Coveys Great Adventure: May 2021

#79 – April 2021 – Eastbound

Welcome to Las Cruces

On the 7^th of April we pulled out of Benson and pointed Ripley into the rising sun. Ok, enough shabby poetry: we’re back on the road after sitting in one place for longer than we have in almost 7 years. We love Benson, but we are always ready to leave, especially this time.

With our usual flare for planning we made no reservations, hoping that we can make it up as we go. That turns out to be a little stressful, because we quickly discovered that most state parks are already booked for most every weekend between now and snow-fall and after schools close, the mid-week days will fill up, too. Blame Covid and the record RV sales, I guess. We will have to rely on more commercial RV parks this time. The state parks have also figured out that they can charge a lot more than they used to, and all of them have raised prices to match or exceed the prevailing commercial park rates. One state park in Massachusetts now charges $70 a night for out-of-state visitors. We stayed at that park in 2018 for just under $30.

A casual glance at a US map will show that it is pretty difficult to head east from Benson without crossing Texas. Again. We found a unique inexpensive overnight parking spot at the Sunland Park Casino in New Mexico about a mile north of the Texas border. They offered power hookups and a security patrol for $10, which sounded like a good deal. Aside from the locals drag-racing their monster trucks all night, it was fine.

We pulled out early the next morning headed for Lamesa, Texas. In 2018 we
discovered that Lamesa has a few free campsites in the city park on a first-come basis. I also needed to visit a state DMV office to renew my driver’s license and Lamesa had Covid- mandated reservations available. Everything was fine until a passing truck waved me over about 10 miles shy of town. I pulled right over and first thought that one of the dolly wheels had come off. Closer inspection showed that the wheel hub was still attached to the dolly, but the tire, the wheel rim, and the fender, fender brackets and the light were gone. Apparently I’d been dragging the frame of the dolly down the road for some time.

Luckily the road had a wide shoulder and the traffic was light, so we unloaded the car. Having no way to move a one-wheeled 400# dolly, we left it there, went to the park, claimed a space and made martinis. My first inclination was to leave it right where it lay and look for a used one to replace it. That dolly has been an expensive, unreliable piece of crap. After more wine and further reflection I decided to go back and see if I could resurrect it. The following day we managed to jack it up and remove the remains of the wheel hub and the disk brake, mount the spare tire and tow it back to the campsite in the park. I spent the rest of the day making sure it was safe to tow and looking for parts to replace the damage. By wine time that evening it was back in service. It still needed a new fender and brackets, but both lights now worked and it was safe to use.

The next day we added a new state*: Oklahoma. The roads in Oklahoma are as bad as any I can recall, and then they have the temerity to charge tolls! We got beat up for over a hundred miles and paid $1 a mile for the service. Pecan Grove RV Park in Chickasha was a real gem. Family owned and operated, the spaces are very large, the facilities are spotless and the price was a bargain. I can’t think of any reason to go back to Oklahoma, but we’ll willingly stay there, again. The Walmart in Marshfield, Oklahoma was fine, too. The lot was level, quiet and there was lots of room to walk Schroeder.

Dr. Edmund Babler State Park

We went through OK because it is the most direct route to St. Louis. Kayeanne hadn’t seen her cousin Tom and his wife Emily in many years, so we decided to make visiting them one of our goals this year. We were able to get a site at Dr. Edmund Babler State Park, a huge, lovely, quiet gem of a park just west of the city. It was a pleasure to meet Tom and Emily, and to hear the stories about Kayeanne's family’s past.

We didn’t get to see much of St. Louis. The city seemed to be under construction everywhere, and the signage was uniformly lousy. Even the Google Maps lady was befuddled. We finally gave up touristing and fled back to the suburbs and went to Trader Joe’s.

Best part of Loretta's place

Kayeanne wanted to visit Loretta Lynn’s Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. The ranch combines an RV park, museum, performance venue, motocross track and her former and current homes. The museum was truly boring, and the RV park was poorly laid out, indifferently maintained and littered. The house tour was mildly interesting and the grounds were scenic, but for me, the best part of the visit was the Amish country store a few miles down the road. In fairness, Kayeanne did enjoy the museum.

There are two Escapees parks that we haven’t visited and Raccoon Valley in Heiskill, TN, was one of them. It is located about ten miles north of Knoxville, a city that several people suggested we see, so we decided to take a week off the road and really look around the area. Raccoon Valley is different from any other Escapees park that we have seen. It is not structured as a Co-op or as a Rainbow park, it is a commercial RV park that is owned and operated by the Escapees organization. The sites were ok, nothing special, and a little close together. The showers were adequate, the laundry was good, and there were a couple of short trails thru the woods to walk Schroeder. It is good value for the area, but we were ready to leave at the end of the week.

