Vincennes

Tuesday, July 26 - Well, we've been at Lucille's for a few days now.  Life in Vincennes is always an adventure.  Actually, life at Lucille's is always an adventure.  Friday we, of course, had some chores to take care of.  At the top of the list was getting Lucille set up with a "hardship mailbox" so she did not have to walk out to the road any more to get the mail.  First, we had to find where the post office had moved to, but we did find it, got the form, filled it out, completed the process, and got it all set up.  (Thank you, Nancy, we didn't even know there was such a thing as a "hardship mailbox.")  But buying the new mailbox was a real adventure.  We went to Lowe's and looked over their inventory.  Joe took one out of the box to check it out, and when we finally decided that was the right one, I told him there were a couple more on the shelf if he wanted to get one that was unopened (even though he was the one who opened the one he had).  Anyway, he tried to reach it but couldn't, and there happened to be a ladder right there in the aisle (I'm sure it was for "authorized personnel" only), so he tried to pull it over to the row.  He had to release the brake to drag it over, but when he stepped on the bottom step the brake wasn't all the way back down, so it made a loud "clang."  We were trying to be inconspicuous, but it got worse.  He pulled the other mailbox down off the shelf, and it immediately crashed to the floor (apparently someone else had already opened that box too).  This whole episode equaled my adventure here last year in Rural King when I tried out the swing and immediately crumpled to the floor.  Anyway, he starts to walk away, but we've left the ladder sitting across the entire aisle, so he went back to push it back in place. More noise.  By this time, a worker had rounded the corner and was coming to check out all the crashes in this aisle.  We guiltily sauntered off, mailbox under arm, and vacated the premised before they arrested us.

I'm happy to report now that the mailbox has been mounted on the front porch, and she has received her mail there for the last two days.  Mission One Accomplished.

Every trip to town involves several stops, but we finally headed back to the farm, with a stop at his counsin, Brad Wonning, to get Lucille one watermelon and one cantaloupe.  One of the main reason's Joe wanted to come back through here in the summertime was to see Knox County harvesting the melons, and we got a good look at this today.  Brad has quite an operation going here, and the process for getting cantaloupes ready for shipment has really evolved.  While picking them still seems to be as labor-intensive as always, Brad has implemented some procedures that requires less pitching and throwing than back in the old days.

(Brad is the one in the blue shirt).  The melons now have to go through a "wash," and he has installed a conveyor belt to accomplish that.  In addition, the wagon has a drop-down side that he cranks down so the melons can be rolled off onto the belt, instead of pitched. 

Although they may have eliminated some steps, others have been added.  Now, they have to place a sticker on each melon identifying the farm it came from.  (So if you see a Wonning melon, you'll know we've been there!). 

This probably isn't too interesting to some of my blog readers, but this brought back a lot of Joe's childhood memories, and he was fascinated by it all (and also very grateful that he left the farm at age 17).

They were also bringing in wagonloads of watermelons, so Brad took Joe over to pick one of those out for Lucille (and us). 

We finally left here (and it was hot, hot) and drove on to Lucille's, which is about one mile down the road.  We had been gone so long she thought we must have left the country.  Fred and Judy came out, and we had to run back into town for Bobe's Pizza for supper, then we started out card game.  We played until about midnight, but when we quit, we had to empty out the bathroom vanity and clean up the kitchen because a man was coming in the morning to install a new sink and faucet (and heaven forbid he find a messy kitchen).  I carried the drawers to the living room (although they probably did not need to come out), and Joe helped unload under the sink.  Joe did mention to his mother that she does not need to buy any more powder.  Ever.

Of course, no job is ever finished until Lucille puts her stamp of approval on it.

Finally, she dismissed us all, and we were allowed to go to bed.  It was probably 1:00 a.m. by now.

Saturday morning, her carpenter showed up, and the new sink is now installed and functional.  And it is a thing of beauty.

We took Lucille to town for lunch, then went for a drive through the country, checking out the melon fields. We drove down, around, and through Decker, then returned home.  I then took a nap, but Fred showed up so he and Joe went for a drive.  Judy had a music thing she was going to with her sister, so no card game tonight, but Mike and Rachelle and the kids stopped by about 9:00 p.m., so we got to visit with them for a while.

Sunday was church, then we went to town for Sunday dinner (where Joe spilled his full glass of tea all over the table, and Lucille and I barely escaped getting soaked).  We had a leisurely Sunday afternoon, and I think we all got naps.  It has been awfully hot here, and this afternoon we had a little thunderstorm which brought the temperature down, and gave these farmers some much needed rain.  We did play cards again that night, but Judy put a 10:00 p.m. curfew on us, so it was a fairly early night.

Monday it was back to projects.  The next mission was to get the newspaper delivered to the front porch as well, so we stopped by the newspaper office.  We had stopped here on Saturday but it was closed, but today we got the name of the person we need to talk to (he wasn't in, of course).    Then we went shopping for a remote control for her bedroom lamp.  That took 3 stops, but we found one, and Joe installed it Monday night (at midnight, after the card game).  Mission Accomplished.

