsville to check out the Space Center.

Another Day, Another Drive

We left Meridian, Mississippi, this morning, heading for Woodville, Alabama, tonight.  It wouldn't have been too long a drive, but we wanted to go to Camping World south of Birmingham as we needed to replace our power cord to the RV.  It must have shorted out due to rain, or a power surge, or something, and the connection burnt, so wouldn't work properly any more.  Walmart has some RV stuff, but not what we were looking for.

We went about 20 minutes out of our way, one way.  But that's OK.  We had time.  We got what we needed, and went back north as far as Huntsville, Alabama, then east on a US highway to our destination.  We're here for 3 nights as we have a couple of things to see in this area.

Heading into Alabama.

I thought this town should have an 'F' on the end.  (Only people from the Orillia area would get this.) Eutawf.

This is one of the reasons we're here - the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

We're staying in Woodville which is about half way between Huntsville and Scottsboro.  So I'll let you know how our sight-seeing goes over the next couple of days.

Back to some Warmth in the East?

Last night in Bossier City (pronounced Bo-szer), we stayed beside this nice river.  The point of the picture though isn't the river, it's the railroad bridge.  Just before 11 p.m. (after I was sleeping), a friggin' loud TOOT, TOOT, TOOT!!!  And then listening to the engines go over the bridge was not the quietest thing in the world.  Fortunately we didn't hear them often in the night.

Last night we were in Louisiana, and tonight we're in Mississippi, after a 5-hour drive.  I've noticed that 10 miles on one side of the state line, most of the car licence plates say "Louisiana".  10 miles the other side of the state line, most car licence plates say "Mississippi".  That happens everywhere!  Why is that?  Did the others just disappear?  Hmmmm.

We've crossed back into the "East", so to speak - east of the Mississippi River.  Of course the river is the state line between the two.

We stopped at the Mississippi Welcome Center (sp:(  ) which was a very nice spot overlooking the river.

I took this picture of the sign showing the highway to Memphis.  We were on that highway last year when we went from Biloxi to Memphis.  Our paths are criss-crossing.

So tonight we're near Meridian, Mississippi.  The name Meridian is deemed to be synonymous with "junction" where many trains intersected in times gone by.  It was 18C when we got here.  Yippee!  It's funny that Texas was the coldest area we were through.

We have one more day of driving then we'll take a couple days off.  By the way, the tire has held up, so the sealant seems to have done the trick.