Relaxing in Nashville

Went online and got tickets to the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium. It was a neat experience to be in this theatre as we had seen shows from this venue on DVD. In particular Neil Young’s Heart of Gold The Opry was a great show with Vince Gill, Josh Turner, Bill Anderson, Little Jimmy Dickens and Jack Green. A real nice mix of ages and styles… oh also a blue grass band called the Del McCoury Band. Yee haw!

A shuttle bus from our campsite took us right to the show and back again. We were downtown early enough to go for a walk on the main drag Broadway -honky tonks and bars. We ate supper (ribs and Brisket) at Jack's Barbeque and Grill.

Taking a few days and just hanging out here in Nashville.

At the races

Welcome centre in Kentucky

Daniel Boone Way

Blue moon of Kentucky... and our journey continues...

From PA we stopped in Hagerstown Maryland at a KOA We could only stay one night as they were filled up for the Halloween weekend. KOA’s are expensive but they seem to include some type of entertainment. This campground was doing up Halloween with all sorts of activities.

Once again we had an adventure and did some unexpected sightseeing as we tried to find the campground. We had entered the wrong address so it was our fault and not our toms. We do get to see the back side of the country when we are driving around. We did the same thing the next night when we camped in West Virginia at a Beeker Forks state park

The country roads are hilly, narrow (there are no shoulders) and windy with hairpin turns. It is exciting when pulling the trailer. I thought the Cabot Trail was supposed to be scary… hmm these roads are much more exhilarating.

We had a beautiful drive through the Appalachian Mountains over the Cumberland Plateau. Definitely mountainous up and down with hardwood forests. We saw a few snowflakes… nothing serious.

We are now camped in Lexington Kentucky (the horse capital of the world according to the brochures) at the Kentucky Horse Park Campground. We went to the last horse race of the season at the Keeneland race track. We learned how to place a bet and spent our two bucks each with wild abandon on each race. The crowd was dressed up and the liquor was flowing pretty easily. The weather is sunny and warm,,, very beautiful area with miles of white rail fences and huge homes for the horsey set. Happy Halloween!

So far we have been in/thru, Maine, New Hampshire,Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.

This section is the most highly populated area that we have driven through so far. We thought about going into Boston, we thought about going into New York. We were as close as 30/40 miles from both, cluck--cluck--cluck.Had an experience with closed roads. drove around and the next road was also closed. Handled it well.

Heading for Diners, Drive-ins and Dives fame, diner called “DaddyPops”, just outside ofPhiladelphia.

We had brunch, fantastic pancakes,-eggs and scrapple (ground pork and cornmeal) chipped beef in cream sauce and grits, in this little metal dining car with 8 booths and a dozen stools and two barber chairs at the counter. Served by a waitress who grew up with the menu at home and explained what we were about to eat - - - a great experience!!!

Now we are 15 miles from Philly city center – take a deep breath and get on the train.

We saw the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, got a lesson in American History aaaaand had a real philly cheesesteak sandwich at famous “Cameron’s”, (Obama ate there two weeks ago), in the biggest market anywhere.

Lots of very rundown low income housing projects and neighbourhoods on the train route.

Sturbridge, MA

Autumn in New England... Covered Bridges, stone fences, antiques, baked beans, and of course clam chowder Boston style.

We stumbled onto this area just by getting off the highway .... very quaint area.

We visited The Old Sturbridge Village which is an historical site in New England. ..Quaker style. The architecture was exactly what you would expect for picturesque old New england towns. We drove around the area and saw the antique centres and winding tree covered roads. Beautiful.

USA

USA. We are in the Village Green campground in Brimfield Massachusetts. After trying unsuccessfully to spell the name of this state I now understand why abbreviations are so prevalent from now I on I will refer to it as MA :-)

We camped in Newport our first night. Then we started our journey south using the notes and information that we had gathered along the way. The next day we got as far as Freeport where our Tomtom let us down and we ended up on a dead end street where Jack had some unkind words for him. Freeport is a pretty little town that is crawling with tourists. It is where LL Bean store originates. There are Guci, Gap. etc. type of stores. The McDonalds looks like a 18th century farmhouse. We drove around for a while trying to find the campsite where we paid $10.00-$15.00 more per night then we have been paying…. and the internet didn’t work… and this was our first night of hard frost

The next day we drove down the I95 awhile and then onto the 495 then onto the 84 then on to the 95 again. There were toll’s along the way but they only added up to around $6.00. Driving the interstates is a fast way to get somewhere but on the smaller highways you see more interesting things, The fall colours have been amazing. This is a great time of the year to travel as far as natural beauty and not so crowded usually. The only drawback has been that we have to search for campsites that are open.

*Generally we have hit the best weather possible and have missed the major storms.

• This blog is posted a bit late due to the state of the internet access in some of our camps.

Notes

Here we are at the Imperial theater in Saint John " Just for Laughs" comedy show. We are Capital one stars.??

We crossed the border and are overniting in Newport, just outside Bangor Maine at the only campsite that we found that is open at this time of the year at this location. Walmart here we come.

Much to Kits disgust he did not get sent back home at the border as I think he was hoping. They did not even look at his papers.

Actually he is doing great or at least if he is meowing, we are not hearing him as he travels in the trailer. He walks better on the leash now... well kinda.

The cat is funny when we set up the satellite dish for TV:

Jack is outside the trailer moving the dish slowly and I'm in the trailer yelling out the window at him (Jack not the cat). I need to tell him the numbers for tuning the satellite. The numbers have to be in the green area and above 50 for the tv to work well. So you can picture me yelling out the numbers, usually they start at around 6, and then when it gets close to being tuned.....Well of course I get excited, my voice gets louder and then the cat starts running around the trailer jumping off and on the furniture. I think he looks forward to tuning the "dish".

We traveled 13,400 K. on our Canada Trip. That does not include the 5 ferry trips.

Bye for now.