Friday, 25 October 2019
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| today's route |
Lexington
In Lexington, I went first to a recycling center, located in a nitty-gritty part of town, which was quite near a very nice part of town, unusually. And very thankful to get rid of most of my recyclables.
Past Mary Todd Lincoln's house (red brick, several stories, about 2' or 3' away from the street (cars now, not horses - changes the size of the roads). Through an old business section that's been revitalized and looks quite trendy now.
I was charmed by the stonework around the porches on the old houses I drove by. This was stone outlining the porch ceilings as well as the floors, and it had cut-out designs but also, unusually, quite a bit of what I think is called bas relief, that sort of partial sculpture that raises a design from the background of the stone. Really attractive.
RV Supply
And north to an RV supply business. One of the drawers in my cabin has, from time to time, failed to latch shut - a feature that's important when you're driving down the road. I've always before managed to fix it, which involved taking all the stuff out of the drawer and pulling the drawer completely out from its slightly oily tracks and use a screwdriver to pry out the catch that was stuck in an already closed position, without the drawer being closed to be held in that position. A tedious process but it worked. Up until now.
This morning when it happened again, I couldn't make it work and finally took the whole latch off the frame and discovered it was broken. I found more online - apparently it's a common item to fall apart - but I'm not in a position to tell Amazon or someone an address to send me this part, moving around as much as I am.
This RV place had some latches that looked identical to the one I took off the drawer and, though they cost almost twice as much as Amazon's, I bought them. But I didn't want to take the time to install right there because I wasn't parked in a particularly convenient place for all the traffic at that RV place and because the dogs really wanted to go for a walk. So we left. In the meantime, for purposes of today's traveling, I'd put all the contents of the drawer into various other storage areas - not conveniently - and put the drawer itself on the floor where my shoes live, and they now live in the drawer - again, not conveniently.
But after some thought, I decided to wait until I got to camp tonight to try to put the drawer back together, since everything was already stowed for travel anyway.
What's in town
I crossed a bridge in town and found myself on Oliver Lewis Way. Not having heard of him I looked him up to see why he merits a street and learned he was an African-American jockey who, in 1875, rode Aristides when he won the first Kentucky Derby. So yes, he deserves a street in the city that calls itself the Horse Capital of the World.
Lexington is also the home of the University of Kentucky, founded in 1865, originally called the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, it now has more than 30,000 students. It's huge - its buildings cover a lot of territory.
Much smaller is Transylvania University, also in Lexington. Founded in 1780 as the first university in Kentucky, in now has just under 1,000 students. But it's a lovely campus and seems to focus on the sciences.
I saw lots of evidence that people here value horses - Thoroughbred Park, e.g. - but sadly, no horses themselves. Altogether, Lexington seems to be an attractive vibrant city of about 325,000 folks.
Oil Change
A Jiffy Lube that promised on the phone that its doors were 16' tall was in the southwest side of town, on my way to my next campground.
Turned out the doors were plenty tall, but the doors' width turned out not to be enough, when combined with the sharp angle of their driveway, to make them think I could get the RV all the way inside without scraping it (and also their building). So they squeezed me enough inside that they could get my engine over their pit to drain the oil and got 'er done. And I'm glad to not have to worry about that for another few months.
Back on the road
In Kentucky, or at least in this part of Kentucky, the county jailer is an elected position. Having never seen that before, I can't help wondering about the history of that situation. And at least in some parts, it's a seriously contested race, according to the yard signs I saw.
Again I saw tobacco hanging inside barns.
I'd only had about 3 hours of sleep last night, so driving on the winding roads that constitute much of Kentucky's roadways was a little scary sometimes. You'd think fear could keep you awake, but when your body wants to sleep, it does. Fortunately, it was only about 25 miles from the Jiffy Lube to the campground.
Camp Nelson RV Park
Unfortunately, the online information about the campground was misleading, to say the least. The aerial photo on the RV park's website showed campers parked around a large green area, so I figured it didn't matter so much where our site was since I could always take the dogs on that green space.
Well, that green space is sort of there - or would be, I guess, if it were as large as the photo made it look and if it were actually green. But that's not where I got put. First, the person in the office had trouble believing I'd been told on the phone I didn't need to make a reservation, which of course gave me a sinking feeling about where I'd end up.
She consulted the owner and they found me a spot down a long heavily wooded narrow drive to a muddy narrow space along the drive. Previous tenants had left tracks showing they'd parked parallel to the road, and that's what I did too. But the ground was so uneven, and previous folks had added their ruts to the uneven ground, that I worked for about 5 minutes trying to find a place that was remotely level that was also close enough to plug in to the electrical outlet, which I shared with the site next door.
My stress level had already gone up several notches because, as I was pulling away from the office to follow this woman to the site, Gracie started vomiting (she eats grass when I'm not paying attention, which often causes this). Fortunately she threw up on the kitchen floor and not on the dog bed, which she often does, but I didn't think I could just stop and make that woman wait while I climbed back over the dog bed and over the vomit to get to the paper towels to mop it up. So I was driving back to this remote area of the campground with unwanted liquid rolling around on the floor. It's no wonder I have blood pressure problems.
So I mopped that up even before I started the 5-minute positioning process. We weren't even pretending to be level there, it was just the best I could find, and my electric cord was stretched as far as it could go.
I took the dogs for a quick walk and it started to rain.
While we were walking, I saw the office person showing someone else to the site right next to ours. She came down to where we were and said they'd talked like they planned to party tonight but, don't worry, their 10 PM quiet time was strictly enforced and if I had any trouble I should call the office right away. But with my bedtime as about 7:30, a 10:00 curfew isn't much help.
And the wifi that I'd been promised when I first called the campground turned out to be available - if I wanted to pay $2.95/hour.
Oh well. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, "It just goes to show you, it's always something - if it ain't one thing, it's another." (Gilda Radner was a genius.)
But the rain, continuing for much of the night, deadened sound, and the young guys next door went out to dinner and didn't come back till I was asleep, so it all went okay, notwithstanding the tilted cabin. But with all that, I was not in the mood to horse around with the brackets for that drawer. We all ate supper, I watched a video to unwind, and that was the end to an odd sort of day.
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