Our First Fender Bender

Candler, North Carolina  (high 74, low 43)

We arrived safely at Hominy Valley Campground in Candler, North Carolina, which is just a few miles west of Asheville.

We arrived safely, but not without incident.  We were traveling on I-40 when an idiot pulling a Fifth wheel veered into our lane and hit us.  Fortunately, the only damage was to the drivers side mirror.

Here is the idiot.  He kept going west.  If you see him, let me know!

He was flying by us and we both saw him veer into our lane.  We heard a clunk and knew he hit the mirror.  We didn’t know if there was any other damage, and there was no where to pull off to check.   The mirror was skewed outward and Al wasn’t able to use the mirror for the rest of the trip, which fortunately was only 10-12 miles. 

Al  was able to manually move the mirror back in place.  There are some scratches but nothing too bad.  It makes us so mad.  Of course he kept right on going, and may not have even know what he did.  I hope he has some damage.  I hope he has LOTs of damage.

If there had been more damage, we would have gotten a police report and notified our insurance company.

Other than that we had a pretty good trip up to Asheville.   While in South Carolina, we just encountered rolling hills.   Once we crossed over into North Carolina, then we got to the big stuff!

I think this was about the point where we both said, Holy S$!t.  Then we both said it again when we realized we were going to have to go over that mountain.  After so many years of marriage it seems we think alike.

 

The motorhome did fine, but Al did have to floor it on one stretch to keep it at 45 mph.   We practiced what we had learned about the exhaust brake (we means Al) and he  rarely needed the foot brake.

The Allison transmission seemed to keep us in the correct gear most of the time, so Al didn’t do much gear shifting.   We watched the temperature and the rpm’s and he tried to keep his foot off the brake. I think we did okay, but any suggestions on how to drive in the mountains is appreciated!  

(yeah I know many of you are laughing at us for being such cowards to drive in these little bitty mountains)  

We thought Chatty was doing better because he had finally started urinating normally.  Yesterday morning he wasn’t very hungry, but I didn’t worry about it too much at the time.  By the time we arrived here, we realized he wasn’t doing well.  He slept so soundly we had to keep checking to see if he was breathing.  He did that all day and night, but this morning he finally pepped up.  I called the vet and he decided to take him off a few of the medications.  It seems to be helping as his appetite is better and he is awake.  We were pretty worried yesterday, and wondered if we had made a mistake by leaving Charleston.

The weather here is gorgeous and we’re loving it.  It has been a long hot summer in Tampa and we are very glad to have some cool weather.  I just wish we had brought a few more warm clothes!  This morning we awoke to 43 degrees.   We had to break down and turn on the heat pump.  It warmed up nicely today. 

We got up early and took a drive out of the campground to the right.  They say NOT to take a motorhome on that road and boy were they right.  We went up a mountain on some extremely narrow and curvy roads.  I was pretty nervous the whole time and Al wasn’t particularly relaxed either.  You gotta remember we are Floridians where we don’t have hills, let along mountains. This road (Pisgah Highway)  eventually led us to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  No pictures because I was too worried we were going to fall down the side of the mountain. 

I took a picture of the GPS showing our elevation at one point.  Note, we were going 11 mph, and the speed limit was 35.   35 would have been crazy in my opinion.  I don’t know why the GPS said it was 55, the signs all said 35.

We got to over 4000 feet. 

It was a beautiful area and once we got on the Blue Ridge, there were lots of places to pull over and take pictures.

There were a lot of tunnels.

It was so much more beautiful than the pictures show. 

After our early morning jaunt, we went home and checked on Chatty.  We were happy to see he was feeling better, so we felt we could leave him awhile again this afternoon.

We took a drive into Asheville to the downtown area.  It’s one of those downtowns with a lot of little shops and even a trolley.

There were some interesting churches.

We were near the Biltmore so we went to the visitor center.  Tickets are $59 plus $10 if you want a video guide (which is recommended).  They say the ticket prices are only used to run the place and they make no profit.  After seeing a little of it, I think I might just buy that.   It will take a full day to tour it, so we’re going to wait until we can leave Chatty for the day.

We drove by Bear Creek Campground to check it out.  It was $45 a night for 50 amp.  The sites were crowded together.  They had amenities, but the price was too high for us.   Especially after paying our Vet bill. 

Our Campground is right off a highway, so we have some road noise, that’s a negative.  There are only 5 campsites, positive.   The price is $17 a night…another positive.  The owner is also a cat lover and rescues them like we do.  another positive!  It’s on the honor system because the owner lives 300 miles away. There are some stamped envelopes in the mailbox, you put in a check and mail it to him.  He’s a trusting soul.

We are on the end and backed up to a mountain (some people might call it a hill).   We are at 2200 foot elevation.  Our view is very pretty, except for the electrical wiring.

I’ll take more pictures later.  There are NO amenities, except I think you can get cable for $2.  We have a good Verizon signal and our Directv works fine, and we even got some local channels, so that Al was able to watch the Tampa Bay Bucs yesterday.

Our kitty is having a better day, we made it to the mountains, the temperature is wonderful.  Yeah, we’re very happy campers!