Current Location: Nashville KOA, Nashville, Tennessee

On Monday, Malcolm drove the truck in to work. He called the local Ford dealer to check to see if they could take care of a few items on the truck before our trip (oil and filter change, fuel filters changed, tires balanced, air filter changed and shock absorbers checked). They said bring it on in. Malcolm left work at 4:00 and stopped by to pick up Val. We stopped by the local car rental place and picked up a rental car, then drove on over to the Ford dealer to drop off the truck. After dropping off the truck, we had dinner at Taziki’s then headed back to the house.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Ford dealer called and said the truck was ready to go (didn’t need shocks). Malcolm left at 4:00 again, just as a pretty good line of thunderstorms rolled through the area. That slowed him down coming home. The storms had passed by the time he got to the trailer to pick up Val. The power got knocked out during the storm. Traffic was bad getting to the Ford dealer, so Malcolm called the rental car company to tell them we wouldn’t return the car before they closed. They said drop it off and put the keys in the key drop and they’d just charge us for the day’s rental.

We picked up the truck, had dinner at NYNY Pizza then headed over to drop off the car. Traffic was still bad in the area, but we were able to bypass it, fuel up the car, drop it off and drop the keys in the slot, then drive back to the trailer where we found the power was still out. Fortunately, the trailer was still fairly cool from earlier in the day and the recent rain storm cooled the outside air off into the mid-70’s, though it was still humid.

We opened windows and turned on the power fan in the ceiling to draw air through and eventually went on to bed. Fortunately, our iPads, computers and the mifi unit all had good battery charges.

When we woke up this morning, still no power. Malcolm decided to work at home during the morning until his laptop battery ran out of power. We ended up driving over to Camping World (who also was without power, but was using a generator to power part of the store) and bought a small Honda generator and a Fantastic Fan and cover to put in the front bathroom.

Generator in action

We stopped by the gas station and fueled up the new generator, then took it home to the trailer to hook it up. Malcolm couldn’t find his 30 amp to 15 amp adapter, so it was back to Camping World (which fortunately is literally next door) and picked up one of those. Once back, he had the generator running and the trailer powered up. Our EMS initially was faulting saying that the generator power had a floating ground (Honda generators are known for doing that), so Malcolm searched the internet and found the solution and had us powered up in no time. The new generator is only a 2000W unit, so it won’t run an air conditioner, but at least will power up smaller stuff and run the converter which charges the 12V batteries on board.

By mid-afternoon, we still had no power. The outside temperature was in the mid-90’s, the humidity was high and the inside temperature was close to 100. We were miserable and the cat was looking pretty miserable as well. We decided to take a ride in the (air conditioned) truck to the front of Jellystone to check on when power might be restored. They said the power company kept saying they were working on it, but couldn’t make any promises. Best they could say was “maybe tonight”.

We drove over to the KOA and walked into their registration area. We asked if they had power (yes, they did) and if they had a space our 42′ trailer would fit into. The gentleman at the desk looked at the computer for a bit and said he had one back-in space that was listed as 46′ long. We paid for it and said we’d be back with the trailer. Turns out there was a pretty steady stream of campers from Jellystone doing the exact same thing. We hitched up the trailer and moved it to KOA, hooked up and turned on the air conditioners.

Moved to KOA

After running the air conditioners for about 20 minutes. Probably was close to 100 earlier.

While the rig cooled down, we drove up the street to Logan’s Roadhouse for dinner and dessert, then back to the trailer, which had cooled down fairly well. Malcolm got ambitious and went ahead and installed our new Fantastic Fan in the front bath. He will install the matching vent cover at another time, to allow the self-leveling sealant time to skin over up top.

Malcolm up top with the fan removed

The old fan

New fan dropped in, screwed down and sealed up top.

Installing the inside trim

Success

We were fortunate enough to get our site through Saturday, so we’ll be right on schedule for heading out west.