Knoxville's Riverfront Walk

We liked Knoxville. It ticked all of our boxes: a large college, good food, pretty easy to navigate, a Trader Joe’s and interesting stuff to see. It is also located in really beautiful country. We had fun touring the city, exploring the river front and eating the first sushi in quite awhile at Fin-Two in Old Town.

Unfortunately, the museums about the history of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Manhattan Project were closed due to Covid, but we had no trouble finding other interesting places to visit. The Coal Creek Mining Museum in Rocky Top is small, but worth a visit, especially when combined with lunch at the Coal Creek Smokehouse BBQ located directly behind the museum. Some folks we spoke to call it the best ‘Q in Tennessee. I don’t know about that, but it sure was good. Kayeanne and I split a platter and had leftovers for Schroeder.

On another trip we drove through Norris Dam State Park, a lovely area of steep
hills, sweeping vistas and, of course, a dam. While the park itself was interesting, the highlight of the visit was discovering the W G Lenoir Museum. This is a small museum displaying part of the private collection of Will and Helen Lenoir. For over 60 years the Lenoirs collected everything they saw about Appalachian life in the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th centuries, filling several barns with stuff. The ranger on duty said that

they keep rotating material and changing exhibits because of the sheer volume of items that the Lenoirs acquired. The grist mill and additional farm related buildings on the site were closed due to Covid.

The next day we visited the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton. It’s a living history museum displaying a combination of preserved and recreated buildings depicting rural farm life in the area in

the 1800’s. While interesting, it certainly made me glad I wasn’t born a hundred years earlier. People had to constantly work really hard just to survive. The farm is home to a few head of various period livestock including sheep, cows, horses, etc., but I strongly doubt that the resident peacocks and musk oxen were natives. The small restaurant in the gift shop is really, really good.

Charlie and Mollie Kendrick sung the praises of the Kentucky Horse Park Campground, so we made that our next stop. It’s located on vast acreage in the heart of the bluegrass region just north of Lexington. The campground is one of the most attractive places we’ve ever stayed. It’s impeccably maintained and the sites are spacious and shaded but it has one major flaw: mud. The sites have narrow gravel or paved pads barely big enough for the RV, but the rest of the site, including the vehicle parking, is beautiful, lush grass. Any rain turns the grass areas into mud as soon as you touch them. We arrived just after a couple of rainy days and constantly worked to keep the mud outside the coach.

A very big, friendly lady

The Horse Park is worth the price of admission. The grounds are simply beautiful. Acres and acres of grass and shade trees surround buildings that look like they truly belong where they are sited. Clearly, a lot of thought and skill went into the design of the place. The lower level one of the two museums had been flooded in a violent winter storm and they lost hundreds of items. The upper level might be interesting to thoroughbred fanciers, but it just looked like lots of pictures of the same horse with different jockeys to me. That notwithstanding, the rest of the park was really worth seeing. There was another museum and several barns to tour. Most of the thoroughbreds hadn’t yet arrived for the season, but a number of draft horses are in permanent residence. One of those weighed over 2,000 pounds, a really imposing animal. Several of them seemed to welcome company and attention.

Probably not period-correct...

Lexington is more city-like than Knoxville, but it was manageable. Kayeanne dragged me (complaining all the way) to visit Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate, but I ended up having a good time. The house tour was interesting. Clay was a real factor in pre-Civil War politics at the state and federal levels. He was also an ardent innovator, especially in agriculture and animal husbandry. Among many other things, he introduced Hereford and Durham cattle to the

, both significant improvements to the extant colonial livestock breeds. Clay died in 1852 and the house passed to his son and then eventually to his granddaughter who both updated and conserved the house, and continued his flare for innovation.

I hope we can return to Appalachia. The countryside is a pleasure to explore and there is much, much more to see and do; we barely scratched the surface. But, it was time to head east, and then north, so more about that next time.

This month I enjoyed John Sanford’s Neon Prey, one of his Davenport series.

The backlog of good, inexpensive wines that we have tried recently has grown beyond the two or three that I have listed each month, so to catch up a little, here are a few more than usual:

Coppola Claret (Cab)– Diamond Collection 2018 - Napa
Kirkland Pinot Grigio - Fruili 2019 - Italy
Bottega Vinaia Pinot Grigio 2019 – Italy - Good
La Enfermera Toro - Tempranillo 2017 - Spain
Columbia Winery Red Blend 2016 - WA – Really Good
Elevation 1250 Red Wine - Paso 2018 – Trader Joe’s

More soon,

Bob

* We count a new state when we stay overnight for the first time