My chores today included burning the trash, and I think it took me 13 matches to get it started.  Eric always remembers his assignment here when Lucille sent him to burn the trash with only one match.  That pressure about did him in, so I just took the whole box of matches with me. 

Tuesday we got the newspaper issue resolved and Joe went to town to get a tube from the newspaper office, and to get the oil changed in our car, and to get a haircut.  He got all that done, and came home and attached the newspaper tube to the handrail on the front porch.  Another Mission Accomplished.

There's no end of "missions" here, and we've got a couple more things underway, but for the time being, we are basking in a feeling of accomplishment.

Spottsville, Kentucky

Thursday, July 21 - We decided to make a run over to Spottsville this morning, which turned out to be only 10 miles east.  I visited here with my family in 1964 and could not remember the names of my mother's relatives that we visited, but we made several swaths through the little town looking for anything familiar.  I was even checking mailboxes, but I never did see anything I recognized, other than the bridge and the locks here.  Someone had obliterated the S from the sign -- don't know if there's a message there.

From the bridge we could see the dam, and we were actually able to drive down to the locks (at least no one ran us off).  Unfortunately, no boats came through while we were there, which would have been really interesting.

Upstream from the dam was a railroad bridge that has a swing span, which pivots on its base to allow for the passage of boats too tall to go under it.  This had been turned open, and I don't know if this railroad is still in use, or if the swing span is left open all the time.

After about 4 passes through town, a beer-drinking party of 4 (this was about 11:00 a.m.) began to eye us suspiciously, so we thought we should leave before we made their acquaintance.  So we headed back to the RV and de-camped.  This was a nice little state park right in town, right on Hwy 41, with electric and water, and a dump station, so it met all our needs.  It even had one washer and one dryer, at the restroom/shower building. 

We got on the road just before noon EST, and were back home again in Indiana 5 minutes later.

Indiana is looking much healthier than when we left in May, when it was mostly under water.  It was 95 degrees, pretty warm for back here in the humidity.  We decided to go into Vincennes and get tenderloin sandwiches before we even got to the house (Joe invited his mother, but she declined), and we needed to fill up with propane.  So we got to Joe's mother's about 2:00.  Today's drive was a whopping 61 miles!  Joe had wanted to come back here in the summer to see them harvesting the crops (picking the melons), and as I drove out from the propane station (we unhooked there), I saw one field where they were picking watermelons, then I followed two wagon-loads of cantaloupes for a little while, so it looks like we made it back here at the right time.  We were just happy that it wasn't us out there picking!

Henderson, Kentucky

Wednesday, July 20 - We're finally on the road again.  We left Mike and Nancy's about 10:30 (EST) this morning, traveling through Tennessee on I-24, and we made it all the way to the Kentucky/Indiana border at Henderson, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Evansville, Indiana.  We had a good visit with Mike and Nancy; we watched the video about Uncle Junior that they showed at his funeral, Mike drove us around the countryside, we played cards, and Nancy even got out old picture albums from the early 70s when we used to all go camping together.  It was fun trying to remember who, what, when and where.  I woke up this morning with a headache from laughing so much.

We hit Nashville just before noon, and passed the Titan's football stadium which is pretty close to the Interstate.  It was 92 degrees, so we did not do any sightseeing in Nashville -- we'll save that for another trip.

At the first Clarksville, TN exit, Joe pulled off so he could put some more tape around his side window.  His whistle was back, and driving him crazy. 

We no sooner got back on the highway when I saw a billboard that there was a White Castle hamburger joint just up the road, so we made another stop and had lunch.  This was on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard (an Olympic gold medal runner born in Clarksville in 1940).  I have a poster of Wilma Rudolph at home, so this was worthy of a picture.

This interstate carries a lot of truck traffic, about like I-10 between Phoenix and California, so we were glad to get off it onto US 41A at Clarksville.  There were also a lot of RVs on this interstate, and I noticed when we passed some of them that Joe has less gray hair than most of those drivers (yes, we do occasionally pass somebody!).  We were looking for a place to dump our tanks, so we drove through a truck stop here.  Their dump was shut down, but there was a tobacco field right behind the place.

We passed by some of the property of the Ft. Campbell military base, home of the Special Ops forces that took out Osama ben Laden, along with the Navy Seal team.  The 101st Airborne Division, known as the Screaming Eagles, is based here.  This is where President Obama came to thank the troops for that victory, back in May.

