A Relaxed Drive, a Slow Time, and a Little Bit on Our New Way of Living

(This was actually written a couple of weeks ago so there is even more catching up to do, but since I've been delinquent in my postings lately, I thought I'd finish this one and then move on.)

It's gently raining this morning here in the Hidden Valley R.V. Resort in Newville, WI.

“What?” you say! The last we heard you were in New York! How'd you get to Wisconsin?

That's what I stopped by to tell you so let me catch up on our travels.

We were in Glens Falls and Lake George, New York, for the Adirondack Balloon Festival and to visit Barb, Mike, and Pete, Mary's sister and her family. And we had a great time! We'll be back there, that's for sure, but good things have to come to an end and it was time to move on.

We left King Phillips Campground on Monday, September 24, and drove maybe seven miles before we stopped. No, there wasn't a problem. It was a planned stop. You see, I had a telephone call coming in from one of the people I mentor and I needed to have time for a conversation. So we pulled into a southbound rest area on the Adirondack Northway and, while I talked on the cell phone, Mary took a nice long walk around the parking lot.

That's the great thing about the work I am now doing as a LifeCoach for leadership, conflict situations, and ministry (and as a Mentor for some people in ministry). Since most of what I do is by telephone, usually in one-hour time blocks, I can stop and work from anywhere. So I did. After an hour of delightful and stimulating conversation about ministry and various situations, we got back on the road and drove down to the Albany area where I pulled into the parking lot of a Home Depot and took a second call for an hour of coaching with one of my clients.

After the second call was completed, we drove down I-88 to NY 17 and I-86, The Southern Tier Expressway, and headed west. We stopped for the night at Camp Bell, in Campbell, NY, and then got back on the road the next morning. It was a typical one-night stop. Pull into the campground, do a minimal set-up for comfort and efficiency, make supper, relax a little bit by reading, watching some tv, or playing a game, go to bed, sleep, get up, eat breakfast, stow everything in its place, and get back on the road. I don't think we even unhooked the car.

For those of you who aren't familiar with RV living, let me describe the routine of our life a little bit. We drive a Type A motorhome. That's a large box, in our case, 34' long, 8.5' wide, and 12' high. That box happens to have six wheels and a Ford V-10 engine to move it around. Behind that box, we tow a car, four wheels down. “Four wheels down” is RV'er jargon for all four of the wheels of the car are on the road and turning as we roll along. That means that the car is not on a trailer, with all its wheels off of the road. Nor is it on a tow dolly with two wheels off the road and two wheels turning. The car is attached to the motorhome with a tow bar, has an independent braking system, and absolutely CANNOT be backed up (backing up could damage the tow bar). That means that pull-through campsites save us a lot of time because we don't have to take time to disconnect the car at night and reconnect it the next morning.

When we stop at a campground, we pull into our campsite (or back into it AFTER we disconnect the car if we didn't get a pull-through), level the coach with the hydraulic jacks, extend the two slides which give us extra living space in the living room/kitchen and in the bedroom, plug into the electric connection, connect the water, turn the refrigerator back on, and start getting out some of the things we stowed away for driving that make life in an RV comfortable and homey. The next morning, if it's a one-night stand, we reverse the process and drive away.

If we're going to be in a campsite for a while, we also may put out the outdoor mat, extend the awning that gives us an exterior living room and set up the recliners for comfort! It's not a bad life at all … if you don't mind living in approximately 300 square feet (on a rainy day) with an outdoor living room that is limited only by the size of your campsite.

We were in Campbell, NY, for the night before that side trip. Let's get back on track. We left Camp Bell and Campbell, drove across the little bit of Pennsylvania that is between NY and Ohio, and found our way to Kenisee's Grand River Camp in Geneva, OH. We said when we pulled in that this looked like a nice place and that we might stay for more than one night. We did. We spent a second night.

Geneva, OH, is an interesting area. It is just off of Lake Erie and the lake has an effect on the agriculture. This is a grape-growing area and has a number of wineries producing their local version of a variety of wines. We visited a couple of wineries, tasted some good (and some not-so-good) wines, and bought a bottle of one we really liked. In the “old” days when we lived in a stick-and-bricks house with lots of room, I might have purchased several bottles, but now, when every inch counts, one bottle was the limit!

I did have a long conversation with one of the wine makers who just happened to be hanging out in the tasting room of his winery. The conversation was about, of all things, Wisconsin politics. He had been following the happenings on the WI political scene in recent days and was quite knowledgable. And we happened to agree so it was a quite enjoyable chat.

Geneva also is home to many covered bridges, some old, some quite new (usually replacing old ones). The ones we saw were all functional bridges, carrying traffic across creeks and rivers. One of them we saw was the “longest” covered bridge in the U.S. It required modern engineering to stretch the length it did over a river gorge.

Covered Bridge, Geneva, OH

Covered Bridge near Geneva, OH

Another Covered Bridge

 

We also drove along Lake Erie on a cold, damp, windy day. Despite the gloomy sound of that, it was pretty and delightful.