Current Location: Jellystone Park, Nashville, Tennessee

Malcolm is feeling much better now. He felt well enough to work all day at the trailer on Tuesday, but had problems getting sleep that night. He was pretty much worn out on Wednesday morning and spent the day just relaxing. Thursday he was back at the office and worked Thursday and Friday there. He has been driving the truck into town this stay, instead of renting a second vehicle.

The Postcard Map at Work

Garage-top Parking

Though our space is sort of small here at Jellystone (about 55 feet long), we’re otherwise enjoying the peace and quiet at the back end of the campground. All of the children-friendly activities and, thus, the family campers are all located towards the front of the park. We are also further away from the traffic noise on the Briley, especially the bridge over the Cumberland River which is close to the back side of the KOA.

This afternoon we enjoyed sitting outside for a while, especially since our entire row emptied out and left us a decent view of something other than the broad side of a Class A RV. Saturday evening, we rode our bikes up to the ice cream shop in the park and had some pretty good hand dipped ice cream cones.

One fix/mod we did on Saturday is to better secure our couch to the back wall of the trailer. The factory had put two screws through the back board of the couch into the wall, but both screws were simply screwed into the wallboard, which did absolutely nothing towards anchoring the couch. During a recent hard braking incident, we found that the couch apparently flipped foward and the back of the couch broke the handle on the window opener.

Broken handle, bent mechanism

We picked up an eight-foot long 1×4 and brought it home. Malcolm cut it to length between the two “end tables” mounted to the side walls of the trailer. He was able to actually anchor the board to five different studs behind the wallboard, so it isn’t going anywhere now. We pushed the couch back against the new anchor rail and drove screws through the couch board into the anchor rail. The couch shouldn’t go anywhere now.

Rail installed. Callie inspects the work.

Couch pushed up to the wall and screwed into place.

Close-up.

Other than that, we’ve just been doing a little shopping and preparing for our trip out west, which starts on Saturday, August 1st. We will be getting the truck serviced in preparation for the trip sometime during the week.

Current Location: Nashville KOA, Nashville, Tennessee

On Sunday we went to church again at First Baptist. We met Malcolm’s co-worker and his family after the service and talked for a bit before finding a pretty nice little Mexican restaurant for Mother’s Day lunch. It wasn’t too busy but the food was really good. They were giving all the mothers there a free small dessert. We took care of a couple little things around the trailer and mainly just bummed around the rest of the day.

Malcolm took out the two fixed shelves in the top half of our kitchen pantry and added shelves via the side rails, clips and board method like we used in the tall half bathroom cabinet. Here are some pictures.

Hard at work

Scrap materials

Ready to start

Rails

Done. Double the number of shelves.

We also moved our dining table a few inches away from the theater seat. It wasn’t centered between the dining room chairs, but now it is. Malcolm also installed screens on the refrigerator vents. We used these that we bought from Amazon. They were actually too long (they have correct size ones, too, but we clicked the wrong link), so Malcolm cut them down to fit. Should keep the flying critters out of the refrigerator compartment.

On Wednesday, David drove up to visit us overnight. Wednesday was his birthday, so we took him out to eat at McNamara’s (the Irish place), then wandered around the mall. Malcolm bought his birthday present in the Lego store while we were there.

Today, David and Val rode downtown on the shuttle and wandered around the town for a while before heading up to Malcolm’s office. We walked around and introduced David around then headed down to eat lunch. After lunch, Val and David headed back downtown to catch the return shuttle since David needed to head down the road.

This evening we went out to eat at Pie Five pizza and stopped by the mall to exchange a mattress pad we had bought for the couch bed (wrong size – we accidentally bought a full size instead of a queen). The couch bed sleeps “OK” according to David. Malcolm laid down on it briefly and decided it wouldn’t be too bad of a place to sleep if needed.

Tomorrow is Malcolm’s last day of work here before we fly out next week to Seattle.