Sherlock and Mary Russell accompanied us into Asheville uneventfully. We arrived at Bear Creek RV Park after hours, change of time zone flummoxed us and what was planned as a 5:30 arrival turned out to be 6:30 on the local clock. That happens every few days when crossing the country. We got set up and made dinner and settled in for the evening. The weather in the morning was pleasant and after lunch we set off to see the crafts people in the Riverside Craft area. The area has grown significantly in the two years since we were there last. Many of the same crafts people are still there doing pottery, wood turning, painting etc and many new groups as well. It is quite exciting to see. We eventually did not want to see another mug,teapot, you name it so we headed into Asheville proper to see if we could find Blue Spiral, one of the very best art galleries we know of, anyplace. That is for those who treasure contemporary art. It is quite prominent and the art was very much what we expected, much of it new since we were there a couple of years ago.
After a pleasant stay in Bear Creek RV Park in Asheville we set out for Gaffney SC and the KOA between Gaffney and Spartanburg. The route looked too easy, I 26 to I 85 and we are there. So we got off I 26 on to US 25 figuring we would let the GPS connect us on to I 85 in Greenville. It would have been fine if I had looked ahead on a paper map, or even on Google maps, but I hadn’t and I chose an inappropriate moment to distrust the GPS. Carol was at the wheel and we ended up in the middle of the road trying to decide whether to trust the GPS or my dead reckoning. Eventually we went with the GPS and it worked out okay except we ended up going through Greenville local streets on a Thursday afternoon. Carol was not happy with me or with the GPS. Then we were involved in the audio book and missed our exit for the campground and what we thought was an exit was a closed rest area and we came to a rather abrupt stop – no we didn’t hit anything just stopped short. It took a couple of minutes but we sorted it out and made it to the KOA in plenty of time.
Friday morning we toured the Freightliner Factory where three production lines manufacturer UPS car chassis, school bus chassis and motorhome chassis. There were just three of us on the tour, Ray, Carol and me. We will be together with many others for the class in the morning.
Saturday we drove into Charlotte to visit with Leigh and Patrick. We last visited in the Fall and they were talking about how they planned to renovate the new to them house. This time we got to see the renovated house and it is gorgeous. We had a lovely light lunch at their home and we went to dinner at Halcyon in downtown (or is that uptown) Charlotte. It was a lovely meal. We capped the day on our drive home by finishing “Oh, Jerusalem” by Laurie King which we have been listening to for the past 1,000 miles.
Today, Sunday, I got out the new cleaning system I bought in Tucson and did the coach front to back and side to side. It is a waterless system that was originally designed for aircraft. It is easy to use and does a very nice job. I will qualify the easy part, that is relative to dragging out the hose and bucket and spraying water all over the place then having to dry the coach because otherwise it just waterspots. Besides the sidewalls are 36 feet long and 12 feet high and the front and back caps are 8 1/2 feet wide or 1068 square feet of walls to wash. It takes time and I had to delay for a while waiting for the sun to shift to the side I had done. The coach is beautiful, until the next rain 🙁