Thursday, May 21, 2020

It Comes Full Circle - Back to Paducah, Springfield and Chicago

But we aren't ready to move out of this rig yet! We love this new home!

Thursday, May 7th

Well, as noted in our last blog post, after a few false starts trying to find a campground in Southern Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky, we decided to stop again in Paducah, Kentucky - back to where our "East Coast Leg" of the trip began. After searching for awhile, we decided on a known entity. We like Paducah, we liked the (new) owner of the campground - he needs the business, and we (Neil specifically) like the fact that there are 2 disc golf courses within 10 minutes of the KOA.

We are up and out of the campground in record time! We are getting pretty good at moving...The trip across Tennessee is pretty uneventful until Neil decides that he wants Taco Bell for lunch. No problem, right? We are on the interstate, and it looks like there is a Taco Bell in about 5 miles, and then another in about 15 miles.

As we roll up to Taco Bell number 1, it is a left hand turn into a pretty full parking lot that doesn't look like it has a lot of space to turn around. Anne mentions this, and as Neil makes the left turn into the lot he spouts "too late now I guess" with the vision of Chalupas and Cinnamon Twists in his head. We get into the lot, and even Neil is immediately worried. Keep in mind that we can't back up. at all. And this rig swings pretty wide also. Neil sees a path out, and he just has to wait for one car to move up into the drive-thru. We can't help but wonder how many people were laughing at us, because it looked like we were waiting for the drive-thru - we would NEVER fit or even come close. Lol. We swing a U-turn by the narrowest of margins. Phew.

Undeterred and cursing Taco Bell parking lots everywhere, Neil is hellbent on checking out the next one. Apparently, his craving is deep. Anne literally google maps the next Taco Bell and is telling Neil about a road next to it - maybe we can park there. As we pull up to Taco Bell number 2, the parking lot is a no-go. Even though Nachos Bell Grande sound good right now, we can't repeat that last lot. We got lucky. Turning up the road, there really is nowhere to park. Neil whines and cries a little, cursing Taco Bell for their apparent lack of hospitality towards RV's at ALL Taco Bells. He has given up, and decides that he will settle for another cold-cut sandwich. We decide that truck stops are the best option for stopping - they are just made for rigs like ours.

As we see signs for the Pilot and a slew of truck friendly places, Neil spots another Taco Bell sign, and triumphantly say that he will make this one work. Score. He does a drive by of Taco Bell #3 to assess the parking lot. Too tight, but there is a large parking lot across the street! After going about a half a mile down the road to just turn around, we are back at the parking lot of a closed business.  Neil parks, dons his mask to get takeout, and crosses the 5 lane road towards Taco Bell (Run for the border!). Mission accomplished! Anne is utterly amazed at the lengths to which Neil will go to get Taco Bell on this day.

We arrive at the Paducah KOA, and we pull into our spot. The gravel is a little loose, and when we go to level the rig, it is completely lifted off the ground, and the leveler is flashing an error message. It doesn't like this surface. Luckily, we bought these stackable bases for under the leveler arms, and they do the trick. We are getting pretty good at this! We are even able to get in 18 holes of Disc Golf before the sun goes down at the 2 local courses we both know.

Especially when we are playing! Watch out!!

Friday, May 8th

It's Friday, we wake up in Paducah, and it is raining :(. Although we both enjoy a quiet, lazy morning, we are both feeling the end of this section of the adventure - we want to do some fun stuff! We both know that there is a bunch of work still waiting for us in Chicago with the closing of the house scheduled for May 29th. The good news is that the rain looks like it will end around 1PM, and then it is supposed to clear up for the entire weekend. Awesome.

Anne finds a great bike trail that is about 45 minutes away in Illinois called the Tunnel Hill Bike Trail that is confirmed open. It is part of the Rails to Trails program in Illinois, where they have turned miles and miles of old railroad beds into bike trails. We load the bikes on the car and head up to the trail head. It's an amazing parking area and the trail runs right through it in Vienna, IL - you can go either North or South on the trail. Anne spots a nice lady loading her bike and asks her the best direction to go on the trail. She recommends North, because the big tunnel is that way, and it's a 3% grade uphill, so it's much easier when you come back. Also, there are more trestles and bridges to look at. Sold, and we are off.

