Mud Island - Downtown Memphis

We were in Memphis 1 1/2 years ago, but never made it out to Mud Island. Friends of our said it would be worth seeing so we decided yesterday to head on out there. They have an exhibits, which is a miniature recreation of the Mississippi from start to finish.



I knew that the Mississippi was a long river, but even as a miniature model, it sure was a long walk to get to the Gulf of Mexico. The museum on the island was also pretty interesting.

Of course being in Memphis you have to go to Beale Street. Last time we went I did not take any pictures, so this time I just had to. What I love about Beale Street is the live bands that are playing in the small park on the right side or any of the beer gardens. There is just a lot of good music in the air.

Batesville, AR

You might wonder what is in Batesville, AR. It is the birthday place of Mark Martin, a pretty well known Nascar race driver and they built him a museum. Now Doug has been a Mark Martin fan for a long time, so we drove the 120 miles to check out his museum. I like driving in the country anyway and it was a nice day.



It was actually pretty cool. I was not aware of how many trophies he had won in all the different racing venues he has participated in.

On the way home we saw farmers getting there land ready for planting. I never knew that they grow rice out here. All in all, it was a very good day.

Old Man River ...

We drove another 240 miles on Thursday to arrive at Tom Sawyer RV Park in the early afternoon. It was nice just driving on highways and this RV park is totally cool. We heard a lot of goods things from our friends and I have to agree totally. We are parked about 20 feet from the mighty Mississippi and can watch the tug boats going up and down the river all day and night.


It is very peaceful here and I actually got a geographical lesson. We pulled into the park, got all set up and then I complained to Doug that I did not see the "Welcome to Tennessee" sign when we arrived here. Guess what, West Memphis is actually in Arkansas. To be greeted by Tennessee you need to drive about 5 more miles on I40, half way over the bridge, until you are in Tennessee. You would think that a suburb of Memphis would actually be in the same state then the town, but that's what you get for thinking. :-).

Tennessee did greet us when we drove into Memphis yesterday.

FEMA

Remember Hurricane Katrina at the end of August in 2005? The Federal Emergency Management Agency bought a whole bunch of travel trailers and mobile homes to give to the people that lost their homes along the coast in this horrible storm. I got to see something on Wednesday on the way to Murfreesboro that I never thought I would see.



Apparently this is a staging area for FEMA. Now the hurricane happened almost 4 years ago and these trailers and mobile homes are just sitting there. I understand that people were complaining that some of them have a chemical smell in them and we have been in rigs were our eyes burn from the formaldehyde in the air, but these rigs could be aired out and could be used. They have been sitting there since 2005 and are just rotting away. What a waste of our money!!!

I could not believe the vast amount of rigs there was. I was curious enough to go to Google Earth and check it out. This is what I found.

What we saw from the highway was just a fraction of what really is there. A couple of weeks ago we saw a report on the evening news about people having lost their homes in the LA area and were living in a tent town. I am sure this in going on all over the country and there is FEMA in Hope, AR and has all these trailers just sitting around. And who knows how many more staging areas there are around the country. Our government agencies really need to work together better to stop all this waste, specially since so many people have fallen on hard times. It just breaks my heart!

Digging for Diamonds

We arrived in Hope on Tuesday afternoon and figured that we might want to stay for three nights to have a day of rest after two long days of driving, but I paid for only two nights, just in case, since we were staying right next to the highway. Well 6:45 am the next morning we had a rude awakening by a train that blew his whistle for at least 5 minutes. We looked at each other and decided to go digging for diamonds today and head out the next day.

I was so excited to finally go digging for diamonds, I felt like a kid in the candy store. It is about an hour drive to the park and we saw some beautiful flowers along the way. Have you every noticed that you see the most beautiful flowers along the highway where there is no way to stop. I just don't understand why you can't pull over into the breakdown lane to take a picture, but Doug says that it is not safe. Well on this back road I was able to take a picture of these pretty flower.


Well, we arrived at Crater of Diamonds State Park, watched the 10 minute video, got a sifting screen, and were of with my bucket and shovel. I had no idea just how hard the soil actually is. You would think it is pretty soft since you need to sift the soil through the screen, but I was sadly mistaken. I had to break the soil apart with my gardening claw and it still was pretty hard to do. This is me sitting under the umbrella, since it was a pretty hot day in the high 80. Not the best day to go digging.

