The following week our friends Patty and Jim Hammond stopped in Blairsville for a week.  They could not get into the Lake Nottely Rv park because the place was full due to all the leaf lookers and folks in town for the fall festivals that occur all around the area.  They spent the week at Mountain Oaks Rv park, just a couple of miles down the road from us.

We took them to the John C. Campbell Folk School near Murphy, NC for their fall festival the first weekend of the month.  We have attended this festival for several years and really enjoy it.  Patty bought a very nicely decorated gourd and Jim and John spent a lot of time watching the crafts folks make things!

After the Folk School, we all went to Hayesville, NC to have lunch at the Country Cottage.  These folks serve great food at a good price.  The piece de resistance there however, is their pie.  We bought a piece of pie for desert and then bought two more pieces for an informal dinner gathering we were going to attend later that evening.  They make the best pies in the country at this place, so if you are near Hayesville, NC, make sure you go get some pie at the Country Cottage.

We spent the afternoon showing the Hammonds some of the highlights of North Georgia Mountain living.  At dinner time, we all went over to Cathy Jarrett's house for an impromptu chili dinner.  The Hammonds were warmly welcomed into Cathy's house as we expected and we all spent the evening chowing down on homemade chili and store bought pies.

Later in the week, we took the Hammonds to Brasstown Bald, the highest point in Georgia.  This mountain is also in Union County, where we used to live.  We sat through the forest service movie describing the mountain and then we went up on the observation deck and looked out over the beautiful fall foliage and mountains in South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.  Brasstown Bald is about 4,800 feet high and actually has a climate more like that of New England instead of the deep south.  The highest temperature ever recorded at the peak of the mountain is 84 degrees and winter often finds the summit encased in ice and snow.
 
 

    This is the view from Brasstown Bald, looking into North Carolina.   Hiawasee, Georgia is in the valley
 

We then drove over to Helen to show the Hammonds what that tourist town looks like, making our way back to Blairsville, via the Richard Russell Scenic Highway.  Folks don't often realize that there are large tracts of wilderness left in the east, but the Russell Scenic Wilderness is one such area.

On Tuesday, John had his physical with our family doctor and both of us got flu shots.  On Wednesday, Libby had an appointment in Atlanta, so we made the trek over the mountain and ventured into Atlanta traffic.  The appointment was at 10:30 so we missed the morning rush hour.  We got out of Atlanta about lunchtime, we managed to miss the afternoon rush hour too.  This is a good thing!  Libby's checkup went just fine and she is set for another year.

On Thursday, Libby had her regular physical with our family doctor and it went well also.  Interestingly, he was out of flu vaccine by then, so it was a good thing we had the shots on Tuesday.

On Friday the Hammonds left, heading for Anderson, SC and then on to Freightliner in Gaffney, SC for some service work.

We continued to visit with friends in Blairsville and did do a couple of things with Pappy when he needed help.  We also helped the Doughty's order a new computer.  Our friend, John Mullinix, put us on to a site on the web that had some of the best computer deals we have found.  www.Compgeek.net.  We got them a 733 mhz Intel Celeron, 30 gb hard drive, CD RW drive, floppy, sound card, video card, usb port, keyboard, speakers, 64 mb of ram, (we ordered another 128 mb of ram for only $14) and the whole thing was $273.  This was a refurbed computer and the keyboard had a Ford Motor Company logo on it.  Who cares for that price!  A nice machine and the only thing not included was a monitor, which they already had anyway.  These folks had a 17 inch color monitor for only $79 if needed.  We have looked at that site  and am just amazed at the prices.

