Busy, busy since last blog entry two weeks ago. After spending a full day in the service bay on Monday, we also spent most of the day Tuesday. It seems most of our problems have been solved. There are still a couple of small issues we will take care of at a later date. We simply didn’t have time to deal with them right then. We needed to get back to Alabama. Our service techs were great and if we are able to attend the June 2023 rally, they plan to get us back in after the rally to make a few more adjustments. We departed Middlebury midafternoon Tuesday and overnighted at a great Cracker Barrel a little south of Indianapolis. We hit the road again early Wednesday morning (enjoyed a good CB breakfast) and arrived back on Pine Mountain in time to get a good afternoon walk and begin transferring all the dirty clothes, food, etc. over to Fred. Thursday was routine dental appointments and completing the unloading of BB and working on Helen’s house. Friday was laundry and readying Fred for three weeks at Camp Sumatanga.
Saturday morning (Oct. 1) we completed our packing and headed to Camp. It was so great to see our wonderful friends Dave and Rita. We haven’t worked with them since Covid and really look forward to spending time with them while working at the Camp. Our leaders are Scott and Teresa who we enjoyed visiting with at annual meeting and we look forward to working with them for the next three weeks. We began our work at the camp repairing the ceiling at the McBee pavilion. We also cleaned and changed light bulbs in the ceiling fans, repaired the roof, a toilet, and painted fascia. The ladies also tackled the floating swim platform and stained and sealed it after replacing some rotten wood. We demoed three canoe racks and all worked to begin construction of two new, heavy duty racks Thursday afternoon. It was a busy week but we accomplished a lot. It’s always good to work at Sumatanga. We camp in view of the lake and get to do our walking around the lake each day.
The old rubber flashing and tar had pulled away from the chimney allowing water to get into the ceiling. We applied roof patch to stop the leaks.
Removing damaged ceiling panels
Dave always enjoys painting. 🙂
Installing new ceiling panels
While the guys worked on removing the water damaged ceiling panels, the ladies decided to clean some of the others.
Repaired ceiling
Max and Dave adding drip edge to the front of McBee pavilion to protect the fascia. We later applied a coat of the famous Sumatanga Brown paint to the fascia that was still exposed.
We also added some protection to the gable end of the roof.
It was a lot of work to remove the hundreds of screws holding the old canoe racks together.
After Rita, Teresa and Anne disassembled most of the canoe racks, the camp staff pulled the posts out of the ground.
The whole team was involved in building the new canoe racks…
… and hopefully we will finish during week 2.
Teresa staining the currently non-floating dock.
Rita, Teresa, and Anne applying sealer to the dock
One of the reasons we enjoy being at Sumatanga
Thursday evening the team went into Oneonta for a great dinner at one of the newer restaurants – Mio Sogno. Saturday there was the Blount County Covered Bridge festival and pancake breakfast. Hopefully we will have enough energy to get back to work tomorrow. It’s great to be back working a NOMADS project.
A lot has occurred since our last post. We have been busy. After our trip to Red Bay for Fred repairs, (The slide is still working beautifully.) and returning to Pine Mountain, we spent several days on estate business and Aunt Helen’s house. We then headed back to South Carolina hoping to pick up the little van/RV – BB/Beyond Blessed. She was not quite ready so we were able to spend Labor day weekend with Randy and Debra. We learned the repair shop had to reorder the rear doors 3 times before they received doors that were not damaged. BB was repaired – looking good – the following week and then we headed back to Alabama after Randy re-installed the undamaged rack. It was just in time to pack her up to make a trip to West Virginia for our annual NOMADS meeting. We felt like we were finally back on the road again. We overnighted at a Cracker Barrel and arrived in Lewisburg, WV the next day to make final preparations for Anne’s last NOMADS Board meeting. We were in Lewisburg for the meetings 9 days. It was a busy but fun time. We saw friends we had not seen in several years due to COVID. It was so GOOD!! Anne turned over the gavel to the incoming Board chairman Thursday.
