Steve’s Retirement Trip to Tennessee June/July 2024: Part 1: Off We Go!
Lake Oconee KOA, Greensburg, GA to Sasquatch Farm, South Pittsburg, TN
June 28-29
Lake Oconee KOA - Site 31
With much anticipation, Steve’s last day of work was Thursday, June 20, 2024. He began his retirement with a week of camping prep for our trip to Appalachia and adventures in Tennessee. We left on his 62nd birthday, but maybe didn’t spend the day *exactly* how he planned.
Our adventure started by finding out the day before that our beloved pet sitter who had been planning to stay with our pup had been hospitalized, so we had to pivot and take the pups with us. This meant bringing two cars (which ended up being helpful) and packing up dog supplies at the last minute to add to our travels. I have to say, the dogs were excited to get to go with us for the first time this year!
We set off around 10 am on Steve’s birthday, heading out for a 4 hour drive to the Lake Oconee KOA (which we hadn’t been to), as a pit stop on the way to South Pittsburgh, TN, which is about 9 hours away.
About 30 minutes into our drive, as we got on I-26, we came across a slow down and people moving over from the left lane - there was a piece of plastic billowing from the left-hand side. My car made it through, but as I looked in the rear-view mirror, I saw the plastic stretch out and envelope Steve’s truck AND the 40’ camper!!! He couldn’t see and it was the hugest piece of plastic I have EVER seen. It flowed up around the cab and around the camper. We were on a bridge, so we couldn’t just get over. It slid over the top of the truck and he could see again, but we had to pull over quickly! We were able to maneuver to the right lane and pull over as we got off the bridge. Auntie ran back to help him remove the plastic, which, as it was removed, we realized was THE BIGGEST PIECE OF PLASTIC IN THE UNIVERSE. It encircled the cab of the truck, the ENTIRE 40’ camper, both axels and the bike rack in the back! We were SO lucky we were able to pull over and get it off before real damage could ensue. We counted that as #1.
We continued on our journey and as we got 2 hours further, toward Columbia, there was a sudden slow-down. Cars were veering left and right with abandon. Steve had to get over a lane suddenly and then we realized there were HUGE metal pieces (12 feet long, 1 foot wide) in the middle of the road. About 1/2 mile down, we saw a man with a trailer pulled over with the same items on the back of it, assessing the damage. WOW. Count #2 of getting lucky.
Continuing on, anticipating an arrival around 2 pm, we merged onto highway 20. Suddenly, Steve called me and said, “My low tire pressure warning sounded on my tire - on the truck.” I was a mile ahead of him and pulled over. He had pulled over and was assessing the situation. Grace, who was with him, stayed on the phone with me as he tried to figure out what was going on. The next thing I heard was, “There is a nail in my tire. I can see it.” UGH. Auntie quickly went to action and started looking up Firestone tire repair places *they have saved us before!*. We found one about 9 miles away that was open and wouldn’t mean we had to retrace our route. Steve got the tire pumped up enough to make it and we headed to Lexington, SC to fix his truck tire.
We arrived and found a place across the street to unhook Geraldine so he could take his truck in to have the tire repaired. We moved dogs from his car to mine for safety (because it was 110 degrees!) and kept my car running for comfort. I was able to scout out different routes out of the area, as it was a bit sketchy and convoluted. I also was able to scout out where he and I could get gas before hooking Geraldine back up. Thank goodness for having an extra carwith us…guess we got really lucky having 2 this time! God knew to help us for this travel! 3 hours later, his truck finally was fixed - the nail removed and patched - and we were ready to be on our way. Count #3….
We arrived at the KOA with no further incidents and were assigned a space we were not sure we would fit into… but we did. With a beautiful lake view. The staff was lovely and the place was HUGE - with two pools and lots of cabins and campsites. We had to drive through a sketchy RV storage area to get to our site, but the rest of it was lovely. A dog park *which Lila and Sam liked* was available and they were the only pups in it to play around that evening. And we had a deck that overlooked the lake. Pretty cool! Though the reviews we had seen were not great for this KOA, we actually really liked it - the only thing we felt was off was the sewage drain, which was higher than the actual site. But we weren’t dumping here, so no issue!
