Brian and Barbara RV'ing: Time to get going.

We had our trials.

Chased out of Florida by Irma,

Fiesta had a starting problem.

Blew a rear tire on the RV.

Smashed the lid of the casserole dish when we put the slide out.

Our neighbor at Foscue COE Park

But then we randomly picked an area to stop at halfway between Summerville and Birmingham AL and discovered a super Corps of Engineers (COE) facility called Foscue Park.

A nice quiet spot to camp

Foscue was such a pretty place we extended our stay from 2 days to 4, I even broke out my paints and did a watercolor painting of our view across the lake. The rest of the time we sat outside and watched the egrets fishing and the turtles sunning themselves on a log. Such a stressful time!

The thing about COE Parks is that they accept the National Parks Senior Pass. That normally gets us into ALL National Parks free and gets us up to 50% off camping too. Our stay in Foscue was $13 a night instead of $28, which paid the $25 cost of the pass several times over, never mind all the money we've saved in the last 2 years going to all the Parks.

An old grist mill.

After leaving there we had a rear tire blow out, they were 7 years old so we had planned on replacing them during our winter break, but they didn't make it that far!

We had 4 new rear tires fitted by a shop in Birmingham. We had reservations at a campground (without a deposit) and there was an Elks Lodge with camping near Birmingham so we went to see what the Lodge was like and if we liked it we could cancel the campground reservation!

Turns out the camping at the lodge was less than ideal with car and train noise but for a couple of nights we made do and we had a lot of fun with fellow Elks in the lodge.

A big vintage/antique motorcycle event near Birmingham caught my attention and we decided to do Friday there, as the rest of the weekend could be pretty busy. That turned out the be an excellent idea as the crowds weren't bad at all, but more importantly ANOTHER hurricane was on it's way and headed for this area.

MV Augusta racer.

Barber had a LOT of motorcycles

I could paint these bikes for ever.

Hurricane Nate was due Saturday night - Sunday morning and, discretion being the better part of valor, we headed out!

The best direction to avoid the storm was West and the second best North. When we looked on the map there was our old favorite Memphis just 275 miles North West of us!

We hit the road Saturday morning and stopped a night in Walmart in Tupelo Mississippi.

MMMM, Charlie Vergos BBQ!!

That broke the trip into 2 reasonable legs 175 and 100 miles each.

After 3 nights at Graceland RV Park and a delicious night out at the Charlie Vergos BBQ restaurant followed by some nice micro brews at the Flying Saucer Taproom we upped sticks again and headed due SOUTH!

Porter ale at Flying Saucer

King cotton ready for harvest

Baled and ready to go.

Wait a minute I thought we were supposed to going west towards our winter spot in Casa Grande AZ??

Well we have a week off!

Well a week out of the rig anyway. How come? We still own a timeshare near New Orleans and we called to ask if we could swap one of our weeks for a week there now and they said yes.

This will be only the second time we've stayed at our home resort IN 35 YEARS OF OWNING IT!

Indian Mounds in Mississippi

That meant a nice leisurely drive from Memphis to Abita Springs along the “Great River Road” thru Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, taking time to visit the Indian Mounds and the Vicksburg National Military Park.

The "Great River Road" sounds really romantic and if you have visions of rolling along the banks of the great Mississippi River, forget it! You barely glimpse the river at all! But is was a very nice drive along a reasonable road with NO traffic.