Dec 19th

Another frigid morning today north of the new Arctic Circle in Kentucky. It's Monday so I scoped out a tire place and we headed there to get our flat fixed. Good news: they can take me right away. Bad news: can't fix the hole because it's too close to the sidewall. Oh, other good news: have a replacement in stock and it only cost $106! That's a bargain even with the exchange rate as I replaced a trailer tire along with the truck spare before we left and it was $180 CDN. So, we got that done, installed back on the trailer and hit the highway by 10 am. We actually got up early cuz we unknowingly crossed into the central time zone yesterday and gained an hour.

The temp warmed up to -2 by noon and we were hoping to see a number, any number, without a minus sign in front of it today! The other really odd thing that happened was that we saw a UFO. I thought that mainly happened way further south and west in Roswell NM but, sure enough, there it was. It looked like a big orange burning ball that hung in the sky right overhead at around noon today. We talked to a local about it and he said they knew all about it and called it the Sun!

Anyway, things were looking up all day and not just at the sun either. No new mechanical problems, new tire worked great, roof glacier was finally starting to recede due to our personal global warming, and the temperature peaked at 2! We decided it was time to actually spend the night in the rig so we found a place just south of Memphis and set up. Some of the canned food that had been on the RV was actually frozen so it's good timing to get things thawed out!

Sam really wanted to see Graceland tomorrow but we had an incident not unlike Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Vacation movie where he gets to Wally World only to be told by John Candy's character "Sorry folks, the park's closed. Moose out front should have told you!" So, we'll continue south tomorrow with a forecast of possible double positive digits as we head further south in Mississippi.

As for tonight, we got the rig set up, heaters going, furnace fired up for the first time, Sam made dinner and we're now sitting by the fire getting ready to watch some newly downloaded Netflix movie as soon as I finish this blog post.

Thanks to all of you that have been in touch. We're over the bad stuff and I'm gonna try and go the whole day tomorrow without a parka!