We're not in Kansas Anymore

Or home in Minnesota, either. Andy found this on the highway this morning. (He was not responsible for the demise of the armadillo.) Never the less, this is something that is distinctly southern.

It's easy to pick up on the Southern accent after you've been here for a while. It's refreshing to hear the yes, sirs and yes, mams. Everyone wishes you a good day/evening. I'm still amazed that people have carports instead of garages here. Also, it seems everyone has at least one or two rocking chairs on their porches. We're definitely in the South.

Weekend Travels

It's field trip day. We're on our way to the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and the FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL.

On our way we decide to stop by the Coon Dog Cemetery. This is a cemetery where hunting (coon dogs) are laid to rest. You have to be a certified hunting dog to be buried here. Pictures will tell the rest of the story.

The Alabama Music Hall of Fame honors AL singers, songwriters and publishers of music. Great singers like Nat King Cole, Tammy Wynette, Lionel Ritchie, the band Alabama, Sam Phillips, and Hank Williams to name a few, are honored here.

Pictures are of the "Golden Country Car" that has more than 500 silver dollars in it and guns for handles. That's a replica of Hank Williams in the bottom photo.

On to the FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL. FAME stands for Florence Alabama Music Emporium. The owners didn't realize what the acronym was when they first named it that.
This studio was founded by Rick Hall, nationally recognized as a pioneer in launching the Muscle Shoals music industry. The studio is in it's original location; they are working on getting it placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Various artists have recorded there-Aretha Franklin, Mac Davis, Lou Rawls, Wilson Pickett, Paul Anka, Etta James, the Osmonds, Bobbie Gentry, Andy Williams and more. After touring it, we watched the Muscle Shoals documentary (available on Netflix) which goes into the history much more. Our tour guide was one of the engineers who works there. He had a lot of great stories to tell. We cam away with a greater appreciation of the music and a few new T-shirts!

A stop for lunch at Rosie's Mexican Cantina in Florence-some of the best Mexican food we have had!

Red Bay

We have to wait a day until we get in for service, not too bad. Step 1 is to go over our list of things to be done with the tech.We make progress, and find out some of our items actually need to be replaced instead of fixed. 

There are lots of people from all over here-I found another RV with MN plates. We've also seen Rhode Island, New York, Maryland South Dakota, California, Washington and Oregon to name a few. 

On Tuesday we decided to take the Tiffin Factory tour. We were amazed that they let us walk on the actual line the RV's move along on. We were very close to the workers and the work being done, stepping over wires on the floor, scrap pieces, etc. Tiffin makes 12 RV's per day. 

The top picture is of the guys assembling all the wiring that goes in the coach. The bottom picture is of people installing the slides. Tiffin works a day ahead of time, so, for instance the wiring they were doing was for the next days work. 

We're learning how to do things while on the road. Martha (Andy's sister) went to our house to get some things and found out that our alarms were going off. Long story short, we had to get our security guy out to check things and get them repaired. We're able to get mail here, so we've had some packages sent here. Slowly but surely, we're learning how to do things long distance. 

On our way to Red Bay

First of all, I'll explain our "nickname". JandA is simply a shortened acronym for Jean and Andy. We're looking for an easy way to chronicle our adventures in our RV. This is my first attempt at a blog.

It is January, 2016 and we're headed to Red Bay, AL to the Tiffin factory service center to get all of the "bugs" worked out. On the way, we encounter snow and slush in Missouri. It's pretty scary seeing cars in the ditch and a car spin out in front of you. Luckily we were able to go around it with no problem.

We stopped to clean off the windshield, and when we attempted to get going, our tires were spinning on the slush (it was a slight incline). The convenience store had kitty litter, so we were able to get traction and get going again. This is a picture of the slush on the bikes. Lesson learned: don't park uphill on ice or slush.

As we head toward St. Louis, the snow changes to rain. Since it is supposed to be cold that night, we decide not to put out the slides as we're afraid they will freeze and we won't be able to pull them back in the next morning. It got down to 9 degrees and upon waking, we find that our water tanks have frozen. We can only hope there has not been permanent damage to the water system. We have a good deal of condensation on the windshield which has frozen. Luckily we have fans that can take care of that.

On the trip to Red Bay, we pass green fields. After some research we determine the fields are winter wheat crops. It seems strange to see bright green fields in January. We add three new states to our list-Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama.

We're here! We get checked in and assigned to our spot in the campground. The bedroom slide, which hadn't worked, came to life again. We thought we'd broken the water pump, but once here, the water is working again, The campground has turned off the water until further notice-tonight it's supposed to get down to 19 degrees, which is cold for Red Bay. At least that is warmer than St. Louis and Chanhassen where it was -2 degrees today.