During this time frame, our two way satellite internet dish came in and we got it set up and running.  This system uses a large dish, 39 inches wide and 23 inches tall.  It must be mounted at least 5 feet above the ground to keep folks from getting too near the transmitter which is at 1.4 ghz and is not something you want zapping your head or other vital body parts.  The dish was easy to set up and we found the satellite after much searching by finding the Direct TV satellite and then coming east 3 degrees.  The download speeds on this system can exceed 400 kbps and upload is on the order of 128 kbps.  Just to give you an example of how fast it is, we downloaded Netscape 6.1 as a test.  The download page says it will take 71 minutes with a 28.8 dial  up modem.  we got the entire file in a 1 minute and 52 seconds.   The equipment cost about $500, install starts at $199 and the monthly fee is $69.95.  For that fee, you get unlimited internet access.  Since we were paying for 900 minutes of cell phone time to cover our email use on it and we were also paying Earthlink each month as our ISP, we found it easy to cost justify having this system.  Our cell phone bill was $123 a month including taxes.  Our Earthlink bill sometimes was $65 depending on how much 800 service we had to use.   (We signed up for a special 800 rate with Earthlink back in 1999 and in over two years, they could never get the billing correct)  We were paying almost $190 a month to have slow access via our cell phone.  We cut our cell phone back to 350 minutes at a $50 per month fee, dumped Earthlink completely saving that money and then we moved our website from Earthlink to Namesecure.   The monthly fee for our Earthlink web hosting was $30 and we now pay $6.95.  All in all, we are spending much less for the DirectPC system from Pegasus than we were for using our cell phone for email and using Earthlink for our ISP.

On Sunday the 14th, John had to fast all day in preparation for his colonoscopy on Monday.  The lack of food wasn't a big deal, but the junk he had to drink was not good.  4 liters of this stuff is a lot and by the bottom of the jug, it didn't taste very good at all.   On Monday bright and early (7 a.m.) we went to the local hospital.  They took John in about 7:30 and dressed him in one of those wonderful hospital gowns. (scary thought isn't it).  At about 8:30 they rolled him into the exam room and put some really neat stuff into his IV.  This was the first time in his life that he had ever had an IV or been sedated.  It turned out to be no big deal, but it was interesting.  He was talking to the doctor and nurse one minute and the next thing he remembered was talking to Libby.  No recollection of the procedure at all.  Everything was fine and this ordeal is over for another 5 years.

After the procedure Libby took John to breakfast, but he couldn't eat.  Must be the anesthetic.  We went home and John promptly fell asleep for few hours.  Our friends, Al and Joy Coke came up from Atlanta and stopped by just about lunch time.  We took them to the world famous Blairsville restaurant for lunch, but John still didn't feel like eating.  In mid afternoon, he finally came around, had a brownie and a glass of milk and was back to normal!

One of the results of John's regular physical was the discovery of an abdominal hernia.  He saw a local surgeon on the 16th, who decreed it was no big deal and not worth cutting  at this point.  That was ok with John, so the doctors are all over with for another year, we hope.

On the 17th, we met our old work chum Glenda Roth for lunch.  We got caught up with all that had been happening with her and her husband Jacques.  This included flying to England the week after the terrorist attack.   They had second thoughts, but decided to go anyway and had a wonderful time in London.

We went out to dinner on Friday the 19th with Pappy and Cecile and then our big adventure for the month began.  On the way home as we crossed Dividing Ridge between Young Harris and Blairsville, the oil warning light on the Tracker went on.  Uh OH.
We pulled off the road and smoke was pouring from under the hood.  John popped the hood and checked the oil.  Way down! He dumped a quart in and it went right through, pouring out on the ground.  Hmmmm, a big problem.  John got on the ham radio and called for help.  The down side of being in the country is folks tend to go to bed early.  Nobody answered. Ok, John walked over to the movie theater, without his glasses, trying to see the phone book in the dark in order to call Pappy for rescue.  He got them on the phone and in short order Pappy and Cecile showed up with an extra truck for us to use until we got the Tracker repaired.

The next morning (Saturday) John drove over to Ware Chevrolet, the local Chevy dealer in Blairsville.  They don't do service on the weekends but the service manager,  Steve Ware just happened to be there.  He got the company tow truck and took John with him to go get the Tracker.  They brought it back to the dealership and John explained that he and Libby had to go to Gaffney, SC on Sunday for an appointment for the motorhome service Monday morning.  This appointment was set several months ago and could not be changed.  He explained that even though Steve indicated that it might take some days to get to the Tracker, it was ok, John and Libby would just come back after going to Gaffney.  Steve indicated that he would just go ahead and take a look at the car and see if it was anything obvious.
 

