A Nice Ride on a Rainy Night

 

Blairsville, Georgia  (high 81, low 56)

We awoke to nice cool morning temperature of 59 degrees.  Just how we like it.

 

I wrote in a previous post about the driveshaft disconnect on our truck popping out.   It left us essentially in neutral as we were driving down the road.  This is a specialized part made for vehicles that can’t be towed behind the motorhome without modification.   We were very concerned about finding a qualified person up here in the mountains away from any large city.

A guy in Atlanta was the recommended person for the repair.  It was 130 miles away and he had a bad attitude, so we lost confidence in him.

We hadn’t had any luck finding anyone else, until last week when a mobile Rv mechanic was parked at a neighbors site.   We walked over to talk to him, discovered he knew exactly what we had and was very familiar with it.  As it turns out, he has been in the business many years, starting in Tampa at Lazy Days.   He had great credentials and a good recommendation from our neighbor as well.

On Monday, we brought the truck to his shop which is in nearby Hiawassee.   It’s up on top of a steep hill and I cringed thinking of having to bring the motorhome up that hill.   Fortunately, we just needed the truck yesterday.  He has one inside service bay and one with a cover on it, a nice parts store and a pretty nice overall operation, especially for his remote location.  He has a few guys working with him and he has them under his wing teaching them as he does things.  It appears he keeps a close eye on the work they do.  We liked that and it inspired trust. 

He and his crew worked on the truck for an hour or so.  He loosened the mechanism and repositioned it some.  After he was done, he showed us a better was to engage and disengage the driveshaft disconnect.  We went on a test drive, came back and tested it out a few times.  All appears to be working well for now.  It only cost about $100 for the labor.  We are hopeful it will be okay now.  He told us it was normal for adjustments to be needed, and since we have put over 30,000 miles on it, we understood.

 

After we left the shop, we took a drive over to nearby Lake Chatuge.   We are not really lake people, but these mountain lakes are really incredible.

We think that we might rent a pontoon boat one day, and cruise the lake.  It would be fun to see the dam and mountain views from the water. 

 

Sunday night, we started our golf cart/happy hour ride and it looked like it was going to rain.

The clouds and “smoke” over the mountains was pretty.

It looked like rain and the radar confirmed it, so we stayed close to home.

 

We ran home to grab our rain jackets and continue our ride.  It was so nice and cool, there was no lightning or thunder and it was just too nice to go inside.  The rain, while heavy at times was coming straight down and not blowing into the cart too much.

It turned out to be one of the best golf cart rides/happy hours we’ve ever had.  

We’re starting to notice quite a bit of fall color on some of the trees.  I’m wondering if this might be an early fall. 

I liked this old tractor and house/barn.

We haven't seen any bear yet, but plenty of deer.

It was one of the best night ride yet.  We rode for hours, and then came back home and took a nice long soak in the hot tub.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

(until last night)