Free at Last, Free at Last...

For the first time since 1991 we are free of that habit forming blight - the RV, temporarily at least. Last week, our little convoy set off to the land of the newly-weds and nearly-deads to turn our RVs in to the grim raper, Lazy Days. With Black Bess hauling the Saturn Vue and Marian bringing up the rear (which she still does very nicely) in White Rabbit. An uneventful 1150 miles, except for the frenetic traffic from Chattanooga on south and approximately 100 miles of road works set out for our entertainment.
We arrived at Lazy Days on Friday, in the nick of time for a life threatening calorie infusion at the Crown Club luncheon, having dumped the vehicles at the Check-in. By the time we were thrown out of the Crown Club, the Signature had been parked at a delivery site where we were to perform the last rites, and the Vue was parked alongside. "Where is the little one?" we naively asked. Turned out that it had already been through the shave and shampoo ritual and was strutting its stuff among the other used RVs, almost crying out "Choose me, choose me!" Got to hand it to Lazy days when it comes to inventory turns effort.
After signing a couple of papers and sinking a few mud slides at cocktail time, we spent our last evening in Ol' Faithful. It is nothing short of amazing, that having essentially stripped the coach bare in Indiana, we were still finding odd items here and there that had escaped notice. By mid-morning on Saturday however, everything had been tossed into the Vue which, by this juncture, had taken on the air of a garbage skow and it was finally time to cut the umbilical. After five years and 50+ thousand miles, I had to pry Marian from the coach where she appeared to be embarking on some close encounters of an uncertain kind.
I finally got her attention by pointing to a shiny new coach and assured her "...those nice people in Oregon were building one just like that, especially for her..." That did the trick - fickle as she is, Black Bess was cursorily abandoned as the numerous, and largely useless features of her new love were explored and adored. And, just imagine, all it took to bring about this metamorphosis was to open my billfold and utter the magic phrase "Help yourself". Seems to work every time.
Black Bess meanwhile, heaved a final sigh of relief and blissfully looked forward to her first wash in five years.