Having pumped up the troublesome tyre the previous evening, it'd gone down by 6 psi overnight and therefore was in need of some care and attention. So, at 7.20am I set off into Maryville for Matlock's Tire and Auto Service, operating hours 7am to 5pm. Yes, you saw that correctly, open at 7am! The place wasn't some back street garage, either, housed as it was in a new unit close to a shopping mall. Having handed over the car keys, I sat back in a leather, wing backed chair, sipped my coffee and settled down to read about the history of Blount County. Did you know that the mother of the famous World War I military commander, General John J. Pershing, came from Blount County? Well you do now. An hour later and with the tyre fixed, ($18 total bill and a three inch bolt removed from the tyre), and it was back to the campground to hitch up and head off on our penultimate day of travelling; 400 miles to northern Ohio.
Our destination was the little town of Jackson Center, just 7 miles off the I75, home of the Airstream factory and birthplace of Towed Haul. We had wanted to do one of their free factory tours, to see how our baby was put together, and to spend some loot in their gift shop, and this was the perfect opportunity. If we'd have been slightly better organised we might have arranged with the Service Center at the factory to have a couple of warranty items on Towed Haul sorted out, but we're not so it'll be back to the dealers' at the end of the season. Sadly, I think the dealer will do a better job.
But first we had to get to Ohio. The man in the Sat Nav had sorted us a good route out through Knoxville where we crossed the majestic Tennessee River a couple of times. It put me in mind of second year geography and talk of the TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority, formed to create dams for hydro-electric power and to minimise flooding. I always imagined that I learned nothing at school, but clearly I did; nothing useful of course, but learn stuff I did. From Knoxville we passed over the last big mountains on the western edge of the Appalachians, beautiful, wooded but steep, and on into Kentucky. It's at this point that I sing the praises of the Toadmobile as it hauled 7,000lbs of trailer up the grades and then down the other side with very little complaint. Sure, the petrol usage gets a bit scary and coming down hill is always a trial, low gear and light on the brakes, but we made it all the same and I couldn't help thinking of all those detractors who told us that our car wouldn't pull an Airstream.
Kentucky came and went, past Lexington and the horse park, past Boonesborough and down Death Hill to the Ohio River and Cincinnati, Ohio's first and last town on this route, if you see what I mean. All through this transition from mountain to field, state to state, the Tadpoles either slept or watched DVDs with the blinds on the windows resolutely closed. Mrs T says that I must have been an odd kid because I always looked out of the window when travelling with my family, but I still find it strange that anyone would not want to take in what was going past their eyes. OK, I was an odd kid!
From Cincinnati we rolled onto Dayton, then onwards towards Jackson Center. Actually, we were staying at Indian Lake State Park, about 12 miles outside Jackson Center, despite being able to camp at the Airstream factory for just $10 if we had wished to. Airstreamers are a nutty crowd and refer to the factory as “The Mothership”; we can't bring ourselves to do this (nor wear plaid shirts, name badges and blue berets, but that's another story), so we drove past the factory and onto Indian Lake for the night. The road from the highway, past the factory and on towards the east was as straight as an arrow for the 13 miles we travelled on it and quite possibly well beyond. It had a slight undulation and was flanked with telegraph poles and couldn't have been anywhere else except rural USA, at least according to Hollywood, for years my only source for things American. Indeed, I could well imagine the planners marking this road (and most of the others) on the map with a pencil and a very long ruler!
I'd often wondered what brought the Airstream factory to a little country town in Ohio, from it's original position in California. Well, it's probably be the same thing that brought the huge Honda Transmission plant that we discovered on the edge of Indian Lake; state subsidies. Clearly people around here had jobs to go to.
As we approached the lake we could see a plume of black smoke and as we neared the campground, having to avoid speeding emergency vehicles on the way, it looked for all the world that the fire was on the State Park campground. However, there was no flap whatsoever amongst the Park's staff so we could only assume that the fire was just next door. Goodness! Such excitement and on our last night, too. The campground was huge but flat, grassy and very neat, complete with little concrete hard stands for each site. After filling Towed Haul's water tank, for the first time on this trip (no water on the individual stands), we made our way to our allotted space. It turned out to be in a totally uninhabited part of the site (where was everybody?) so our little silver mansion on wheels was all alone at the end of a long, long loop. Of course, being miserable oiks with no social graces, we actually prefer being stuck in the boondocks as it allows us to beat the Tadpoles and no one hears the screams. I should point out at this juncture that no Tadpoles were harmed in the creation of the blog; it's just artistic license. And wishful think of course.
No sooner had we set up, carefully avoiding getting the awning out, the sky went apocalyptic black and unleashed a huge downpour of rain and hail. The last night was shaping up in the same way as the first night that offered some unsolicited symmetry for the trip, which pleased me in some unaccountable way. The rain gave way to lightning and more rain so we simply settled back, enjoyed our Tuna Helper (much better than Hamburger Helper) and achieved yet more symmetry as it was almost the same meal that we'd had on our first night out.
Mrs T and the Tadpoles played cards for the remainder of the evening whilst I wrote of our adventures. I eventually gave up, though, because I was falling asleep at the keyboard. Tomorrow we make our way to the Airstream factory and then, after the tour, we head home. It's a little over 200 miles, so one of the shorter legs on the trip, albeit that we have to negotiate the US/Canadian border which will, as it always does, add time.
My plan will be to do a final, concluding entry to the blog, complete with facts and figures. That said, as I plan to sleep for a week on my return, it may be a little while in the publication.....
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