Hurricane Sandy did not directly hit the Atlanta metropolitan area but we sure have felt her presence.  Our daytime and nighttime temperatures are about 20 to 25 degrees lower than the average and the wind has been blowing steadily for almost a week without a break.

Now I know that wind for a week is nothing new to many of you.  It is a normal day in Texas, Oklahoma and along the coasts.  But around here if the wind gets above 15mph for a couple of hours they put out the red warning flags.  But for good reason, drought-weakened and diseased trees are coming down all over the place.  Atlanta is one of, if not the most heavily wooded city in the country, there is hardly a square foot that is not in jeopardy of a tree falling on it.  We have several monsters surrounding our little RV, and everybody else's RV in the park we are staying in.  Thankfully the owner of the park had a crew in just in September to prune healthy trees and remove questionable ones.  Still, when we get a good, long gust you can see heads pop out of the RVs to look and see if a tree near them has moved abnormally.  The wind should let up by tomorrow morning, barring anything happening tonight, everything is okay.

Even with temperatures hovering near the freezing mark at night we have yet to use the furnace.  So far all our heating needs have been met with just a simple little ceramic space heater.  At night we close the door between the upstairs and downstairs and set the heater to hold the temperature at about 66°.  Perfect sleeping temp.  The little heater is not overly taxed at these temperatures, it cycles on and off.  We'll see how it goes when we get into single digit temps in January.  I am keeping the propane tanks full in anticipation that the furnace will be needed.

Fall is festival time all over the country and the North Georgia area seems especially so.  There are way more festivals on any given weekend during this time than any one person can get to.  But in our 22 years in this area we have come to favor a few and found ourselves attracted to them year after year.  Normally we pick one, or if we try really hard we make it to two each season.  But now that there are no gutters to clean, lawn to mow, leaves to rake, garage to clean or the multitude of other things one has to do to keep a bricks and sticks kept up, we found ourselves with time to get to more this year.

A big one that seems to kick off the fall festival season is the Yellow Daisy Festival at Stone Mountain Park, GA.  If nothing else, it is large.  But it is more than just a big festival, it is a diverse festival.  It has attractions by corporate sponsors like you would see at a State Fair, the likes of Ford and the Texas Tourist Bureau.  Then there is the three acre pasture that doubles as a food court.  You can get everything from the ubiquitous foot long corn dog and giant turkey leg to some finer fare of local restaurants and caterers.

But the main attraction is the arts and crafts booths.  Hundreds of them.  This is what gets Cyndee going.  When she gets on the trails that make the circuits through the woods full of these booths she is 'in the zone'.

Next is the Ellijay apple festival.  This is a mountain town in North Georgia that became its county seat in 1834.  Half of the county's 427 sq miles is in the Chattahoochee National Forest and it seems the other half is covered in apple orchards.  It is a nice place to spend the day.  You can pick your own apples or get a bushel or two from one of the many apple stands that dot the country side.

The old, original center of town has preserved buildings that date back to before the civil war.  It seems that the whole of the old downtown has been converted into an antique'rs paradise.  Another place that Cyndee gets into her zone.

As Halloween approaches, our thoughts turn to pumpkins, and Burt's Farm is the place to be for virtually any kind and any size you have in mind.  This is not really a festival but it draws such large crowds it sure feels like a festival.

Burt's has a great selection of pumpkins that we have enjoyed for years to pick the 'perfect' one for carving.

This year we are living in a place that has absolutely no children so we won't be carving any pumpkins but we still liked shopping for them.

Heck of a month!  And this was not all of it.  We also celebrated my birthday by taking a trip to Cartersville and touring two museums and having a fantastic lunch in a place named 'The City Cellar'.  The shrimp and grits with andouille sausage was worth the trip all by itself.

Every October for 10 years running we have hosted a fall cookout/camp out.  There is a state park less than two hours from where our house used to be.  We would take a couple of days off on either side of the third weekend of October, reserve a campsite and bar-b-que shelter and have anywhere from 30 to 50 people come and hang out all weekend or just the cook-out day.

This year was no different except that instead of packing the camper for the last trip of the season, we were preparing our camper that is now our home, to be picked up and moved for a four day get-a-way.  I don't know if other full timers think about it this way but I think about the new level of risk.  I am about to take the roof over my head and all my possessions and hurdle them down the highway through a city that is ranked in the top ten for worst traffic in the country.  It has always been stressful driving through Atlanta, even under the best of circumstances, but this was a whole new deal.

With all the craziness of prepping the house for sale (garage sales, Craig's listing, and Goodwill trips), listing and showing the house, the ordeal of closing the sale, Cyndee's surgery, and building the new rig, I just about did not get the reservations for the campsite or shelter.  When I finally did get to it, at the behest of some of the faithful attendees, our normal weekend was not available.  Luckily I was able to get an October weekend but it was at the first of the month instead of the end.

