taking a break

Rudee spent most of the last week helping out at her Mom and Dad's house. Her Mom is having some back problems that landed her in the hospital so she has been splitting her time between there and helping her Dad at home.

Friday finally got here and we were sure ready to pack up and leave! I had to finish the day at work while Rudee caught up the laundry and got the 5th wheel ready to travel.
As soon as I got home and changed my clothes we started disconnecting all the hoses and cords. I had loaded the bike up Thursday evening so as soon as I hooked the truck onto the Montana we were ready to go.
Traffic through Indianapolis was very heavy coupled with all the road construction they are doing around the "loop" made for a nervous drive. Once we were through the city though, things settled down and I was able to just set the cruise control and relax some.
We decided not to go too far tonight and stopped after a little over 125 miles at the Hollywood Casino in Lawrencenburg Indiana. When the built the Casino they opened it before building a parking garage so they have a huge parking lot up the road from the main casino and they would shuttle all the guests back and forth. The garage has been open for several years now and the parking lot does not get used so that is where the park over sized vehicles. The lot is huge and sits right off the interstate. We arrived around 7pm and the parking lot was virtually empty so we had our choice of spots in the 300 acre paved lot :-).
The signs in the lot have a phone number listed to call for the shuttle. We wanted to go to the casino and have dinner so we called the number and asked for a ride. The shuttle showed up in about 2-3 minutes and picked us up right at our 5th wheel. Now that's service!
We had a nice meal and played some of the penny slots before catching the shuttle back "home".

We have never "boondocked" (going without hook ups) in our Montana. We followed the proper etiquette and didn't set up "camp" by leaving the slides and awning in and the jack up. The weather was a little warm and it would have been nice to have a fan blowing. We both woke up several times in the night but we did get some sleep. I can see where it would be nice to have a generator so we could at least run a fan.

Saturday morning we showered and walked over the Burger King next door and had breakfast before heading back out to the interstate.
We headed south on I-75 and the traffic wasn't too bad. I set the cruise control on 64 and the miles clicked away pretty fast. We only had another 250 miles to Knoxville which would be home for the next week.
The truck did a great job on the trip down and we had no problems. The truck has a "jake brake" which is an engine retardant device that slows you down. Without this these, when going down hill, these big trucks just keep picking up speed. You can adjust the jake brake to keep your speed at a consistent level and don't have to keep using your brakes to slow you down on the downhill grades. With the cruise control set and the jake brake on I can relax and let the trucks computer do most of the work. :-).

We pulled into the Volunteer Family Campground just north of Knoxville in Heiskell, Tn. and stopped to register http://volpark.com/. We didn't even have a chance to get out of the truck when a guy on a golf cart said to follow him to our site and we could come in a register after getting set up. That's not the usual procedure we see at most places but it felt good that they were not just wanting their $$ up front.
We were led to our site which was about the same size as our site at the KOA. We were able to navigate the roads pretty easily with our rig but the sites were not long enough to leave your tow vehicle hooked up. There was not enough room at our site to park the semi so they showed us to the long term storage area and told us we were welcome to park it there.
The park is a Passport America park so we got our site at 1/2 price. When we went to register they had us in a "premium" site and said it was not a "discounted" site because they didn't know we had PA. I reminded them that when we reserved the site we made it very clear that we were PA, they said they had just recently purchased the park and had run into some problems with reservations set up by the previous owners. In the end they gave us our discount but seemed a little miffed that they were losing some income.

We are here to attend "Wing Ding", the national GWRRA motorcycle rally. There are several of our friends camped here with us and we are looking forward to the rally starting Wednesday morning. We will have a few days before the rally to do some riding through the mountains, relax and just enjoy life. I'll keep you posted.