John and Steve pushed the car into a bay and Steve popped the hood.  Lo and Behold, the oil filter was not screwed on tight.  It had actually blown off of the engine and dropped all the oil onto the road.  Back on September 4, John had taken the Tracker into the local Fast Lube for an oil change.  The Tracker had 2,000 miles on that oil change, had been to Atlanta and back and hauled John and Libby and Jim and Patty Hammond all over the north Georgia mountains.  This could have been much worse!  Anyway, Steve drained the old oil out, the whole quart that was left, and put the correct oil filter on and filled the crankcase with new oil.  He disconnected the ignition while John cranked the engine in order to get oil back where it belonged.  After a few cranks, they reconnected the ignition and fired up that little old Suzuki engine (Trackers are Suzuki in American clothes)  It ran fine, no noise, no problem.   Whew! how lucky can you be?  Steve charged us $91 including the tow.  John then took the bill to the Fast Lube place along with the offending filter.  They looked at the filter, then at their reference book and agreed that they had indeed put the wrong filter on.  They opened the cash register and shelled out $91.  Small towns are just wonderful!

Saturday afternoon, John went to Cathy Jarrett's new business to finish getting her computer up and running.  He had started this project Friday afternoon, but ran out of time to finish.   He also fixed the phone line for her computer.  Then on Saturday night, we  went to Pappy and Cecile's house to help celebrate Pappy's 69th birthday.  We had a great time and sadly said goodbye to many of our Georgia friends since we were planning on leaving Sunday morning.

Sunday, we did indeed get away and headed for Gaffney, SC., following part of the Southern High Country Trail.  We picked up I 85 just southwest of Clemson and followed the interstate on to Gaffney.

We had been told that the plant at Gaffney had been completely remodeled and expanded.  It had, but there are still the same four bays for Rvs.  The campground has been moved up the hill a bit, but still has only electric and spots for 6 or 8 rigs. (not enough electric for that many).    We rolled into the bay promptly at 8 a.m. and told Dave Brown the service manager that we wanted the chassis lubed, the coolant changed, the hydraulic fluid changed, the recall on the valve stems for Alcoa aluminum wheels done and the mod kit for the blow by tube done.   We also told Dave that we felt that Freightliner should consider reimbursing us for the $151 that we spent in the summer of 2000 to get the radiator and charge air cooler cleaned.  They are doing this for free now for those folks who are still under warranty.  We paid for ours before this was Freightliner's policy and while we were still under warranty.  Dave said he couldn't authorize that, but we should call Customer Service.  We did so and in a little while, Dave came in asking for our receipt from TransWest Trucks in Grand Junction, Co. from 2000.  We, of course, had them in our pocket!  When we paid our bill for the service work done,  Freightliner had given us a $151 credit, so our bill was only about $50.  Great customer service.

We left Gaffney and peddled over to Carnesville, GA to the new Flying J there to fuel up.  This was our first fuel purchase since Knoxville, TN back just before Labor Day.  The cost of fuel has dropped so dramatically and we knew that GA would have the cheapest fuel, so we paid $1.07.9 for it that day.  (I just looked --Nov. 7- and it is down to $1.02.9 with the discount in GA now)  We filled up for less than $100 for the first time in a year!  Wonderful.  We also had lunch there and then went on to Commerce, GA and spent a little time strolling through some of the outlet stores there.  After Commerce, we went on to the driveway of our friends, Al, Joy and Megan Coke.

The Cokes were in our Winnebago Club, Gone With the Winnies and the Atlanta Metro Club when we had our Chieftain.  We have become good friends with them and they come to Blairsville, each time we are there to visit.  We took them up on their offer to stay in their driveway on our way west.  We visited with them and their absolutely delightful 16 year old daughter, Megan for the evening.  They even fed us.

The Cokes were all gone when we got ready to roll the next morning.  Megan is in High School, Joy is a teacher and Al is a bag boy at Chateau Elan Golf Resort.  This is Al's second career. He is retired from Kraft Foods.  It is a great deal, he makes a little money and gets to play the resort courses for free.

We waited until the Atlanta rush hour was over (or as over as it gets in Atlanta) and then headed west again.  We went around the east side of Atlanta on I 285 and picked up I 20 for our roll to New Mexico.  We pushed a little harder than usual to make it to Birmingham by lunchtime.

