May 18 to May 20

We rose early so the workers could finish the work on the water tank. We didn’t walk but did take time to shower. They got right n the work and patched what they thought was a crack in the tank. It turned out that that was the problem and the repair worked. We spent the morning calling about Evelyn’s prescriptions and sending e-mails to our accountant. We drove the coach out of the work bay to dump our tanks and put the living room slide out but the awning would not retract properly. We drove back in just in time to miss the storm that hit. Had the awning been correct, I would have been in the process of connecting the car. What blessings the Lord gives. We thought this was just another problem but it was really a protection. They made an adjustment and the awning worked fine in several tests. We paid our bill of only $271, hooked up the car and left. We had eaten lunch earlier and left at 2:30 heading for Ohio. We took 27 all the way to I-275 around Cincinnati and encountered only one minor delay on I-75 in KY. We drove on the Berea where we parked at the Wal-Mart and went to Cracker Barrel for dinner. I don’t like Cracker Barrel but we did enjoy their tortilla soup. Evelyn noticed that this was where I dragged the Jeep we towed last year into a dumpster. What fun that was.
We got up early Friday and drove on to our favorite destination-Middlesboro, KY. There is a Kroger store there and we shop for $100 worth of groceries so we can get a 10 cent reduction in the price per gallon of gas. We also love the hazelnut/poppy seed bread they sell. I was crushed to see that there were no loaves on the shelf. I asked that they look in the back to see if there were any more and they found one! How happy we were. You may think that is nuts but you haven’t tasted it. We left there and went on toward NC. We stopped for lunch at a Sagebrush restaurant and shared a lunch of chicken strips. We ate a ton of peanuts while awaiting our meal so we had plenty to eat. We came on to home and arrived around 4:00. It was a beautiful day so we enjoyed unloading some of the motor home items. We may have completed half of the job but still have the items under the bed and the storage doors to unload. We were amazed at the amount of groceries we now have because we had bought many things at the discount grocery in Decatur. We pledged to not eat out or go shopping until we have consumed most of the things we brought back. We spent some of the evening cooking some kind of oriental soup that I must have said I liked. It is fun to cook together: I open the cans and chop some of the ingredients.
Up and back to work on the motor home. It is hard to believe that there can be so much stuff in a motor home. We need to clean most of the things out so we can rent it out and still have most of our possessions. We had the oriental soup we made last night for our lunch and it was very tasty. We decided to take a walk around the lake while it was sunny. We had a violent storm last night and it rained off and on all day today. We did bring things into the house between rain storms and took the above mentioned walk. I had intended to do my blogging etc. at the Terrace Hotel at the lake but the wireless router has had trouble for several days. During one of the rains later in the day, I prepared the grill and cooked three buffalo burgers we had brought from Texas and eight grillers, two of which we had for dinner. I also used the remaining heat to flavor two chicken breasts for a later dinner. We also made plans to have Barry and Jackie Conover for dinner next Sunday. He is the pastor I will replace in the worship service on Pentecost. We spent the evening putting things away that Evelyn had laundered during the rains throughout the day, Tomorrow is worship and we will try to take the motor home to storage sometime tomorrow evening.
We went to church at 10:30 and decided not to stay for the lunch planned as a farewell dinner for the pastor. We learned that a seminary graduate has been assigned to this parish. I guess that means that I will not be called to be pulpit supply until the new pastor arrives. Oh, well. The Lord knows what He is doing. We came home for lunch and a relaxing afternoon mingled with continued unloading. We had learned that there was a Haywood County band concert planned for this evening at Maggie Valley’s pavilion at 6:30. We wanted to take the motor home to Maggie for storage, so we went around 5:30. We decided to ask a single lady to go to the concert with us. She was glad to be invited. While at the concert, which we enjoyed, I saw a pastor from Peachtree UMC where we had worshipped while looking for property. I told him that I was available for pulpit supply at Peachtree. He seemed to be quite interested in that information. We came home and had popcorn for our very late dinner.