Posts featuring the coach.
We drove our coach 139 miles, about 2 hours of driving, from Memphis, Tennessee to Red Bay, Alabama.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading southeast:
An interactive map:
“Welcome to Mississippi” sign (just passing through):
Building transportation:
Our coach at a truck stop for lunch:
Menu:
Breakfast for lunch:
River:
“Welcome to Sweet Home Alabama” sign:
Exit to Red Bay:
Hotel Red Bay:
Our destination, Red Bay Acres RV Resort:
General Store:
Heading to our site:
Our site (#31):
Under the kitchen sink is a cupboard with a big slide-out drawer, where we keep garbage and recycling bins, plus dish cleaning supplies and more.
At the top of this cupboard is an LED, and a switch that turns on the light when the cupboard is opened.
However, in our coach the cover of the light was missing. I’m not sure if it’s always been missing, or it was knocked off without our noticing early in our ownership. I only discovered the loss when something knocked the bulb out into the garbage. Fortunately, I noticed that and fished it out before taking out the garbage:
Anyway, to avoid that happening again, I wanted to order a replacement cover for the light. I found the light in the online Tiffin parts store, part number 5032143, “LIGHT WARDROBE BROWN LED”. Of course, they don’t sell just the cover, but the whole unit was pretty cheap:
I didn’t need to replace the light, so I just pried off the cover, and kept the remainder as a spare part:
The old light with the new cover:
Much better!
We stayed at Graceland RV Park & Campground in Memphis, Tennessee. (Campground Reviews listing.)
An RV park right next to the museum for Elvis Presley’s Graceland.
Dates:
Weather:
Noise:
Site:
Utilities:
Internet (in usage priority order):
Amenities:
Our review on Campground Reviews:
Basic park on Graceland’s doorstep
This was a reasonably basic, no-frills RV park close to Graceland and the associated museum exhibits, which was our main reason for coming to Memphis. It was tough to get a reservation, not because they were full, but because it was impossible to get anyone to answer the phone. It took three days of calling multiple times a day before I reached them. Upon arrival, the office was closed (in the middle of the day), so we went through the extremely old-school check-in process of filling out a carbonless paper form and submitting our payment information through the “night” slot before going to our assigned site. A bit later, we noticed the office was open, so we went in and finished the registration process. It was a little confusing, but we got there in the end. Being able to walk over to Graceland made it all worthwhile. Despite being in the middle of the city, we found it to be pretty quiet at night. We camped at Graceland RV Park & Campground in a Motorhome.
Tip for Other Campers: Definitely plan on spending half a day in Graceland in order to see all the exhibits. Marlowe’s is like a BBQ version of Hard Rock Café, but with all-Elvis swag.
Campground map:
An interactive map:
Our site:
Utilities:
The sewer was a little too recessed, so I used a handy new extension for the first time. And the water faucet was in an irrigation valve box, which was rather unusual:
Other sites:
The park emptied out quite a bit the next morning (a Monday):
Office/store:
Bathrooms:
Picnic shelter and tenter cooking area:
Closed pool:
Gate to the parking lot for Graceland:
A basic but decent RV park, super-convenient to Graceland, and only minutes to downtown Memphis. We’d be happy to stay here again, and probably will, since we didn’t have time to explore downtown and the many other attractions.
Food bonus:
We went to Marlowe’s Ribs and Restaurant for an Elvis-themed dinner:
Jenn had ribs:
I had baked potatoes with pulled pork:
Our first time trying fried green tomatoes (we liked them):
Crispy Crème Banana Foster Sundae for dessert:
A swag shop in the restaurant:
Tasty food, and I’m sure we didn’t need those years it knocked off our lives.
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 196 miles from Hot Springs, Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee.
