Day 3

Today's route. 

Once we entered Kentucky the beautiful rolling hills began.  We reached Kentucky Horse Park Campground by 11:30.  Set up camp and enjoyed our site.  Very nice campground with lots of large shade trees.  We went for a cycle ride over to the Kentucky Horse Park and found this nice tribute to Secretariat.

Traveled 250 km.

Day 2

Sunny warm day reaching 25C.  Over 100kms of today's travel was through construction .  Very narrow lanes and heavy truck traffic. Once again a Walmart stay.

 Traveled 403 km                     Gas $2.04 per gal.

Day 2 route

310 to Yuma Day 1

310 to Yuma. We are hoping for many adventures with none of the gun slinging of the movie. Our first picture is of our planned route. We expect to travel 11,000 km in 80 days. This is our first venture of this length. Not true snowbirds as we leave home when the weather is still warm and will be home for the winter skiing. Day 1's route takes us from Collingwood ON to Fort Gratiot MI. Along the route we saw many farm fields in their fall state of golden hay being bailed and soya bean plants turning rust in color. Crossing the boarder went very smoothly. We spent this night at Walmart as stacking up with groceries that we cannot carry across the boarder is a must.  Walmart camping is convenient for the nights between consecutive long travel days.  Helpful hint:  we use allstays.com for walmart information.

304 km travelled                              Gas $2.40 gal.

Day 1 route.

Day 27, 28, 29 & 30

Our four day travel home was uneventful and that is always good. Our final nights stay is the Seneca Casino in Niagara Falls, NY. The trees were in full bloom.

Here we take advantage of  CBI, a US mailbox rental business where one can get packages sent and stored until pickup.  The cost per package is generally less than $6 and it is a great when shipping items to Canada is too costly.  Once we cross into Canada we use the free Oakville Waste treatment plant to dump the holding tanks. We arrived home to warm temperatures but we will always remember The King.

Gas $2.46 - $2.75 per gallon ($1.06 / liter north of the border).

We figured out how to take screenshots from the GPS so the daily travel route can now be included in the blog.  Our travel home always includes discussion around our next adventure.   This fall we will be off  to Yuma, Az via The Black Hills, Yellowstone and Death Valley.

Day 25 & 26.

All camping in the National Park is primitive and no cell or wifi service. There are flush toilets but no hot water or showers.  We camped in the Elkmont Campground at this great spot on the Little River.  

We did go into Gatlinburg and enjoy some free moonshine tasting 

and visit some of the artisan shops on the Arts and Crafts Trail. 
The moonshine tasting is quite neat.  People mosey on up to one of the many bars on the main strip where they are treated to about 1/3 oz of 9 - 13 different samples (the bottles are shown above). The alcohol content ranges from 60% down to 20%, however after a dozen shots of this stuff, and then moving down the street to the next tasting, one can get quite a little buzz going.

We highly recommend an English style pub The Parrot and Fox along the craft trail for its quite location, great food, wide variety of beer and free WIFI.

But our campsite called for resting by the sound of the water and watching a few (unlucky) anglers.

Day 24,

We traveled to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.  Our route along highway 441 was picturesque, with many commanding views.  This route is also full of many flea and antique markets.  We expect the foliage in the fall season would be a spectacular sight. 

Gas $2.30 per gallon

Day 21, 22, & 23

Drove to Hickory Knobb State Park in South Carolina. This is a great park generally used by fisherman for the access to Lake Thurmond.  Our electric/water site like many others in this park was right on the water. We golfed the Hickory Knob golf course twice. This course is so much fun, not for planning your best game ever but for practicing those exact placement shots.  This course has many signature holes that feature blind hills,  expansive water, and bunkers that effectively guard the green.  But the beauty of this course (and reasonable cost) makes it worth the effort.  We found humor in these two signs:

and the feeling of nature in these.

Gas in this area is $2.80 per gallon  ( fisherman will pay a lot for their boat gas)