We had made arrangements to meet some of John's old BellSouth work group for lunch in Birmingham.  We herded the D into a parking lot at the Galleria Mall in Birmingham and walked over to J. Alexander's to meet the group for lunch.  It was so much fun. Everyone of the group that John used to work with showed up, including Tony and Marie Benigno who are also retired.  The four retirees made sure that the worker bees knew how much fun being retired is!  We had a great lunch, talking about our adventures, Tony and Marie's volunteer job rocking premature babies at a local hospital and a limited amount of work talk.  Of course, the work part was interesting, seeing who was where and who had left.  We also learned that some of the folks could well be facing lay offs.  We assured these folks that there is life after Bell and that life would go on.    One of the things that BellSouth has done for a while is allow its employees to buy retirement benefits for a one time fee if they are close to the magic number of 75, which is the sum of age and service. This number is the target for retirement with some caveats.  In any case we had a great time with these folks, Lewis, John, Keith, Tony, Patty and Ginger.  Ginger even paid for our lunch. Wow, two free meals two days in a row!  We were going to try to elicit some sympathy with these folks by telling them we belonged to NARPF. (National Association of Retired Poor Folks) but since Ginger paid for our lunch, we didn't have to do that!

We headed west from Birmingham after a two hour lunch and rolled on into Mississippi.  It was getting to be about 4 p.m. which is late for us to drive, so we found a campground off the interstate to stop at for the night.  Now those of you who have talked to us about campgrounds know that we generally do not stay at KOAs.  We feel many of them are overpriced and under maintained.  This time, we did stop at the KOA in Toomsuba, MS.  What a nice park.   Very well maintained, (priced like all of them) and the staff and owners were just wonderful.  They even provided biscuit and gravy the next morning for a buck a biscuit including coffee.  We highly recommend this park.

We left Toomsuba and started west on I 20 again. Our plan was to roll on to Dallas over two days, arriving on Thursday for an appointment with Rodney Simmons of Blue Mood RV Mobile Repair to have refer maintenance done.  However, as we drove west, we started talking about when we would call for mail and discussing the fact that our friends the Holders were at Rainbow's End in Livingston.  We decided just to go pick up our mail and visit with the Holders for a few days.  So when we filled up again at the Flying J west of Shreveport, LA, we just hung a left and drove another 160 miles to Rainbow's End.  We didn't get there until after dark.  This was our fourth time in over two years to drive after dark!

We scooted over to the Catfish King for dinner and then settled in for the night.  We picked up our mail the next day and then spent some time at Walmart and catching up on some other chores that needed to be taken care of.  We had a nice time visiting with the Holders and some other folks we knew who were at RE and then on Sunday we headed out to Traders Village in Dallas to await our postponed meeting with Rodney.

When we got to Dallas in the middle of the afternoon and found the road that led to Trader's Village.  As soon as we left the interstate, we got stuck in a huge traffic jam.  A fellow tried to pass us on the shoulder and then got upset at us.  Folks were honking horns, driving on the shoulder, pulling out in front of other vehicles, in other words, a typical big city driving experience.  After sitting in line for about 45 minutes and not moving even a block, we decided that our refer really didn't need maintenance and we got turned back onto the access road, headed for the interstate and said "so long" to Dallas/Ft. Worth.

We stopped for the night at the Cowtown Rv Park west of Ft. Worth.  Another very nice park.  Large pull throughs, a small store, two sewer hookups per site.  The manager even sprayed the water hose bib with disinfectant when he showed us to the site.  Great customer service and not too much road noise.  There wasn't even a train nearby!   Also in the park with us was the chase RV for the American Airlines Flag Across America Run.  We had seen the flag being run along I 20 on an access road in Louisiana the week before.  John went over and talked to the support crew for quite a while.   Nice folks and a worthy task.
 
 

After we left the Cowtown park, we just continued to roll west on I 20. We filled up again in Abilene, TX at a Flying J and also ate lunch there.  We got to see some B1B bombers coming and going from the Air Force Base near town.  We had intended to go to Pecos and TraPark, the SKP park there and boondock for the night, but we were so close to Carlsbad that we just struck out across country at Odessa, TX on U.S 385.  We turned west at Seminole, TX (home of Melva King) and continued on U.S 62/180 until we reached the Carlsbad Relief Route.  There we bypassed Carlsbad and hopped on U.S 285 for the last 20 miles to Lakewood and The Ranch.  We pulled into The Ranch just after happy hour and got parked on our lot.  It sure is nice to be back and we can relax and not spend money for a couple of months.  Roundup begins on November 1, and we are looking forward to our first one.  Lots of folks are in the park and many of our old friends are already here.

As we went to bed, we heard the coyotes howling just outside the fence around the RV park.  It sure beats Dallas traffic!
 
 
 

Camping Fees for October   $339.10
Fuel for October                   $238.81
Maintenance for October      $51.00
LP for October                      $15.00