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.

A Sputter Start to the Day

An interesting day today...sort of.  We woke up early this morning to a -5C temperature.  That's all well and good as we have heaters in the RV, but we had no water.  It was first noticed when we tried to flush the toilet in the middle of the night.  Oh oh.  Something froze.

After the sun came up, Gerard was able to determine it was the RV park's water tap that was frozen...and our short hose wasn't short of some ice in it either.  We make sure the pipes in the RV are fine by heating it (also heating us).  It wasn't long after the sun came up though the tap was fine and we finally had some water.

So we're all packed up and ready to go and I commented to Gerard the one tire on the RV seems awfully flat.  So we got out the handy-dandy tire pressure gauge, and sure enough - only 12 psi, when it should be 50 psi!  We have dual axles, so we pulled it up to the front office area, and the guy there was very helpful.  He had a compressor, and used it to put air in the tire.  Then gave us directions to Discount Tire about 11 miles down the interstate.

We found it easily and within 45 minutes, they jacked up the RV, took the tire off and checked it, put some sealant around the rim and replaced the valve stem, put it back on, and they made sure all the tires were good, and we were off again.  Best part...NO CHARGE!  And, if we have a problem with that tire again, we take it to another Discount Tire and they'll fix it free of charge.  Great deal, and we will definitely use them again...perhaps to purchase new tires for the RV and get rid of these "Chinese tires" (no offence, but they're not known for quality).

So off we went.  Within the first hour, we drove by Fort Worth and Dallas.

S

Just one of several spaghetti junctions.

 I've been to DFW airport a couple of times, but I didn't need directions to it. 

They like to name their roads after Texas Presidents.

But I bet our neighbour didn't know they'd named a road after her!

And now we're in Bossier City, Louisiana (burb of Shreveport).

We're staying at an RV park right next to a casino.  So we thought we'd check it out...and wish we hadn't.

This is how Tibby likes to stay warm.







Tomorrow we're off to Mississippi...finally through with Texas for a long while!

Texas Texas Texas

Another day of driving, and another night...in Texas.

After last night's ice storm, we delayed our departure this morning until about 10 a.m. to make sure the sun had a chance to melt any residual ice and snow on the roads.  As you can see, we have ice and icicles on our equipment.

Yep, that's snow in them thar fields.

And on the side of the road.

It was a beautiful day today for driving, clear and sunny.  Finally got up to 6C.  But this is why we got off the road early last night, and didn't venture out too early this morning.  This was the 8th semi turnover we saw today.

We saw tons of these windmills in a certain section.

We only stopped at the Walmart for some groceries in, "Abilene, Abilene, prettiest town I've ever seen,  Women there don't treat you mean, in Abilene, my Abilene."  Doesn't it just make you hum the tune?

Why is it there are so many songs about Texas or Texas towns?  Hmmm.

We're making tracks.  We will pass by Fort Worth and Dallas within the first hour tomorrow morning, and will be into Louisiana shortly after that.  No plans to stop except for one-nighters until we get into Alabama.  Then we'll take a bit of a hiatus.