October in the Nashville Area

We left our overnight parking spot at Yazoo at 1:45 on Saturday October 8 with 95,209.3 miles on Acey, 197,214 on Thor. We arrived at Harpeth River Bridge Campground in Ashland City about 2:45 and got set up. We have water and electric hookups, and the dump station is just across the driveway from our site. The small campground has a lake and the river as well. The fall colors are so pretty this year!

We did a couple of loads of laundry and Chris came over with Linda’s new computer and got everything transferred from the old one.

Sunday morning, we went to Stephens Valley Church – it was great to be there in person! For 8 weeks we won’t be Zooming for Sunday School or worshipping with our church via You Tube; we will attend in person! Our class is still studying the book of Acts, finishing up chapter 15 and onto 16. Paul plans to re-visit the churches on his second missionary journey, meets up with Timothy and covers new territory as well. Pastor Heeth preached this morning; Pastor Jim is on vacation. The church is focusing in the “I am” passages in scripture, today’s sermon – The Good Shepherd (service, sermon only, bulletin) Jesus IS our good shepherd! He knows us intimately, and still loves us unconditionally! That’s pretty amazing 🙂

After church, we had lunch at PDK Southern Kitchen with Chris and Eve and her friend Robert. We stopped by Chris’ place to drop off our bicycles and the bike rack and then stopped by our storage unit to pick up a few things.

We zoomed with family in the evening!

Not many showed up for the Family Zoom today – Ted in Oregon, Linda & Jim and Chris in Tennessee, Bill & Charlene in California and Eve, also in Tennessee.

Monday Jim met Chris at a shop where he dropped off Chuck’s 2008 CRV for repair. Chuck is in the UK for a year and Chris picked up his car to use until his Tesla comes in – hopefully in January. Chris will sell the CRV when he gets the Tesla – he and Chuck have it all worked out! Chris had been driving our Nissan Rogue which we need back while we are in town. We got titles, tags and insurance all worked out and by that time, the CRV was ready for pick up – a full day of driving around Nashville and Dickson!

Wednesday, Jim went out to the papermill in Waverly – back to work just for one day! Linda went thru the mail and looked into insurance claims. Always paperwork to attend to! There was a thunderstorm in the afternoon which got quite severe; when the rain let up finally, Linda headed out for the Wednesday evening dinner and service at church. Jim would be heading back to Acey when he finished at the papermill. Linda arrived at the church to find the parking lot nearly empty, and the lights were out. Pastor Jim was heading to his car with take-out dinner and said there’s no service tonight, the power is out from the storm! So, she got some food too and headed back to Acey and had a tasty dinner with Jim when he got home.

On Thursday, Linda stayed at Acey to do laundry and figure out insurance claims; Jim went to our wooded lot in Pegram to get started on clearing out brush and hoped to cut some trees down. However, the chainsaw would not cooperate! Linda fixed lunch and, after getting the Rogue jump started, met Jim at the lot with lunch. Jim continued working at the lot for a while and Linda dropped off the chainsaw for repair. Back to the campground, there are several egrets hanging around in the lake – and a blue heron too!

One of our neighbors at the campground had made a HUGE batch of gumbo and didn’t have room in their fridge for the leftovers – so she gave us enough for a few meals! It was pretty tasty!

Friday, October 14, after jump-starting the Rogue and dumping the holding tanks, we left Harpeth River Bridge Campground at 1:45 with 95,244 miles on Acey and 107,774 on Thor. Jim drove Acey (towing Thor) to Montgomery Bell State Park Campground, arriving about 3:00, and Linda drove the Rogue, stopping to get a new battery. After we got settled in, we went to Yazoo ‘cause its Friday again!

The weather was a bit cool, and we sat on the patio. We met Oscar the dachshund, he was quite vocal – in a fun way!

On the way home, our creator God gave us a spectacular show as the sun set!

