Have you ever had one of those days?

There were two things that we wanted to do on our way home. We wanted to visit Waco in order to eat at the Magnolia Table and we wanted to do a tour of the Tiffin Motorhome plant in Red Bay Alabama. We had a reservation for the restaurant on Jan 31 and we would leave on Feb 1 to drive to Red Bay for a Friday morning tour. Mother Nature had other plans. The ice storm kept us in Waco where everything was closed until at least 11 am on Thursday. 

The temperature was above freezing Thursday morning so we decided to leave around 10 am. The roads were good and we were especially careful on the overpasses. All was going well until Lawrie muttered “What the…?” And headed for the shoulder. A truck passing us was crossing into our lane and ticked the motorhome with his passenger side mirror. We both stopped on the shoulder to look for any damage. Luckily we had none and his mirror was fixable. “No habla  ingles” but he indicated it was his fault. He had a sore throat and was reaching for a lozenge. Lawrie was all calm and cool but the driver knew I was ticked. 

In the early afternoon we decided to pull into a truck stop for a bathroom break. It was extremely busy, but we found a spot on the very edge behind a tractor trailer. The roadway was to our right and there was an orange striped area between us and the roadway  Lawrie decided to have a cat nap and while he was sleeping, a truck parked on the orange striped area which meant he couldn’t just pull out to the right. With the Jeep attached to the bus, we can’t back up more than about 6 feet before the wheels start turning all the way one direction or the other, so I got into the Jeep to keep the steering wheel from turning. We were able to back up about half the length of the motorhome that way and were able to get by.

Our goal was to get to a KOA west and a little north of Memphis, but that meant driving until around 8 pm. Lawrie is quite comfortable driving at night (especially since the headlights now work). We needed to stop for fuel and I found a truck stop where we could fit in. However, it was probably the worst truck stop we have ever been to. There was no visible signage for where trucks should pull in, so we turned in where the trucks were coming out. We drove into a huge pothole that rattled the poor bus so much that the microwave door popped open and the turntable fell to the floor. Surprisingly, it didn’t break. Then we realized we were going against traffic so we had to drive around to get facing the right direction for the pumps. 

We have a fuel savings card for diesel that saves anywhere from 20 cents to 80 cents a gallon. When you take on 100 gallons, that is significant. Lawrie tried the card, but the buttons for the screen prompts  wouldn’t work. He went in to the talk to the cashier who told him to wait 5 minutes and retry. We waited and had the same problem. We drove around again to another pump, waited in line and when we got to the pump the screen was blank. We swiped the card and still nothing. We were only 20 minutes from the campground so we decided to go there and fill up the next morning. 

At the campground, we registered at the after hours booth, selected the closest site and headed there. Only trouble was, it was dark and the marker were not easily visible nor was the roadway. The entire campground was covered in an inch of glare ice. It was impossible to tell where the campsites were. We pulled into what we thought was our site at a bit of a sharp angle. The bus slid a bit on the ice and the Jeep was acting like a rudder and preventing the bus from going where Lawrie wanted it to go. We were only an inch from the bollard protecting the utilities’ post ( only bonus was that we didn’t have to put out much electrical cord) but at least we were off the road. Lawrie unhooked the Jeep and we called it a day.