On the road again
Our West Virginia welcoming committee
The week starts with a Sunday morning worship service.
Our friend Mike presented a very thought provoking Bible study early each morning. He titled it “Big Hits from Overlooked Bible Bits.”
A West Virginia State Senator (who is also a pastor) brought us our devotion one morning.
Some of our talented NOMADS got together for a Monday night jam session.
The silent auction is always a lot of fun.
Our live “Love Auction” along with the silent auction raises money to be used to help our partner agencies buy materials on NOMADS projects.
Anne conducting her last NOMADS business meeting
One of several education sessions during the week
GloryWay Quartet was our Wednesday night entertainment.
On Thursday Anne handed over the gavel – ending her four year term on the NOMADS Board of Directors.
Before the concert Dave warmed up the audience with his “You might be a NOMAD if … routine. Always a hit.
The NOMADS Choir, led by our friend Tammy, presented a great concert Thursday night.
Special treats this year were these hundreds of paint brushes and other painting supplies donated to the members by Wooster Brush. Max was thrilled.
On Friday we left Lewisburg for Middlebury, IN. We overnighted at a wonderful Harvest Host farm in Ohio. The couple that owns the farm were so friendly and sweet. It was a great overnight out in the country. Very quiet and peaceful and we made a purchase of some really good, creamed honey and chicken salad. Never tried creamed honey before but it’s very good on toast.
Peaceful stay at the Harvest Hosts location in Ohio
Back in Amish country
The Pumpkinvine Trail trailhead in Middlebury is a very short walk from our compground. We think all trailheads should have ice cream shops. We walked a ways on the trail when we arrived to help recover from a long drive.
BB has an appointment to be seen tomorrow at the factory to get the last of her warranty work completed and to be sure the guys here don’t see any further damage from the wreck. We are hoping to head south Tuesday or Wednesday because we need to get Fred over to Camp Sumatanga this weekend so we can begin a 3 week project with NOMADS Sunday afternoon. Since Anne won’t be so busy with NOMADS business, we hope to return to more frequent blogging, projects and seeing the country. Maybe another trip to Alaska next year – or Nova Scotia since we had to cancel that one this year due to BB’s injuries. Can’t wait to see what happens. Hope you will continue to travel along with us.
We were parked at Convenient Campground in Red Bay last night. It’s just a gravel parking lot but we were off the road enough that we had a quiet night, slept well. We were back up at 6:00am to be ready for the Tiffin supervisor who always visits you at your RV sometime after 7:00 am your first morning. We were still sitting at the table finishing up breakfast when the phone rang and the person on the other end asked us to come to Bay 7 ASAP. What? No visit from the supervisor? Nope. Straight to the bay. Guess our problem description was adequate. Talk about going from a slow relaxed morning to top speed in less than a minute. We made it to Bay 7 in about 20 minutes. As usual we had two very nice young men assigned to our coach and they began work on our slide out immediately. Since you are not allowed to stay with your RV, we spent the next three – four hours roaming around Red Bay, visiting the grocery stores, the Tiffin Hospitality Center, the parts store and getting our walking in for the day. Shortly before lunch we received another call asking us to return to Bay 7. The work was complete and we were good to go! They found a wire from the slide controller to a motor had come disconnected inside the wall. Apparently a known issue because they had a retrofit on hand to apply to keep it from happening again. So relieved and the cost of the repair was much less than we expected. We grabbed some lunch and were on the way to Pine Mountain. We will get some estate work done here tomorrow morning then we plan to return to SC. It was a good day.
In our Red Bay Tour today we found this at the Big Star grocery. Of course we had to buy it. And no, we haven’t tried it yet.
So… Another month has slipped away. It’s been a busy month and a hard month in some ways. The estate sale at Aunt Helen’s house is now complete and the house is now empty. We are thankful that project is complete. We have spent time cleaning out and then cleaning up. We are praying that God will bring the family He wants to have the house, to make Pine Mountain their home and be good members of the community. Of course, we want that to happen NOW, but… we know that God’s timing is perfect timing and that’s what we want.