Lake Erie on a cold, windy day in September, 2012

Lake Erie Haze and Mist

We were trying to stay off of the toll roads of NY, PA, OH, and IN. They are expensive! And, like any Interstate highways, they are high speed. We were trying to travel with less cost and to travel slower, so we stayed on more local roads much of the trip home. The upshot of that was that we drove across northern OH and as Thursday, September 27 drew to a close we were looking for a camp in the vicinity of Pioneer, OH (on the far western edge of the state). We tried one campground that was WAY off the beaten path. No one was home! I called the number provided on the office door but no one answered. I left a message and waited. And waited. We thought about just picking a site and settling down for the night and trying to make contact with the owners or managers the next morning, but I didn't want to poach a site so we finally turned the engine on and headed back to the main road. I know it is near the end of the camping season and this was a mid-week night, but it's hard to keep people in a campground if no one is around to welcome them and give them a place to camp!

Fortunately, it wasn't too many miles before we found another campground and, this time, someone was home and we stopped for the night. The Lazy River “Resort” Campground was a place to stop for the night. I'm not sure that it deserves the name “resort” but its owner thought it did so that's what it was called. Suffice it to say, that this was the one campground we've encountered in all our travels that we simply would NOT use the restrooms at the site. We were glad that our little home on wheels has it's own private facilities for such purposes. Enough said!

Our next stop was a three day sojourn back at the Elkhart Campground. Obviously we liked the place since we went back and stayed longer. And I'll start from there the next time you hear from me.

Getting High ... Mountains and Balloons

After we got ourselves set up for staying a few days at King Phillips Campground, we decided that Thursday was a good day to go see our first hometown together: Saranac Lake, NY. It's been 28 years since we left there! Time flies so quickly when you're having fun!

It's a couple of hours drive from Glens Falls up into the heart of the Adirondack Mountains. Things have changed but not as much as one might think. We recognized places that look very much the same as they did when we lived there. But some places clearly showed the devastation of the aftermath of a hurricane that just sat over the North Country and poured buckets of rain last year. Roads were washed out and were still being rebuild this summer. Old Military Road, the "short-cut" around Lake Placid must have been one of those badly damaged since it was under total reconstruction.

For those of you who don't know Adirondack geography, Saranac Lake is only about 10 miles from Lake Placid, the site of the 1980 Winter Olympics. And, yes, we lived there during the Winter Olympics, we went to Olympic events (I think we were able to get tickets to two of them ... and one of them was NOT the epic hockey gold medal game), and Mary even worked for one of the subcontractors at the Olympics, serving as a Security Guard from Burns Security at the venue for the ski jumps. It was a fascinating time.

I moved to Saranac Lake in 1979 (33 years ago) when I became Director of Learning Resources for North Country Community College.  I'll never forget flying up there on July 5 for an interview and getting off the airplane at Adirondack Airport to snow on the ground (it had snowed on July 4) and thinking "What could I be getting myself into?" I moved up in August and Mary and I got married in October of '79 and she moved to town to join me.

As we drove into town, one of the first place we came to was NCCC and I just had to turn up the hill to see the campus. There were lots of changes but the LRC (now just the library) was still in the same place at the very top of the hill. I walked in the old building and looked straight ahead and the furniture was the same as I left it 28 years ago. The arrangement was the same except there was no longer a card catalog. Times HAVE changed in libraries.

One of the staff members, Phil Gallos, remembered me from the old days. In my day, he was a patron of the library but had now been working there as a library clerk for many years. I talked to him and one of the librarians for a while and then we headed on out to see other parts of town.

We drove down to the lake and looked around. It is as pretty as ever. Saranac Lake is named after Upper, Middle, and Lower Saranac Lakes that are all in the area around it, even though it actually sits on Lake Flower on the Saranac River.

Here's a picture of the area from the top of Mount Baker which overlooks the village. Mt. Baker also overlooked our home at 10 Forest Hill Ave. on Moody Pond. We could walk around the pond and hike up the mountain to get our exercise.

Saranac Lakes from the top of Mount Baker

I've probably violated somebody's copyright by downloading this picture from the Web, but it was just too good to pass up!

We drove past the house we lived in for five years. It's been repainted and reroofed and looked a lot different from the Adirondack Brown wood and green tin roof that we knew and loved, but still looks like the same delightful little cottage in which we spent the first five years of our married life. We also drove up to see if an old friend, Chris Brescia, might be home. He was and we reminisced for a while looking at his collection of railroad memorabilia which include such things as station light poles, block signal boxes, and track switches. These aren't little things. It's a good thing he has a big yard to put them in. Chris, it was great to see you again after all these years.

We were there for the 40th Anniversary of the Adirondack Balloon Festival
Opening Ceremonies in Glens Falls park

Laying out a balloon prior to inflation

Our exercise in nostalgia had to come to an end, so we turned the car back to the south east and returned to Lake George and Glens Falls to catch the opening of the Adirondack Balloon Festival. I've included some pictures below, some taken by Mary, some by me. They are taken from several event at the Balloon Festival. We went to the opening where a few balloons inflated and stood tethered. It was too windy to fly so we had to look at them right there in front of us on the ground. We also went to an event in Lake George called MoonGlow. This took place after dark and had balloons tethered in the park lighting themselves up with their propane burners. The morning after that, we were up at 4:30 AM (yes, that time really does exist on the clock, believe it or not!) so we could get to the Adirondack Airport for the 6 AM lift-off of some 100 balloons. Our campground also had a demonstration by a balloon pilot of a balloon and its basket. He talked about lots of technical details and provided a good look at a balloon. One of the most interesting things about the whole weekend was that you could get right to where the balloons were, stepping across the balloons being laid out prior to inflation, dodging the inflating balloons, standing right by them as they rose into the sky, and watching them up close and personal. We did not have the opportunity to fly in one but it was a whole lot of fun to see them.