Doug chose to sit in a comfortable chair in the shade at the outskirts of the field while I was digging in the dirt. I don't give up that easy, so I sat there for about 1 1 /2 hours playing in the dirt.

If my hands would have not been so dirty, I would have taken a picture of him sitting comfortably in the shade. But, I was not the only one that dreamed of finding a diamond.

Well, after 1 1 /2 of digging in dry dirt I decided that this was not the way to go and went on to wet sifting. I found myself a trough, send Doug for some more screens for wet sifting and got myself a bucket of dirt. It is easier to search this way, except that my back was hurting a little bit.

I found a lot more pretty stones that way and we actually found two stones that really looked like diamonds. I tried to take a picture of my "diamonds" and the ones that Doug bought for me at the gift store, but my camera can't zoom in on it enough. If I figure it out, I shall post the pictures later. I was pretty bushed after two hours of hard work, but I truly had a blast.

On the way back to Hope we stopped at this cool junk store in Murfreesboro.

And again, we are starting to see a lot of closed or "going out of business" stores in smaller towns. What a sad site to see.

On the road again ...

Yes, we actually managed to leave Mission. Monday was our moving day and when you pack up for the first time after six months you do expect some minor glitches. Well, let me tell you about our "minor" glitches.

Everything went were well to begin with. The inside was packed up pretty quick and Doug was done about the same time on disconnecting everything outside. Getting the rig hitched up at this point does take a little bit longer, since we are not used to the new hitch yet and it is not as forgiving as our old one. That means you really have to line up pretty close and move the hitch with a little bit of force into the king pin (or the other way around) for the claws to actually close. A couple of tries were made and we were hooked up (thanks to Gayle for being Doug's eyes at the hitch). We gave the airbags a few minutes to adjust to having the load of the rig on top, but nothing happened. No bid deal for us, since we have a small air compressor that gets its power from the 12 V cigarette lighter plug and can fill up the airbags just fine. We plugged into the first plug and nothing happened. So I thought maybe something is wrong with that plug and plugged it in the 12 V power outlet for the computer. Again, nothing happened. So we got out the big compressor and put some air in the airbags, which moved nicely in position in the rear. Nothing happened in the front, but we decided to pull out of our spot first and check them again before we get worried.

So Doug gets in the truck to set up the computer, which is also our navigation system while traveling, to find out that there is no power to the computer. Now he has to pull of the cover for the fuse box, which is not that easy, to find out that we blew both 20 amp fuses for the 12 V power outlets. Note to myself, if the first one does not work, don't try the second one, it might not be the outlet. Of course the Ford takes a small 20 amp fuse, which we don't have, so Doug had to go to the auto part store to get fuses. At this point I am getting slightly discouraged and our 9 am leaving time has long come and gone. Doug came back with the fuses, put them in, mounted the fuse box cover back on and everything is well. We pulled out of the spot onto the street and checked the hitch. The airbags leveled themselves out and we are good to go. It is now almost 11 am and we have 373 miles to go. I was ready to stay another day and give it a try on Tuesday, but Doug wanted to head out.

Ever wonder what it looks like from my point of view when I am following the big rig?

By the way, it is not the smartest thing to take a picture while you are driving. I wonder what the guy behind me was thinking.

We actually drove 325 miles the first day and found a nice campground in La Grange to stay for the night. The next day we drove another 400 miles to arrive at Hope, AR in the late afternoon. We were both pretty tired and glad to be sitting for a few days, but Hope will get its own entry. Later ....

Where are we?

... still in Mission. I thought we would leave yesterday, however, when you are a full time RVer, you normally try to avoid driving on weekends or in rush hour traffic in a big city. It is nice to be on a leisurely schedule. We also had a nasty storm pass through north of us and we would have been heading right into it. No sense in creating stressful travel when you don't have to and since we don't make reservations at any campground we can leave whenever it is convenient for us.

So we have been busy doing laundry, cleaning house and closing up the coach house for the season. I am getting really excited about getting back on the road. It is hard to believe that we spend six months here. Time sure seems to fly when you get older :-).

Tomorrow will be spend saying goodbye to all our friends that are still down here and wrapping up last minute things. Thanks for stopping by and see you all on the road.

Correction!!