As we get on the trail, we notice that the tunnel is 9.3 miles away. Seems a little far for us, but we will see what happens. At the first stop we make, about 4 miles in, Anne mentions that she is not sure whether we can make the bridge. This trail is definitely uphill, and it seems very far off. Neil fully supports that hypothesis, but is now completely sure that Anne has a strong goal of the tunnel in her head. At mile 6.5, we stop again. It seems now that Anne believes it is more likely that we could make the tunnel - I mean we've come this far... We are totally going to make this tunnel.

9.3 miles to the tunnel.. we got this!


Lots of tressels!




Bikers welcome - An "on your honor" store along the trail, but it was closed by the time we got there.




After 9.3 miles uphill, the tunnel does not disappoint. I believe it was over 500 feet long. It really didn't look very long until biking through the tunnel. It was crazy, because it was really pitch black and a little freaky in the middle, even though you could see the "light at the end". We were both hoping the trail had no potholes, and that there wasn't a sudden rush of bats!

We made it to the tunnel!! 9.3 miles!

Who's afraid of the dark?? Bats, rats, spiders, potholes??

We made it through the tunnel!!  I ain't afraid of no ghosts, I mean dark.


We have both calculated that when (if) we complete the ride back to the car, we will have shattered our longest ride on this trip. Neil keeps yelling that we have trained for this moment, and we are ready for the easy coast back to the car. Only, it's not an easy coast! I feel like an old person, but we both agree that there was a lot more uphill spots on the way back than what we anticipated. I think we are both overly tired, and we both thought we would be coasting with the brakes on the entire way home. Oh well. We made it back in one piece, our butts and legs maybe a touch sore. LOL. We hobble back to the RV for another night of games and relaxing - this time we really deserve it, and our biking adventures are over for this leg of the trip!



This is supposed to be our exhausted face after biking 18+ miles, but looks like we just ate a bug!

Saturday, May 9th

We both sort of feel ok when we wake up. I mean we both decide that an activity other than biking is in order for our last day, so we decide on a walk/hike to finish it out. Neil has already booked us a KOA in Springfield, IL for Sunday night. We will store the RV back in Pontiac, and this gives us a nice, short trip on Monday and we can get everything cleaned up for storage over the next few weeks. After looking around and figuring that some hiking trails might be pretty wet, we both find a public trail, the Greenway Parkway, in Paducah that goes from a park outside of town all the way into downtown. Perfect.

As we set out on the trail with Hamilton in tow, there are definitely a few people out and about with the same idea as us. That said, it was easy to stay apart from people - just less easy to control Hamilton when a biker passed. He is really a stickler for social distancing, and he will not let anyone within 6 feet of us, that's for sure. We find out that the first mile is through the woods to another park, but then the trail extends another 3.5 miles into downtown Paducah. We are game. The first part of the trail is awesome. A nice gravel path through the woods. Score.

Hamilton says "Enough with the selfies! I have bikers to bark at!"


As we get through the woods to the next park, the Greenway opens up a bit, but we decide to keep going. The trail definitely becomes a bit less exciting, and we realize that this is definitely a better trail for biking. It is essentially a 3.5 mile sidewalk that leads us along the Ohio River (we can't see the river though) with no tree protection on a super sunny day. Oh well, we DID get to see the Paducah/McCracken wastewater treatment facility. Score! I think Hamilton is the only one who liked the smell we got for a few minutes. Along the trail, we decide that we will probably walk the neighborhood back to where the wooded trail ended.

The good news is that the trail ends on the waterfront in Paducah, and it is a beautiful day. One of the most unique things about this little city is the 12 mile flood wall that surrounds the city. It was erected by the Army Corps of Engineers after extensive flooding hit Paducah on multiple occasions. The flood of 1937 absolutely crushed the city, and we noticed a sign that the Red Cross provided over $1.1 million of relief. That's a lot of money in 1937. The coolest part is that the side of the wall that faces the city is adorned with a mural on every panel of the wall. Although absolutely NOTHING is open except the hardware store and the sporting goods store, this town has a unique charm to it. We both quite like this area and enjoy ourselves every time we are here.






Broadway back in the heyday

Broadway during the current times...
We decide to walk back to the park at the end of the greenway, and this time we opt for the neighborhood walk back to the park for a change of scenery and some shade. We walk through the Lower Arts District, which is a super cool little area. We so wish that some of these little shops, breweries and galleries were open - but I guess we don't have any room for anything anyway. What a cool place to be an artist, though.



