Wednesday August 11th 2021

The heatwave continues in the Memphis area. The TV weather talkers continue to warn about a heat index around 107 degrees. As long as you stay out of the direct sun it really doesn’t seem that bad. The forecast calls for the system to break on Friday.

Today’s task was replacing the starting battery in my RV home. Yesterday I got some supplies and verified that it wasn’t just loose connections. This morning while the sun was shining on the other side of the rig, I got the old battery disconnected and out of the motorhome. A trip into West Memphis to the Advanced Auto Parts store resulted in a new Diehard battery. I waited until near 6PM this evening for the sun to get low enough in the sky placing the front of the motorhome in the shade once more before completing the replacement. Everything seems to be OK. I was able to start the motorhome after replacing the battery. I still have concerns associated with the strange way things worked and didn’t work on Monday. It is always possible that the real problem is in the charging circuit or one of the many relays isolating the coach from the chassis batteries. I am likely to be very nervous as I pack up and move on tomorrow.

I continue to be befuddled by the occupancy or lack thereof at campgrounds. This park was just about full Monday night. Last night there were slightly fewer. Tonight it looks like there are even less. My impression is tomorrow night will be full or close to it. When I booked my stay Thursday night was not available in my size site. Most of the guests are travelers either going north south on Interstate 55 or east west on Interstate 40. Each night there have been several Texas and Louisiana RVs, but I have also seen California, Florida, Oregon, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Virginia RVs. The two or three RVs that have been here all three nights are from Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi. The local states.

Tuesday August 10th 2021

It was another hot day today. The temperature peaked in the upper nighties. When combined with the humidity the heat index was around 107 degrees. The normal high temperature in the Memphis area this time of year is closer to ninety. The difference is enough to get the TV weather talkers excited.

The meteorologists on TV believe they have an obligation to inform the public so no one gets adversely impacted by the heat. The result, particularly with people like me that aren’t familiar with the local weather, is a higher level of caution at best to a real fear at the extreme. I’ve been in lots of areas of the country with higher daily temperatures and higher humidity. It all comes down to context. Activity in areas without shade is not particularly safe even with the nice breeze we had today.

I had a busy day today. My first stop was to get some tools and supplies to work on my RV coach battery issue. The second stop was for groceries. Once again my refrigerator and pantry were getting a little empty. The Walmart was the source for food and another battery service supply. I was surprised that the majority of customers at Walmart were back to wearing masks. The store wasn’t too busy, which is good since it was also getting rearrange. There were large sections of empty area and many shelves were empty.

This campground is very much an overnight stop. It was close to full last night and empty by noon today. My site is across from the office so I watched tonight’s guests arrive as the afternoon and evening went by. I don’t think it is as full tonight.

Monday August 9th 2021

The temperature is back in the upper nineties with humidity. A strong south breeze kept things manageable most of the day. The heat index was around 107 degrees.

Today was a short moving day. I tried to time things so I left at the noon checkout, but I ended up pulling out about twenty minutes before that event. I paused in root to my new location at the Arkansas welcome center on the interstate to kill time. I checked into my new location about twenty miles away at 1PM.

The day wasn’t without a challenge. The 12volt RV chassis battery didn’t want to start the motorhome this morning. I found a loose connection at the battery that after a little work I got the motorhome running. I didn’t turn the vehicle off until I was on my site at my destination. It turned itself off when I tried to lower the leveling jacks. That took more work to get everything setup. Tomorrow I’ll work on it some more and probably buy a new battery. If that doesn’t work I’ll have to get the motorhome and a mechanic together on Wednesday.

I am at the Memphis KOA in Marion Arkansas until Thursday. I’ve been at the park twice before including last year about this time of year. The memorable milestone is the kids in the area starting back to school this morning.

Sunday August 8th 2021

The breeze out of the south and east was stronger today. It kept the outside temperature comfortable despite the strong sunshine and humidity. The temperature inside my RV home when up quickly with the sun coming through the windows and baking into the roof surface.