We drove our coach 196 miles, about 3 hours of driving, from Hot Springs, Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading east:
An interactive map:
Leaving the RV park:
Bubba’s, where we got tasty food during our stay:
An uncomfortably narrow lane due to roadworks:
A break at some truck parking:
I had fun watching traffic cameras to spot us driving by; yes, that’s our coach and truck in the right lane at the bottom:
Another traffic camera showing us:
And another one, showing us from the other direction:
Another snapshot:
Another stop at truck parking:
A snapshot:
A bridge over the Mississippi River into Tennessee; a big milestone for us, crossing this major river for the first time:
Dissapointingly, there was no sign marking the occasion. Probably due to roadworks (with uncomfortably narrow lanes again):
Our destination, Graceland RV Park:
The office:
Our site before parking:
Sometimes my Modification Monday posts are about significant projects, sometimes they’re a simple addition. Today is one of the latter.
On travel days we often have snack packaging or other garbage we want to throw away while driving down the road. So we added a small garbage bin (like this one on Amazon), hanging off the back of the driver chair:
Easily reachable from the passenger chair, and doesn’t get in the way of the slide-out when it’s in:
(It’s hanging off the strap for a lumbar cushion… which I could also cover in one of these Modification Monday posts. But it could easily be attached to the pocket on the back of the chair instead.)
A simple but satisfactory solution.
We stayed at Catherine’s Landing in Hot Springs, Arkansas. (Campground Reviews listing.)
A pleasant resort near Hot Springs National Park and Garvan Woodland Gardens.
Dates:
Weather:
Noise:
Site:
Utilities:
Internet (in usage priority order):
Amenities:
Our review on Campground Reviews:
Lovely down by the water
This is a large, well-maintained campground near everything Hot Springs has to offer. We went for one of the Executive back-in sites by the water and loved watching the peaceful scenery. Since it was the off-season, most of the amenities were closed, so $110/night seems a bit much, but the view and serenity were worth it. Our site was perfectly level, which you expect with a concrete pad. We’d definitely stay here again. We camped at Catherine’s Landing in a Motorhome.
Tip for Other Campers: Bubba’s Catfish was really good and just up the road.
Campground map:
An interactive map:
Our site:
Utilities (before hooking up the sewer, but you can see the sewer cap immediately opposite the wet bay):
The Power Watchdog had the red light that indicated that the power neutral was missing, which is apparently not a fatal problem (since the dog face wasn’t red), but not ideal:
The site was perfectly level:
After visiting Hot Springs National Park, we added its sticker; the last National Park of 2023:
Ouachita River / Lake Catherine:
Office:
The pool was closed:
Rental boat docks; they removed the pontoon boats for the winter during our stay:
A guest’s pontoon boat:
Ouachita River / Lake Catherine:
Morning mist:
The motorhome that was next to us when we arrived made an annoying compressor noise every few minutes; we were glad when they left about halfway through our stay:
Other sites:
A nice resort; we’d be happy to stay here again.
Bonus: some food samples from our stay in Hot Springs.
We enjoyed some Chinese delivery on our first night:
And some takeout from Bubba’s Catfish and Seafood on another night:
And David’s Burgers:
A nice touch: they bring around bowls of tasty fresh fries while waiting for the ordered food:
A decent burger:
Another nice bonus, free ice cream delivered to the table:
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 128 miles from Russellville, Arkansas to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
We drove our coach 128 miles, about 2 hours of driving, from Russellville, Arkansas to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading east then south then west:
An interactive map of our route:
We had planned to take a more direct but curvier highway route, below, but it was raining heavily, so opted for the slightly longer but safer Interstate route, above:
Rain off the slide topper:
A bit flooded next to the wet bay:
After bringing in the slides, there were a bunch of leaves on the topper:
Our truck hooked up to our coach; the tow bar lit up:
Lake:
We saw a new icon on the Mobileye guidance system, which I had to look up; a little yellow eyeball, indicating that the device had low visibility:
Unsurprising, since it was rather rainy and foggy:
The name “Toad Suck” amuses us:
A break at some truck parking:
Breathe in:
Fuel stop:
A stop we regretted, as we didn’t get the advertised fuel discount, and the pump limited us to 35 gallons, so we did three transactions:
I-30:
Overpass:
Our destination:
Our coach about to back in to our site:
