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By Katrina Kane, on July 23rd, 2009 Took off for Branson via Poplar Bluff and Camelot RV Campground. Nice place close to the highway for a one night stop. Hilly but my site was fairly level and very long. The drive there was easy and pretty.
Heading into Branson, be ready for steep hill driving. Even without the trailer attached, the hills of Branson make driving a challenge. Everything inside the car slides here and there. Per everyone I have spoken to who has been there, I avoided taking the trailer through downtown. It is no place for RVs. I stayed on the 65 past the Escapees park, Turkey Creek, in Hollister then got off and came back up to it. Like all Escapees parks, I was met with hugs and how-do-you-dos. They gave me a great spot near the front so I was close to the wifi which is provided by Tengo for a charge. My new aircard I bought off Ebay to replace my dead card was to arrive the next day care of general delivery. The park is right on a creek that runs into the nearby lake and has a boat ramp. In the clubhouse is tons of brochures on everything you could possibly want to see while there and the park gave me some free tickets and discount coupons for some shows. They served a nice pork chop dinner one night with the most excellent pudding and also got one of the Branson Mall entertainers to come in one night to sing the songs of Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Englebert Humperdink, etc. He was pretty good. The park also provides cable TV and a jam session one night a week.
  
The first thing I did after arriving and setting up camp, was run up the 76 through town to the Titanic museum. They gave me a boarding pass of someone who was on Titanic which included the name and background of that person. At the end of the tour we would find out if we lived or died. They have a big sheet of ice you can touch on the way in to set the mood. Inside they have lots of pictures of the building of the ship, original plans, items from the ship, and info on life aboard for the different classes. The ships bridge was well done and stepping out onto the deck you can feel the cold of that night. Sit in the life boats and feel how large they were though most were launched half-empty and listen to the talk of the panicked crew and passengers. Many passengers refused to get in the boats because they honestly believed the hype that the ship was unsinkable and thought the captain was just being too cautious. It was very cool standing on the grand staircase though they didn’t allow picture taking in the museum so no pictures of it. The outside of the museum is very well done and you can control a camera on the web to view it at http://www.titanicbranson.com/titanic_webcam.php . And good news! I was a first-class passenger who did survive.
  
Continue reading Branson, MO
By Katrina Kane, on July 11th, 2009 On to Kentucky to claim it on my state map. I drove through Nashville and on up to Cave City which is only 5 miles from Mammoth Cave National Park. I waited too long to book into the C2C rv park but happily found Singing Hills RV Park in the midst of bunches of tourist attractions. It is a Passport America park thus very inexpensive and the owners are wonderful and helpful. They understand that some of their sites are too short and happily let me park my large SUV in the small site next to mine. It is a very basic park with no pool or anything but none of that matters considering everything surrounding it. The wifi worked great. I would definitely stay here again when in the area.
I first drove back south to Bowling Green to see Lost River Cave by boat tour. I very much enjoyed the boat and ducking to slide the boat under the entrance. It was sooooo cool in the cave on a very hot day. Morgan’s Raiders used the cave to hide out during the Civil War and Jesse James may have also used it to hide out after a bank robbery. Locals have always used it to stay cool and party in it’s ballroom at the entrance. A walk along the paths outside past the blue holes and butterfly house is interesting. They even have some geocaches there and are kind enough to provide both information on geocaching and a Magellan Explorist 200 handheld gps device already programmed for the caches. It was my first chance at using a handheld since I use my car gps device for hunting normally. Maybe it’s a matter of familiarity but I still prefer my Garmin C330 car gps. I found 3 including a travel ingot/bug, a change purse, and a winner’s medal.
   
I ate at White Castle before heading back just to see what the big deal is with their hamburgers. The look of the bun and the small size did not appeal to me (Size matters, at least when it comes to hamburgers!) but the burger did taste very good. I still would not spend a whole night going through everything Harold and Kumar did to get one. Get a life!
Continue reading Cave City, KY
By Katrina Kane, on July 3rd, 2009 Off to my home park, Breckenridge Lake Resort, in Crossville, TN off I40. In order to join Coast to Coast, RPI or other clubs, you must buy into a home park first. This can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars and there are different levels. The cost depends on many things such as location, amenities, closeness to major tourist meccas, etc. I bought my home park membership on Ebay. The buy in was low and the yearly maintenance fee is low (watch out for those) so it is perfect for me. I don’t need a bunch of amenities either. I like the location which, while not near my home area, is a very nice place to play and relax with a warm lake nearby, waterfalls, great food at the state park restaurant, a Mennonite community, the home and grave of Sgt. Alvin York nearby, the famous Cumberland Playhouse, and more. If you love the 4th of July and fireworks, these guys are fireworks crazy! The park is plain jane average but it does have full hookups, excellent wifi, a clubhouse, a pavilion, laundry room, and a group fire ring. I can definitely recommend the laundry room which is inexpensive and has dryers that actually dry in one pass. Best of all, it costs only $2 a night to stay here for up to 3 weeks as a member. If you leave for a week, you can come back for 3 more weeks.
I headed in toward town and stopped at The Tower. It was built to house government offices and a water tower during FDR’s New Deal when he opened a homestead project here. These were not your average homesteads. The government did not just give them land and homes. Out of many applications, able bodied men were given a chance to learn a good trade such as carpentry, plumbing, electrical, masonry, etc. and use those skills to build barns and homes. They earned credits toward the purchase of their own homes for their families. Families lived in the barns at first while the homes were being built. While the government called the project a failure due to cost overruns, bickering, many who left for good jobs rather than buy a home, etc., to those families that stayed it was a major success and a godsend. Many of their children’s children still live in the homes they built.
  
Continue reading Crossville, TN
By Katrina Kane, on June 19th, 2009 I just needed a place on the way to Tennessee to rest up a while so a park in West Virginia seemed just right. The drive all the way down through the state to the bottom on I79 was remarkably easy even though it is solid mountains. The highway is laid out well without steep ups and downs. I arrived at Jim’s Campground with a choice of partial hookups with grass right down by the river or full hookups above on a gravel plateau. I checked out the cheaper river area first but quickly found there would be no hope of using my satellite dish down there. That was somewhat contradictory to the idea of resting to me and I discovered their weekly rates are very very affordable even for full hookups so I moved up to the plateau quickly. As a bonus, the plateau is closer to the wifi antenna so it gets better signal (not that it was bad down by the river). The plateau also has cement patios with tie downs built into them and some new picnic tables.
 
It was so hot and muggy, I put out my awning, both for me and for my refrigerator. I had used some WD40 on the roller mechanism in DC so it came out much easier than usual. I may use it more often now! The tie downs were nice to use and a great idea in a gravel area like that. There’s no pool and I didn’t see anyone in the river.
Continue reading Milton, WV
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