From Spartanburg, South Carolina

How quickly plans can change.  Last evening we got a call that my aunt had passed away.  This was not unexpected as she has been in failing health for some time.  After a long drive today, we are in a small campground near Spartanburg, South Carolina.

This has not been the uneventful day that we hope to have on any travel day.  It actually started with last night’s thunderstorms in Nashville.  The wind blew and the rains came and we got up this morning to a soaked carpet under the dining table.  Of course, we did not have time to deal with wet carpet this morning, so we busied ourselves with readying the trailer for travel.  Expecting to have today to do these pre-travel chores for our trip to the Smokies, Gene was out before daylight with a headlamp airing up tires and stowing the ladder in the bed of the truck.  Somehow we managed to pull out of our campsite by 8 AM.

Under normal circumstances, we would travel to Spartanburg via I-40 through east Tennessee to Asheville North Carolina then down I-26 to Spartanburg.  However, a few days ago there was a rock slide resulting in the closure of I-40 at the TN/NC border.  We had a couple of options, and we selected a series of interstates routing us through Chattanooga and Atlanta.  It was not a bad drive and we made very good time.  We made a couple of quick stops and one longer break.  We pulled into our campsite about 6 PM for the 430 mile drive.  Traffic was light, even near Atlanta, there were no major construction zones, no accidents, and the weather was mostly good.  We had a few areas of light rain to drive through.

The water on the carpet was somewhat of an issue during the day.  It was still raining early this morning, so when we brought the slides in they were wet.  I got a towel and wiped them down as much as I could reach, but the top of every slide was still very wet.  With the trailer closed up all day, all that moisture that was evaporating was condensing on every surface inside.  There was nothing that was not damp.

Even with the humidity off the charts inside, we were still feeling pretty good about the day.  That is until we got to our site.  I was driving the last leg of the journey, so I was the one parking when we got to the campground.  Gene got out to inspect our position in the site and give me those “fine tuning” instructions.  That was when he noticed that there is a scratch/dent some 20 feet long along the lower panel in the drivers side of the Everest.  One running light is broken and the back end cap is slightly damaged.  We have absolutely no idea how or when this happened.  We were never both away from our rig at the same time and neither of us felt anybody hit us or noticed that we had hit any thing ourselves.  Needless to say, this was not the highlight of our day.

One of the last things Gene said before we pulled away from our site this morning was, “the main goal is our safety”.  Humidity in the house and a little scratch on the fender we can live with.  Thank you, Lord, for a safe trip today.

Once set up in our site, we cranked the AC down to arctic and turned on all the fans we own to try to take care of the wet carpet.  Gene is bundled up in a hat, a fleece vest, and a blanket.  We sent the wet towels I used to blot up all the water for a spin in the dryer.  After a couple cocktails, Gene thinks with a little elbow grease, he can make most of the scratch disappear.  Life is good.