6/25/2013 Nashville

So we packed up Max and his ma and moved on to the Nashville Jellystone Park. Max had fun there with more “Hey” rides and swimming in the pool. He is turning into quite the fish with his underwater prowess…We stayed at this particular park because it was a bit hard finding places with spaces, we were in the middle of the CMA “Fan Fair” and town was PACKED. We were able to walk around the downtown venue areas and we caught some of the performances in the various stage areas. It was OK, but we did get some rain. OK, a LOT of rain. The drawback to this stopover was that Nashville is a large tourist town and EVERYTHING gets marked up in price, so it can get a bit costly to spend any amount of time here.  Jenn and Max got to see the Gaylord’s Opryland Resort and Opry Mills shopping mall which are very large areas in themselves. While we were in Nashville we took the time to check out the Brentwood and Franklin areas, two suburbs of Nashville. Very nice… All good things must come to an end, and it was time to put Max and Jenn on a plane back to Looneyville (AKA: California). It was a bit tough to see them go.

We then returned to the Rainbow/SKP park in Heiskell for a couple of weeks. The trailer had a small leak in the seals for the bedroom slide, so we had that taken care of while we continued to check out the area. Buddy Gregg RV Sales and Service in Knoxville did an outstanding job of taking care of us, they have a very large service program and an on site camp area for full timers.  We took a short jaunt up to Cumberland Falls State Park in Kentucky, the falls were interesting to see. We snuck over to Rock Island State Park outside of Sparta, TN, to check out a possible stint as Camp Hosts. It was a very green mountain area, and as it turned out, we got the host gig for which we committed at least for the month minimum that they requested, but probably will be there for a couple of months, we’ll see…

We also contemplated trading in the 5er and getting a Class A diesel pusher and “towed”. We found a 2013 Phaeton 40 footer that we really liked, so we started the process at the local dealer. Unfortunately, we quickly found that it is not easy to get financing if you are a full timer, even with the financing companies that claim to specialize in full timers (Essex being one of the more popular of them). Well, the deal eventually fell through, but we will continue our quest to get into a bus, albeit at a slow pace, no rush, take it easy…

On to Rock Island State Park…