First Day of Travel

Long day of driving, 601 miles covered.  Made it all the way to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Started out wet and raining, but we actually saw a bit of filtered sunshine late today in Kentucky.  Not much, but more than we’ve seen for quite some time in Michigan.

Purpose of this trip is to volunteer at the Florida Baptist Encampment, located just west of Orlando.  This is through the SOWER ministry, the same organization we volunteered with last April in North Carolina. We will be there for three weeks and then we'll probably do some additional Florida travel for another week or two.  We've never seen the Everglades, so we're planning on spending a few days in that area.

We stopped at Highland Park in Kokomo, Indiana to make lunch and to stretch our legs for a while.  Took a pleasant walk in 60-degree weather. There’s a museum at one end of the park which honors Elwood Haynes, who, by many accounts, invented the first automobile in 1893.  No, it wasn’t Henry Ford.

This park was all decorated for Christmas, with a one-lane drive lined with light-up Christmas decorations.  All the buildings were lined with lights, including the park’s central feature, a 1875 covered bridge.  All the exterior lights were in the process of being taken down, but the lights inside the bridge were still on, which made for a fairyland look and an ideal place for a selfie.

Upon recommendation from a friend, we stopped first in Louisville, Kentucky, at Mark’s Feed Store (a popular BBQ restaurant) for a jar of their original BBQ sauce.  We also made a stop at Jack’s in Nashville for two jars of their BBQ sauce.  Looking forward to trying these on some smoked meat.

After nearly 12 hours on the road, we stopped here in Murfreesboro at a Cracker Barrel for the night.

As always, there’s something that needs to be fixed.   Our water heater is struggling to stay lit and probably has a spider’s nest in the burner.  Tomorrow when it’s light I’ll have to open the cover and investigate.  Everything else appears to be working fine, however.

We did have a bit of a scare a couple days ago.  I had tested most everything in the RV to make sure it was all working, but did not test the fridge.  When I turned it on, it displayed an error code that was not listed in any manual and did not attempt to cool.  A five-week road trip without a fridge would not be real pleasant.  After some internet searching that turned up nothing and some poking around with the diagnostics in the fridge, I pulled the fuse and plugged it back in.  It operated normally after that.  Must have needed some sort of reset.