2 RV's heading to AR - (delivered)

... spending the night at West Memphis AR

... another 12+ hour day.

Up early today. I wanted to make sure that I was at my drop before 3 PM. If BB's drop took over an hour that could be an issue.

Breakfast was real eggs and a sausage, plus a yogurt. Likely a good idea because we seldom know when we are going to eat on drop days.

We pull out at 7 AM instead of 7:30.

No issues on the AM drive ...

1st stop is a Shell station in Springdale for dealer fuel for BB and hopefully my last fuel. I do the math and I put in enough fuel so that I should have 20 miles extra range. Two blocks down we are at our first drop.

2nd stop is BB's drop in Springdale. The driver we saw before leaving IA is already there and being inspected. We are there before their 9 AM open so that is good to know. Next time we will call and see how soon they 'currently' are inspecting units. We are done and rolling by 9 AM.

?? When I pull out of BB's drop I am showing that I am short on range of my drop, not the 20 miles over that I had thought.

?? Somewhere down the road, I get up to 60 miles range past my drop. Now I am thinking I have left $20 too much fuel in the RV.

?? When I get to final fuel later today I am back to 36 miles from 'E,' that is about as close as I could have guessed it and felt safe.

3rd stop is at a rest area near Knoxville. I make a phone call and find out that my services are not needed for a couple of weeks, until the ground at least thaws. We will see how that plays out.

Not a stop ... but I drop BB at the Little Rock Airport to pick up the rental car and head back. This adds about 70 miles to my trip, miles I do not get paid for but have to pay for. Still cheaper than a taxi.

4th stop is the Velaro for final fuel. Small place and as I am pulling across oncoming traffic, someone comes out where I thought was an in, I have to quickly adjust and get out of the way so the car behind me can also clear traffic.

... sitting on the curb is a teen age girl wrapped in a heavy coat (by now it is 70 degrees)

:(

5th stop is my drop. We are there over an hour, but it only takes 15 minutes to check mine in. I do talk to another driver who is dropping. He has the usual story. He doesn't make enough money pulling travel trailers to cover his truck payments. He is late again this month ... and he is living on SS.

6th stop is a few blocks away. Freddies. Burger and custard. It looks messy so we sit in the car so I do not have to eat and drive. Another half hour lost.

7th stop is Forrest City at a rest area. BB needs a break and we have talked about a final leg to this trip. We did not have time to do the Nashville to MN trip but there is a shorter one from St Louis to Des Moines. I call dispatch and then the drop. I need to be able to do a Saturday drop and that is not an option. (I may try again tomorrow AM ?) It would only add a few miles to the trip we are doing anyway. Might as well get paid for it.

8th stop is the airport. The recommended way to drop someone off for a rental is go through the short term parking. So I did, but when I try to leave ... my car 'pauses' like the new ones do but then will not restart. I wasn't sure why, because my seat belt was off? because I had opened the door? because ?

I ended up having to shut it off and restart it. Then it went and the exit gate was still up.

The plan was for me to take this rental to the cell phone lot and BB would pick up the 2nd rental and meet me and then she would return the 1st rental and I would pick her up. She works while I sit :)

When she comes to the cell lot she pulls up to the first red Jeep she sees ... and it's not me (so she quickly backs away) What are the changes of two red Jeeps out of twenty cars in a cell phone lot??

Then when BB does return the 1st rental ... she can't find her way out walking :) She calls me and as we talk she finally sees a sign 'to Terminal' so she heads that way instead of finding her way to where I had dropped her off.

Not sure how much I covered previous days. We had looked at rental cars for this trip and we could get one out of Little Rock, but had not reserved one. Then we took the trip and those cars were gone. So we finally found a one way from Little Rock to Memphis and then a 2nd one way from Memphis to MSP.

We have checked every day and there has not been a change. When we dropped my RV we say a Hertz right across the street from my drop but they did not have any one ways or even local cars for today.

All of this cost us a lot of time but not much money.

Once I pick up BB at the airport we head ... right into the sun. We had not decided where to spend the night. If we had not had to wait at my drop we would have made it half way to St Louis before shutting down tonight. But now we are looking at another 12 hour day and we are still in Memphis. We had looked at picking up the 2nd car, taking both to a close hotel for the night and then dropping the 1st car tomorrow AM. Somewhere we decided against that.

Now we just head to the closest hotel. A Clarion. A huge place and almost no cars. We are in an area where most places have barbed wire around them. We thought we had stay here years ago because of all the barbed wire but the layout was not correct. Not this Clarion, but the Travelodge a block away.

So we u-turn it and head out. I miss where I should have turned so we take the long way around. Then the computer routes us back to the closest freeway which has an accident on it ... so another u-turn. We now pass the Comfort Inn and Quality Inn. One had a fence requiring it to be opened for each car. Nice area ?? Actually this is a trucking area with dealers and terminals so not sure how bad it is ... compared to other parts of Memphis.

BB decides on a Comfort Inn in West Memphis.

When we get off we see a sign for Chik-fil-A so we try to follow that and get lost ...

9th stop is the Chik-fil-A

10th and final is the Comfort Inn ... another 12+ hour day. But it has been 70+ degrees and NO SNOW.

Load board

US - 597

IA - 336/334 (341 in the AM)

Most likely we are heading home tomorrow without more work. 850 miles so not likely we will get home without a real push. We will do the final miles on Saturday.

Sunday is Easter.

Monday is tax day

Tuesday is the dentist for both of us.

We really do not know what we will do next. CA is always on our radar. But doing that we move 2 RV's in two weeks. We could do shorter trips and move six in that amount of time.