Hard Labor Creek is a pretty State Park just outside Rutledge, Georgia, North of I-20, and East of Atlanta.  Like most campgrounds in Georgia, it is heavily wooded and follows the natural contours of the hilly terrain it is built on.  There are a few sites that are large enough to hold our rig, some are pull-through, some are back-in.  The park has been upgraded and just about all the sites now have 50 amp electricity but none have sewer connections.  With our new 100 gallon waste tanks, four days is going to be a piece of cake.  If we are careful with our water use, we can go almost two weeks with the Majestic.

So, two hours of breaking down, driving and setting up and we go from our home in the city to our cabin in the woods.

 

Not only did we have a very nice spot to park, but it also came with a very relaxing view.  It was hard to tell that there was anyone near us.  And to top it all off, we were within a short walk of the shelter where the bar-b-que was going to be.

 

Saturday came and as the usual routine, the cooking fire was lit at noon so that it could be ready for the grilled food to be put on by 4pm.  It takes several hours to get 500lbs of firewood and 50 lbs of charcoal just right.  But with ten years of practice we have it down pretty good.

 

As the years have passed our menu has evolved a little.  We have graduated from just dogs and burgers to pretty awesome ensembles of beef cuts, side dishes and desserts.  But the biggest change has been an addition of a low country boil.  A 60 quart boiling cauldron of potatoes, corn, sausage, and shrimp with time-honored seasoning courtesy of Old Bay and Zatarain adds to the fragrant aroma filling the open-air shelter.

 

Timing is nearly perfect, the low country boil and grilled food are ready at the same time and everyone fills their plates with the abundant variety of food and sits for a meal under brilliant sunshine and crisp fall air.

This year Cyndee and I felt especially blessed as family from South Carolina came over for the day.  Our Burdett cousins drove over from the Columbia area and joined us for the festivities.  We know how fortunate we are to have family that enjoys being together and we treasure the time we get to spend together.

Continuing our tradition, what cook out would be complete without roasting of marshmallows and making of s'mores?  After 7 hours of burning a huge pile of wood and charcoal, it is just right for roasting a perfect marshmallow and no one in this group lets that opportunity get past them.

 With that marshmallow roast it signals the end to another successful cookout.  The weather could not have cooperated more and the company and conversation were priceless.

But this was only Saturday night, the end of the cook out but not the weekend.  Cyndee and I had two more days to enjoy and we did.  Sunday was a day for exploring, we drove about twenty miles to another state park called Rock Eagle.  It is an ancient sight where very early people had piled rocks, some several hundred pounds in weight, into the figure of an eagle in flight.  It was a large structure flat on the ground and not readily identifiable from ground level. 

One has to get some elevation to be able to look down and see the shape all in one gaze.  But since this effigy had been built on the highest point in the entire county, nobody is sure how these ancient people viewed or used this monument.  Not to worry though, the CCC took care of that for modern day man.

Excavations by archaeologists have revealed very little, it remains a curiosity and is being preserved for future study.

We ate lunch in Madison, GA in the middle of the afternoon and then returned to Hard Labor Creek where we took in a couple of bicycle rides and refreshments while kicked back in our camp chairs under the awning.

Monday came all too soon and it was time to hitch up and return to city living.  Everything worked well.  I did have to fiddle with the leveling system a little but there was no hint of the problem I had with the brakes back in August.  We used a dump station for the first time and it took a little longer to empty the tanks in the Majestic than it did in the Kountry Star.  Because of the way I have to store the dump hose, I have to take the connectors off the hose to store it and reassemble them to use the hose.  Not as convenient as just taking the hose out and hooking up, but not a show-stopper.

The tow back to our city lot was pleasant and within minutes of parking it was as if we had never left.  Back to the corporate grind.

It has been nearly a month now of living in our new rig.  A couple of issues have come up; I noticed that one of my 40lb propane tanks was nearly empty.  That is really strange as it was typical for us to go a whole season on less than one 30lb tank in the Kountry Star.  Granted, we were cooking meals three times a day but that could not possibly explain the consumption I was seeing.  Being aware of this, I started looking for possible culprits.  The first thing was that both of us had been noticing a faint odor of propane when we opened the cabinet doors just below the range, so possibly a small leak there.  But then I saw the read-out on the refrigerator and the little dot that indicates that the fridge is running on electricity was not on.  Dang, the fridge had been operating in 80+ temperatures trying to keep a freezer cold enough to make ice.

After several days of working with the factory over the phone to try and diagnose why the fridge would not switch over to electicity we finally gave up and scheduled a technician to come out.  It was several days before they could ge to me but when they finally did, it only took them a little less than an hour to track the problem down to a fuse on the circuit board of the fridge.  The guy had to go through about three layers of electronics to get to it, but he found it.

Cyndee bought me a spray water bottle and I made a soap solution to start tracking down the suspected leak under the cook-top.  It only took three squirts and I started seeing bubbles.  A quarter-turn with a wrench and the problem was solved.  A quick trip to Ace hardware to refill the propane bottle and we were all set.

RV Ballet

While the brake problem was unsettling, it had to be put aside.  The task at hand was getting the old and new rigs positioned so that we could transfer all the contents from the Kountry Star into the Majestic with the daylight left.

