SW USA 2024: The Canadian Coddiwomplers*
*Coddiwomple: “to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination.
HANGIN’ WITH THE HANKS, Sevierville, Tennessee.
Kyle and Renee Hanks are a fun young couple who have been on the road for 6+ years. They are ER nurses and decided to become travel nurses working short term (12 week contracts) at different hospitals in the USA. Thinking the best way to do Travel Nursing was by RVing. They bought an RV and truck and, never having RV’d before, they became “New Bees”.
They started a YouTube channel of their adventures for family/friends and for fun. It's called
“HappilyEverHanks”: https://www.youtube.com/@HappilyEverHanks.
Currently they are on their way to an astounding 300,000 followers/viewers and are a popular weekly watch.
Earlier this year the Hanks announced a “meet-up” that would be held in Tennessee. We debated signing up and weeks went by. They were quickly sold out. We placed ourselves on the waiting list. Finally we decided why not and discovered we got the last spot - there must have been a cancellation. So we committed and booked the camp along with 75 other rigs/RV ‘hanksters’ and made our way to the event. About 200 folks.
Some night time activities included smores.
The campground itself is owned by a large corporation (Sun Outdoors). We didn’t get off to a good start. The first thing that happened was we showed up early and they wanted $30 extra to check in early (12:00 instead of 2:00). Jerry could rant about that - it's not like they were doing anything in the three hours between check-out and check-in like cleaning-up. So we left and went to the Apple Barn and probably spent $100. 👅Na! Na! The employees were not very friendly and we just didn’t think of or rate the place very highly…but we were there for the event which was sooo much fun.
My thoughts about the campground run by Sun Outdoors Corp.
The Hanks are such genuine fun people. We were a few days early so we joined informal evening campfires with those attending. The weekend progressed with group meals, seminars, campfires, themed dress-ups, seminars, karaoke, and prize raffles. We went to a dress-up dinner where you were supposed to dress as a pop star. I went as Willie Nelson with my guitar and Elizabeth was Mama Cass. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a wig to braid my hair and we didn’t take pictures of ourselves. We did have fun and have some shots of other important musical folks.
The next night it was dress as a pop star or celebrity.
Dress-up ABBA
Me trying to be someone I'm not
We made some new friends, met a couple from the other meet-up we went to (the April eclipse in Texas) and generally had a good time.
And then it was time to head home…
We had nine days to get to Guelph for our target homecoming day of June 20, 2024. We couldn't follow our 3/3/3 rule but we still managed to stay for two days in most places. Our drive back took us through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York states. There were lots of things along the way that would have liked to check out but we did have a schedule to keep. We might just have to do the East Coast one day. We stayed in Hungry Mother State Park, a super place with a bike trail; a few KOAs (meh); and finally at a lovely park in Springwater called Holiday Hills Campground.
This cool park also has many cabins built by the CCC. They can be rented for a stay in Hungry Mother State Park.
My niece Debbie and her husband Tom have a place on Honeoye Lake - just a 20 minute drive from our campground. We spent two great days visiting with them, it had been a long time. Then our final trek was across the border and home to Guelph. Amie, our daughter is such a wonderful person, she picked up our grocery order, had a spot saved for the trailer in front of the house and even took time to help us unload.
On the way home we discovered a serious problem with the floor in the slide-out. We stopped in at a very reputable RV Dealer in Grimsby to see about getting this problem fixed. Of course they said why not trade in your trailer for a new one. Well that caused us to do some serious thinking but we finally decided to get the repair done and see how it goes. We just dropped Too off for her surgery yesterday.
"Th Th Th That's all Folks." Until we get Miss Adventure Too in tip-top shape we won't be RVing for now, but maybe in the Fall ... who knows?
I hope you have enjoyed following our travels this year. Please let us know, we'd like that.
Take care all.
Love from,
Jerry, Elizabeth, Misty 😢 (posthumously), FJ (Flat Jesus), the Guys, Miss Adventure Too 🤕 and Clifford the Big Red Truck
The Big Picture:
Approximately 13,000 km, 42 stops and 151 nights
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