Kentucky - Day 8 - Bowling Green and Corvettes

Beech Bend Campground, Bowling Green
Tuesday, 8 October 2019

When the dogs and I were out walking this morning, Dexter found a Daddy Long-legs walking across the road.  I don't think he's ever seen one before and it was pretty funny watching him look at the thing.  I pulled him away though, in case it's true that they can bite.

We had a nice sunrise this morning.

It's been raining quite a bit in the last few days - sometimes coming down quite hard.  I heard on the radio that Kentucky has gotten up to 4" in parts during that time, and I'm sure we got more than an inch in the campground.  But the drought in this part of the country in the last few months has made the ground so dry it soaked up everything that came down.  So not much in the way of mud puddles, thankfully.

today's route

It got pretty chilly last night and, this being still early October, I knew we were in for much chillier weather before next spring.  Given this fact, fixing the heater suddenly moved to the top of my priority list.

I hadn't gotten an answer when I called the RV repair people in Bowling Green so decided to go by there first thing this morning.

Aussie Sheepdog (per internet)

The countryside I drove through this morning was mostly farming of some kind: cows, sheep, crops (now harvested), quarter horses (according to the sign), hay (or some kind of grain), bees.  Lots of farms and scattered farmhouses.  We passed one with 3 Australian Sheepdogs in a large fenced yard.  Dexter saw them and they all saw him, riding shotgun, and it was interesting to see them all pay attention to each other for quite a distance.

Dunlap RV Center
This seems to be a big enough company that it's got 4 locations around Kentucky, fortunately with one in Bowling Green.  We got there before 9:00 and I explained to the nice folks at the service desk what my problem is.  Buddy, the young man who seemed to be in charge due to being most knowledgeable, told me the company's only given him 2 technicians who are booked out for at least the next 2 weeks.

He said, from what I'd told him, the problem could be my thermostat, in which case they'd need to order the part, and would likely need to install it in a different place from the one I have now to be sure the wiring was done properly.  Or it could be the board (which I now know means the computer board that controls the heater function), which we'd also need to order and install.  It sounded like it'd cost me about $500 to get and install the 2 of those parts and I was just about to say go ahead and do both and let's get this taken care of, when he said it might not be either of those things but instead something else wrong inside the heater.  And that's why I need a technician - to check out all the different parts and figure out which one or ones is/aren't working.

I explained I wasn't planning to homestead in Bowling Green and did he know of someone somewhere else in Kentucky who might be able to work me in sooner.  He gave me the name and number of a guy up in Owensboro (a few hours north of Bowling Green on the Indiana border) who is willing to travel to any campground where I might be staying, within a county or two of his.

That being apparently my only option, I thanked him for his help.

The National Corvette Museum was across the street, so I went over there and parked, and walked the dogs, and called the traveling repair guy.  I told him I'd been thinking of going next to Land Between the Lakes in western Kentucky (supposed to be one of the state's beauty spots), and he said he'd be glad to come over there.  But when he said he'd charge $80/hour, including travel time, I decided I was pretty flexible and would find some place near enough that I could go to him.  So we settled on an appointment for Thursday morning.

I'll do a separate post on the Corvette museum, where I spent more than an hour on a self-guided tour, plus time outside walking the dogs, fixing lunch for all of us, and enjoying the bright sunshine.

Driving around town
I decided to go next to find the campground, because they didn't take reservations and I wanted to be sure to get a spot for the night.

It turned out to be a weird place.  Right next to a huge amusement park, which luckily wasn't operating on an October weeknight.  It was a seriously gated campground, and the person at the gate wouldn't let me in unless I paid $38 up front for my unseen campsite.  A lot of money to take on faith, but I didn't want to have to hunt up someplace else at 2:00 in the afternoon.

The campground was huge, too, with hundreds of spaces and almost all of them empty.  Which should have made finding a spot easy, except the electric plugs were shared by 2 sites, meaning only half of the sites were useful for me.  And although most of the sites were level, half of them were paved and the pavement had buckled enough to make them really un-level.  The unpaved half were on muddy ground, not gravel, and I didn't want that.  And without a heater, I didn't want shade but instead to get as much solar heat into the cabin as I could while there was a sun to provide it.  And of course I wanted to be as far away from other campers as I could, for the dogs, without being so far away I felt vulnerable.  You wouldn't think that in an enormous nearly empty campground I'd have trouble finding a spot - and eventually I did pick one out.

My next priority was to find the Target I'd found online to buy a space heater.  I've resisted getting a space heater before, out of concerns about fire and hurt critters and so forth.  But when it gets down in the 30s outside during the night, it gets down almost to 50° inside the cabin - which is chilly any way you look at it.

I drove past a Nehi Bottling Company facility.  I know their products are still around but the brand is so much a part of my childhood I'm surprised to still see it active.

I drove past many of the buildings for Western Kentucky University, which appears to play a big role in the life of this town.

As I was stopped for a red light, I saw a regular street sign that said:
   Change the way you give.
   Panhandling is not safe.
And I realized I hadn't seen any panhandlers anywhere in town.  Since some towns are so successful at reducing this situation, I wonder why it's still so prevalent in others.

I had a little trouble finding any employees at Target who knew where I could find space heaters, but we finally located them - where the fans are, of course - and I had several models to choose from.  I ended up with a Honeywell product that's only about a foot tall and maybe 10" in diameter.  I figured it might be just powerful enough to add some heat without setting the place on fire.  (This photo is from a Target ad.)

Since heat rises, I knew the best place to put it was on the floor, but I know the critters all walk around during the night, and there's so little floor space I was afraid they might not be able to avoid it.  I didn't want to put it on the table, because the nearest electric socket is next to Gracie's bed and I was afraid one of her feet might get tangled in the cord and she'd pull it down.  That really left only the little fold-out shelf next to the kitchen sink, so I moved everything else several feet away and, with great trepidation, left it on overnight.