Launch Date 10/31/2015 - From Annandale
The Turnaround trip this year got started later than planned. First our dog got Lime disease. Fortunately she was diagnosed quickly and the drugs worked well. She was much better after 3 or 4 days. Next we were delayed by dental problems. I broke a tooth and needed it to be repaired and capped. I then found out I had three abscess teeth. After two pulled teeth and several re-done root canals, another cap and a tightened implant, I was patched up and ready to go on the road.
We started on Saturday morning about 9:30 AM. Traffic was good except for an accident in Hartford that cost us about 20 minutes. This is just a travel day and our objective was to get to PA, which we did. The key to this start was to get Linda and I back on the road again and see how Kacey was going to react to RVing. Kacey did fine. She spent a lot of time sharing the passenger seat with Linda. We spent four days getting to Chattanooga TN. We worked out a process for how Kacey was going to travel. I disconnected a seat belt from the dinette that we do not use and mounted it on my desk chair that never had a seat belt. That allows us to belt Kacey into that chair and she had enough lattitude to sit on the chair or sleep on the floor. In either case if we had an emergency stop she would be protected from flying too far and hitting something hard.
Kacey quickly got back into a routine of RVing and ended up being little trouble. We can leave her for hours in the front of the RV and she does not get into any trouble. We partially block off the back room yet we can leave the A/C on in case she is being left in seroius heat. She has a pee pad that she can use if she cannot hold her toilet needs. She almost never uses it.
A big highlight of this years trip is gas prices. The first day we spent a high of $2.159 a gallon for regular in CT. That was the high price per gallon with a low of $1.809 a gallon in TN. It’s unclear how long this will last but these are the lowest prices we have seen since 2008/2009.
We spent two full days in Chattanooga. On the first day we went to Lookout Mountain and toured Rock City. Rock City is a rock complex that has been developed at the top of Lookout mountain. The following link is the Wikipedia write up about Rock City. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_City We spent about two hours in Rock City and it was well worth the visit. Kacey could go with us through the complex. The rock walled passages, tunnels, and garden spots were very cool. The 140 foot waterfall (man made) was beautiful. Later in the early afternoon we went down lower on the mountain and toured Ruby Falls. Ruby Falls is a limstone cave under lookout mountain. The cave has a river that runs through it with a 140 foot waterfall. This is 1120 feet underground! WOW! The whole story of how the cave was discovered and developed was fascinating. Here is a link to the Wikipedia page for Ruby Falls. We could not take Kacey on the tour but they had kennals that we could use. Linda did not like leaving her in a kennel but it worked out fine in the end. This was quite a full and tiring day. We have driven by Chattanooga for several years and seen the signs for Lookout mountain and Ruby Falls but I never expected something this good.
The second full day in Chattanooga was spent touring the city. We drove into town and parked at the site of the ChooChoo. The town has a free electric trolley that we took downtown. It was a gray and dreary day. We wandered around the town and went into a few shops and restaurants/bars. I was not very impressed with our visit to the city but we did visit a bar called Hair of the Dog Pub (http://hairofthedogpub.net) that seemed like a nice local establishment. On our way back to the parking garage we stopped at a brew pub called the Terminal Brew House (http://terminalbrewhouse.com) this place had really good food and excellent craft beer.
Next up is Nashville. On our way out of town travelling on Route 24 I saw in my rear view mirror a tractor trailer truck jack knife behind me and completely block the highway. For the next several miles I did not see any vehicles behind me dispite the fact that there was a fair amount of traffic before the truck jack knifed.
The next page will follow on with the trip starting with our visit to Nashville.
