Once again, October finds The Rolling Home in Blairsville, GA. This is where the adventure started and this is where we return each October to visit good friends, do the doctor and dentist thing and just drink in the atmosphere of the North Georgia mountains. Lots of festivals and things going on during this time of year in the mountains.We arrived at the Lake Nottely RV park on September 30 after traveling from the Van Wert, Ohio Fall Escapade. We spent three days coming south, stopping at the Cincinnati KOA south, the Racoon Valley Escapees park in Heiskel, TN and then on in to Blairsville on day three. We traveled with our good friends the Doughtys who live in Young Harris, GA.
You might remember the Doughteys from previous posts. Pappy is the fellow who had heart trouble in 2001 and we hustled back east from Nevada to help him with his business while he was recoverying. We are happy to report that Pappy has recovered nicely from his heart problems and also his prostate cancer surgery of last winter. We attended his 70th birthday party while in Georgia in October and we look forward to helping him celebrate 80,90 and 100 over the years to come!
We made one trip to Atlanta while in Blairsville for Libby to see some specialists she goes to once a year and once again, everything was just fine.
I continued to have heart rythm problems so our regular doctor had me visit with an electrocardiologist. This fellow thought I was ok, but sent me to have an echo cardiogram. Now I have done quite a few stress tests and all the associated monitoring that goes with them, but this is the first echo cardiogram I have ever had done. It was just too cool. If you have never had one, (and I hope you haven't) they use the same ultrasound device that they use for looking at babies in the womb. It was just really neat. I could see the heart valves opening and closing and also watch the blood flow between chambers. It is something to watch your own heart operate. After it was all over, they sent the results to Atlanta and it took a couple of weeks for them to get me the results. Everything was ok, and it was a very interesting experience.
Perhaps all of this heart rythm problems stem from too much caffeine. I have stopped drinking tea and of course, always drink decaffinated coffee. Now at the end of December, I haven't had any rythm problems for about a month, so I guess that might be part of the problem. One really good result of all of this, my doctor tells me that chocolate has very little caffeine in it, contrary to my earlier perception, so now I can still pig out on Hershey bars etc.!
We were visited in Blairsville, by Rich and Diane Emond and also Dave and Sally Stribling. It was the Striblings, who are from Alaska, first visit the the mountains of North Georgia and they had a really good time. Rich and Diane have visited with us there several times.
We all went over the mountain one day to Cleveland, GA to visit the hospital where the Cabbage Patch kids are born. While there, one of these delightful children was born. Sally named the baby and later, Dave and Sally adopted her. At last report, Tammy is sleeping through the night, never dirties her diapers and seems to ride quite well in their motorhome, The Lugnut.
We ate our way around north Georgia that day, going from Cleveland to Helen and having a beer and a snack in one of the creekside cafes there. Then we went to Hayesville, NC and bought an apple pie, taking it home for desert.
We had scheduled an appointment with Cummins in Ocala to change belts on our engine for the third week of October, but rescheduled when the Striblings and Emonds told us they were coming to Blairsville. We finally left Blairsville on Saturday the 26th, but even that was an adventure.
Leaving the campsite, I had to turn right and drive the wrong way on the one way loop that circles the top of the park. I could not make the turn to go left because of a tree that was in just the right spot to keep us from going out the correct direction. Not a big, deal, folks do this all the time. Libby took the Tracker to the end of the road to make sure no one was coming and then called me on our ham radio to let me know it was ok. I swung out of the spot, promptly clipped a railroad tie that was being used as a landscape timber and punctured our outside right tire on the rear. Bummer, a nice 12-18 inch gash in the tire and we were stopped in the campground. We moved all of about 100 yards!
I called road service and within an hour (this is from our insurance company, RVAA) three guys and two truck were there. They could not get our rim off the rig, so we just jacked it up with the levelers and they changed the tire right there with the rim on the rig. Luckily, we had a spare tire in one of our bays, so we didn't have to wait for them to find us a tire. After a few hour delay, we headed on out, crossing Blood Mountain and going through Cleveland, GA where we picked up US 441, following it to Macon. At Macon, we jumped on I 75 and rolled down to Unadilla and the Southern Trails C2C park where we have stayed many times.
The next day, we drove on down to Ocala hoping to stay in the little campground that Cummins provides for folks coming in for service. However, it was full, so we moved back down the road a little to a Passport America park and spent the night there.
The next morning, we went back to Cummins, got our belts changed and moved on down to the SKP park in Bushnell for three days.
It was an interesting month to say the least.
Fuel for October $139.63
Camping for October $344.00
LP for October $10.70