Leaving Home

After a very nice Thanksgiving dinner with our family, we left for our winter trip on Saturday morning. We stopped in Kokomo for lunch with our friends Mick and Carol, and then headed down to Louisville where we stayed overnight at one of our favorite places (the Walmart parking lot). We both slept really well, considering we were in the middle of all kinds of traffic noise, and then headed out Sunday morning for a nice "easy" run down to Jasper TN (just north of Chattanooga). Well - it was supposed to be easy; but we made a mistake - we totally didn't count on how heavy the Thanksgiving traffic would be on Sunday! (Note to self - NEVER travel on the holiday weekend again!) Poor Dave - he had solid traffic in all lanes the entire day on Sunday - pretty stressful. But we had no road problems, not even any delays, so we pulled into Marion County Park about mid-afternoon. We love this little park - it's in the middle of Nickajack Lake, right off Expressway 24, about 15 miles north of downtown Chattanooga. It's located on a little peninsula sticking out into the lake, with the mountains all around it. It's pretty basic - the bathroom is PRETTY bad! - but it's great for a couple days. We each did some of our favorite outdoor things over the next couple days - Dave biked, I walked, he fished, we both kayaked and we had a GREAT campfire one night. We had fairly mild weather Sunday through Tuesday, except for a really heavy rainfall Tuesday night. But Wednesday we were up and ready to head out for our first "official" park of the trip...