Saturday, February 1, 2020           Visit to Sidney's and Mom's house

As planned, we left Atlanta Saturday and had a smooth 3-hour trip. We arrived at my brother's house in the afternoon. Sidney's house is on a state highway in the small rural town of West Green. His front yard was big enough for us to pull the RV off the road, and right into his front yard—except for his mailbox being slightly in the way of one of our slide-outs being able to expand fully. Sidney being most accommodating, pulled the mailbox straight out of the ground and heaved it several feet back towards the house. "There. The mail doesn't come tomorrow anyway." Wow. Thanks, Sidney! Problem solved! For now, at least.

Since Sidney's house is not equipped to be a campsite, we planned to "boon-dock," which in the RV world means to run your RV independently of any outside utility connections and rely on your propane tanks, batteries and generator. Upon trying to fire up the generator for our night's heat, we ran into trouble and couldn't get the generator to stay on. It would start but then die out. Sidney called a friend, and a couple of "engine guys" were there within a few minutes. The friend was able to tell us our generator was sending us a Morse code of sorts by the blinking light on the side. "Code 36", he says, which turns out to be a general code for a multitude of things that could be wrong. That was the extent of his help for the evening—he was late for dinner. We would have no heat from the generator, and the temperature would dip to 38 degrees in the night. Mom provided a space heater, and we were back in business. More troubleshooting on the generator will need to be done later down the road.

Mom cooked a delicious dinner, and we slept well—I guess city life had well prepared us for the cars flying down the highway a few feet from our heads.

Sunday, February 2

The next morning mom cooked a delicious breakfast, and we prepared to say our goodbyes. Sidney gave Craig a ukulele. It was a great gift and Craig plans to learn how to play! Mom was excited and said she's looking forward to seeing videos of Craig sitting by the fire playing Home on the Range. That scene makes me grin.

We said our goodbyes and were headed for Laura S. Walker State Park in Waycross, GA, only about 50 miles down the road!