A tin cup or a gilded goblet, a hut or a castle, wobbly bicycles or a Bentley -- to wherever and by whatever means, my love, our journey is splendid,
our cup is full.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

On our way to Texas

Its been quite a while since we made an update to our blog, and it will probably take more than one entry to bring things up to date. 
We spent a good three weeks in Red Bay, Alabama at the Tiffin factory getting all of our warranty issues taken care of.  Duane and Nick and all of the techs at the service center did a good job for us (although there are several outstanding issues for next time).  When we talked to them about our time constraint in needing to get back to Texas for the baby, they did everything they could to get things done so we could get going.
We will do a separate blog post to go over more detail of the repair and addition items to the motorhome (suffice it to say that we got our key items taken care of - replacements for the day/night shades for the whole coach, additional cabinetry from Chris Berry,  a new Maytag washer, and virtually all of our warranty punch list addressed).  We'll use this post to just cover our travel chronology since our last entry.
Over our last week in RB, we continued our evening cocktail tradition with our new friends Wayne and Kathy, and also went with them to visit the TMH Belmont Paint facility -- as well as finding the BBQ restaurant in Belmont (which is excellent!).  We managed to get all our Red Bay items done by Friday, the 24th, and we hit the road on Saturday morning.
At the old gas station at the TMH Belmont facility with Wayne and Kathy  The best kept BBQ secred in the Red Bay area


The first leg of our trip to Texas took us down the Natches Trace to Jackson, Mississippi.  This is a very interesting parkway, which was originally a trade route (both for Native Americans and white settlers) stretching from Nashville, TN to Natches, MS -- over 400 miles.  It is now a National Scenic Byway, and is administered by the National Park Service.  It is two lane, has a 50 mph limit, and commercial traffic is prohibited.
We drove the parkway for about 170 miles from Tupelo to Jackson -- it was a very interesting drive, and was the most direct route for us, but I wouldn't want to do much more than 200 miles on it in a motorhome.  We were in a bit of a hurry so we didn't get a chance to take too many pictures.
IMG_0883  The original Natches Trace
At one of the scenic pullouts for lunch A section of the Trace
When we hit Jackson we filled up with diesel at the Flying J ($2.939 per gallon!!) and then headed west on Interstate 20 for Vicksburg.  We spent Saturday night at the very friendly Vicksburg Elks Lodge, and were going to play tourist at the Vicksburg Civil War battlefield on Sunday -- but we thought we'd better get to Texas sooner than later, so we hit the road again. 
Sunday night found us in Tyler, Texas, and after a quick night there at a Passport park, we made the final leg to our kid's place in Liberty Hill, Texas, just northwest of Austin, by Monday evening.  We'll be here for the next month or so, through Thanksgiving, and then we'll head west for our winter stay in Yuma.

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