MoonGlow, Lake George

MoonGlow in Lake George

Vendors tents at the Morning Lift-off

Inflation

Getting Ready to Fly

Up n the air

A bite of birthday cake?

Balloons come in all sorts of shapes, even barns with silos and 

cattle

Lots of Balloons in the Air at the morning lift-off

Up, up and away

What a mass ascension looks like

Bouncing Around Across New York

When I last wrote, we were leaving Evergreen Lake Park in Conneault, OH, to drive up I-90 to I-86 (NY's Southern Tier Expressway) and head east across New York State. There are parts of that trip that are amazingly beautiful, particularly the stretch that goes south of the Finger Lakes region in west central NY. There is some excellent road. There is one of the most beautiful rest areas we have ever seen on an Interstate Highway. And there is LOTS of construction on the route with the concrete safety barriers providing minimum width for the lanes through which you drive.

If you've never driven a larger vehicle, you may not be able to appreciate just how much stress there is in driving a 8.5' wide (that 102" if you're wondering) vehicle down a lane that feels like it is 10 feet wide. I don't know what width interstate highway lanes really are in construction areas. It's probably more like 12 feet wide (which is the standard width) but it sure seems narrower than that, probably because of the concrete safety barriers on either side). It requires full attention to the road all the time. I've gotten used to driving in construction zones, but there is still a lot going on and you don't want to make a mistake. That can get expensive! So concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.

Some of the interstate roads we drove in NY were rough, being bouncy and rocky at the same time. When the roads are particularly rough, you really have to be careful when opening cabinet doors. Things might have shifted during the bouncy ride and you may just have a coffee cup or a bottle of soap or ... well there are all sorts of things packed in these cabinets ... and one of them may just come falling toward your heard if you're not careful in opening the overhead compartment doors. It kind of reminds me of an airplanes overhead storage after an extraordinarily turbulent flight. You don't know what's going to come out of there when the door is opened!

So we bounced our way across the southern tier of counties in NY. Wouldn't the NY Thruway have been closer and faster? Maybe, but it would also have been a whole lot more expensive. The Thruway is a toll road and they make you pay for the privilege of beating yourself to death on its bumps and jars. It's an expensive toll way. And the gas at the toll road oases is sky high. So we elected to travel on NON-toll roads.

Tuesday night when we got to Binghamton, NY, we were supposed to head NE up I-88 to Albany. However, we needed to stop for the night and so we found a site that was listed in the Passport America member's guidebook. Passport America is a membership club for campers and RV owners that makes it possible to camp for up to 50% off of standard rates. That's usually restricted to Sun - Thurs. nights since weekends can fill up at many RV parks and they can charge full rate fees. You pay about $50 per year to belong and usually the savings pay for that in just a stop or two. I recommend them highly. It is one of the memberships we will keep for year after year.

Anyway, we were looking for Forest Lake Park in Windsor, NY, so we had to stay on I-86 toward New York City.  We found the exit for the park easily but the park itself was up (and down) in the hills. We threaded our way up and down narrow country roads for several miles, each road getting narrower than the last. Oh, did I fail to mention that by this time it was raining buckets?!

Finally we found our way to the campgrounds and everything was totally dark! There were several campers (trailers mostly) in the park but no lights. It looked like nobody was home. The office was locked. The main house looked empty. Now what do we do? Did I mention that it was pouring buckets? Thankfully a gentleman drove up at that moment. I thought he was going to be the owner or manager or caretaker. Nope. He was just a resident. However he did know the telephone number of the owner. The NEW owner. So I got the number, called the owner, got the wife in the family on the phone and she said they were over 10 minutes away from the park ... at their home. BUT her husband was driving home from his job (his job? The camp isn't his job?) and would be coming by there shortly and she'd give him a call.

Finally, a man in a truck pulls up. It's the owner. He takes me in the empty house which is going to be the office. It seems that he has owned the camp for every bit of two weeks. I may have been his first overnight customer. I'm not sure. He certainly did not know how to register me or give me a receipt or how to assign me to a campsite. Instead, he took me for a ride through the campground in his truck to look at potential sites. Did I mention that it was pouring buckets? The poorly maintained roads were potholed and covered with running water. The sites he showed me were saturated with water and it was standing in some places. I finally selected a campsite that looked like we were camped in the middle of a pond with water all around us (that's a slight exaggeration but only slight). Fortunately there was a good gravel base beneath the coat of water all over the ground.

To top it all off, the new owner had dropped the Passport America affiliation and they no longer gave the 50% discount. ARGGGH! After all that, we were paying full rate in a dump, in a FLOODED dump.