After walking for what feels like an eternity, we both decide to stop for a break in the park that houses the greenway. We are both very excited to take a load off, so we find a bench at the edge of a great little pond in the middle of the park, complete with an island for birds. Hamilton is very interested in the swimming ducks, so he goes over to make some friends. These 2 ducks are pretty interested in him as well, and they end up following us as we walk away. We cross a bridge and they swim right under us, seemingly saying goodbye to their new friend, Hamilton. They glide through the water and we are ready to finish this epic walk. When we arrive back to the car we have walked almost 10 miles! We decide that we have really hazed ourselves on this final weekend with our longest ride, and our longest walk. We head back to Ronald Vincent Vega for some recliner time!

Hamilton makes some new duck friends in the park.



Kicking up the feet and chilling with Hamilton and Stella. 

Sunday, May 10th

We wake up, have a nice, lazy Mother's Day morning, and then we are off for the final long leg of driving. As we set out, the wind is blowing pretty hard. This is the windiest day we have had of driving so far, and even Neil is a bit freaked out. It is literally like driving the broad side of a barn, and Neil is fighting just to keep it between the lines... Anne makes it a point to just look down at her device and trust Neil's driving skills. Thankfully the ride is uneventful, and we even get a nice extended stop for a lunch and a Mother's Day call to Anne's mom (Don't worry, Neil called before we left). We make it to Springfield just before the sun goes down, and we are hooked up and ready to play one final game night with Jen and Jay. We also get some cleaning and packing done, as we will make it back to our (sold) house by tomorrow afternoon.

Monday, May 11th

Well, we arrive at Pontiac RV, unload Ronald Vincent Vega, and load up the car for the trip back to Chicago. Another uneventful drive from Springfield, and also back up to the house in Chicago. We made it back, the house is in one piece, and leg 1 of the mega road trip is in the books. Although it turned out to be a lot different than the original plan, we are so thankful for the trip and all of the other blessings we have received during the trip.

Closing on our house is still scheduled for May 29th (fingers crossed), and then we will start heading West, after some time in Peoria and St. Louis. We are planning on starting the blog up again once we hit the road in early June. Thanks to everyone for the views, the comments and the general love and support we have received about this trip. It was a tough decision to head out, but we still feel it was the right one for us. One of the hardest things for us was being in places near family and friends and not being able to stop for a visit due to these crazy times (Nashville, Chattanooga, Savannah, Florida and the list goes on). We hope to see you all someday! We will leave you with some stats from the trip, and until next time...

Stats:

Miles driven in Ronald Vincent Vega (not counting day trips in the car) - 2,288 miles
Gallons of gas used - 367.88
Average miles per gallon - 6.22 miles per gallon (ouch)
Money spent on gas - $498.61
Average price per gallon - $1.36 per gallon (unreal - gotta love these gas prices)
Number of states visited - 5
Number of disc golf rounds - 13

We took a bunch of day trips, but here is the path of Ronald Vincent Vega so far...

Saturday, May 9, 2020

The Mountains are Calling - Smoky Mountains, TN


Monday, May 4th

So, we have decided that the Smoky Mountains are calling, and we need to go. Even though the National Park is closed, we figure that there will be some trails/activities that we will be able to find - we've been pretty successful so far. This was on our original itinerary, and it is definitely one of the places that both of us want to see. Although we have stayed at KOA campgrounds the entire time (Neil is pretty excited because we are almost to VIP status - which probably gets you early access to the bathrooms or something), we switch it up this time to stay at a different campground. Anne finds us a great deal in Pigeon Forge, TN at a place called Riverbend Campground. The dings in reviews that it gets are that there are too many "park models" (trailers), so we are slightly worried that we are headed to a full on trailer park...

