IN FULL TOURIST MODE

AND THEY’RE OFF…
Well, we finally “escaped” Red Bay, AL on Friday 4/18. We traveled the Natchez Trace Parkway up to Nashville. The dogwoods and red buds were in full bloom and everything had it’s spring colors on so the trip was spectacular!
After a one night stop just north of Nashville, we traveled on to Shepherdsville, KY, just south of Louisville, where we stayed for three nights. While there, we drove over to see Churchill Downs, the home of the Kentucky Derby. What a spectacular facility this is. On Monday, we drove over to the Jim Beam distillery and toured the facility. We learned a lot about how Bourbon is made and even got to taste samples of a couple of their premium labels. It’s a little spendy, but good stuff! After leaving Jim Beam, we drove a few miles to My Old Kentucky Home State Park and saw the home where Stephen Foster composed the famous song “My Old Kentucky Home”.

Churchill Downs

One of 71 buildings at Jim Beam used for

aging

Barrels are stored 27 barrels high

A horse of a different color

Spring colors at My Old Kentucky Home

My Old Kentucky Home - Inspiration for the

Song composed by Stephen Foster

KENTUCKY HORSE PARK…
Tuesday, we moved over to Lexington, KY to stay at the campground at the Kentucky Horse Park. The rolling hills of blue grass on the drive over were amazing! The campground is laid out over several acres of grass and trees and has 260 sites. When we checked in, there were only a couple of spaces available, which surprised us given the time of year. Then we found out they are hosting the Rolex 3 Day Equestrian Event, a major national horse event, starting Thursday. We were lucky to get in at all and we ended up with a tree between us and the Directv satellite, so we were forced to watch American Idol over the air this week without being able to tivo it first, so we had to watch all the stinking commercials. Sure glad we don’t have to do that all the time! The campground is one of the most beautiful campgrounds we have ever been in.
Wednesday we spent the day at the Horse Park. This is a HUGE facility spread over 1200 acres that is all about the horse. There are numerous paddocks, huge barns, a huge indoor arena, and numerous outdoor arenas. There is every kind of horse one can imagine here. The whole park is geared towards education about the horse. We saw several demonstrations of moves used in various types of competition. One of the most interesting was a rider that rode two beautiful black Fresians tandom. He rode one and had the other one on reins in front of the one he was riding. As he ran through various moves, the horses worked in unison. It was an awesome sight! We also got to see some famous retired champion horses, including two very successful race horses, Cigar and Kona Gold. Cigar won just shy of $10 Million during his racing career and still holds the winnings record. The facility also houses two museums, the International Horse Museum and the American Saddlebred Museum. The displays are awesome It was a great day and a stop on our tour we are glad we made.
Our next stop is Indianapolis where we will go see Indianapolis Motor Speedway. More on that shortly.

Roadside color

Kentucky Bluegrass for which Kentucky is famous

Some of the many acres of paddocks at

Kentucky Horse Park

Tandom Fresians

KEY UNDERWOOD COON DOG CEMETERY

Yes, you read the title correctly. Last Thursday we took a short drive from Red Bay to see the Key Underwood Coon Dog Cemetery. If you don’t know what a Coon Dog is, it is a hound dog that is bred for hunting. The most notable breed is the Tick Hound. Only AKC/UKC champion hounds may be buried there and the owner pays a fee of $100 for the burial. The first dog was buried there in 1937. As you can see in the pictures, there have been a lot of dogs buried there since. The graves are all marked, some with rather elaborate headstones, many of which have some sort of epitaph inscribed on them. One of the markers said:



“He was good as the best and better than the rest”



Another one said:



“He wasn’t the best but he was the best I ever had”



YOU GOTTA KNOW WE’RE IN REDNECK COUNTRY!





Yesterday we drove over to Tupelo, MS to do some shopping and go to Chili's for Ardelle's birthday. Ardelle found a quilt shop that she really liked. She would probably still be in there if she hadn't needed to come up for food! Tupelo is the birthplace of Elvis. We didn't go see the house he was born in or the other tributes. We may do that while we are killing time during the days the coach is being worked on.



We will be here in Red Bay for at least another week.

"ALL SHOOK UP"

We had stayed within a stone’s throw of Memphis many times, but for one reason or another, had never gone to see Graceland, so last Friday we decided it was time. We were staying near Tunica, MS, about ½ hour from Graceland. When we arrived, we were somewhat surprised at the line at the ticket counter, considering the time of year, but it was also Spring Break time, so there were more families than there probably would normally be this time of year. After getting our tickets, we were shuttled across the street to tour Graceland mansion. The house itself is not as enormous as many of the mansions and plantation homes we have seen in our travels, but nevertheless, was impressive. It was built in 1939 and was purchased by Elvis in 1957. He was 22 years old at the time. It was initially occupied by Elvis and his parents. The purchase price for the home and 13.8 acres was around $100,000. Probably the most impressive part of the mansion is what Elvis did to it to make it his own. As you can see in the pictures, he did some pretty elaborate decorating. The tour of the mansion included all of the lower floor of the house and the basement. The upstairs was off limits. We were told that was Elvis’ private area and out of respect for him it was kept that way. On the grounds, Elvis added a racket ball building which is now used to display many of his numerous awards, gold/platinum records, etc. The tour ended at the Meditation Garden, an area Elvis added for quiet reflection. In this area are the gravesites of Elvis, his mother and father and his grandmother. The area was adorned by numerous floral arrangements that are constantly brought and/or sent from fans all over the world.