It rained most of the night. But the following day dawned clear and sunny and, as Mary said, the camp was really a pretty little place with lots of potential and ought to be a good campground someday IF the new owner worked at it. I sure hope he does. I wonder if he will. He seems to be a nice guy but he doesn't know the first thing about running a campground (and admits it) but thought that the land and the lake would be an excellent investment. And the camp came with it. That's not necessarily the best rational for becoming a campground owner.

The next morning, we managed to make our way out of the mud and the muck and the mire and get back on the road, traveling back roads to get to I-88 so we could head north. Our goal was King Phillips Campground in Lake George, NY, just a few miles north of Glens Falls, the home of the Adirondack Balloon Festival and Mary's sister Barb and her family. We were actually arriving at King Phillips CG a day earlier than we had planned but we didn't want to stay where we were at Forest Lake so I called ahead and asked if we could come in a day early. We could.

We got to Lake George on Wednesday afternoon, September 19, and got ourselves set up. King Phillips Campground was a wonderful contrast to our home of the previous evening. It is a neat, clean, well organized business that takes good care of their facilities and their customers. We'll probably be back there to camp sometime.

That evening, we ran down to visit Barb and family for a while, got the low-down on the Balloon Festival schedule and activities, and headed back "home" to King Phillips where we would be living for the next few days.

The trip continues in the next installment. By the way, there will be more pictures as the rest of this stage of our journey is described.

Home is headed for WI for a few more weeks

It used to be that as a trip was coming to an end I'd think about "heading for home." But since "home" (in the phraseology of the RVers) is "where you park it," I have to say where "home" is heading. And right now, we are headed back to Wisconsin for about three more weeks of this fall.

We have kids with birthdays and anniversaries and we want to see the.m and we want to see the grandkids. We also have some Red Cross training to take. And a doctor's appointment and ... Well, you get the idea. There is unfinished business. Isn't that always true in life? As long as we are living, there is some kind of "unfinished business" to be taken care of. So we're going to take care of some of it and, I'm sure, will leave some of it unfinished for the next time we're in WI.

Let me bring you up to date on the peregrinations of Forrest and Mary. When I last left you, we were at the Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, IN. And a delightful place it was and we'll stop there again (probably in a couple of days). However, we left Elkhart on the morning of Sept. 16 with plans for a short day's drive. We were stopping at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.



Some of are old enough to remember when the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland would catch on fire and burn. Yes, the river would burn! There was so much flammable pollution in the river (or on the surface of it) that the river would catch on fire and burn for days. Today, the Cuyahoga River and the Valley along it is a beautiful national park! The valley and river have been cleaned up and the river is clear and clean.

We weren't planning an extended visit to the park. It is long and narrow and could easily take several days to explore. It would be fun to take a LONG walk along the Ohio and Erie Towpath Trail which follows along the route of the Ohio and Erie Canal, a vital transportation link in the pre-Civil War days in Ohio, enabling canal boats to take cargo and passengers to Lake Erie from towns along the length of the canal all the way down to the Ohio River.

We stopped at the Boston Store Visitor's Center near Peninsula, OH. There we had an interesting discussion with a volunteer about the role of bats in the Cuyahoga Valley, saw some static displays on the history of canal boat building, and walked a 1/2-mile or so along the Towpath Trail. A Monday in September was definitely NOT the best time to be visiting this park. They were already cutting back on services and activities in preparation for fall and winter when the number of visitors greatly declines. However, we agreed that this park will be on our "list" for a revisit during some summer trip through northern OH.

The "list" grows longer daily. There is always so much more to see than we allow time to see it. But as we slow down and stay places longer we know that we'll take some items off of that list as we take the time to thoroughly explore an area. Like many newbie full-timers, we are busy going instead of taking time to sit. By the way, we KNOW that it costs a lot less to sit and explore than it does to drive from place to place and just get a glancing look at an area, but we are trying to be certain places on certain days this fall and that means we have to keep moving.

After our visit to CVNP, we stopped for the night in Brunswick, OH, at Willow Lake Park. It was an okay place to stop for the night, but I'm not sure it will be very high on the list of campgrounds we revisit. However, that may not be very fair to the park since a quick overnight spot is definitely not the best way to judge a campground. It was pleasant enough but, I admit, failed to make enough of an impression on me that I even remembered its name. I had to go back and look it up to write this post.

On September 17, we drove from Willow Park to Evergreen Lake Park in Conneault, OH, stopped overnight and then headed on across the little part of Pennsylvania that was on our route before we pointed our RV across the Southern Tier Expressway in New York state. There were several things in the vicinity of Evergreen Lake Park that we could have taken the time to see, but we had decided that we wanted to move on into New York and maybe get to Glens Falls a day earlier than we had planned so we could do some more things in that area. Northern Ohio definitely has some interesting places that we want to see in the future so we'll just keep on adding to the ever growing "list" of places we'll return to investigate in more depth.

I'll leave you there for the moment and continue the journey later as we travel across southern New York.

Playing Catch-UP!

