13 January, 2018
Good morning. We are sitting with our coffee and thinking of all
of you. It is 33 degrees outside and consequently a perfect time to tell you
the story of our trip to Submit.
As with any 'passage', one must wait for a 'weather
window'. The “conditions” for which we were waiting were, for
example, appointments, truck repairs, new tires for motorhome, etc.
New tires for the motorhome? Yup. At one point we thought we
were going to be headed here in Bev, our antique motorhome. We weren't able to
find a place to rent for a month that fit our budget, so we had to dig Bev out
of a foot of snow. Of course we needed a place to park her while
here and while searching for that…voila! We found a camper trailer to rent just
a couple miles from Submit's winter home. With her new tires, Bev
plowed back up the driveway and nestled down in the snow. Back to plan A-the
truck.
You might expect us to have been ready to leave at the drop of a
hat since we had been aiming at departing as early as 12/26. Well, we weren’t. However, someone dropped a hat on 1/5 just
after lunch. Make a few phone calls,
drive 50 miles round trip to pick up the pickup, grab some stuff and by 6:00
that night we were on the road. As it is bad luck to start of passage on a
Friday, we just went to Missoula to eat ice cream and say good bye to family.
Our voyage started on Saturday. The
Friday luck did get us though, as we began to remember all the things we had
forgotten to grab in our rush to escape roughly two feet of snow at home.
In Missoula, we woke up to find Snow White, the truck, covered
in a layer of ice. It was definitely time to leave the frozen North. Actually,
we didn't head south. We were headed to North Dakota to see family. For the
first few hours, the driver’s white knuckles matched the icy road conditions.
As we moved east the temperature climbed and we were on our way.
On Sunday Reggie did a repair on Snow White's bed cover. We had
a good visit and feasted on delicious dinners provided by grandson's elk.
Many of you encouraged us to take our time and enjoy the trip.
Heeding your advice, after a day layover we drove to see the giant heads of SD,
which we had never seen, but was on my bucket list. Quite impressive. I was
particularly interested in learning how in the world that project was
conceived and then carried out.
Tuesday was a travel day as we were excited to get to St. Louis
for another visit. We were provided with another evening of good food, good
conversation and some laughing. We would
like to have stayed longer but the news was full of warnings about a severe
winter storm headed towards us
Snow White wanted an oil change, so we ended up sitting for a
few hours in the lobby of a local Ford dealer waiting for that which caused another
rather short day of travel. Wednesday we put some miles under the wheels. It
looked like we would be in Nashville that night. Should we stop before
Nashville and avoid rush hour? Should we stay in Nashville? Or maybe push
through and stay of the other side? We chose option 3. Nashville at
rush hour is not for old folks from Montana. The helpful navigation voice from
our phone said to exit, so we did. Hmmm? This hardly seems right. We are now
driving through a rather old part of the city, then through two lane
residential streets. "Go three blocks and turn right. Proceed to the stop
sign and turn left. Go 100 feet turn right." Our dear friends
had encouraged us to spend some time in Nashville. "Go to the Grand Ol'
Opry. Have some fun." It is our theory that they somehow hacked
our phone and sent us on a highly questionable tour of Nashville. Not sure why
they took us through that particular area, however. Weird sense of humor?
Once back on the freeway and out of Nashville, we stopped in
Murfreesboro for the night. Glad to be out of Nashville. In the morning the
news was all about the winter storm. "Do not drive. Stay home. Schools and
businesses closed." Nashville had freezing rain and soon snow would be
covering the ice. It was raining in Murfreesboro, but not freezing
yet; however the temperature dropped about 20 degrees while we were
breakfasting and preparing to get on the road.
Time to get a move on.
We outran the storm and arrived safely at our new temporary home
in Satsuma, FL. (anyone know how to rotate this photo in the blog?)
As we prepared to retire, we closed the drapes and were welcomed
by the current owner of the trailer:
He was almost 3" long. We encouraged him to vacate.
The coffee is gone. The temperature is slowly climbing. I'll
leave the next chapter until another day.
Barbara
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