I dropped the Majestic off in a school parking lot a couple of miles from the camp ground we are in and went to get the Kountry Star.  The intention was to position them side-by-side so that a couple of 2x12's could be laid across the door thresholds and make a "gangway" to carry stuff from one rig to the other without ever going up or down a step.  But the chosen school parking lot was too steeply sloped.  I would never be able to get the slides out (and back in again) with that kind of angle.  Time for plan B.

There was a chunk of land where a shopping plaza had been started.  They got the anchor grocery store in and a couple of shops on either side but the economy dipped and they left some paved roads to nowhere that looked like a good possibility for what I wanted.  I drove down one of the stubs and took a look; perfect!  Just what the doctor ordered.

I headed back to the school to get the Majestic.  I sure wish I had more practice with the automatic leveling system.  I was not quite sure of the command sequence for retracting the levelers and returning the landing gear to hitching position.  I guess I did not get it quite right as the rig proceeded to retract all the rams - the nose of the shiny new rig was headed for the ground!!  Luckily I did know how to do a panic stop of they system and caught it with just two inches to spare.  I switched the controls to manual and operated it that way for the rest of the hook-up.

A couple of miles later and I was positioning the Majestic on the stub road.  I unhooked again and went to get the Kountry Star.  Cyndee had everything on the inside in 'travel mode' and I disconnected all the services on the outside.  Another hitch up and away we went.  In less than five minutes we were inching up along side the Majestic.   Cyndee was spotting for me and expertly guiding me until the doors were aligned exactly opposite of each other.  Got out to open the doors and put the boards across but, woops, the rigs were so close to each other the doors could not be swung all the way open.  Okay, no problem, just back up ten feet, open both doors and bring it forward again.  Done.

At about 3pm on a hot, Georgia, August afternoon we start transfering the contents from one rig to the other without the benefit of any air circulation.  Other than being in a sauna, things went pretty smoothly and quicker than I thought it would.  The floor plans of the two rigs are very similar, so much of the stuff went from one location in the old rig to almost the exact same spot in the new rig.  But, layouts were not exactly the same so some piling of items on the furniture and in the floor was done and to be dealt with later, when hooked up to power (air conditioning) and with the luxury of time to think about it.

Between the two of us we probably made over a hundred trips between rigs.  Cyndee's clever idea of using laundry baskets to put all the loose contents of a drawer or cabinet in and carry them all at once instead of handfuls at a time worked great.  You could put everything from one small storage location in the basket at once and put it right back in it's new home all together.  Being able to keep things organized similarly from old rig to new has greatly reduced that feeling of disoreintation that is common when you move and you have to re-learn where all your 'stuff' is.

By now it was getting late and it was time to get both rigs to their parking spots.  There were a few little things in the basement, exterior storage compartments, and a couple of small cabinets that remained but they were not essential to living in the next few days.  They could wait until after we get settled in.  Right now we had to get the Majestic on its pad and hooked up to services and the Kountry Star to its storage spot.

The truck and Kountry Star were still lashed up so it was off to the storage location first.  Conveniently this location was a freshly graded and mulched area directly behind our camping pad.  The owner of the camp ground made me a deal that was financially attractive and I had the added benefit of being able to market my used rig by powering it up with an extension cord from my power pole.  But it was a bit of challenge to get the KS on the mulch pad.  While the spot where the rig was to be parked had been freshly graded and mulched, the area where I had to swing around and start my backing in approach was raw farm land, covered in tall grass and random stalks of volunteer corn.  It had also rained the night before so it was wet too.  It took several runs at backing up the slight incline onto the mulch pad.  The incline itself had its challenges but then when I got the wheels of the trailer on the fresh mulch pad, they sank like they were rolling onto a marshmallow.  That was more resistance to rolling than the dual rear wheels of the truck could take.  I broke traction several times, each time causing the back of the truck to slip sideways and cause the trailer to get crooked on its pad.  After several attempts I had beat down a decent enough path that I finally got the trailer close enough and called it "good".  Unhitching again and heading back to get the Majestic.

When I got there, Cyndee was sitting in the door watching a guy pilot a remote controlled helicopter.  Not one of those little ones you see in the mall at Christmas time but scaled model with a rotor span of almost three feet.  While it was pretty cool to watch, the guy had parked his vehicle right where I needed to back in so I could hitch up.  I backed up as far as I could, thinking he would get the idea and come and move his vehicle.  But as far as I could tell, he never even knew I was there.  The helicopter was pretty loud so I gave a tap of my air horns and that got his attention.  He landed the helicopter and moved his vehicle.  I hooked up and made my way to our lot where I was going to back this longer, heavier rig for the first time.

Not too bad.  I think the Majestic may be a little more responsive to changes in steering than the Kountry Star.  I got it on the pad in one move but it was not positioned side-to-side exactly where I wanted it so Cyndee worked her signaling magic to get me just where it needed to be.  Whew!

The day started with a pre-dawn departure from a truck stop, traversing South and Eastward from MO to GA for roughly seven hours, luckily averting a near brake fire, moving two rigs to a place for contents transfer, moving two rigs back to their respective parking spots, hooking/powering up, and all in time to eat a late dinner and hit the (new) sack for a much needed nights rest.  Today was quite the 'dance'.