1700 Miles Later...

Well, we're home folks! 80% of our trip was WONDERFUL ... The first 80%. Thanks to everyone who left greetings and comments... I enjoyed reading them. Donna...I'm going to answer your 'tag'! Later! For now, better get a cup of coffee for this post! After dropping the kids off last Monday in North Mississippi, we drove to Horn Lake to spend the night (as was recorded in the last post). The next morning we went to Reelfoot Lake to spend a few nights. But it was not to be so! I was hoping to find cozy cabins, but it's mostly fish camps (called "resorts"). In our opinion, it was pretty awful... so we drove to the nearest city, Union City, TN. Only when we got there it was just an open road through some sparsely populated areas, I couldn't find the 'city'! So I called my friend Cecil May, III in a panic..."I'm Lost!!!". He directed me to drive 20 miles to his house where we had a great time eating, visiting, and spending the night. It was really cool for Tommy Dublin and his wife Carrie and their beautiful girls to come over and visit as well! Great conversation, laughs, and friendship. I can't tell you what a delight it was to spend that time with Cecil and Patti... just a real memory maker for us. They have a Scottish terrier named "Duncan" who would not let me pet him - he kept hiding under the dining room table. Before we left, Duncan escaped and it was a little scary to watch, but the tenseness turned to humor as everyone tried to catch him. I just drove a van around, however! Patti & Cecil's bountiful breakfast included biscuits, home made blackberry jam and home made plum ... country ham fried in a skillet, scrambled eggs, mini-muffins, and coffee. We headed to Nashville, but I do question the route. I think I drove for 2 hours and was still in Kentucky. But who am I to question the directions of someone who could not catch his own dog? We did eventually get there and instead of some quiet outside-the-city out-of-the-way place, we dove right into Music Valley and got a third floor suite from which one can see Opryland Hotel. As it turned out, this was perfect. For three days we only drove to Opry Mills for entertainment and food ... Then back to the room for 3 hour naps and lazy nights. We did hear Jubal Lee Young in a free concert outside the Grand Ole Opry. That is not country music to me, but all the musical boundaries are pretty much gone. But it was fun. The humidity was 34% and the evening was perfect. We also saw Batman Begins...on IMAX ... which made it triple cool because it was already double cool. Go see it! We also ate at a Bob Evans and sitting right behind us was Grand Ole Opry star Connie Smith. I think she was eating with a member of Lonestar or one of those bands. The manager told us later that Merle Haggard occasionally eats in there (and gets grumpy with autograph hounds). Also Johnny Cash and family used to eat in there a good bit. Whodathunkit? Saturday was our day to venture out of the little cove and explore a bit. We drove down Hwy 70s to eat at The Loveless Cafe. This has been there since 1951. I had the fried chicken ... and I think it was one of the best meals ever! Maggy had a big breakfast. We looked around in the Hams & Jams shop and bought a coffee cup (of course). On the way back we located the Otter Creek church of Christ at which we hoped to worship the next morning. On the way back to the hotel our CHECK ENGINE light came on. The engine was making a terrible winding noise. It was not driving right. Not good. We went to the hotel and mechanics-that-we-are looked under the hood. The battery was pretty corroded around the posts. An old cajun gentleman proposed we pour some coca cola on it. I pretended I had never heard of that before. I did so. Waited a few hours ... Then tried to re-start... engine light still on. We found an Reilly auto parts and they checked the battery. Battery good....alternator not good. Ok...it's Saturday late afternoon in Nashville with a bad alternator. I'm envisioning extra nights in the hotel adding up on the bill. Not to mention what the van would cost us. The guy working at the place knew a guy who fixed cars 'where you are' ... so we called him. He had to drive an hour north to a warehouse to get the alternator we needed. At 9:30 that night he was replacing the alternator in the hotel parking lot. I have to take a moment to paint this picture. It's 9:30 at night ... in a hotel parking lot ... with a guy I do not know (and a friend of his who drove up) ... he ONLY takes cash (our checking account is a ghost town now) ... they are wearing gloves (no prints) ... I'm a sitting duck. Creepy. But they fixed the alternator ... I paid a hefty ransom ... turned on the engine ... CHECK ENGINE light still on. He plugged into my van and said "it's your transmission...I don't work on transmissions". I really felt the need to be somewhere else (like HOME) talking with someone I trusted and not in Nashville talking to a stranger. The glory, relaxation, laziness, joy and quietude of the week was now gone. I was up all night worried about what to do ... exhausted, we climbed into the van and headed for Ruleville, MS where my inlaws live. Unfortunately, because we faced who-knows-what on the trip ahead, we did not attend the assembly anywhere. We will have to catch Otter Creek next time. Disappointing. Since the transmission would not shift into third gear, we drove at 50-55 mph all the way to Ruleville ... 8 hours. Monday we rested and had wonderful visits with Maggy's family. We enjoy being together so much, it's a shame we are separated by distance as we are. We also made calls to the auto dealership. Guess what! The warranty we bought ... that warranty company went bankrupt. The good news is that our local dealer is servicing the warranty. But only in Pascagoula. So we took off this morning and 7 hours later arrived home. Beat, but thankful. Tomorrow we take it to the shop and hopefully they'll get us back up and running without too much pain. Yes, there are the haunting questions. Did we do something to cause the transmission trouble? Did we really have a broken alternator, or did we shell out mega-bucks to a rip off artist? What is that echo in our checking account? When we look back at our vacation, will we remember the wonderful 80% or the crappy 20%? I didn't mention that while the guys were in the parking lot working on my van, my good friend Gary Boswell happened to call on my cell phone. He reminded me to look at the blessings and keep our eyes on the positive. I think we did that ... mostly. Thanks, Gary! And that's what I did on vacation this summer.