A Memorable Thanksgiving Day

We left Memphis on Thanksgiving morning, heading due south into Mississippi. This route was about 1 to 1-1/2 hours longer than our original plan, but it was just far enough east to keep us away from the strong storms predicted for Little Rock.

Paddington was a little disappointed about having to travel on Thanksgiving Day, she was looking forward to Turkey!  She settled in between Dennis' seat and the slide-out wall.

We made a good choice and stayed clear of the storms by going south on I-55 to Winona, Mississippi and then taking Route 82 across southern Arkansas. It was sunny and in the 80’s most of the day and we enjoyed seeing families gathering in their lawnchairs, sitting outside after their Thanksgiving dinner.

One town we passed through in Arkansas had a drive-through liquor store called the Buzz-Thru.  We thought that was appropriate.
We were headed to Texarkana, TX and finally made it there around 5:00. By the time we got checked in and set up at the RV park, Thanksgiving dinner sounded pretty good to us. We went out in search of a restaurant that was open. Nothing!! We had been on the road 10 hours and now couldn’t even find a McDonald’s that was open. We stopped at a gas station that had a little deli in it. I asked the lady what was the best thing to choose. I told her that this was going to be our Thanksgiving dinner and that we’d been on the road all day. She looked at us with an apologetic look and said, ‘Well, honey, I guess the catfish is the freshest thing I’ve got.’ So catfish it was, along with hush puppies, fried okra, and some things like corn fritters. She gave us a wink and whispered, ‘I gave you extra but don’t say anything.’ I guess she felt sorry for us. We’ve had some memorable holiday meals on the road before, so this one just adds to our list.

We stayed in Texarkana for several days, not wanting to travel on the weekend after Thanksgiving.  We tried to visit a couple museums but because of the Thanksgiving holiday, they were closed.  We did visit the Post Office in Texarkana, which is the subject of many photographs because one side is in Texas, and one side is in Arkansas.  State Line Avenue was interesting to drive on, as one side (Texas) was dry (no alcohol), but on the other side of the street (Arkansas) bars were plentiful.  This photo was taken in front of the Post Office. Dennis has one foot in Texas and one foot in Arkansas.

It's Always Something...

Finally it was Friday of our second week in Indiana and our coach was ready! We picked it up in Bremen and were on the road by 11:00, heading south toward Kentucky.  We drove about 225 miles and found a campground about 30 miles north of Louisville, KY that was semi-open.  We stopped there for the night, got some groceries at a nearby Wal-Mart and settled in for the night. Life was good!  The next morning when we brought in the large living room slide - - life was not so good!!  It’s a flat slide and it wouldn’t quite make it up the ramp to close.  Many tries, many angry looks, a few angry words, but nothing worked.  Finally, with the help of a prybar, we got the slide in and instead of heading south to Kentucky, we had to backtrack to Bremen to have this problem fixed.  We were not happy campers!!  To make matters worse, it was Saturday, so they wouldn’t be able to work on it until Monday.  So it was back to our Indiana ‘home’ – parked at Newmar again for the weekend.  We could have parked at Precision Painting in Bremen but it’s nicer at Newmar.  We had to spend the weekend with the large living room slide retracted because we didn’t want to have to use the prybar again to get it in. We have two living room slides, so we weren’t too cramped, just a little inconvenienced.

On Monday we were at Precision Painting bright and early and they did some adjustments and modifications and again sent us on our way around 11:00 again.  That night we stayed at the same RV park we had stayed at on Friday night. (Didn’t want to be too far away from Bremen – just in case.)  So on Tuesday morning, with fingers crossed, we closed up the slides without a problem and 3 days and 450 miles off our schedule, we finally crossed into Kentucky.

Our original plan was to spend 3 or 4 days touring the Bourbon Trail, a part of central Kentucky where there are several bourbon distilleries not too far from one another.  You pick up a Passport at the first distillery and have it stamped as you visit each one. Once you have visited the distilleries on the Trail, you get a special T-shirt showing your accomplishment.  Sounded like fun to us!  Some of the distilleries are large and modern, others are small family-owned ones that haven’t changed much over the years.

 Unfortunately, because of losing 3 travel days, we were closing in on Thanksgiving and also cold weather was closing in on this region – fast.  So we readjusted our plans and decided to head south and hit the Bourbon Trail in the spring.

We stopped just north of Memphis at the Mid-South Regional Naval base, where they had a small but nice FamCamp.  After checking the weather, we decided to spend Tuesday night and Wednesday here and travel on Thanksgiving day, when the traffic should be light.  Bad weather was predicted for Little Rock, Arkansas, which was to be our travel route. 

Sightseeing In Amish Country

The best part of this week was driving around the countryside taking in the sights of the Amish farms and schools. We stopped at a couple Amish businesses, one was Yoder’s Popcorn. Of course we had to sample and purchase some of their delicious popcorn.  Here's a photo taken outside an Amish one-room schoolhouse.  Many bicycles and buggies filled the yard.

One thing that surprised us was to see so many Amish and Mennonite families in the local restaurants at night. I’m sure the food they serve in their homes was much better than the restaurant meals we had!

Week 1 - Year 2 of our Escape from Winter

We left home Saturday, November 5th, after what seemed like weeks of packing, checking lists, more packing, double-checking lists, and still more packing.  The weather was cool and overcast and we were full of anticipation of what this year’s trip would bring us.


This was our second winter of traveling to what we hoped would be warmer weather. Last year, the weather proved to be cooler than we had hoped, we even got snowed in on Christmas Eve in Abilene, Texas, unable to spend the evening with Ryan and Crystal who lived less than 10 miles from our RV park.


Our first day on the road went very smoothly.  We traveled most of the day on Interstates but we got off I-84 in Northern New York and took the scenic Delaware Water Gap road from Matamoras New York to East Stroudsburg, PA.  It’s a bit slower but by this time of the day, we welcomed the slower pace and it’s a good connecting route to I-80 in PA. We spent our first night at Silver Valley Campsites in southeastern Pennsylvania. The second day was spent on I-80 – all day!  We couldn’t find a campground that was open so we spent our 2nd night at a Wal-Mart in Ashland, Ohio.  It was a large Wal-Mart, but we parked in the side lot where it was very quiet. We had a good night’s sleep and were on the road by 9:00 Monday morning.



We arrived in Bremen, Indiana around 12:30 on Monday and went straight to Precision Painting to talk to them about replacing our living room carpet with hard flooring. The next two weeks were spent waiting, first for the flooring material to be ordered, then for it to be installed.

We spent the first week parked at the Newmar Corporation in Nappanee, just up the road from Bremen.  Newmar is the manufacturer of our coach and they offer complimentary hookups for their customers.  We are familiar with the Nappanee area since we spent several days here in April. It’s a very pretty and quaint town, and has one of the largest Amish communities in Indiana. You quickly get used to seeing the horse and buggy teams on the roads and parked at the stores.

We took a tour of the manufacturing process at Newmar, even though we had taken the tour in April. This tour was much shorter than the tour we took in April so I’m glad we had seen the longer tour.  Our tour was on a Friday afternoon and most of the workers had already left for the day. They work in teams and when their work for the day is done, they can go home. The workforce at Newmar is 85% Amish and they produce very high quality coaches.

We spent the second week in a Best Western in Goshen, about 20 miles from where our coach was having the floor replaced. The Best Western allowed dogs in the rooms so that was the deciding factor in choosing it.  All three of us were very happy to be back in our coach after staying in the motel.