Lucy Becomes More Terrestrial

And, Lucy became Percy who is now Ruby. Got that? I'm not going to change the name of the Blog, but the focus will change to our travels. And since we will be traveling more, I won't be in the observatory. So, fewer, if any astronomy entries. You can say Thank You.

After the trade of Percy for Ruby, we noticed that we had put only 5000 miles on Percy in about 2 ¾ years. The travels had been mostly to Red Bay Alabama for some work on him or to our NOMADS projects. Percy was a wonderful motorhome for that type of “stay and work” traveling. He was really a home on wheels. Ruby is different. Since my illness, we are no longer able to work NOMADS projects, but we still have the urge to “go, see, do”, as one of the members of the Lazy Daze forum puts it. Ruby is VERY compact, but easy to drive. Percy was more of a “staymobile”; Ruby is a “gomobile”. After about 2 ½ weeks of preliminary work, putting things like the surge protector on, we have taken her out for the maiden voyage. On the first trip, we have already put over 1000 miles on her, so she is living up to the purpose for which we obtained her.

The first few nights we stayed in her, we stayed in the back yard. We needed to see how things work, and didn't want any really bad surprises on the road. Actually, there was one bad surprise; a nail in the rear passenger tire. We took Ruby to a local tire shop for repair, which is now done only as an “internal patch”. This causes us some concern as there is NO spare tire. Dodge gives you a 12v tire pump and a can of “Fix A Flat”. Not really confidence building, if you catch my drift. We are paranoid about checking tire pressures now, which is probably a good thing, since that tire appears to have a slow leak, as compared to the driver side rear tire. Oh, bother. The other major glitch is an intermittent awning extension. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If that is the only issue, then I think we will have a pretty good motorhome. Most times, the post-delivery punch list is quite long. Sometimes, after reading other blogs about other campers, I think the factory puts most of the parts there and the poor dealer has the job of making it all work.

The first night actually camping was done at Red Top Mountain, a Georgia State Park, near Marietta.

At Red Top Mountain State Park, Georgia

Wanna guess why we named her Ruby?

Following that, we met with some close friends to caravan to Paducah, KY and a trip the the National Quilt Museum. JW and MR are quilters, so they were having a good time. JR and I are not quilters, but did find some good barbecue at the show. I will say that there were some amazing quilts to be seen though.

Aren't these amazing?

Near Paducah, there is a town call Metropolis, in Indiana. Any of you older than about 30 might have an association with that name. Well, the town has capitalized on that association.

Who knew I looked so good in blue tights?

After Paducah, we parted ways with JR and MJ, with JR/MJ heading to the NOMADS Annual Meeting in Illinois and J and K heading not far away to the Land Between the Lakes park. It is a National Recreation Area. We stayed there several days to relax, but found some things to see while there.

Yep, that's a lake. And we're on the land.There's another lake behind us, too!

For outdoor activities, we when to the 1850s Homestead, which is a functioning farm. Docents showed what life was like at that time, including woodworking, blacksmithing, quilting, and growing crops and farm animals for food. Apparently they used to slaughter the hogs, there to get their pork, but, times being what they are, the hogs are now slaughtered elsewhere and the carcasses returned for butchering and smoking/salting for preservation, etc.

They also had information on the use of plants in the area, like simple strawberries, and how they used all of the plant.

They preserved green beans by stringing them....

All my life I have heard of “string beans”, which I always thought was a type of green bean. I wonder now if it referred to a variety of green bean that was particularly good at being strung for preservation. When I get internet again, that's something to check on.

Following LBL, we traveled to the Mammoth Cave area of KY. Not our first National Park by any stretch of the imagination, but the first one where we had a National Park Passport, which we promptly stamped for Mammoth Cave.

On the steps in front of "Frozen Niagara"

As you would expect, they had information on the formation of the cave and the area. I would have assumed that the reference to “mammoth” would be to a large “room” in the cave. Not so. The mammoth refers to the huge length of the tunnels, currently about 420 miles or so. All of this in an area (surface area, that is) of about 7 miles by 9 miles or 63 miles square. So far, no one has found the end of the tunnel system, and people have been actively surveying since at least the 1950s or so.

Well, that's enough for now. It's been interesting to see how much we have come to rely on the internet. When we don't have it, it's easy to become bored, especially since we didn't bring enough to do otherwise (not a lot of room). That's OK for now; this is a different type of traveling for us, and we need to learn how to do it. That will take some time and a few false starts, but we'll get there.