The only real issue we encountered was when we hooked up the water, which we typically do once we have at least one slide open. Due to a need to get the dogs to go to the bathroom, we hadn’t yet opened the slides. I noticed that there was water pouring out the bottom of the slide that is the living room and immediately, we thought something was REALLY, REALLY wrong. We opened the door and I stepped in and immediately realized the water was not from a leak under the camper, but IN the camper. The faucet on the sink had turned all the way around and somehow had flipped on and was literally pouring water ALL OVER the inside of the camper. I quickly hit the faucet to turn it off, but in that short 2 minutes, there was a LOT of water. We mopped up the water with beach towels which actually cleaned the sofa and the floor nicely - silver linings - and vowed NOT to turn the water on again until we had assessed the inside situation in the future! Count #4… thank goodness we were set up for the night!
After that, we spent a pleasant night with gorgeous stars and a very pleasant temperature. Whew! What a Day 1 of a trip!!!
Saturday, 6/29
Sasquatch Farm Site #17
We left Oconee first thing in the morning - we noted the water faucet outside the camper where one hooks up was leaking/dripping when we unhooked. We reported it to one of the staff driving around on golf carts and we had an IMMEDIATE response from the staff, who were again really awesome. We set out on our next 4 hours of travel to Sasquatch Farm RV park, which was to be our home for the week.
This part of the trip took us through Atlanta, GA and to say the traffic was miserable is an understatement. Steve was white-knuckled the whole way as we wound through stop and go traffic. On the other side of Atlanta we needed to stop for gas, and I saw that there was a Buc ee’s in Adairsville, GA. Grace and I had stopped at one in FL when we went for one of her school trips, so I thought it might be fun to stop on the way to Sasquatch Farm. This was a mistake! While the one in FL had parking for buses and campers and the like, the one in Adairsville does NOT have any such item. Also…it was lunchtime and the number of people at this Buc ee’s was PROLIFIC. We went inside to use the facilities and came out with our heads spinning at the crazy crowds! Steve and Grace didn’t even go in - they used the camper, which we had to park in a center lane on the road. No Sir. NEVER again with the camper!!!!
The highlights of the travel day in my car were frequent shouting out of song names when we would ask Kaety if she needed anything or what she was doing. She sat in back and colored THE ENTIRE trip, while listening to music on her phone with her headphones on. While we heard, “Bartender!” Or “Champagne Nights!” Or “All American Girl!” Throughout our trip, Steve and Grace were rocking out to Taylor Swift in his truck with the dogs. :).
As we pulled into South Pittsburgh, we were met with a HORRIFIC rain storm that made it hard to even see the road. We turned to head up the mountain toward Sasquatch Farm and drove up out of the rain to some BEAUTIFUL scenery. The road was a 20-30% grade, so it was STEEP. When we got to the top and headed down Brown Trace Rd to Sasquatch Farm, the shout outs became, “Deer!” And “Horse!” It was hilarious…and beautiful.
We arrived at Sasquatch Farm, which is basically at the end of 2.5 mile Brown Trace Rd. Upon arrival, we had yet another massive rain storm, so while I checked in, everyone else except Grace stayed dry in the vehicles. The lady at checkin in Piggy’s Store was super nice and the store was really cute. We headed into the park down the gravel road to our site, #17. We had a nice green patch next to our site, probably the largest in the park, which ended up being great for the dogs!
We backed up to forest that had trails to take us out to the “lake,” which was basically a big pond. But it was a great way to walk the dogs and since there were so few people there, we were able to go behind empty sites to small green fields and Lila had NO PROBLEM going to the bathroom. Hallelujah! The dogs were GREAT and got settled in right away.
We explored the amphitheater (very cool - wish they had had live music while we were there!) and noted the way each site was designed with a custom fire pit (it was FAR too hot for a fire, we never had one!) and custom sign with each site number on it. They did a nice job making the place feel cozy.
The bath houses were colorful trailers really set up for tent campers but with a full laundry room and nice swings to hang out in the small area.
One thing we DIDN’T realize was that where we were staying was in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TIMEZONE! All the activities we had planned in Chattanooga were on ET and South Pittsburgh/Orme are on CT. So we started doing calculations that night to determine what changes we needed to make to our schedules to accomodate the time differences. It all worked out, but was not something that was even on our radar!
Our first adventures were set for the next day, so we were happy to get some good sleep that night!
On to Retirement Trip Part 2!…
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