May 11, 2006

I guess you all are wondering if the Seabolts ever got it all together to get out of town? Well, we got an early start at 3:30pm on Friday May 5th, just in time to hit the Friday rush hour on the Beltway. The first 10 feet, we had the Honda in park, so we scraped off about 1/8 inch of tread. By the corner, we had the Honda in neutral, and it was clear that we had excess water, with water dripping furiously from the water tank - we had successfully engaged the water overflow mechanism!!! But, by the RR tracks, we were down to a drip, and we were off! By our Frederick stop, we were bone dry. We spent our first night in Rocky Gap state park, which is gorgeous. It is also a little damper there, since when we turned on the water pump, we managed to pump out the entire water tank through the --- water overflow valve, which we must have flipped at the corner back home. After 2 hours of hooking up every hose and flipping every switch, we figured out that the water tank patch we got in March didn't fail, rather it was one of those "human error" issues. But we were smart enough to figure out that the batteries aren't supposed to be smoking and giving off a nasty odor. Sunday night, we had a fun filled evening in the Wal Mart lot with no "juice." It was a lot like camping with the 2 old people gathered around the camp flashlight lantern engaging in cutthroat dominoes, and climbing over each other to the bed that didn't slide out. Bright and early Monday morning we met our new best friend Terry from Summit RV in Ashland, KY, who gave us 2 new Winnebago warrantied batteries, and we were off again.

In case you are interested, gas is only $2.73 here in KY, but we filled up (pumps will only pump $100 at a crack, you have to put the credit card in again!) in Maryland at $2.89. We figured that we were getting about 5 mpg towing the car going up the mountains, but it was a little hard to figure out since the odometer was set in kilometers. Terry fixed that for us as well and we have 706 miles on our baby. But all this was too tough for Lee to calculate, and he figured that we Might run out of gas from Rocky Gap to the nearest gas station. We passed up one gas station because we figured there was no way We were going to get our rig and the dinghy in there. So, Lee took a scenic trip from Rocky Gap to the gas station with the friendly 5 gallon gas can we borrowed from the ranger and filled us up- Turned out we had plenty, but who's to know!!!
While the RV was being rebatteried (is that a word?) we had a big breakfast at 10:30 a. m. at Bob Evans- can you get any more retired than that? Obviously, we have not yet implemented the "nuts and berries" regime for weight control, but it is coming. We had to wait for a table- who are all those people eating a big breakfast on Monday???

So far we have seen 2 signs warning us of a congested area approaching ---- on a 2 lane in the country with virtually no buildings in sight!

We're writing this message in beautiful downtown Elkhorn Creek Campground, suburb of Frankfort. We have holed up here during the deluge-3 inches of rain yesterday. We're looking for a Rver gathering up 2 of every species for his Ark, but have not spotted him. Spent the evening on TV tracking the tornado, which missed us, but not by much. Bobbi added to her collection of State Capitol buildings on Tuesday with a Twofer, in Kentucky they have an old one and a new one. We met the statue of Governor for a Day, Mr. Goebels. It commemorates KY's famous version of the hanging chad circa 1899. Seems Governor Taylor got elected, but Goebels called foul on 2000 votes. Goebels was shot on State House Grounds. They rounded up 3 shooters, but Taylor left in the middle of the night and was never seen again! Goebels was inaugurated on his deathbed, died, and the good Democrat Lt. Gov. became Governor. (Don't you love it when good triumphs evil!!!!), said the Democrat.

A special thank you to everyone for being with us to celebrate Lee's imminent old aged ness, his retirement, and our departure on the excellent adventure. Your gifts were very generous, and well appreciated. We are blessed with wonderful friends and family, we already miss you all, but we have met some very nice folks, very patient with the rookies, and nice to the Yankees.

We're off to RV school and not a minute too soon I'd say. We're still working on getting the blog with pictures up and running-next step.

Remember, when you've had enough of the travelogue- email us to remove your name!!! You can still stay on the Christmas card list!
Fondly, Lee and Bobbi