The 1.5 hour ride goes very smoothly, and we get about 15 minutes from the campground and stop for gas - $1.14 per gallon. Awesome! Upon leaving, Neil has the campground address set in Waze to bring us there. Although we are on a main road, the GPS tells us to take the upcoming right, the road looks a bit sketchy... too late now! As Waze always seems to do, it takes us down a windy, tight road - which has Neil cursing out Waze and every road on earth that isn't a highway. He decides not to follow it's directions to turn on Sugar Hollow Road (that has small covered bridge written all over it in his mind), and we arrive safely with no real issues. Neil is getting quite good at maneuvering this big rig. Keep in mind that WE CANNOT BACK UP AT ALL. If we get into a situation where we need to back up, we would have to detach the car, then detach the trailer, turn around, and reattach it all. Likely with people honking and cursing. It has only caused a few mild nightmares and waking up with cold sweats for Neil on this trip.

Driving into Pigeon Forge, we both didn't realize that it would be a cross between Wisconsin Dells and Niagara Falls. There aren't too many places in the country that can sustain a free standing building that only sells those old-timey photos. Or a funnel cake shop. The entire town feels like a theme park. There are like 187 go-kart tracks and mini-golf places. Neil is practically crying because none of them are open, but we probably wouldn't go anyway. We take a left at the Hollywood Wax Museum (King Kong is punching a plane at the top of the building), and we are almost there. Leave it to Americans to build the cheeziest town right at the base of the most popular National Park. Awesome.

Upon arrival, we couldn't be more pleasantly surprised! The campground is right next to the river, we have a concrete pad (much easier to level), and the trailer part of the campground is quite clean. Way less lawn trash piles than we had envisioned! Score. We check in, and have the entire rig setup for living before 1:30 PM!

Concrete pad!  These are the things that we get excited about these days.

Getting our feet wet in our backyard!  

The campground website says "bring your own raft or mattress" - mattress??!
One thing we have definitely not experienced too much on this road trip is a short drive between destinations. Usually, so far, a travel day means that we aren't going to do too much that day. However, being set up by 1 PM means that we can enjoy the nice day and head out to explore, and we are ready to hike one of the amazing trails around here. So we head through Pigeon Forge (Neil almost causes 8 accidents from drooling over the funnel cake shop, go-kart tracks, lumberjack battle course and everything $9.99 shops), and up towards Gatlinburg - the gateway to the Park.

Gatlinburg
As we approach Gaitlinburg, we note that the Gaitlinburg Byway that leads to the park is CLOSED.  We continue through Gaitlinburg towards the Smoky Mountains Sugerland visitor center, which per one website opened up in early May - CLOSED. Bummer. Oh well, let's go try another that we found. CLOSED.  And there is no parking anywhere nearby.  Uh-oh. Looks like this park and all of the trails really are closed down.  Neil suggests a round of disc golf at a course that is only like 15 minutes away at a local park. CLOSED. Ok, I guess we will head back to the rig and enjoy the day at home...

One more try, Anne finds a back road that might be open, so why not? It is a super narrow one-way road and at the end we find a Park road that says "Do Not Enter" and a place to park our car!  Some people we encounter inform us that if a Ranger finds us, we will get a ticket, but are there any Rangers even working... haven't they all been furloughed??  We take our chances and decide to check it out.  They also inform us that earlier someone had seen a bear and her cubs! 

There's a little store here and in talking to the owner, turns out that this was an operational mill (called Ely's Mill - visit this place!) that her grandfather owned, and she is bringing it back to life. It started in 1925, and she is trying to restore it to it's former glory. She is rebuilding the big wheel, and has now turned it into an amazing little property with a shop selling only local goods, a couple of outbuildings with artisan workshops, and even a venue for small weddings. So cool. 

The closed road that we stumbled across is actually a motor road tour that you would drive through with points of interest along the way. We start walking and we go up. And up some more. And then a little more. After all is said and done, we walk about 2.5 and go up almost 1000 feet in elevation. Once again, we have turned lemons into lemonade, and it is an amazing walk through the woods. We see a few people coming down the road, and even a person who passes us while going up (we're slow and out of shape). We feel bad for breaking the rules - but we are definitely being respectful of the environment.

Park entrance... Hope we don't run into a Ranger!





Stopping to catch our breath and enjoy the sights. 

The road meandered along this stream for the entire hike.

Must touch the water!  5 seconds later Neil is in the stream. SOOO COLD!!!!

No bears here! Kind of one of those things we wanted to see from a distance...