I simply didn't realize how much time I let go by before posting anything! I didn't mean to ignore those of you who follow along with us in our travels. The last time I wrote was August 26 when we were in Indianapolis for the FMCA Family Reunion. Now it's September 15. What happened?!

We had a great time in Indianapolis, going to seminars, having a good entertainment evening (and one that wasn't), and touring new coaches of all price points. The $1.7 million coach we saw did seem a bit over the top compare to our little Terra, but it was just too much. Not too much money but too much bling and shine. And it was BIG! (Forty-five feet compared to our thirty-four feet.) The seminars were quite educational. We booked two months of our winter time in FL (more on that later).And we bought a brand new mattress for our coach. It was very plain that the OEM mattress was just flat cheap ... and not very good. They saved weight and money and neither saving served us well. So we bought a new mattress and is it ever better! Thank you Denver Mattress!

The highlight of our visit to Indy was an opportunity to connect with Bob and Deb Norman who live nearby. We've met them at the Fleetwood Rallies for the past two years and have enjoyed hanging out with them. Bob and I will never agree on politics, but that's alright. We do appreciate the faith perspective each of us brings to life and we have a good time in the RV world. Bob and Deb, we both had a great time and are glad you made the effort to come up to FMCA. (Deb's father was in the hospital for a number of days before they came up to Indy and would later pass away. Deb, you have our love and sympathy!)

One of the most interesting things that happened took place on the day AFTER the rally when we were getting ready to leave the Indiana State Fairground. I had arranged to get the coach weighed at 9:30 that morning so we weren't hurrying to get ready to leave. (Getting the coach weighed is vital for folks like us who have almost everything they own in the RV. Do we have the load balanced? Do we have too much weight in the coach? That, of course, is very dangerous.) When I went to take one of the final steps to leaving our camping site, retracting the hydraulic jacks that stabilize the coach, the system would not come on. I tried and retried and checked all the steps I needed to follow but nothing was happening. So ... I walked over to a small group that was standing nearby in front of their RVs and apparently getting ready to leave and I asked if any of them knew anything about the hydraulic system for the jacks. And one of said "I'll be over in a minute."

One of the things I have always heard about RVers is that they are ready and willing to help one another. I did not get the name of either one of the men who helped me (or their wives who kept Mary entertained while we were working on the jacks) but I sure did appreciate the time they took to try to help me. The women told Mary and the men told me to not let this get us upset, that things like this happened to RVs and that if we were going to live in one we just had to get used to it.

We (the fellows helping me and myself) wound up calling Fleetwood's customer service and they told us how to manually retract the jacks (a task that is somewhat messy and a little bit hard to do but one I'm glad that I now know what needs to be done to accomplish it). So we got the jacks retracted and could head for the weighing session (a full 1-1/2 hours late). Fortunately they could still get to me and the results were great. We are underweight and reasonably well balanced, left to right and front to back. Thank you, unknown fellow RVers, for the help you rendered. I hope I cross paths with you again along the road.

Heading for home, we stopped off at one of our favorite campgrounds, the Champaign Sportsman's Club, in Mahomet, IL. This is a small, simple campground with basic facilities, but it is quiet and family-like. I've been there three times down. And it is on Lake of the Woods. And three out of the four jacks worked. The fourth just wouldn't go down.

We arranged to take the RV into Finnegan's RV in South Beloit, IL, a local dealer from which we have had very good service. The problem with the jacks? An electrical connection that had separated on ONE of the four jacks. It was simple to fix but cost more than a few dollars since it took some time to find and the labor cost was all that it involved. I'm glad nothing more serious was involved.

So, with the house sold and new folks living there, where did we go? What did we do for a place to stay? We went to Hidden Valley RV Resort near Milton, WI, between Beloit and Madison. That we we could go see the kids AND go to our storage units in Beloit and visit some friends. By the way, we drove past the old house and neither one of us felt bad about not having it as home. It did seem a little strange to not be able to stop in, as we have done in past years, and do the wash and pick up a few things we needed.

After we moved out of the house, we had all of our remaining belongings in the RV and in two storage units in the Beloit-area. So during the two weeks we were home, we sorted and gave to Good Will and other places and moved things from the RV to storage and from storage to the RV. NOW we have only one storage unit. And we have a few more things in the RV and a few fewer of some things with us.

One of the fun things that we did during the two weeks we were at Hidden Valley RV Resort was to go to near-by Edgerton's Chilimania. It was a genuine chili cook-off competition plus a salsa-making competition. We tasted some twenty or so salsas and nearly thirty different kinds of chili. Wow! Some of it was hot, some of it was very taste-filled, all of it was good. Thank you, Edgerton, for a fun day!

Today, after two weeks at Hidden Valley, we headed east. We're going to Glens Falls, NY, and the Adirondack Balloon Festival. We'll also get to visit with Mary's sister, Barb and her family, and Mary's brother, Dennis. Tonight, we stopped off at the Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, Indiana. It was in a good place at the right time to stop but one of the real reasons that we stopped here was that I had read Nick Russell of The Gypsy Journal speak so favorably of the times he had stopped here for a while. Thank you, Nick! I can well imagine that we'll stop here again. Tomorrow, however, we'll move further east, stopping at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park for a day. Do you remember when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was so polluted that it would catch fire and burn for days? It's all cleaned up and, I understand, is a beautiful place to visit. We're looking forward to checking it out.