The campground emptied out at a steady pace this morning. It started with the very noisy diesel engine in the bus conversion behind me. They felt the need to be on the road before 8AM. By the noon checkout time, I had an unobstructed view of the river once again. This evening the river front sites are filled, but the second row in this area and the second and third rows in the other area are only sparsely filled.

I took the opportunity while the campground was mostly empty to do another load of laundry. These new, fancy, and free machines are nice to use. Today I got all the towels along with this weeks accumulation of dirty clothes. It has been a long time since I’ve been this caught up with the laundry.

Tomorrow I’m leaving this park, but will be staying in the local area for another few days. I still haven’t been able to lock in all of the logistics going forward. I would have stayed here longer, but dealing with the staff is complicated. The only way is by phone and they really don’t answer it very often. I just didn’t want to deal with the phone tag.

Saturday August 7th 2021

Today was a more normal day temperature wise for the area. It was around ninety degrees with plenty of humidity. What breeze we had came from the south bringing more heat and humidity with it. It still didn’t come close to the extremes of last weekend.

I was surprised by last nights visitors to the RV park. My speculation was that most of the people were here for the weekend. This morning far more people than I thought departed. There were still more RVs in the park than a week day morning, but more than I expected were only overnight stoppers. Interestingly this afternoon and evening more RVs arrived than left this morning. There are more people here tonight than last night. I expect most everyone will be gone by checkout tomorrow. I still have another two nights.

Today was only a walk and a half day. My first walk of the day wasn’t until well after the lunch hour. It was hot, but I managed to complete a circuit of the RV park. Boat traffic on the river today wasn’t heavy. I didn’t see any boats during my firsts walk, The last few days I’ve taken a second walk around the RV park in the evening. Today it was only about half of a loop around the park. I hurried out of my RV home to get to the river’s edge to watch one of today’s only big tug and barge setups go my. Once the boat was well past my location, I cut the walk short and returned home.

I spent my inside time today working on travel options. The labor day holiday weekend is only a few weeks away. I have to get a plan and reservations in place soon. One thing or another keeps me from committing to a real plan.

Friday August 6th 2021

There was no breeze today and a high cloud level kept the sun from beating down most of the day. The result was a warmer less comfortable day. It was a humid day with the high temperature in the upper eighties. Tomorrow is forecast to be warmer.

I spent most of the day doing a lot of watching. Most of the watching was in the Mississippi River. The tugs and barges were a little more frequent today. The deep throb of the tugs engines as it pushes the barges against the current gives an early warning on approaches from the south. The tugs from the north don’t make nearly as much noise. They are often almost passed by the time I see them.

The other thing I was watching today was a few of the contests from the Olympic games in Tokyo. I haven’t been in the right area to received the NBC over the air broadcast, so I’ve been restricted to seeing the coverage of the Olympics on the Satellite Cable channels. The bottom line is you get to see some real different sports. This morning I turned on the channel to see a woman hanging from a fake rock wall. It was a rock climbing competition. I’ve also seen a lot of equestrian events, water polo, hand ball, table tennis and fencing just to name a few. Some are interesting, but others are just plain head scratchers. Why are some of these things sports let alone Olympic sports. I can only assume that they have an audience, but in this pandemic time the stands are empty.

This campground is a little more occupied tonight than the last few. The main areas seem to be filled and an area that appears to be lesser used has a few RVs. I don’t know what percentage is caused by the weekend vs. just overnight. Some of today’s arrivals have obviously been here before. They arrived at their sites from the opposite direction so they could face their windows toward the river.

Thursday August 5th 2021

Today was a little cloudier than the last couple of days. The breeze was still strong out of northeast. The high temperature was a little higher in the upper eighties, but the cloud cover keeps the inside temperature better.

Another battle with the little ants turned today into a domestic chores day. After declaring victory in today’s initial battle with the ants, I got out the vacuum to suck any more soldiers out of the carpet and clean up any appetizers for next battle. The vacuum didn’t seem to have its normal power. To diagnose that issue I needed to get into the basement compartment the vacuum hides in. All it needed was a new dust bag. The old one was full. I don’t know the last time I changed it. At least the vacuum was back to sucking dirt and ants.

