Queen of the road
“I’ve always said, if you treat yourself like a queen, you’ll attract a king.”
And just like that, our princess became a queen.
The 340 mile drive from Chattanooga to Memphis was uneventful. 5:00 AM wakeup call. RV packed and ready to roll by 6:00. Chloe immediately back to sleep for the 6 hour drive.
Chloe has become one with the RV. She’s always loved hanging out in her little home away from home. But now, she even loves driving in it. She nestles herself into her bed between our seats and lulls herself to sleep in tune with the hum and vibrations of the diesel engine.
She’ll stir when we slow down.
She’ll turn over when she hears the turn signal.
And she’ll brace herself, when she senses the lead of mom’s foot hit the pedal.
With the advantage of a 1 hour time difference, we arrived at the Graceland RV Park & Campground at 11:00 AM. As the temperature was already in the nineties and heading to 100, we were thrilled to pull into our site on 46 Hound Dog Way to find a bit of shade.
A quick light lunch and then we were off exploring. Fortunate to be in the adjacent campground, we simply had to walk across the Graceland parking lot to get to the ticket office. At 100 degrees. In the middle of the day. On freshly re-surfaced asphalt. I think our tennis shoes began to melt.
As we saw the looooong lines for the actual Graceland Mansion Tour, we realized that we arrived at the wrong time of day. So we opted out. Instead, we chose the “Elvis Presley’s Memphis” Tour. Plenty of indoor exhibits in air conditioning. We were happy.
The self-guided tour was in his “Memphis Entertainment Complex”, which includes various museums and exhibits dedicated to Elvis’ career as an entertainer, his life in the army, his custom jets and his automobile collection.
Lisa was particularly fond of this one …
Now, the prior day, that was a different story. Things did not go as smoothly. There were lots of lessons learned. Things like …
Finding a fuel station, with diesel, with enough space to maneuver the RV and the tow vehicle takes a bit of planning.
And things like … don’t blindly trust Waze to take you on shortcuts to avoid traffic. I’m not sure how this would have worked out getting our 12’ foot high rig through a 6’6” tunnel. This was close to being very ugly.
Did I mention that you can’t drive in reverse with a “four down” flat tow? Yes, turning around just before entering that tunnel was very interesting.
A few other glitches with the TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring System) on the RV and the RVI Brake Buddy on the Jeep were resolved after we stopped for some trouble-shooting. The 2 hour delay through Atlanta only added insult to injury. Note to self: avoid Atlanta if at all possible on future road trips.
But our biggest panic on our Day 1 drive from Bluffton to Racoon Mountain RV Park in Chattanooga was when our MBUX system decided that we had heard enough “entertainment”. MBUX (or the Mercedes Benz User Experience) is the brains of all things entertainment in the cab.
After some still undetermined sequence of events, we no longer had Satellite Radio. Or AM/FM radio. Or streaming through USB or wireless from a phone. Nothing. No sounds of entertainment whatsoever. Lisa and I looked at each other with sheer panic as we sweated over how we would “entertain” each other during the drives of the next 46 days!
Fortunately, after a couple of hours - and a fair amount of research on the internet - I was able to resolve the issue. Long after I went deep into the settings, tweaking this and adjusting that, growing more frustrated by the minute … I finally took Lisa’s advice. I rebooted the system. And it worked.
Lisa one, Scott zero.
Today, we will be driving from Memphis, TN to Oklahoma CIty, OK for our third campground of the journey. It should be about an 8 hour trip and our plan is to take a breather and stay 2nights.
Stay tuned, more to come. In the meantime …
