We kissed the boys good bye and said our farewells to Malena and then Dan as they went off to school and to work. With the place to ourselves we got the coach ready for the road and set off with Carol taking the lead down the road to warn of cars and trucks headed the other way and of tree limbs that might have fallen between Dan’s departure and ours. The drive down the 1.8 mile stretch of dirt road was uneventful until the last couple of hundred yards when five deer bounded across the road in front of the coach and behind Carol in the car. She never saw them. My heart rate accelerated like it does when I peak on the treadmill. They had it timed quite nicely and I merely had to slow the coach to somewhat less than my heart rate.

In the driveway of the Church of the Hookup/Disconnect (a small Baptist church which is a tenth of a mile up Heards Mountain Rd from US 29 with a very nice driveway) we aligned the car and had it completely hooked up with the exception of one hold down when I looked up and noticed something was very wrong. There were no bicycles in the bike rack on the roof! “Oh Darn!” I said. We decided that this was a practice hook up and disconnected so I could drive the car back to Dan and Malena’s and put the bikes on the roof rack and return to Carol to complete a “for real” hook up. For a wonder weverything worked, including all the lights AND the breakaway switch. The rest of the day was fortunately boring. 373 miles of uneventful driving that brought us to Walden Creek Campground in Pigeon Forge, TN

I will report on what we found to do here in another post, on another day.

Oh yes there has been some excitement. I have been engaged in an email discussion of possible responses to Israel’s attempts to dislodge Hamas from Gaza. Since I believe that there is no alternative for dealing with people who want all of the Jews removed by any means from the State of Israel and others believe that we must talk while they destroy us, the conversation has not gone entirely well. I would not choose to live in Sderot or Ashdod or anyplace within the reach of Hamas’ rockets knowing that there are no real targets and everything and everybody is a target. It is the Government of Israel’s duty to provide security for it’s citizens living within its borders as defined by the UN and recognized by most of the world.

Stepping down from my soapbox. I will try to keep these matters out of this blog in the future.