A Week with Friends and Family

Saturday, Aug 14-Friday, Aug 20, 2021 After we left Oak Island, we spent a lovely week visiting "at home" with various friends and family. As I wrote in my previous blog, we did a major shuffle of our belongings from house to Jeep to RV when we left our beach house. Then we drove down to Myrtle Beach, where our friends Howie and Lois have an oceanfront condo. We shlepped our two coolers up in the elevator to the 5th floor, where we filled up their refrigerator with leftovers from the beach and our RV foodstuffs. Then the four of us, somehow tired after our lovely beach vacation, just chilled out, reading on the balcony and napping. We had a totally delicious steak and salad dinner with a view of the ocean, and did absolutely nothing until we went to bed. Sunday was similar, but we did go swimming in the ocean. The water was a little bit cooler than it had been at Oak Island, but that may have been due to the rain which fell the afternoon before. Dinner this time was out on the balcony--pasta and scallops, YUM! And after dinner, we watched the movie Yesterday. All in all the two days were completely lovely. Although of course we adored spending a week with our kids and grandchildren, there's something very nice about just hanging out with old friends. Monday morning, we all packed up yet again. Joe and I planned to drive back to Oak Island again to pick up the RV, and then head for the mountains. But after some discussion, we decided that we would not try to get there that night. We knew from experience that our destination was pitch black at night, and we didn't think we'd get there before the sun went down. After looking at various routes, we decided that we'd simply go to Howie and Lois's house in Greensboro for the night to break up the drive, thereby extending our vacation with them. So saying "See you later!", Joe and I headed back to the RV. Our departure from the storage yard was delayed by the electrical connections between the Jeep and the RV. Both vehicles were fine, but the hookups were not working. Joe ended up spending almost 90 minutes completely rewiring the lights, getting soaked to the skin in a sudden torrential downpour of a rain shower. Once he was done, he changed his clothes and we left, without bothering to get lunch, despite the fact that it was now after noon. We drove for a while, and then I wanted to pull over for some lunch at a fast food place (I knew Joe was exhausted and I didn't want to take the time to make lunch and then clean up). We found a Hardee's with a large parking lot, but when Joe went in, they said it was "drive through only." We obviously couldn't drive through in the RV, so we left without eating. In the end, we never DID eat lunch. We did, however, miss our exit, and somehow we turned a 4 hour drive into a 6.5 hour drive. Not only that, but I had a mishap-- we stopped for gas, and I was going to walk Cassie. But she managed to pull me over when I was coming down the stairs, and I landed hard on the concrete. Fortunately, H&L were waiting for us with open arms, a delicious dinner, and a hot tub just waiting for our aching bodies. The next morning, we took off for Linville and our friend Margie's mountain cottage. We were extremely happy to get there in daylight, but as has been our luck so far with this vacation, just as we were unhooking the jeep, another torrential downpour soaked Joe to the skin once more. However, we did get the RV up to the cottage and situated on the flat driveway pad of a neighbor (Margie's driveway is too steep for us, as we discovered the hard way last fall.) We spent the rest of Momday and all day Tuesday visitng with Margie and Grace, and even seeing Margie's parents Dot and Ed (whose anniversary we were at in 2019.) We also saw Margie & Grace's daughter Eliana. We played bridge with Dot and Ed, ate barbeque, and generally just had a relaxing time despite the heavy rains the night we got there. Finally, we left Margie's house to drive to Joe's sister, Betsy, and her husband Sean in Hendersonville. We got there at about 3pm on Thursday, and have been hanging out with them since then. Today, Betsy had an appointment in town, so I went with her and then walked on the main street window shopping while she was busy. Meanwhile, back at the RV, Joe changed the oil and installed a new XM antenna on the roof (the old one was broken, so he ordered it while we were at the beach and had it sent to Betsy's house.) Then all four of us had lunch together, after which Sean went back to work and the three of us went to the Pinball Museum. We ended up buying "bracelets" allowing us to play the machines for as long as we wanted, and Betsy and I spent about an hour trying them all out (I still much prefer the 1970s vintage machines to the razzle-dazzle electronic machines from the 1990s.) Then we came back home, and I took a nap for the second day in a row. Tomorrow we head west to Chattanooga. I have reserved a place to stay for the next 3 nights through Boondockers Welcome, a program which matches RVers up with people willing to host them. This will be our first time using the group, and it looks like a very nice place to stay, very near downtown Chattanooga. So if all works out, we will get there in the late afternoon and have a launching pad to explore the city.