Sunday, April 5, 2009

A chain saw starts the great adventure to Kentucky, but we made it


The big getaway day started with a chain saw. Yes, a chain saw.

When I backed my trailer into the driveway last week I was very proud of how I tucked it into a corner of my driveway. That pride turned to frustration this morning when I confronted a large limb that threatened to rip the roof off my trailer.

No matter how hard I worked in backing up the trailer, I couldn’t find a way to maneuver it so that I wouldn’t hit the limb. So the solution was to fire up the ol’ chainsaw and remove the problem.

My wife had the hard job, catching the limb before it fell on the front of the trailer. Little Joan had to balance on the tongue of the trailer while I slowly cut through the limb so it would bend slowly down and not fall on her. It was quite a sight.

Just to make sure I had hooked everything up correctly I had my friend Greg stop by and give it a double check. So out of the driveway we went and got about a block before I remembered that I had forgotten to plug in the trailer lights.

I have pulled trailers before, but never one quite this large, so when I took off it was with a little bit of nervousness. By the time I got to U.S. 23 in Flint, I was starting to feel comfortable with vehicle and trailer and some of the nervousness, but not all, went away.

We crossed into Ohio about 11 a.m. our first state line on this new adventure. The wind was pretty strong and that gave me a few anxious moments along with a construction zone near Cincinnati that narrowed the lanes enough to keep my concentration pretty intense.

My wife looked very concerned a couple of times and she said she was worried we were going to rip off our air conditioner on one of the many overpasses we were going under. When I pointed out to her that we were quite a bit shorter than most of the semis, she relaxed a little.

Because of the break in period for the truck, it is suggested that you not drive over 50 mph for the first 500 miles of towing so we got passed by everyone and their brother.

Once inside Kentucky the scenery became very beautiful and the weather warmed up considerably. At one point we passed by the Kentucky Horse Park something we are going back to see. We also spotted a couple of Kentucky wineries and Joan wants to go visit those. Wineries in Kentucky, who knew?

We arrived in Berea about 6 p.m. and pulled into our campsite and were set up by 6:30 p.m. and eating dinner by 7 p.m. That’s if you call eating hot dogs dinner. But it was our first meal in the trailer.

Everyone has been very friendly and the owner of the RV park was very helpful in getting us into our spot in a very crowded campground. Most of the folks are pulling out tomorrow heading further south, which isn’t a bad idea because it is supposed to snow here on Monday.

It took me a frantic few minutes to set up our television antenna so we could see the Michigan State game which we turned on at the 15 minute mark of the second period and the score was tied 46-46. We saw the exciting finish and that made the day just about perfect.

I would have posted this last night, but the park's Internet access requires a user name an password, which I couldn't get until the park office opened this morning. I'll put up some pictures tonight.

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