Day One On the Road–It’s Spring Down South

Certain that every Easin’ Along reader is breathlessly awaiting an update on Lucy’s progress, I am posting a short update at the end of Day One. 

We arrived at the FamCamp on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama late on Wednesday night. A drive that should take no more than five hours stretched to seven due to heavy traffic and a nine mile, bumper to bumper backup, caused by an overturned lumber truck on the Interstate.

We arrived after dark and after the campground office closed for the day. Fortunately, we have camped here twice before and know how to find the campground on this very large installation. The campground manager, a very nice man named Rick, had left a note on the office window to let us know to camp in site #32. We pulled in, unhooked Lucy, de-winterize her, and connected the utilities. Within an hour, we were eating a late dinner of chicken salad and artisan bread in front of the television.  Bedtime came early after a long day on the road.

On Thursday, we spent the entire day getting Lucy organized for a three month trip. When we left Knoxville, we loaded boxes, bags, and cartons of food into Lucy and left it on the floor until we reached Montgomery.  Helen (adorable wife) had the task of moving all of it into Lucy’s pantry and cabinets after she cleaned them. She also spent the morning organizing the bathroom cabinets and the bedroom closets–something we did not do before we left. By the end of day one, we could find food in the kitchen and our underwear in the bedroom. Helen really is a master at finding a place for everything and putting everything in its place.

My job was to install a handle on the screen door, and activate Dish Satellite TV. The screen door handle was no problem, but the Dish TV thing took a while. There are three satellite connection points on Lucy and I tried all of them…three times.  Finally, I placed a call to Grand Design, Lucy’s manufacturer, and a customer service representative helped me find the connection I needed, located in a cabinet above the television. Once the connections were completed, I had to call the Dish people (in the Philippines) to activate the receiver. The whole process made me wish for the days when we had only three channels and rabbit ears on top of the tv set. Ultimately, I got it done in time to watch an old Perry Mason on MeTV. Life is good.

Once we completed our projects, Helen decided we needed some exercise, so we took a walk around a small lake near our campsite. The hike probably was a mile in length and felt good.  Temperatures are near seventy degrees here and the Azaleas are just coming out.  Helen found one with blooms and wanted to pick a few, but I finally managed to talk her out of it.  The bush with the new blossoms are pictured above. Pictured below is the lake.  The leaves are not yet out on the trees but it won’t be long and it feels like spring is on top of us here. Will it be hot in Arizona?

That’s about it from Montgomery.  Tomorrow (Friday) we drive to Biloxi, MS for a three day stay then on to LaFayette, LA. We’ll have another update soon.  Thanks for Easin’ Along with us.