Galax Week 3, then on to Red Bay

The wall building on the high side of the lot continued on Saturday with Rojas leading the way. Unfortunately, he decided to keep the wall level and not follow the down sloping contour of the driveway as I had wanted. Thus, early Sunday morning (in a heavy fog that could easily have passed for rain), I took a portion of the wall apart and rebuilt it the way I wanted, then I began the big wall on the low side of the lot. It is the most difficult as it has numerous curves and changes elevation several times. The wall building continued on Monday (again in the fog) and on Tuesday. Rojas finished the high side wall and I finally finished the low side wall.

That done, we began spreading the heavier soil in the beds, and ordered three and one-half loads of good topsoil for the top of the beds. By the time we were done on late Wednesday afternoon, my back was in spasms and I never wanted to see a shovel, or wall stone again! But the job was done and it looks pretty good (if I do say so myself!) As it turned out, we had about 100 wall stones left over, what a dilemma! But I called Lowe's and they said they had a truck in the area and would be glad to pick them up and give me a full refund. Now that's service! The truck arrived within a half hour and the extra stones were on their way back to Lowe's - no charge.

The last aspect of the landscaping was the arrival Tuesday evening of our landscaper, Charles Barnhardt and his wife Margaret. Charles and Margaret measured the beds and we discussed the types of plants that we wanted - then Charles told us which plants he would advise we use - a somewhat different list of plants. Oh well, Charles is the expert. Then he and his wife left to design the plan. It will take two weeks for Charles to finish the design, send us the final drawings and then get all the plant material together, so the final grade work and planting will have to be done after we leave. But Charles is very reliable and his workers are very meticulous. We have seen their work and it is impressive.

But enough about the wall and landscaping. We also had time to install a small trailer hitch on the HHR (thanks to our friend Jim Paschall) - it's sooo cute! - and visit our friends Holly and Rachael at Macado's on a few occasions. As we have said before, Macado's is a great place, with very reasonable bar prices and food (albeit mostly enormous sandwiches and a limited line of pasta and salads) is that is excellent!

On Saturday night we visited a small, out-of-the-way place called the Saddle Mountain Cafe (you could almost hear the music from Deliverance) for "barbecue," which in this neck of the woods means a plate full of pulled pork, macaroni salad and deep fried okra (or in Suzanne's case, a grilled cheese sandwich - no pulled pork and okra for her!). The price was right and the portions were large to say the least. And the "barbecue" was not bad. Unfortunately, I had to wash it all down with a diet Dr. Pepper - oh, well.

On Thursday evening, we joined our great neighbors for another round of bowling - 20 of us this time. With my back spasms, my game was slightly worse than awful, but we had fun. I have a (rather blurry) picture of Suzanne on the lane. You will notice her unique style - sometimes the ball goes backwards! But she loves it and we'll work on her technique back in Florida from time-to-time.

After bowling, we visited another "family" restaurant, Brown's in Sparta. I had chicken and dumplings and Suzanne had - you guessed it - a grilled cheese sandwich! The food was good, but with Dr. Pepper?

Friday, we cleaned up the site, went to Macado's for dinner and said goodbye to our new friends. We were sorry to leave, but have to get to Red Bay to have the coach serviced - lots of small issues. So, Saturday morning we headed West to Chattanooga on our way to Red Bay. We stopped for the night at the Chattanooga North KOA - not recommended - and had a good dinner - with drinks for a change - at The Outback Steakhouse! Sunday morning, we were on the road by 8:00 am (7:00 am central time) and rolled into Red Bay at noon (central time). we got one of the last open spots in the campground and gave them our list of issues to be dealt with. We got the coach situated, then it was off to Jack's -Suzanne's favorite burger joint - for lunch.

This afternoon, we will watch the football games and get ready to have the coach in the service bay by 7:00 am. As you can imagine, Suzanne will still be in bed! Until the next post, Cheers!

John, Suz and Dixie the Wonderdog