After touring the mansion area, we were shuttled back across the street for the rest of the display. This is the “tourist trap” part, with numerous gift and Elvis memorabilia shops containing rather excessively-priced stuff. There is the auto museum which is very nicely done and displays numerous cars and other motorized toys owned by Elvis. In another area is a display of the various costumes he wore in his concerts. Also on display are his two private aircraft, a Convair 880 named Lisa Marie, after his daughter, and a Jetstar named Hound Dog. If you look on the tail section in the picture, you may be able to make out the letters “TCB” with a lightning bolt. This was Elvis’ logo. The TCB stands for Taking Care of Business.

All in all, it was a worthwhile visit, albeit a little pricey, but nonetheless worth seeing.

We were both to worn out to do much more “touristing”, but we did drive downtown to Bealle Street, the birthplace of the blues, just to say we had been there. On a future visit to the area we will go back and take in some of music-related museums and studios.

On Saturday, we drove back over to Red Bay so we could meet the representative from MCD to get a couple of repairs made to the solar shades we had installed last fall. The service department at Tiffin said they may get us in earlier than expected so we are going to hang out here. It’s not exactly your ideal RV resort, but we have full hookups, the rent’s free and we’re not burning $4.00/gal diesel fuel!

Graceland

Elvis' living room

The jungle room

Meditation Garden

Convair 880

Jetstar

Back on the Road

Well, as planned, we departed SeaWind on March 1. We really had a great stay there. It was nice to be with all the friends we came to know when we were there last winter. We are now on our way to Red Bay, AL, the home of Tiffin Motorhomes. We spent four days in Kinder, LA at the Coushatta Casino where we had our annual crawfish pigout (ummmm!). Unfortunately, we didn't win any money in the casino, but we had alot of fun. Next we moved on to River View RV Park in Vidalia, LA, which is on the Mississippi River across from Natchez, MS. Natchez is the oldest settlement on the Mississippi River with alot of interesting history and beautiful antibellum homes. Our campsite overlooked the river and we could watch tugboats pushing numerous "trains" of various types of barges up and down the river day and night. It's amazing the amount of commercial traffic traversing from point to point on the river. One of the highlights of April's and Pansy's life is seeing squirrels, prairie dogs and other ground critters and being able to bark at them. Pansy has a special bark/yip she reserves just for such critters. After not seeing any of these intriguing creatures for quite some time, they soon discovered that this place has squirrels. Life is good! Sunday night, after the NASCAR race (everything stops when NASCAR is on) we went Natchez to one of our favorite restaurants, The Cock of the Walk, and had some good southern food. There are three. The other two are in Nashville, TN and North Little Rock, AR. We have been to all of them more than once. Monday morning we picked up the Natchez Trace Parkway in Natchez and headed north. If you've never been on this parkway, you owe to yourself to do it. This is a two lane highway that is a national park and stretches from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. It crosses three states. The countryside along the road is spectacular and the road and surrounding landscape are very well maintained. There is no commercial traffic allowed and the speed limit is 50 mph, so it is a very realxing road to travel on. There are no commercial businesses or signs. The Parkway has many historic sites along the way. During the stretch from Natchez to Jacksonville, we saw maybe three other vehicles. We spent the night in Canton, MS and Tuesday will rejoin the Natchez Trace Parkway to make our way to Tupelo, MS. Yesterday, while sitting outside, Pansy discovered there was a cat under the motorhome. This was almost exciting as the squirrels! On Wednesday, we'll make the short jaunt over to Red Bay, AL where we will be staying until we can get the work completed on our rig. We will post some more pics when we get to Red Bay and have time to pick some out. Thank you to those who have left comments. We enjoy reading them.



mississippi river looking north from camp
the twin bridges connect LA and MS

mississippi river looking south from camp

typical stretch of natchez trace parkway

UPDATE 3/13/08:

We arrived at Red Bay on Wed. and got our place in line for the work. It's going to be 3 weeks or so before the work can begin, so we dedided, rather than sit here and wait, we will do some travelling around the region. We will be leaving here on Monday, March 17. Stay tuned to find out where we wind up next!

"On The Road" is "Online" Again

Well, it's been quite awhile since we abandoned our previous website. At the time we were posting on that site, we frequently had less-than-efficient internet access which made it very difficult to keep the site up-to-date. Thanks to improved technology, we now have reliable internet access most anywhere we travel so we decided it was time to try setting up a blog. We hope to keep our family and friends posted on where we are and what we're doing as we travel around the country. We'll try to post a few photos along the way. Currently we are stationary at SeaWind RV Resort on Baffin Bay in So. Texas. We will be here until March 1, so there may not be alot of new things to post for awhile, but we'll try and post a couple of pics of the area. Neither of us has ever had a blog before, so we ask your patience in advance with any blunders we may commit along the way.

View out our windshield at Seawind

Mardi Gras Parade - "Seawind Style"

Just a quick background for those with whom we haven't been in contact for awhile. We have been full time RV'ers for almost five years. We live in our RV along with our two shih-tzu dogs (Pansy and April). We have travelled in all but 4 of the continental United States. Typically, we spend about 3 months or so during the summer at Charleston Marina RV Park in Charleston, Oregon (near Coos Bay) where we keep a boat and fish and crab in the Pacific Ocean. During the winter months we stay in south Texas at SeaWind RV Resort on Baffin Bay (s/w of Corpus Christi). The remaining months we travel around the country. Where we travel depends alot on what the weather is doing. We try to avoid ice, snow, severe thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornados and extreme heat. In spite of our efforts, we have occasionally been confronted with ice, snow and extreme heat in our travels and we have ended up way closer to tornados than we wanted to be! We started out in a 33' Teton fifth wheel trailer with three slide-outs. As of last March, we are living and travelling in a 42' Allegro Bus motorhome with 4 slide-outs.

We hope you enjoy the postings we make along the way. We would enjoy reading any comments you may like to add in the "comments" area.

Roger & Ardelle