Week One – Tennessee to Texas

Helen and I were all a-twitter about beginning our road trip to California and the Rockies. The plan was to leave very early last Friday, make the long drive to Memphis, and arrive at a decent hour. The plans of mice and men often go astray. The restrictions in our neighborhood only permit RV’s in for a maximum of twenty-four hours for loading and unloading—which is fine with me.

Helen had worked very hard before Thursday to have all the food organized for loading, and what little clothing isn’t already in Dora (trailer) was neatly folded and would go into the trailer in minutes. I drove to the facility where Dora remained between trips and touched the power button for the controls that raise the nose of the trailer to allow me to hitch it to the truck.

No power to the controller. I hooked the trailer to the battery connection on Ruby and let the truck run for about 30 minutes, thinking the batteries would charge sufficiently, and I would hook up and move on. That never happened.

I removed the batteries and took them back home, and put them on the battery charger in my garage. When I checked the batteries after two hours, they had only reached half charge. The batteries are almost brand new. I loaded the batteries back in the truck and drove to the retailer that sold them to me. They agreed that something was off-kilter, but they wanted to try charging them on their super-duper charger before they could honor the warranty.

At around 5:30 that evening, the technician agreed that the batteries were defective and needed replacing, but…he didn’t have any in stock. I pitched a fit and demanded that he find some somewhere—now. He called around to some other stores and found two at a store in a small town 30 miles away. I took off and made it to the store ten minutes before it closed. Now, I had to drive back to Dora’s storage facility, install the batteries, and pray that the controls worked. Prayers answered. I arrived home at around 7:30 and loaded my clothes, ate dinner, and hit the sack.

We finally made it out of Knoxville around 10:00 am on Friday and reached Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis, Arkansas, in less than seven hours. This park sits right on the Mississippi River. After the harried events of the day before, I welcomed the soothing effect of watching towboats and barges float by while savoring a glass of fine red wine. I captured an image of a barge floating toward a brilliant sunset, putting an exclamation point on the end of day one.

We enjoyed two nights at Tom Sawyer Park. Two dear friends that I shared a house with in my college days came by to spend the afternoon with us on Saturday. Both are Memphis natives and know Memphis barbeque. They treated us to a lunch of ribs and pulled pork. We had a grand time catching up, and the events of Thursday were erased entirely by now. I owe them for that.

From West Memphis, we drove to Roland, Oklahoma, a small town near Ft. Smith, Arkansas. We discovered our campground on one of our return trips from the west. Cherokee Casino in Roland has five campsites with full hookups on a first-come-first-served basis, free of charge. Free is good, but they manage to collect in other ways. After two days, I did well in the casino, but Helen paid for our campsite. Oh well, we had fun. Roland, Oklahoma, sits in the middle of farming country, with not much else there except the casino and adjoining hotel. As soon as we set up n the campsite, five deer came to greet us. The sunrise on the first morning was stunning.

The third stop I’ll share is the campground at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The campground is nice but relatively small and is another that takes no reservations. We called ahead and learned that three spaces were open, but the manager recommended that we hurry. We made it with time to spare. This campground is a bargain at twenty dollars a night. We took advantage of the laundry facility and walked around the lovely lake for exercise. The “Tinker Turtles” were out and soaking up the sun.

Today (Thursday), we drove to Amarillo, Texas. This is a one-night stop. We will drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico Friday morning. Fifteen weeks to go…thanks for Easin’ Along with us. Please come back!