2010 03 29 Defeated Creek, Tennessee

For those RVers planning to ‘Go Camping with Lisa’ in October, I’m happy to report that you will be hard-pressed to find anything wrong with the Corp of Engineer’s Defeated Creek Campground at Carthage, TN. I’m hoping we have a really great turn out of fellow fulltimers, wannabee’s and RV-Dreamers, especially now that we’ve seen the campground and met Lisa and Tony.

This is a very well maintained park with sites on a beautiful lake. Of course, what’s even better is that there are many full hookup sites and if you have a Golden Access Pass that means you’ll be camping for $12.50 per night.

After an uneventful drive of about 200 miles from Paducah, KY, we settled in to the site suggested by the campground hosts, #54.

Since it was a Monday, there were very few other campers, so we had plenty of room all around.

Based on what we’ve seen, we suggested to Lisa that she recommend persons coming in October reserve that lakeside sites along this loop, around the #54 site since they are flat, full hookup, most should be able to find space for satellite and we all should be able to be in same loop with number of sites here. It’s really important that everyone planning to attend get a reservation in as soon as the 6 month window is open (next week!!) because our planned week is the week of Fall Break for schools here and the campground is expected to be busy then. As it turns out we will probably be one of the last to reserve since we cannot reserve until April 13th, since because of Kyle’s wedding we will not be able to arrive until Wednesday, October 13th.

Since the weather called for breezy, cool and rain, we contacted Lisa Hembree and her husband, Tony, and made plans to join them for dinner out on Tuesday evening instead of eating at the campsite. Lisa and I have been communicating for sometime online now, primarily through the RV-dreams site and most recently Facebook. It’s always especially fun to finally get to meet cyber-friends face-to-face!

The motorhome continued to show signs of having fuel issues. Bio-diesel apparently is particularly poor at handling sitting during 5 months of especially bad winter. While Ken had taken known precautions it appears we’ve still been bit by this problem. Ken’s mechanic had warned that this might take some time to work itself out and that he needed to add some cleaner to the fuel on fillups down the road. For this reason, Tuesdays ‘to do’s included a trip to the Carthage, TN, farm store to pick up more additive. (Long-term solution: just don’t let the motorhome sit for long times in cold weather anymore!!—it’s a plan!!)

We took a different route back to Carthage, which allowed us a stop at the scenic overlook above the Cordell Hull Dam.

While we were in Carthage, we stopped for lunch and also dropped by a local grocer to pick up some fresh meats and produce. The good news about having Ken shop with me is that I know he’ll be happy with the meals because he helps to pick them out. The bad news is that he is very easily tempted – this time it was a peach pie from the onsite bakery…hmmm, now I’ll be tempted until he’s eaten it all!!

When we returned to the RV we took Ditka and Sox for a walk along the lake. It was breezy but the weatherman had been wrong about the rain. It turned out to be quite a nice afternoon.

There were plenty of signs of springs popping about the park including patches of wild daffodils.

Lisa and Tony came by around 5pm to pick us up for a drive to a relatively new restaurant in the nearby small town of Pleasant Shade. A particular draw of this restaurant was that it was opened by a couple of full-timers who’d recently come off the road to settle back down and start a business. The food was good but the company was even better. We had a wonderful time with Lisa and Tony and it seemed the evening was over much too quickly. We have tremendous respect to this couple and how they’ve first adopted two children many years ago and now adopted little Rick. These kids are tremendously blessed to have found such devoted parents. I’m really looking forward to getting to meet Rick and Tez in October, but it was nice too to have our first get-together just the 4 of us.

After we said goodnight to Lisa and Tony, we began shutting down in anticipation of hitting the road again on Tuesday morning.

I realized, too late, that we’d had such a great time talking that I’d forgot to snap some photos with Lisa and Tony. Darn! Ok, so now we’ll just have to wait until October for a photo op.
One thing has become obvious to us. While the RVer’s code says you should always stay where you park at least 2 nights, we are thinking that we are more inclined from now on to plan for at least 3 nights. It seems like we are such starting to settle in at a place when it’s time to pack up again with only 2 nights.

Stay tuned as we head in to the Smokey Mountains.

Hugs, C