Annual chores

After my New Mexico trip, I put my Minnie back in the side yard until my next camping trip. Or so I thought. Just a few weeks after I got home, I got the notification my license was due and I had to have an emissions test ... again! So, I had to take her out and down to the testing station. She passed, of course.

Instead of immediately putting Minnie back in storage, I decided it was a good time to get the new tires I was planning on this year. The old tires are from 2012, and that's about the limit for tires in the hot desert. They still had lots of tread, but the rubber gets old, and I didn't want to be driving down a freeway at 62MPH and have one suddenly fail. So I took it to Discount Tire and asked for the $1200 set of six. They promised to have them in the shop the next day and put on and ready for me to pick up by the end of the day.

However, after driving past the shop twice during the day, and still finding my Minnie sitting in the back lot where I had left her, I called to ask if they were going to have it ready. That's when they realized the tires never came in, and they had failed on their promise. The asked if they could put $1600 Bridgestones on instead, at no additional cost to me. Umm, YES!! So that's what she got.

I'm making my fall plans to head east about the middle of September to Alabama, where I will join Wendy and Denny's friends and family to help them celebrate their Golden Anniversary. It's hard to believe it was 50 years ago that they got married so Wendy would not have to move away from her beloved when her dad changed jobs.

After the celebration, I'm going to drive back to Mississippi and start the Natchez Trace Parkway again. But this time, I plan to drive the entire 444 miles all the way from Natchez to Nashville, while camping and sightseeing along the way.