From Decatur to Anderson to Indianapolis

We finished up our repair work in Decatur on Thursday ... or so we thought! We got up slowly on Friday morning since the previous two mornings had both been up at 5 and down to the repair shop at 6. We weren't in a hurry, anyway, since we were only going down the road a little ways to Anderson, IN. We were just killing time until heading for Indianapolis on Sunday.

Imagine my surprise when, just before 11 am, after we had hooked up the tow car and Mary had run down to the office to turn in our parking pass, I reached over, grabbed my seat belt, pulled it across me, and discovered to my great dismay that the technician on Thursday afternoon had neglected to reinstall the seat belt BUCKLE and support! There was NOTHING to which to fasten the seat belt! Apparently the tech, in all of our excitement over finally getting the missing pedestal in from the parts depot, forgot to take the seat belt buckle assembly off of the old pedestal and transfer it to the new one.

I suppose some of you who know me best can imagine the fuming I was doing as I walked the length of Buildings 1 and 2 at Fleetwood Repair to tell someone about this latest development. Steam was probably rising from my ears as I rapidly walked the length of the parking lot to the office. Service advisor Julie said that technician Jim wasn't at work on Friday and they didn't know what happened to the missing part but that they'd look for it. Uh huh. Yeah! And just what am I supposed to do? Well, the answer was simple. Wait. And, oh, by the way, everyone was taking lunch break at 11 am! Say what?!

Amazingly, technician Bob showed up in about 15 minutes with the missing buckle assembly. It took every bit of two minutes to reinstall it. Where had the part been? Well, in cleaning up after Thursday's work, the replaced parts had been thrown in the trash bin! But it seems that Fleetwood recycles everything it can and the defective pedestal had been thrown in the metals trash bin for recycling ... and the recycling had not yet left the repair facility! Halleluhah! So he dug through the trash, found the part, took it off the pedestal and walked the length of Buildings 1 and 2, found us sitting in the parking lot, and reinstalled the seat belt buckle assembly so I could fasten the seat belt and legally drive. All of this, by the way, while he was supposed to be on his lunch hour (or half hour). Now that was good customer service and I hope Fleetwood recognized his efforts on our behalf. And thank you, Julie, for getting him right on looking for the part.

After that, the rest of the day went easily. We drove down I-69 to Anderson, IN, home of Anderson University and headquarters for the Church of God, Anderson, IN. There we had arranged to stay at the Timberline Valley RV Resort for Friday and Saturday nights.

This was a pleasant little family oriented campground along the White River. And it was nearly full! (I'm glad I had called the day before and made a reservation.) It seems that the Honda Goldwing Motorcycle club was having a big rally of their own for the weekend. There were several dozen beautiful Honda Goldwing motorcycles all decked out in lights! They did a nighttime ride around the RV park showing off their finery. It was quite pretty. And for someone used to Harley Davidsons, Wisconsin's own motorcycle of choice, the Goldwings were amazingly quiet. You could even carry on a conversation as they "purred" by. In addition to the Goldwing riders, there were quite a few motor coaches on their way to Indianapolis and the FMCA Homecoming rally.

Every day in the life of a full-time RVer is not a vacation day. We still have our domestic days and it was time for one. Saturday was a day of grocery shopping and clothes washing. We did have time for a walk around the RV park and over to an island that was part of the grounds. Mary took some pictures of the White River and the scenery.

The White River, near Anderson, IN

 

White River

Trail on Island at Timberline Valley RV Park

After a working day on Saturday, we were up early on Sunday morning. We had been assigned an arrival time at the Indiana State Fairgrounds of 8 am until noon. We had to be there in that time period or lose our place in line for a camping site. That meant no church for us and that wasn't what we preferred but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. So we headed south down I-69 to Indianapolis.

The Indiana State Fairgrounds is HUGE! Of course, there are some 8,000 of us expected to be at the rally and it takes a lot of space to hold us. It was impressive to see all the coaches that are already here and there are many more to come tomorrow. Yesterday and today were "early arrival" days. Monday is the real arrival day. I'll try to get some pictures that give a hint of the number of coaches that are around here.

The place we are assigned, Lot LL, Street 5, is a long way from the area where the seminars and displays are located. Fortunately, there will be shuttle buses and trams to move us around. A rally is all about meeting friends, making new ones, and going to educational seminars and seeing displays of useful (and not so useful) products and displays of brand new RV coaches. There will MANY of them here at this rally of all brands. And some of the big names are debuting new coaches here at the show.

In addition to all of the above, we have been getting some things in place for our schedule. We know that after our stay in Indianapolis, ending Friday morning, we will be heading back to the Beloit area for about two weeks, camping at Hidden Valley RV Resort, Milton (Newville, for those of you who know the area). We've still got some business to take care of.

Then we'll head across country towards New York where we'll camp at King Phillips Campground, Lake George, NY, for the Adirondack Balloon Festival, September 20-23. While we're there, of course, we'll visit Mary's sister Barb and her family in Glens Falls (which is the real reason we're heading to New York).

