About this time Pastor Bernie from next door came by with Otto, his Schnauzer, and saw the boat. He asked if we were going boating. We said we weren't going anywhere because we had two flat tires. He's been living up here since last October while his house in Huntsville is being renovated. A friend told him he could have built a new house by this time. Anyway, he had electrical damage from Friday's storm at his church in Huntsville and was gone all day yesterday dealing with that. Something about his three-phase power having one phase out. A big mess according to him. He said he 'almost lost his Christian demeanor' or something like that. We feel his pain. He said several other long-term campers here are having houses built in Huntsville or had temporary work that turned permanent and they're waiting for their families to join them.
Bob and I regrouped after listening to his woes. We unpacked everything, put the utilities back in place, put the slides out and re-leveled the trailer. Bob took both tires off the trailer, moved the golf clubs to the cab and put the tires in the camper shell. I walked to the office and paid for one more day and got a newspaper. There were two guys in the office arguing over whether to pay for a primitive campsite or one with water and electric. The older guy said "No, we can't get a primitive site. How will we charge the cell phone?" Somehow I don’t' think they're ready for roughing it in a primitive site.
As I walked by I noticed a new RV was all set up in the camp host site. I guess the new couple had to be here by the first of May. Which, by the way, I cannot believe it is May already. On the way back to our site I saw an older couple with binoculars peering at a bird in the top of a tall tree. They were whispering so as not to disturb it so I didn't butt in and ask them what they were looking at.
Bob and I headed down the Mountain to Wal-Mart on Hwy 231. What a comedy of errors! The 'service manager' and I use that term loosely, could not get his hand-held computer to work. Another customer with six tires who wanted them all changed around and put on different rims was in front of us. Then a young gal who needed two tires on an old junker and one more gal that I have no idea what she needed. He finally got to us but he couldn't input our two lousy valve stems into his hand-held. We left the tires there and hoped for the best.
We went to Beauregard’s for lunch. I had Honey Mustard Grilled Chicken Sandwich and Bob had Shredded Pork plate lunch. Their baked beans were great (we finally got far enough north to be out of 'pinto bean only territory.') And they even had thick BBQ sauce.
We took 231 to Richland Driving Range and hit another $11.00 bucket of balls. It is a sunny day, high of 67 degrees. The air is cool enough for a sweatshirt but it's a beautiful day. Back at Wal-Mart the guy still didn't have the paperwork in the computer. Forty five minutes after we got back there he finally made that happen. We paid him $7.00 for two valve stem replacements and went out to pick up the tires. You guessed it; they never fixed the valve stems because there was no paperwork in the computer for the past three hours. Yikes! I went over to the grocery aisle and picked up a few items and left Bob to sort out that mess. We were finally out of there at 4:00. We stopped for produce at our favorite place one more time.
Back up on the Mountain, Bob put the two tires on the trailer and the spare back underneath. Maybe tomorrow we'll actually leave here as planned. While we were at it, we moved the boat back an inch on the top of the truck. It was howling a little bit as we drove down 231. If you don't have that thing in the exact right spot you get a whistle out of it. Finally we relaxed and read the paper. We had some snacks and then looked at campground destinations again but stuck with our original plan from yesterday to head to Lebanon, Tenn, just east of Nashville.
It's 7:30 p.m. and 55.6 degrees. One thing about this lifestyle is you have to be flexible and deal with whatever comes your way even if you don't see it coming. I guess that's true of life in general. May all of our flat tires be in the campground!