Custer – Not Our Last Stand!

As Flynn sits in a grocery store eating area outside of Knoxville, TN waiting for Karl to get an overdue oil change, he can’t help but marvel at the distance and adventures he has travelled in a mere 3 weeks.  It is early, and the staff here in the store are doing their best to ignore F&O, not even nodding in acknowledgement. Who needs coffee anyway?

True to their word, Flynn and Ollie pulled out of Custer State Park on the 1^st of October. They spent 4 nights on the road at various Harvest Hosts heading eastward, meeting a variety of folk and testing out the rig’s solar and generator power. They stayed at a K9 training facility, a ‘cattle ranch’ (no cattle spotted), a storage facility, and behind a shut-down bar & grill.

While on the road, tourist stops were made, the odder the better. The Corn Palace, The Spam Museum (rocks!), the Deke Slayton Bicycle & Space Museum, the Dignity statue, a cheese store, and the RV Museum.  If F&O didn’t have a deadline to get to upstate NY, they would have spent a few more (not many though) days nosing around these mid-east states.

They hit central pastoral NY state on the 5^th day, and gratefully plugged into full services for the next 4 nights.   There they saw family (whom they miss very much), caught up on some chores (laundry), and played a little poker at Turning Stone in the evening (you knew that was gonna happen).  Somehow or another they managed to miss yet another meet-up with a cousin (sorry S&G), and never did hook up with RV camping friends (R&B, boo!) who were a few hours away. Three days was just not enough to get it all done.

Off again, southbound with intentions of Florida. First stop, Lum’s Pond SP, DE for two nights.  This is a park that is close enough to Baltimore to make an easy day trip, with is exactly what F&O did. They headed to Baltimore Harbor, where they toddled around and on the USS Constitution and some random submarine parked there. Ollie was in heaven. Lunch at a very cool and old local spot previously an all woman-owned printing press, and off they headed to Columbia, MD where Flynn’s handler went to high school: house and school still there. Mission accomplished. Off to the Horseshoe for a little poker – nice place, chip acquired.

The next three nights were spent at another HH in Pocomoke City, MD near the eastern seaboard.  The HH had electrical and allowed extra nights, so that was a score! F&O went to Assateague Island and put their toes and paws in the Atlantic, toured a NASA facility at THE weather station capitol of the world, ate some seafood, tried to go Ocean City (semi-fail due to a huge car show making touring impossible), and ate lots more seafood.

Next:   Bull Run Regional Park, VA for 3 nights. This stop was specifically for Ollie, who is a history buff and wanted more battlefields and cannons. Oh goody. Antietam and Manassas were on the list, and yeah, there were lots and lots of cannons and visual renderings of the Civil War. The second day was spent at the other Smithsonian Air & Space Museum (did you know there were 2 of them?!!), where Flynn admired the REAL space shuttle and Ollie admired the war planes.  As a reward for not breaking into tears with so much war in their little heads, Flynn and Ollie then headed to MGM National Harbor to add to their chip collection.   For dinner they headed to the real National Harbor to dine at Succotash which was super fun. 

F&O rolled into Raccoon Valley, TN after a LAD (long-ass drive), where they will be spending two full weeks tending to the mundane (Karl’s aforementioned oil change) and getting some bodywork done as well.   They are now in possession of a little rental passenger car, which is a nice change from a 1 ton-dually, have a list of to-dos, which includes diagnosing yet another slightly malfunctioning air conditioner, and catching up on correspondence.

For the inquiring minds, YES, F&O are still headed to FL come early November.  The handlers have been sweating the status of the reserved campgrounds and appear to have lucked out with all but one of them (Cedar Key got flattened). Fingers crossed for the residents and visitors of FL that the worst has passed.  

Stay tuned for more exciting episodes.  Meaning, ones filled with humor and sarcasm as we live in TN for now. We have no orange clothing, which may be a problem.

Fin

Flynn