#285c Riley's RV, Mayfield Kentucky

We saw the RV it was wonderful and did the transferring of documents and slept in the new RV the first night on the dealership lot

When we got to Riley’s it was probably about 1 in the afternoon. Our salesman's name was Russ and he had been very attentive. We spoke to him and his wife handled all the paperwork for us. We finished up all of that and the RV was ours. They provided us with electricity and water. By the time we kind of got settled in they were about ready to go home.

We moved over the essential stuff from our old rig to the new one as best we could for the evening. We parked our rig beside the new one with the entry doors facing each other to make the move as easy as possible.

India and loved the large refrigerator but looking back I think she had been rode hard and put up wet for a week or so

One of their technical guys walked us through the basics and we realized there was no hot water. The new rig uses an on-demand computer-controlled water heater. Eventually, he realized it was in winterizing mode so the water heater was on bypass. This was easy to take care of and then he showed us how to do auto-leveling and it was a pretty brief walkthrough in that that was about it.

I had let Bert out for a walk about and at some point, I wasn’t sure where he was. The guys were about to lock up the shop and I asked if I could look inside to make sure Bert wasn’t locked up all night. It was all clear and then I heard him outside crying the blues. He had found a small hole in the chain-link fence and was on the wrong side of it wondering what he had done. I could see him but had no idea where he had done this dumb thing. I’m looking at him but it's hard to reason with a scared cat. I drove down to the entrance and around past a convenience store to where I was on his side of the fence. When I got there he was gone. Now I’m frustrated and I just said I guess I’m done I hope you live. I got back to the RV and was going to tell India the sad news of the missing cat. I opened the door and he was sitting on her lap looking at me like what have you been up to. Whaah.

We nestled into the rig that night and we were quite pleased with our new toy and slept very peacefully.

The next morning around 10 I guess I got busy bringing multiple loads of stuff from the old rig to the new rig.

It seemed to me the only real way to do it is you put everything into black hefty bags and just bring it over and plop it in the middle of the floor for Miss India.

I started at the very back end and worked my way through the kitchen into the bathroom. That means everything has to go. Every salt and pepper shaker every single canned good. It was a big job and quite a lot to do. You put things in slowly but to remove it all in a few hours is a bear.

When we got the RV all empty we had to swap mattresses as we had a pretty new mattress. The MFG provides a goofy 3-inch thick queen. We had a serta king that is more like 14 inches so it needed to happen. The only way for it to work is to fold it into a curved position to get it into such tight quarters.

I felt like we needed to start and finish this process on Friday and pull out and go to the campground which was about 10 or 15 miles away.

They said if we wanted to, we could stay Friday night but I preferred to be at a campground so we can let the cat run around free.

The first day and our first week there were 20 black hefty bags piled on top of each other 6 ft high everywhere you looked. It just took time for India to slowly unpack and put things into the cabinets and so forth.

She made progress while I was emptying the RV. When that was done we had agreed to leave the RV at the end of the Riley lot out of the way. A driver would come in the next few days to pick up the old RV and take it to a salvage yard. We hooked up and headed to the campground. Because of the baggage of hitting the bridge under my belt, I was so terrified of my new toy. I went about 45 the whole way probably making everybody mad that was behind me. It was a rainy, foggy day and I just couldn't mess up. Is also just a two-lane road for 10 miles or so. The place we found is called Columbus Belmont State Park it was right on the Mississippi.

I wanted to go back one moment to when we were originally arriving in Mayfield to pick up the RV. We came in on a tiny road because I misread a turn in the road. We took the exit and there was one of these memorials that had a Confederate flag that was about a hundred feet wide by 50 ft tall. It was enormous. I said, my goodness I think you're making a statement of colored folks not welcomed here. Other people will say different but that's what it makes me think. That's what I would feel if I was a person of color.