We saw 3 wild turkeys right along the road in Hopkinsville, KY, our only wildlife for the day.  Our intent was to drive all the way to Vincennes today, but we needed to dump our tanks and we had picked out a state park in Henderson, KY to do that.  By the time we got there, we decided that was enough for the day, so we just camped here.  As we get closer to Vincennes, we see that gas is on the rise.  We filled up on the Kentucky/Indiana border for $3.579, but that is about 40 cents less than it was when we came through here in April.  So we got off the road about 3:30, having driven 207 miles.  It was 95 degrees, and back here, that is hot, hot, hot.  Joe walked over to the restroom thinking he might take a shower over there, but he said it was like a sauna in there.  So after we cooled out in the RV for an hour or so, he took me over to Evansville to the casino for the evening!!!  No, we didn't come out as winners, but we spent a few hours there, and had a good time.  We are about 20 miles from the Spottsville, KY area, where my mother grew up, so we might make a short side trip over there in the morning, before we head out to Vincennes, which is only about 50 miles.

Manchester, Tennessee

Monday-Tuesday, July 18-19.  Monday morning Mike made us breakfast, then took Nancy to the chiropractor.  Nancy is off work this week on sick leave with a cracked rib, so we are getting to spend some unexpected time with her.  After their return, we headed out to Lynchburg, TN to tour the Jack Daniels Distillery.  Tennessee has lots of flowers and flowering trees, and there were some beautiful ones on the parking lot here that looked a lot like lilacs, but they were crepe myrtle.

This was an excellent tour, with a couple of short videos and a tour guide (the tour guide spoke "Tennesseeian," though, so we had a little trouble understanding him).  This is the oldest registered distillery in the U.S., established and registered in 1866, and it even survived the Prohibition.  And oddly enough, it is in a dry county in Tennessee.

We actually got to go into several of the buildings, and we even saw them bottling and packaging some whiskey.  We were only allowed to take pictures outside the buildings, but it was a very interesting tour.

At the completion of the tour, we were given complimentary glasses of lemonade since they cannot serve any liquor in this county.  Then we toured the town square of Lynchburg, and we had some lunch.  Joe bought a leather belt and I bought a leather purse here.  Mike wants Joe to keep him informed on how the belt wears.  I thought maybe he was going to go back and buy one if this one lasts, but he bought a belt the next day himself, so I guess it has become a contest now.

Mike decided to be our tour guide for the afternoon, so he drove us to some of their rivers, dams (Normandy Dam) and campgrounds (Whispering Oaks).  We later figured out that the campground tour was really to give us alternative camping ideas in case we wore out our welcome here.

It took him a long time to find the dam, but we saw some pretty country while he was looking for it.  We spent several hours in the car.  But we checked out several different campgrounds, and even found some wildlife.  A really cute raccoon was checking out one campsite, but we couldn't get Mike to stop so we could take a picture (until he got so close he scared him away).  He did redeem himself somewhat by finding a deer just a few campsites later.

We finally got back to the house (and our campsite) about 5:00.

We had another fun card-playing evening, although the guys skunked us once.  We thought we might head out Tuesday morning, but we were having such a great time we decided to stay another day (and night).  We went to a local restaurant for breakfast, then Mike toured us around again through some of the neighboring towns.  We could see Mt. Eagle in the distance.  We found 3 deer on a golf course he plays, so of course that added a little excitement to the trip (but he only found me a dead raccoon on the highway).

We shopped at a general store in another small town, where Mike bought his new belt (1/3 of the cost of Joe's), then he saw a pick-up truck they were selling corn out of, so he had to shop for that.

 We picked up a watermelon at a produce market, then headed back to the house, shortly after noon.  I caught a short nap, then we had another card-playing evening (and they skunked us girls AGAIN).  But we shared a lot of laughs and old memories, and it was wonderful to get to catch up with Mike and Nancy after so many years.  We are for sure leaving tomorrow, but don't know if we'll make Indiana.  We contemplated taking some kind of tour in Nashville, but it's supposed to be 96 degrees there tomorrow, so we decided to wait for that tour on another trip, not in the summertime!

Mike and Nancy McRae's

Sunday, July 17 - The next stop on our travel log was Manchester, Tennessee, to visit Joe's cousin, Mike and Nancy McRae, whom we double-dated with before we all got married a hundred years ago.  They have lived here for 23 years, but this was our first trip through here since before we moved to Arizona 26 years ago.  As we left Chattanooga, we crossed the beautiful Tennessee River, where we saw a barge passing by.

We could see houses on the mountaintop but we don't know if this is the famous "Lookout Mountain" here.

We crossed back into Georgia for a few miles on this interstate, then came back into Tennessee.

We also changed time zones here.  We only had to drive 87 miles today, and we arrived about noon Central Time. Mike met us at the gas station when we exited I-24 and led us to his house, where we again have free parking for a couple nights.  Their daughter, Lisa, and her 2 kids were here visiting so we got to see the whole family.  We made a shopping trip to Walmart and the fruit market, then had dinner and played cards -- something we also did a lot of in our younger days.  Mike retired a few months ago from truck-driving (car hauler) but Nancy still delivers the mail.  Mike just lost his father (Joe's uncle) a couple of weeks ago, so it was good to get to visit with them and reminisce about old times.