We drove from Denver to Florida in 3 days and got there in time to see Mike’s brother Tim and tag in on caregiving duties. Mike’s dad was in and out of hospitals and rehab and then home to recover before moving up to Madison. It took a village to make the move happen, but working with Tim and Shelby, friend Tina who works in elder care in Madison, and Mike’s cousin Kevin (a realtor), we got Mike’s parents moved and the house sold.
It was not an easy move. Barry and Maureen had to say goodbye to a way of life and their beloved dogs. We had to put in a lot of thought and elbow grease to pare down belongings and get the house ready to sell. Mike dealt with kidney stones on and off throughout the time and tried to get to work when he could. Mike drove up a giant truck full of both their belongings and pass-alongs while I did some heavy-duty cleaning on the house.
And then two months after landing there, we headed out again. Oh wait. First we had to de-Florida Scarlet. When we headed down, our plan was to park Scarlet in covered, powered storage where she would be protected from the sun and we could run the air some to keep things in good shape inside. Because guess what? It is hot as hell and ridiculously humid in Florida in the summer!
Plans changed when Mike found a place to do some much needed work on Scarlet before putting her in storage. Because guess what else? Good old Jesse back in Cedar City did not do such a good job straightening the axles. By the time we got to Florida, we had two tires that were worn down to the steel. Mike found a trailer place that could change and upgrade both the axles and the tires. All-in-all, they seemed to do a good job, but communication was not the best. It took most of the two months we were there to get the whole job done, so we just left it there for the last couple of weeks instead of paying for storage somewhere else.
We left the fans going (one of which was dying and needed to be replaced), but didn’t not have any Damp Rid in the trailer, so by the time we picked Scarlet up, everything in the trailer had mold on it. Loads on laundry and lots of cleaning later, we loaded everything back up and were ready to hit the road again.
By this time though, Mike and I were both burnt out and dealing with some physical issues of our own and while we considered some ideas for what we should do, everything seemed like a lot of work. So on a Saturday morning we just headed north, out of Florida, hoping inspiration would come.
Well, maybe not inspiration, but after a night in a Walmart parking lot Mike found us a spot that maybe had cell coverage for his work days and was cooler than Florida. We passed the Pisgah (which appealed to us) because iOverlander didn’t show us any accessible sites that had cell signal. On into Tennessee to look at a couple of spots next to South Holston Lake.
Google sent us down a pretty bumpy gravel road only for us to find that the spots we were considering either weren’t any good for us or didn’t have enough signal. Luckily, we had enough signal for me to scope out a national forest campground just up the road and that is where we found a place to rest and recover for a bit.
We had a quiet spot up on a hill with decent access to the water. Over the next several days we read, we slept, we watched the rain. We floated on the water, we swung in hammocks, and Mike even got some work in. We relaxed and recovered.