We are not going to go into a lot of detail during our stay in the Nashville area – we are working on getting our wooded lot cleared, preparing to have a driveway put in and hope to get the septic tank in too before we head to Florida for the winter on December 1. We are getting quotes on windows and building materials – and have a building plan already! We hope to be back in the Nashville area to begin building in April 2023. It’s a bit frustrating that we can only stay 14 days at a time at Montgomery Bell and have to be out for 3 days before we come back, and the last 3 weekends in November are fully booked! (It’s the closest campground to our lot.) So, after November 11, we’ll stay in Goodlettsville at Grand Ole RV Resort till we leave for Florida. We rented a little house that was put at the front of our lot!

We also rented a backhoe and Jim is working on clearing out the small trees and scrub.

There is a lot if clearing to do, but it’s looking better all the time! Here are some views from the street to show our progress.

We bought the property in late 2017
Applied for a driveway permit in early 2020.
Jim began cutting down smaller trees and clearing the lot Oct 13 — photo taken October 15, 2022
October 26
October 29

Looking toward the street from our future home site… Thor (the Jeep) is circled.

October 15
October 19
October 26 – oops, that’s actually the Rogue that is circled
October 29

There is still a lot if clearing to do, but it’s looking better all the time!

Driving around the area, the fall colors have been quite spectacular this year; as with the sunset, photos hardly do justice to God’s handiwork!

We had visited Montgomery Bell State Park many times over the years we lived in Nashville. One of our first visits was a campout with the Cub Scouts back in 1997. Here’s Chuck messing with the fire!

Jim’s Uncle Tom liked to stay at the lodge when he visited here.

Georganne and Tom – February 2003

And we had a big celebration at the lodge when Mom C turned 90 in 2010

The lodge sits on the banks of Lake Acorn, one of 3 lakes in the park and the trees by the lake were so colorful!

These two beauties stood guard over the parking lot

It’s been good to be back in the Nashville area and we hope to spend some time with family and friends. But the main mission is to get moving on clearing the property and getting our “ducks in a row” so we can build when we return in April!

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7 thoughts on “October in the Nashville Area”

  1. How fun to read this and to see/read about Montgomery Bell State Park. We stayed there, too, when visiting. And then what a surprise to see photos from that era–a group picture that we’re in from Georgeanne’s bash. Your progress at the home site is impressive.

    1. I try to keep the blog interesting – and old photos/memories do that 🙂 I had forgotten we had TWO celebrations for Georganne’s 90th; one at her church during her birthday week, which was Labor Day weekend… and the one you guys came to in October. It was fun planning those events and we sure enjoyed having such a great turnout!

      We are enjoying working on this new home project – looking at windows, deciding if we want brick or maybe Hardie board, maybe a metal roof – so many things to decide on! Jim is making good progress on removing the small trees and will work on the bigger trees soon. We left way too many trees in the yard at our last house. We don’t plan to cut them ALL down, but there sure are a lot to deal with! A couple of big ones by the road need trimming – hopefully we can find our tree pruner in storage. If it’s not in the vicinity of the door, we may just have to get another one! I had to buy a pair of dress shoes recently — the wardrobe my shoes are in is about 5 feet into the storage unit – – and not easily accessible! We did a pretty good job figuring out what we would need while on the road, and have not had to buy but a few duplicates of what we know is in storage… We need to get built and get the storage unit emptied!!

  2. What great access you have to your photo album. The sunset was lovely, too. God bless your new home. Looks like you’ll be working on it from the ground up!

    1. I was able to scan a few old photos before we headed out in 2020, MANY more in storage… it is fun to include old photos now and then! We had a similar build on our home on Hallows Drive – this house won’t be as big, but a similar floor plan to the main level of that house.

  3. The colors are amazing!
    Wish we could come and help but it is so far away. Some day we will come and visit, maybe you will still need help then.
    Miss you guys!
    Take care!
    Kim & Lee

    1. Its been delightful to drive around and see the brilliant fall colors! We come back in April, and it will be a long process building our new place! Middle Tennessee is beautiful in the Spring too! Ya’ll come!! 🙂

  4. Cant wait to watch the progress on your new homestead. Glad you are back in Nashville for awhile.
    Boy that picture of Georganne and Tom….no missing they are brother and sister! Stay safe everyone

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