One of the coolest parts of this walk are the old buildings that we see along the road. We come across 2 different dwellings that have been preserved. The first one is a residence with one building and a little mill house on the river. The second one is a full on mountain farm that was inhabited from 1890 to 1930 by a family with their 10 CHILDREN! Crazy. We walk the property, and as Neil is talking (surprise, surprise) about the barn, a pair of eyes look around the corner and stop Neil in his tracks. It is a Doe, and she is over by the barn. She initially runs off into the brush, but then decides to come back and check us out. She is so sweet, and seemingly not that afraid of us. Honestly, it is the closest Neil has ever been to a deer, they are such beautiful animals!

One of the things that irks both of us is why people feel the need to write and carve their names into things to prove that they have been somewhere. Nobody cares! There was even a sign about it "Bob was here" - Don't be like Bob. There are no similarities between Neil and Bob. Ok, off the soapbox now.

Room for 12?!?

We're not tall people, but we felt tall in this house! 

Come here little deer...


Bob sucks - don't be like Bob
As we finish the walk (the way down was a lot easier than the way up!), we come across the most amazing wild turkeys in the road. As we approach, we hear the gobbles and then they scatter. Surprisingly, these birds can move pretty fast! That cool little place Ely's Mill is in the background.


After the walk, we still actually have a few hours of daylight left, so Neil lobbies Anne for a quick round of disc golf. Although the local park is closed, he has found a private course that is only about 10 minutes away on a church retreat site. He calls the number and there is no answer, but we decide that it is worth going to check out the spot - maybe we can get on the course anyway. As we pull into the grounds, the office is closed, but Neil spots a few older gentlemen on the grounds. He approaches them (keeping distance of course) to ask if we can play the course. They couldn't be nicer. They call the owner, and he says no problem - they just usually ask for a donation for people to play the course. We gladly pop $5 into the bin up front and play the 9 hole course. It is a beautiful course and property, and we manage to fit in 9 with plenty of daylight to spare!

The obligatory pre-game selfie...



This is one of the streams that ran through the property - luckily it wasn't in play...
After a full day, we head back to camp to chill, have some dinner and play some more games with friends online. We decide to pick up a pizza and wings from a local brewery, and Anne gets a few beers to go. Although we are happy to see that every worker and server is wearing a mask, we can't believe that there are actually people eating dine-in at the restaurant. Tennessee has reopened their restaurants for dine-in. Neither of us has any desire to eat inside a restaurant at this point, but we are thankful that we can do take-out and don't have to cook tonight - or do dishes!

Tuesday, May 5th

Rain is in the forecast today, but when we wake up at the crack of 10 (we are both serious night owls), it just looks a bit overcast. We have been saying that it would be great if we could actually ride our bikes from the campground instead of having to put the bikes on car. At every campground so far, it has been either too dangerous or too hilly for us to bike from the campground, but we can actually do it here! We head out on the bikes, and find an amazing bike path right along the river in Pigeon Forge. Awesome. We bike about 10 miles to each end of the bike path, and we only catch a few drops of rain the whole way. We make a stop at the Island, which is a outdoor mall type of place. It has some cool fountains in the middle set to music, much like a mini version of the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas. Pretty cheesy, but kind of cool. The sky looks a bit ominous, so we cruise back and have lunch. On the way back we see a ton of geese and ONE SWAN. And that swan was a bit mean! As we were passing him (or her), it lunged at us with an open mouth. It was slightly comical and mildly scary, but he wasn't quick enough for us!

A great trail right next to the Little Pigeon River.
We have lunch and take care of a few chores around the "house", including taking out the trash and walking Hamilton. Neil is very excited, because this campground is paved. So - he can take Hamilton for a walk/run on his skateboard and take the trash out all at the same time. This always garners a few laughs, points and looks from the campground natives. Admittedly, it's not often you see a fat man on a skateboard being pulled by a Chihuahua...

You would probably laugh and point too if you saw this while camping.
Although it looks like rain on the radar, it looks a little better on the radar towards Knoxville. We decide on (or Neil advocates for), you guessed it, disc golf! He has found a course with good ratings right near downtown Knoxville, and it didn't disappoint. Although it was not that well marked, it was a great course with short pins on every hole, but it was VERY hilly. The last hole was literally straight uphill - slightly cruel for a finishing hole. But, we are both excited, because we honestly thought today would be a complete washout. But, we were able to fit in a 10 mile bike ride AND 18 holes of disc golf.


