Cruel first: Yesterday we drove to the nearest WalMart in Fulton MS. While there I went looking for the beer section having only one bottle left in the refrigerator. There was no apparent beer or wine section. I asked a helpful Walmart employee who informed me we were in a dry county, but they were voting that very day to declare the city wet. Lot of good that would do me. Ah well, tomorrow is another day. It turns out that about half of Alabama is also dry, who knew? Of course Franklin County where Red Bay is located is dry. No beer today. The next county north is wet so I guess we go to Muscle Shoals in the next day or so to restock. At least we are not in Mississippi where it is illegal to bring alcoholic beverages into most dry counties! Prohibition continues!

Wonderful: This morning I got tired of waiting for a return phone call from Daniel McKinney at McKinney Body and Paint. I drove over to the shop to speak with him and he and a sidekick followed me back to the coach where they spoke in an accent I had a hard time understanding, deep south with a mouthful of mush. After a bit of a palaver Daniel said to bring it over on Monday morning at 8. I said “sure presuming we did not have to go to the service bay” for our 3 hours of glory, er express service.

We were thinking about lunch and Carol was preparing to bake a loaf of bread when her phone rang. They wanted us in service bay 9, NOW! We looked at each other for 15 seconds and said of course. 15 minutes later I shut the engine down in the service bay. I think that was a record for an unplanned departure from a camp site. For the tsunami on the CA coast we had an hours warning. They started work at 1 PM, unfortunately they close at 3 so we will get to go back in tomorrow at 7 AM. They called over a cabinet maker to do a minor repair on the counter top extension. Meanwhile they ordered a replacement shower door and a a replacement inflatable mattress section for the bed. They also lubricated the leveling jacks. At 3 PM the shower door was installed but not quite complete. The bladder for the mattress that was delivered was shopworn and stained, not usable and Tiffin no longer uses that brand. Choices, Tempur-pedic Mattress or Sleep Number. I guess we will go with the Sleep Number, but they couldn’t install it in the time remaining so one more night on the original SovaQuest knock off. So back we go at 7 AM for the last hour of our Three Hours in Express Bay.

Given all this by 8 AM tomorrow we will have completed all the work we planned on when we set Red Bay as our destination. We have been sort of promised that in the next week we will get the recall work done AND the self inflicted body work.  If I had to guess we will not be leaving before the 15th, but you never know.