On the Road Again... To Tennessee

After several weeks of preparation and packing, we hit the road again on October 13.  I knew it was time to go because the day before we left, I saw some dark-eyed junco's at our kitchen birdfeeder.  Junco's are one of my favorite birds, but they are a sure sign of Winter in NH.

First night was spent at Walmart in Fishkill, New York.  We've stayed at this Walmart before and like it. It's only 300 miles from home so it gives us a short first day on the road. The back parking lot is shared with Sam's Club so there's lots of room.  Our second day took us through New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia. We spend the night at a Walmart in Woodstock, VA. It was a short walk through the parking lot to a Cracker Barrel for dinner.

  Woodstock, VA Walmart

This year, we left NH a couple weeks earlier than we usually do because we wanted to spend some time in Tennessee before moving on towards Texas.  We've been thinking of relocating to Tennessee for some time now. It's a beautiful state, very friendly people, has 4 seasons, and best of all, it's centrally located in the US.

When we first got to Crossville, TN we stayed at Spring Lake RV Resort.

We spent the last 2 weeks in Crossville, Tennessee and we really liked this area. It felt like such a good fit for us that we ended up buying a home at The Gardens, an RV community where all the homes have RV garages and all the residents are RV'ers.

OUR NEW HOME IN TENNESSEE!!

The Gardens has it's own area with full hook-up RV sites for people who are waiting for their home to be built or for people who are interested in building or buying a home at The Gardens.  We spent our last 4 nights in Crossville here. They call it "Homeless Hill."

We left Crossville Sunday morning, October 28th. It was chilly - 40's, and pretty windy. We had a very short day planned, only about 95 miles to Chattanooga.  Some pretty scenery along the way. Lots of steep hills!

Mission West Small Hall Jams

One of my favorite ways to spend an evening is listening to this group of musicians who gathered every night in a back room at Mission West RV Park's small hall to play a variety of music.  

Of course, my favorite part was the fiddles.  These guys sure could play!

Here's some video I took with my iPod. The video quality and sound isn't very good, they sound a lot better in person, but you get the idea...

"What do you DO all winter???"

That's what friends and family back home wonder about - what do they actually DO all winter? Well, that's both easy and difficult to answer.  For someone who has never traveled and lived in an RV, it's hard to understand that spending six months living in 400 sf is actually fun. But for anyone who loves traveling, visiting different parts of our country, meeting new people, it doesn't take much explanation. 

We leave home about November 1st and return around the end of April, so that's pretty close to 6 full months. In the Spring, we usually have to wait for the snow in our yard to melt so we can get the motorhome in it, but this year that's not the case.  However, we have a plan to never have to winterize the motorhome, so we do have to wait for the temperatures to warm up a bit.

There are so many activities to keep us busy here in the RV park that you really don't need to look too far for something to do.  Our park is medium-sized, with a little over 300 RV spaces, just the right size for us.  Some of the activities that are favorites at our park are line dancing, water aerobics, craft classes, ladies luncheons, style shows, pot luck dinners, dances, bingo, billiards, ice cream socials, Gospel jams, Country jams, wood carving, horseshoes, Texas Hold'em, poker, all sorts of cards and games,  Hamburgers on Mondays, a par 3 golf course, swimming pool and spa.  You can get your hair cut, play golf, go to church services, buy fresh fruit and vegetables, pick up your mail, be entertained by all sorts of musicians (many from Branson) all without leaving the park.

My favorite activity actually takes place right across the street from our site.  There's a group of  talented musicians who gather here for a couple of months every winter and play some of the best toe-tapping music I've ever heard.  They are a tireless group who sometimes play all afternoon and every evening as well.  It's been the highlight of my winter to just sit and listen to them every evening.  I'll save that for a separate post because I want to include some video and I have to work on that a bit. 

There are lots of things to do outside the park as well. I'll post pictures of some of the places we've visited in my next post.