One of the places I found more ants was on my fitted comforter / bedspread. It spends most nights during the summer half on the foot of the bed and half on the floor. Last night it became home to a few ants. Yesterday’s success with the laundry provided the perfect solution. The machines seem ideal to wash the comforter. The last couple of times I’ve tried the results have been less than successful. The comforter doesn’t have any care instructions, but I set the fancy washer to the towels setting, modified the temperature to cold, increased the soil level to heavy, dropped the spin rate to medium and gave it a go. An hour and twelve minutes later when I moved it from the washer to the dryer it looked pretty good. It looked even better when it came out of the dryer thirty five minutes later. The ants got me to do something that had very good results.

Again today the barge traffic wasn’t exceptional. There were a couple of big units early that I caught a glimpse of out my bedroom windows. During the day there were mostly just small, probably local traffic barges going by.

Wednesday August 4th 2021

Today’s weather was a clone of Tuesday. The high was in the mid eighties and the brisk north wind kept the humidity down. It was a good day to be outside provided you didn’t have to be in the direct sun.

My big adventure for the day was the laundry. One of the amenities at this campground is free laundry. The owners have built little buildings on trailers with a restroom for each gender and a laundry. This approach allows them to disconnect the facilities from the utilities and move it to higher ground when the river rises. For a few weeks in the spring most years the park is under water.

Inside the little building on a trailer I found two sets of stackable washer dryers. These are not the traditional commercial machines, but high end residential units. That’s where the fun began. You need a Masters Degree in laundry to figure out how to use them. First of all with most of the commercial machines I’ve been using the last few years, you set all the parameters and then hit the start button. On this unit nothing can happen until you hit the start button which is actually an on button. It took two or three minutes to figure that out. I verified that the machines were plugged in and a few other things before I started pushing random buttons. That is when I figured out the start button is actually a power button. Once the computer controlled machine booted you could spin the dial to select the cycle you wanted before modifying the parameters with a bunch of light up buttons. The actual start button looks like the “play” button on your audio or video playback device.

The machine said it wood take 53 minutes to complete the wash and it was pretty much on the mark. My clothes were cleaner than they’ve come out of the laundry in most of the last few laundry days. The dryer was equally as confusing, but at least I knew the magic sequence. It forecast the dry cycle would take 32 minutes. I thought that was a little optimistic and somewhere along the way the machine decided it needed more time. When I returned at 32 minutes the timer read 12 minutes remaining. After twelve minutes it still thought it would be ten minutes. Eventually everything was dry. So my adventure of the day took about two and a half hours between the actual washing, drying and folding.

The boat traffic on the river seemed a little slow today. The barge combos I saw were all pretty ordinary. I still haven’t seen any significant southbound traffic.

Monday August 2nd 2021

This morning in Tunica MS it was hazy sunshine with a high in the low eighties. When I arrived in West Memphis Arkansas it was a bright sunny day with the temperature in the mid eighties. This evening fog seems to be moving in from the river.

I got on the road right at the noon checkout. With only forty miles to travel I didn’t need an early start. My only task other than driving was getting some gas in the fuel tank. It was a little below a quarter which is much lower than I usually allow the tank to get. The forty travel miles would consume less than half the remaining fuel which put me into Goldielocks mode. The first station was too busy, the second had poor access, the next was more expensive. I drove by stations all the way up to Memphis. I watched the gauge and reran my fuel calculation in my head all the way.

Getting across the Mississippi River into Arkansas was as difficult as I feared. Traffic with only one west bound interstate bridge wasn’t bad. I stopped for gas at a Flying J at my exit for the campground. I bought gas there on other trips through the area. Being overly courteous I didn’t fill the tank all the way. I only put one $100 credit card authorization worth of gas in the RV. Another RV was waiting behind me to use the RV lane almost all the time I was there. It will be simple enough to another $100 or close to it in the RV when I leave here next week.

My site at the Tom Sawyer RV park is one row back from the river. I can see when river traffic is approaching and it’s easy enough to walk over to the river bank to watch the tug and barge pass by. I’ve already seen quite a few go by. That’s really why I’m here.