After that, who knows where we'll go, EXCEPT we have reserved a space for December 31 - January 21 at the Sunset Isles RV Resort at Cedar Key, FL.  We also know that we will be working out the details of a trip or two back to WI in the wintertime, one for Christmas with the kids and grandkids, and another for son Vini's graduation from Herzing University with his Bachelor's in Graphic Design.

Waiting for the Part!

The last time I wrote, I mentioned that we were on the way to the Fleetwood Repair facility in Decatur, Indiana. We got here Tuesday afternoon, signed in, and were assigned spot number 1 in the Fleetwood "campground." Those of you who follow Mary's group on facebook (where are forrest and mary? ... it's a "secret" group so if you want to be part of it write her) have seen her picture of the "campground." For those who haven't seen the picture and who are unfamiliar with this camping joy, let me share the picture with you.

Thrilling, isn't it? If it looks like a parking lot, that's because it IS a parking lot, a gravel parking lot with electrical outlets, lots of electrical outlets.

We kind of feel like the poor cousin of the family since most of the coaches here are the BIG fancy diesel pusher coaches of Fleetwood and American Coach (which is the upper crust of the Fleetwood products). Thirty-eight, forty, forty-two, and forty-five foot long coaches abound. We have a thirty-four foot-long RV. We're small compared to the others!

Coaches at the repair facility have to be dropped off at 6 a.m.! Which means we have to get up at 5 a.m. Now I'm used to getting up at that hour, but Mary isn't, particularly since she retired. We get up anyway. I think they prefer to not have the owners in the bedroom trying to sleep while they are working on the motorhome. The first morning (Wednesday) I got to the office at 6:05 and the service tech had already called my name before I got there and when he didn't find me went off in search of the coach in slot number 1. I did get back to the coach (1/2 block away) about the same time he did.

Anyway, he drove the coach away to repair stall number 8 and we went back to the office. There we were issued our protective glasses and told we were welcome in the service area as long as we wore the safety glasses and had closed toed shoes on our feet (we did). A service writer then went through what we were asking to be done, we signed off on it, and the Fleetwood repair techs took over.

Wednesday we decided to explore, looking for some good water for kayaking. We're NOT whitewater kayakers. Class 1 rapids are all I've ever tried to handle, so we were looking for a lake to paddle around in. We found Salomonie Lake, a US Army Corps of Engineers impoundment leased to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Lake Salomonie is a bit low on water, something like 12-14 feet lower than the normal pool height. That meant that power boats were not on the lake and that the fishermen and the paddlers were having a field day!

These two pictures will give you some ideas of the lake. It is long and narrow and being low on water is even narrower than usual. We paddled for 1-1/2 hours to about the middle point of the lake and then turned around and returned to our put-in boat ramp. It wasn't the most thrilling lake we've been able to paddle around in, but it was water and we had fun!

Wednesday we returned to the "campground" and found our coach back in its number 1 slot. Much of the work had been completed, BUT we also discovered that the driver's seat was missing! Uh oh! It is really hard to drive one of these coaches without a driver's seat. There was a plastic chair in place for the driver to bring the motorhome from the repair bay, but it definitely wasn't legal for street driving.

When we checked in Thursday morning (today), we learned that when the driver's seat pedestal had to be removed to replace the poorly installed carpeting that one of the bolts holding the seat to the pedestal had been determined to have been installed cross-threaded and that absolutely ruins the bolt. They had to order a replacement part from the main Fleetwood factory which just happened to have one. Unfortunately, corporate bureaucracy and red tape nearly held up delivery of the part. Fortunately we knew one of the Fleetwood management people in the facility (he was the one who had facilitated our trip to the Decatur repair shop) and we rattled his cage, so to speak, and he went off saying, "Let me find out what's going on" (or what's NOT going on in our case). Thank you, Larry Rodgers, for your successful intervention! And thank you to the other Fleetwood techs who worked on the coach and fixed things the way they ought to have been fixed in the first place. All of which means that they finished the job, although we decided to stay put for the night and head out in the morning being more rested and refreshed.

Thursday evening we decided to take in the city of Decatur and went downtown to a special event, A Taste of Decatur, where 3 restaurants and 2 ice cream shops were selling their wares. We watched the dancers of the "Razz m'Jazz" dance school perform about a hundred dances (probably more like a dozen but who's counting?), ate pizza and ice cream, and listened to the local high school band play a couple of numbers (and they were pretty good, too). And THEN we got to participate in the special event of the night, the FIRST annual Decatur Sculpture Walk.  We looked at ten of the twelve sculptures that had been prepared for the event, with many of them being on-street sculptures and a few being inside sculptures.

When we returned to the luxurious Fleetwood campground, er, parking lot, we took a short walk looking at the other coaches and then we did what some people think RVers do best ... talk. We talked to a couple sitting out beside their motorhome and three other couples walked by at various times and joined the conversation. RVers can be really nice people.

Friday, it's on to the Timberline Valley RV Park in Anderson, IN, where we'll sit for a couple of nights before heading to the FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association) homecoming in Indianapolis starting next week.