Is Hamilton peeing? Surprise, surprise.
We realize that it is now 7PM and we are both pretty hungry - and we are about 30 minutes from home. We decide that maybe we can (safely!) find some takeout in Knoxville, so we head to Old City. It looks like a pretty hip area, and it turns out to be a really cool little area. Although it is a ghost town, we find a little tamale place that looks really cool. With masks on, we grab a couple of tamales and head back to the car for a makeshift snack/dinner. Anne even finds a local beer to go, and we sit in the car for dinner - I guess it's a sign of these crazy times. We can't help but think of how different our meal would be if the times were normal. Oh well - no complaints here. We still feel incredibly lucky for this adventure.

Dining "out" covid style - Delicious tamales!

Sampling some local beers (not driving)

Anne got a pic of this quote while driving the theater district in Knoxville.
We head back to the RV for another night of games, relaxing, and planning for the next place. As of now, the plan is to head for Indiana next - we are getting ready to head back to Chicago to pack up our place for closing. It is set for May 29th, and we have some work left to do. Our plan is to be back at home on Monday, May 11th, so we should probably head back towards Illinois. We read that the state parks in Indiana are open, and we can add another state to our map of where the RV has been!

Wednesday, May 6th

Rain is in the forecast again today, and unfortunately our luck has run out. For the first real time this trip it seems, today is a total washout. It is raining and it doesn't appear to be stopping. Although we are a bit bummed, it is a perfect day to finish the blog, and we really both need to do laundry. We head out for a local laundromat and get the party started. We both feel like idiots with our masks on, because we are the only ones around with one on. We really don't care, because we both feel better safe than sorry. Luckily, there are only about 2 other people in the large laundromat. Score. We both decide that doing our laundry in a laundromat is slightly annoying, but MUCH faster! Those commercial machines make it so that we can finish the entire job (2 FULL loads) in about an hour. While our clothes are in the washer, we run to the post office to mail out Mother's Day cards and a few postcards - they have an outdoor mailbox. Score! We decide that if anybody wants to steal our wet clothes from the washer, have at it. We move the loads to the dryer, and go back to the car. Neil has strategically parked so that we can watch the clothes tumbling from the car - that counts as not leaving them unattended, right? We are such rebels.

One thing that Anne has wanted for a long time is to get a haircut, but she wasn't able to get into her salon before they all closed.  And now she is at the end of her rope with how long her hair has gotten. She decides that it is time to use those barber scissors she bought at Dollar General in Savannah. I mean, what could go wrong?  After the first snips, Anne realizes she'll need some help in the back so Neil offers to help.  We definitely had a few laughs while getting this done on a rainy day. It came out great though, and Neil is contemplating whether his next job should be cutting hair - he hasn't done that yet as a profession... That said, he keeps saying that he has a new respect for barbers. It is a lot harder than it looks!

Since the salons are closed, taking things in my own hands... eek, fingers crossed!!

So scary... what's going on back there??

We finish off another evening playing games with friends online. Every Saturday and Wednesday, Neil has been playing poker online with his friends from The Grift, the band he was in on the East Coast. Anne hooks up with one of her many friends or family members to play Dominion online, which has become a nightly occurrence - either with Anne and Neil only, or with the outside world. So fun.

We have also started planning our trip back to Chicago. Neil books a campground in Springfield, IL for the night of May 10th, so we can be close to Pontiac RV, where we will store Ronald Vincent Vega for a few weeks while we finish moving the house to storage. So, we go to book a campground at our next stop in Indiana at a KOA inside the Brown County State Park. CLOSED. Turns out that all campgrounds are closed in Indiana until May 24th. Ok, Plan B, Louisville, KY. Neither of us has been there, so we decide that will be a good spot. Neil goes to book the campground online, and it says there are "special requirements" for your stay, so you need to call to book. On the phone the owner of the campground says that they can take us for either 1 night of passing through OR 14 nights of self-quarantine. Ok, Plan C. We decide that we will just head back through Paducah where we started this trip. We like the area, we like the campground, we like the owner, and we are happy to give him the business. We have both decided that we are practically locals in Paducah at this point - this will be our third stay in the area. Neil reminds Anne that there are 2 nice disc golf courses within 10 minutes of the campground, and I'm sure that's what sold her.

Off to Paducah we go in the morning! Thanks again for looking, and until next time...