May Winnebago Rally in Townsend

We recently joined the Winnebago Rocky Top Travelers and attended our first rally in May in Townsend at Big Meadow Campground. We arrived on Friday, May 17 in time to pull our Journey through the car/camper wash and give it a good scrubbing and then head to the campground. Once we checked into the campground, we headed over to the Pavilion to officially check in with our club president and get the scoop on the weekend activities. Then we took a bike ride through Townsend, stopped and ate peach pie and ice cream (of course) and picked up a few groceries. After we got back to the campground we headed back to the pavilion, got to know fellow club members, and made new friends.

To start off the weekend activities, we had a meeting before dinner to get the rules of the "Murder Mystery" game we would all be participating in over the weekend. We each had to draw a card; whoever had the ace of spades was the "murderer" and would "murder" five members by displaying the card to them at an opportune moment, hopefully unseen by others. Then on Saturday afternoon, we would get clues from those "murdered" and try to guess who did them in. After the cards were chosen, we enjoyed some really yummy deluxe (Nathans with various trimmings) hot dogs from Campfire Grille, who came to the campground to cook them for us.  After dinner we played a marshmallow toss game. For this game you need a partner and decide who will toss and who will try to catch them with a basket. When we got down to the three couples with the most points, there was a playoff to decide the winners. We didn't win, or even come close, but it was fun to play!

It started to rain Friday night and into Saturday morning, so it's a good thing we had books and cable because we didn't bring a car- only our bikes. But we still had a yummy pancake breakfast, and the rain let up long enough for us to take a short bike ride and a couple of strolls around the campground. We also got to talk to some really nice folks from Knoxville who joined about the same time that we did and looked at their coach. In fact, we met so many nice people on this trip. Most had been transplants from other states after or close to retirement. Several were from Crossville and one couple lived at Lake Tansi, where we have our park model.  All were very happy in retirement (who wouldn't be!!).

We met back at four as a group to decide the "murderer." In the process, I unintentionally misled the group to think Ben was the "murderer." But he was at most of the places at or near the same time as the "murders" took place; plus he just acted guilty. The real guilty party was very good at keeping it to himself and even fooled his wife and mother-in-law! We also had an ice cream social before dinner time- what a good idea to have dessert before dinner! Each party was then on there own for dinner plans. We stayed at the camper and relaxed.

We met back as a group in the morning for a "grab and go" breakfast and said goodby to all for now. We will be meeting them again in November for a Pigeon Forge rally. Hopefully we will be traveling with them more regularly in a few years!

By the way, Big Meadow is a really nice campground run by friendly folks. It doesn't have a pool but the campsites are nicely laid out, you have a good view, and there is a nice playground for the little ones.

Too much water = Roughing it!

View of Watts Bar lake out our front window at Caney Creek RV Resort

For some reason we thought since it was going to be a rainy weekend that it would be fun to get the RV out of storage and check things out. After some fun hooking up in a down pour we finally got settled in to discover we had not restocked the essentials like toilet paper. aaaagh! Since we didn't pull the car one of us had to trudge to the office to borrow some in the rain. Well then it rained non stop all day Saturday and throughout the night which wasn't too bad since we had a couple of movies, plenty of books and wi-fi, what else do you need besides toilet paper. So when a break came in the morning we thought we'd high tail it out of there. Last thing to do is to roll up the awning; push the button and a little movement and then nothing, Push the button many more times and still nothing aaagggh and it has starting raining again. While Ben was outside scratching his head saying bad words Miriam jumped on the internet and do what we refer to as praying to the Google Gods for an answer and sure enough she came across some blogs that gave us enough info to decide something was weighing it down. Back outside Ben has stopped grumbling to discover that water has somehow gotten between the seam and had collected into a large pocket of water or dead weight. No amount of coaxing would get it out so we had to resort to drastic field surgery... poke a small hole in the bubble... "We have a gusher" the water came out on top of Ben of course. When the extra weight was removed the awning rolled up as designed. Whew quick hit the road before anything else can go wrong.. Well of course one more thing had to finish out the trip; driving down the road Ben sees a compartment door open up. Thats what we get for rushing. Back out in the rain close the door and then head home to some dry clothes and hot food!