I talked today about what I thought was the shock absorbers. Of course Mike is correct. I stand corrected; everybody that knows RVs knows that I mend the hydraulic cylinders that stabilize and level the rig. I am glad to know that Mike has my back and makes sure that I don't mess up. Thank you Mike!!

For everybody else, please feel free to leave comments on our blog any time you feel like it. It is nice to know that people come visit us this way. I have to leave for now, since we are going to an Easter dinner buffet with our group down here. Later!!

Happy Easter Everybody!

Another week has passed and we are getting closer to our leaving date. At this point we are thinking about heading out by the end of next week. A lot of people from the RV park next door as well as people from our community have been heading out since the end of March.

We were sitting at happy hour the other day and the guys were talking about the "Big Foot System", which we are getting installed this spring before we are heading west. It costs a lot of money, but it should be making our life a lot easier at setup and leveling. Larry was telling Doug about what could be a weakness at installation and what to look for. Well, I am always interested in these things so I had to stick my nose into the show and tell session. After looking at their rig and our rig to see where and how the system would be installed I finally decided to ask Doug the question that has been bothering me for a while now. If you look at Larry's system you see a round tube with a good size diameter, which I believe is the shock absorber. On our rig there is a square tube, which is bigger then the round tube on Larry's rig, so I never understood why we would change to a smaller size leg. I asked Doug, of course get that look of "What are you talking about?" and then got my lesson. Apparently, the square tube on our rig housed the shock absorber that lifts and levels our rig and there was a place where you could see the actual size of the shock absorber. I wish I would have not looked, since this tube is maybe a fourth of the size than Larry's (about the thickness of my thumb) and these little tubes are holding up our heavy rig. Sometimes inquiring minds should not know and I am glad when we get our "Big Foot System".

We are slowly getting our things together for leaving. How can you tell that an RVer is leaving? They unpack all the stuff that they have stored in the basement and spread it out all over the lot. Then you go through all the storage bins, sort out what stays behind and what goes with us and repack everything. It looks so nice right now, it will not look like that in about three months. At least by now we know better what we use during the year and don't carry as much useless weight with us.

I am getting back into the habit of posting on Sunday's and it should continue until we are back here sometime in the fall. So start stopping by more often and follow us on our adventure this year. It should be a good one, starting with my diamond digging adventure in Arkansas.

The Week in Review

Well, it has been an interesting week for us. When I went with the girls to Progresso, Mexico last year, I had tried to get Doug some allergy medicine without any success. I did not have enough information with me and I just was not convinced that it was the same medicine than we get in the US. This year we had to cancel the health insurance with my old employer, since the dues had increased so much that we could not afford it anymore. We found a more affordable health insurance for us, however, the prescription coverage is pretty much nonexistent.

Doug's mom, who traveled in a RV for 19 years, used to come down to Texas to get her annual check-up and then go to Mexico to pick up her medicines. We spend about $250 a month on prescriptions and even though I am sure a lot of people spend more, it still is a lot of money by the end of the year. So I figured as long as Linda will go with me (I don't want to go down there by myself), I will give Mexico another shot. I took the various boxes with me to be completely sure that it is the same manufacturer and dose that the prescription calls for. I was blown away by the difference in price. One of Doug's prescriptions costs us $150.00 a month. The exact same medicine in the same package with the Mexican name printed on the box costs $32.65. We bought one box and took it come for Doug to check out and make sure it really is the same. Guess what? It really is the same. Three days later Linda was kind enough to go back to Mexico with me, I had gone to the bank in the meantime to pick up cash (don't want to use credit card in Mexico) and we made a "drug" run. We now have enough meds for Doug and me to last through the end of the year and have save $1,400, besides the hassle of explaining to Walmart in various states that they need to electronically transfer the prescription from one state to the other in order to fill it.

I really got to thinking about health care in this country. We know that we are in trouble and a lot of people can not afford their medicine. I will never forgot a little old woman at a Walmart last year that bought just 5 pills, because she could not afford the whole prescription. I don't understand how a medication produced by the same manufacturer cost so much in the US and so much LESS in Mexico. Maybe our president should take a lot at that. How many millions of dollars could we safe if someone could figure out how this works. Well, I hope I did not bum anybody out with this entry, but it has blown me away enough to feel that I should write about it. Most of the time you will find happy news and cool adventures on our blog, but just once in a while you might encounter something that might make you think. Have a great week!!