North Carolina - Day 22 - in Murphy campground

Murphy/Peace Valley KOA
Sunday, 23 through Monday, 31 July 2023

I was here for 9 days, getting myself pulled together after my travels through North Carolina and getting prepared for the drive down to Texas.

During this week+, I made 3 trips into the towns of Murphy and Andrews.  On one trip I went to a local tire place, where the guy discovered this piece:

I think this originally held one of the mud flaps,
though those have mostly disintegrated over the years (and miles).

It was hanging down where it shouldn't have been, so it's no wonder I was hearing a not-good noise from my tire.  He checked the tire itself for me and said it seemed fine to him, as best he could tell without putting it up on a jack, which he didn't have.  He suggested I take it down the road to another place that did trucks.

I went down there - about 10 miles out of town - and showed this piece to the guy there, who said my tires all looked fine to him.  So I guess they're fine.  That was at a tiny town called Mineral Bluff - so small it isn't even on the AAA map.  But this tire place was very busy and was apparently trusted locally, which is a good enough recommendation for me.

One day I stopped at the Murphy post office to pick up mail that David and Anna sent me.  The first woman I talked to there said she couldn't find it, so I went out to the RV, got the tracking number and brought it back in.  That time the young man found it almost instantly.  Don't know if it was their system or if the woman was having a bad day, but I was glad David had bothered with a tracking number.

One day I took Dext to get a bath, only to find that the city had shut off the water in that area for the morning.  They rescheduled Dext's bath for the next morning and, despite the nuisance of 2 trips, I was glad to do whatever it took to clean him up.  It was really nice to have him de-dirt-ed - even though it won't last long (he tries hard to see to that).

On one trip I took the kittens to the vet in Andrews to get their claws clipped and they (the kittens) were ghastly.  It was one of those times when I was glad I wasn't the one doing the clipping.  They weighed 8.6 pounds each - still growing.

I saw a sign in town: "To the guy who invented zero - Thanks for nothing."

I stopped once at the county landfill, which doubles as the recycling center.  At least, they claim they send the stuff to recycling, though everything looks so grubby that I'm not sure I believe them.

We stopped once at the highway rest area in Andrews where we've stopped several times before.  And we went twice to the Murphy River Walk, where Dext and I've been several times also.  This time I brought my camera so I could take a photo of that snake someone had made of painted rocks with googly eyes.  But so sad! it wasn't there any more.  Instead, someone had painted the head blue, the eyes and tongue were gone, and all the other rocks were painted multiple colors.  Very colorful but no longer a snake.  I was really disappointed.

During this period I also got a lot of chores done - housecleaning, cleaning the windows, laundry and like that.  Latches on several of the outside compartments have been sticking, especially the flap for the waste tanks and the one that covers my power cord.  Both pretty important for comfortable living, and this week I finally got around to WD-40ing them.  Amazing what a little lubricant can do to improving our lives.

I got several more blog posts finished and published, bringing me up to Day 8, which I got half done.

One of the more time-consuming chores was figuring out what route I was going to take when I leave here and getting the directions written down.  I'd already made the reservations, of course,  This trip I planned to take mostly Google's ideas of the fast route, though I countermanded some of their alleged shortcuts.  The campgrounds I'd reserved were spaced fairly far apart ("far" meaning 4 or 5 hours per Google, which is more like 7 to 9 hours for me).  I planned some stops for dog parks and grocery stores here and there, but otherwise just aimed to get where I was going without sightseeing.

One night at bedtime we suddenly got a lot of thunder and rain.  Dext got scared and wouldn't stay in his bed - he just wanted to be near me.  I couldn't bring myself to sleep on the floor with him but did pull one of his beds over to the space by the bathroom, and that's where he spent the night.

He was still there when I woke up and he looked really comfortable.  By our usual walking time of 4:00 he didn't even want to open his eyes - I guess he'd been vigilant for most of the night.  Since it was raining and I knew he didn't like that, I decided to wait on the walk.  Made coffee - and he still didn't want to go.  Fixed breakfast for everybody - and he got up for that.  So I moved his bed back to where it belonged, not least because it had been blocking access to the closet and bathroom.  Finally at 6:30 the rain stopped and he was willing to go out.  Strange night.

Not to be outdone, the kittens woke me up at 2:30 one morning with a very strong poop smell.  That was the 2nd time in 4 days.  So once again I didn't get enough sleep.  And I don't know how to break this cycle.  The kittens and I don't really communicate complex thoughts well.

My back/ribs continued to improve.  All very gradual but still noticeably better.  I'm starting to be able to cough and blow my nose again without serious pain, and those turn out to be very handy abilities.

The Murphy KOA is in a valley, and while it's easy to find level places to walk, one of the routes Dext and I take a couple of times a day involves a fairly steep hill.  I noticed we'd both gotten out of shape after staying in fairly small, fairly flat campgrounds for the last couple of weeks, so I was glad our bodies were getting pushed a bit.

I called my friend Paula in Albuquerque.  She's having some serious health problems, but it sounds like she's getting good medical care.  And she's lucky that her husband Bruce is (completely unlike my husband) willing to do anything he can to support her.  Despite her difficulties, she always asks about my situation - not just about the traveling but especially about how it's registering with me.  And she always has good insights.

I don't know if I've already published these photos or not, so in case I haven't, here are The Marauders.  That's Jimmy on the bed, and Bucky emerging from his cocoon.