Good friends that Anne worked with invited us to Destin a few weeks ago. As we were preparing to make the trip south, we realized we couldn’t remember when we had last slept in a house that didn’t have wheels underneath. They have a beautiful new home there where they can walk out their door, onto their deck and into their boat. It was a great weekend of visiting and catching up. Of course, we also had some great seafood and fun time on the water. So blessed to still have friends from the years at Cullman Internal Medicine. We plan to stay in closer contact since we both have plans to have extended time on the Gulf Coast. BTW, we were able to sleep just fine in a house without wheels.
We enjoyed some time on the water with our friends in Destin.
We attended at wonderful worship service on the beach before we left Destin.
We decided to take a few days “off” to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary in Maggie Valley, NC. We are so blessed! We were able to meet up with Barry and Donna on Saturday for a hike and lunch. We share the same anniversary day but different year. After lunch, while walking around in Cherokee, a large herd of elk walked out of the woods and into the town. The huge buck stayed in the edge of the woods for a while then began bugling, and shortly, all the ladies and children rejoined the buck and wondered across the parking lot and back into the woods. Such a treat to watch! We also got to meet some NOMADS for dinner on Monday night. It was a great few days of celebrating our 40th.
In Maggie Valley we stayed at Stonebridge RV Park. This is the “brochure” style picture of our site.
This is the “reality” version. Our slideout was less than 6′ from our neighbor’s slideout.
However we did have this nice view out our windshield at our site
We had a delicious breakfast one morning at The Buttered Biscuit near Lake Junaluska.
We visited Soco Falls which is just a few minutes from Maggie Valley.
The trail to Soco Falls can be interesting. At least someone has left some ropes there to make it easier.
We visited Mingo Falls on our way to meet up in Cherokee.
We went to Mingus Mill to hike one of the trails after meeting up with Barry and Donna in Cherokee.
We chose the Mingus Cemetery Trail. Good choice.
The bull elk acted like he owned Cherokee and all its streets.
Some of the rest of the herd enjoying the river. A group of folks floating on tubes went by shortly before this.
We also took a ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway and stopped for a hike at one of the overlooks.
The Grassy Ridge MIne Trail
Some of the lush flora along the trail
It is another rocks and roots trail typical of the Smokey Mountains
The NOMADS friends we visited are workcamping at Lake Junaluska so we hiked around the lake there after visiting them.
A hedge on the Lake Junaluska Trail
When in the Maggie Valley-Waynesville area you have to visit Mast General Store.
As we were preparing to leave Maggie Valley, one of Fred’s slides wouldn’t retract. Max was able to bypass the motor and get some help to push the slide in so that we could drive Fred and meet Randy and Debra for a few days of fun at South Cove County RV park in Seneca, SC. There we had fun visiting, resting, kayaking and of course eating. We played mini golf for the first time in a very long time. Oasis Ranch mini golf was different than any we have played before. There were water hazards with large fish, sand traps and all sorts of curves, inclines, and dips. It was also nicely shaded and lots of fun.
The view from our campsite at South Cove County Park
Pocket stew cooking on the campfire
We really enjoyed kayaking with Randy and Debra.
Oasis Ranch has the nicest mini-golf course we have seen.
Sunset at South Cove County Park
We left South Carolina yesterday and are now back in Red Bay, Alabama at Tiffin Motor Homes factory service center hoping to get Fred repaired this week. We are fortunate that we can live with the one slide in but sure will be glad when we have that added space again. We usually enjoy our time at Red Bay and have already returned to our favorite pizza place and visited with the owner there again, and then back to our favorite ice cream shop. Now if we can just get good news in the morning about the timing of our repair. It’s really not fun to have both RV’s in the shop. We will keep you posted. Prayers appreciated.
RVing With a Purpose 