Today is our final day for this trip. We departed from Flat Rock, NC on time. The mechanics and Doug Porter, our driver, worked on the bus until about 2:30AM to get it running well enough to drive home. Doug never turned off the bus once it started again. Because of his long day/night, the company sent another driver to relieve him as we were nearing home. This saved him a couple of hours getting home. We cannot provide too much praise for Doug and the job he did for us. Incidentally, the bus was a very luxurious bus by Mercedes and was operated by Crown Charter from Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
One of our sore points was that I frequently chose to stop at Cracker Barrel restaurants during our travel days because they could handle our bus crowd very rapidly without any hassle. However, our people were about to revolt on me; so I relented to find other opportunities as we traveled. This is difficult, since we cannot plan far in advance because we don’t always know where we will be at a certain time. But, I would look ahead for places an hour out based on my GPS. This morning, one of our people suggested a place that he had used called the Athenaeum Cumberland Inn in Williamsburg, KY. So, we called and they would be able to handle us. The choice was an excellent one and everyone enjoyed it. The Cumberland Inn provides a way for Cumberland College to offer its students a positive work experience while promoting the college to visitors.
We used the setting of their grand staircase for our group photo.
As you can see, the facilities are very impressive. There are a couple more wings to this facility that are not shown.
We returned back home to Washington Heights at about 6:10 PM, a full hour earlier that our schedule.
All in all, this trip was a very successful trip with only the minor glitch of the bus breakdown to provide a bit of adventure. Even that was handled very well with only minor inconvenience. During our entire trip, we didn’t have any injuries or illnesses (other than minor things).
We had Rick and Janice Bowersox along to help us. Jan is a nurse and helps pass out medications, when needed, and patch people up. Rick helps me with the ministry side of our trip and leads the singing on board the bus. This, along with help from Nancy, really make my job easier and less stressful.
Based on my initial feedback, everyone was happy with this trip. There are always things that we can do different and we will take the comments to help with future planning.
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