Glad you're along for the ride!

It's REAL! We're FULL-TIME RV'ers!

I HAVE to write something tonight even though I don't have any pictures to go with it!

This is our first "official" day on the road as FULL-TIMERS! It is mind-boggling to realize that this is a reality. We took a two day trip to Green Bay this weekend to visit with Mary's sister, Kitty, and brother, Dennis, but went back "home" to Beloit to finish cleaning out the house, so today is the REAL first day of a new stage of life for Mary and I.

Let me back up. The house in Beloit sold the first of this month (at least that's when we accepted the offer to purchase) with a projected closing date of August 24. So we frantically shelved our plans for the month of August and set about cleaning out the house. We had two BIG garage sales, gave away all sorts of stuff to Good Will and Caritas (the local food/clothes pantry), and gave a few things to our kids. The last week, however, has been a mad dash to the finish. Thanks to Lamarr Pulliam and his crew for their last day visit to the house for a major haul-away of all the trash!

Last Wednesday, we moved the remaining possessions that weren't going in the RV to a storage unit. It is stuffed full to the brim! We still have a smaller storage unit to review and condense and we'll do that in a couple of weeks when we go back to the Beloit area for a couple of weeks (Sept. 1-15).

One thing I know for sure is that we have too much stuff in the RV! We've got to pare the list down some (or a lot). I'll try to get us weighed soon to be sure we aren't overweight. An overweight RV is a hazard!

Right now, we are on the way to the Fleetwood factory in Decatur, IN, to get some warranty work done. From there, we'll go to Indianapolis and the FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association) international rally. Following that, we'll head back to the Beloit area as mentioned above. After a couple of weeks on going through what we put in storage, we'll head east towards Glens Falls, NY, and the Adirondack Balloon Festival in late September. It's not that we're ballooners or anything like that but Mary's sister, Barb, lives in Glens Falls and we thought it was a good excuse to go see her and her family. From there, who knows where we'll go and when we'll get there!

Don't think that life will be a perpetual vacation for us. It won't. There will be many routine days with routine tasks like doing the wash, cleaning the house, and other such domestic matters. I won't have to cut the grass, nor will Mary. That's good. But there are many other things we'll take care of on a regular basis. We will get to see new places and do new things. This first year we may even move around a bit more than we will in future years, just to see where we want to be and when.

I will continue to do my life-coaching and mentoring work. We both will be looking into various places to volunteer and make a difference. And we'll put the kayaks into as many different bodies of water as we can and probably hike a few trails along the way. And I hope we'll get to see lots of friends and family scattered across the US of A and make some new friends to add to the group.

Enough for tonight. It's time to rest and relax. I'll be talking at you some more soon!

It's HOT

We got to the Lone Point Corps of Engineers Campground on Lake Shelbyville in IL on Sunday July 1. As can happen when you pick a campsite online, the one we had reserved was not a great site to park a motorhome. But the nice gatekeepers for the campground suggested several alternatives in case I didn't like the one we were going to (maybe they knew it wasn't going to work). So we wound up in a nice site close to the boat launch and near the front gate. And we got a more expensive site than the one we reserved and paid for without paying any extra cost (the U.S. government computer system couldn't figure out how to charge us for the upgrade). So we have a full hook-up site (water, electric and sewer connections) instead of only an electric connection.

A Bay on Lake Shelbyville at Lone Point COE Campground

 

Lake Shelbyville from Lone Point Campground

It's been an "interesting" week, one of those weeks where "interesting" is a way to say it has been a difficult week. First of all, it has been HOT! Most days this week in south central IL have been over 100 degrees. I sure am glad for a coach with two air conditioners! When we stayed inside, it was comfortable (even cold if we turned the temperature control too low). However, we didn't come here to sit inside an air conditioned coach. We came here to paddle our kayaks around in a large lake. We've gotten to do that twice by getting out early in the morning and staying out until the sun and heat got unbearable (or when the recreational boaters got too obnoxious). In the heat of the day, any effort outside produced drenching sweat.

The first couple of days of the week, however, were marred by the discovery Monday morning that the awning motor had burned out in the extended position. The switch appears to be defective and not cutting off when it is released (it is a spring-loaded switch and is supposed to return to neutral when released. It didn't. So first of all I called General RV in Huntley, IL, to see if they can get the coach in for service. I get to take it in on Saturday (day after tomorrow). The real challenge of the week, however, was retracting the extended power awning without any power being available to move it! Now keep in mind that this is an 18-foot awning that extends about eight feet from the side of the coach. It is heavy and it is about 9-10 feet high in the air. We do have a ladder with us. One ladder. Two would have been nice. We had to try to release the awning's frozen motor and then manually roll it up. Unfortunately the directions provided by the manufacturer did not work. At all. They said remove one specific screw and the awning could be rolled up. Uh uh. Nope. Not at all.

If you're going to be an RV'er, you have to develop some ingenuity. I'll admit that the mechanical side of things is not necessarily my strong point. John Clark (my father) could probably have solved the problem in a few minutes. He was that way, a born mechanic. Unfortunately his sons did not inherit that gene. So Mary and I tried various means of rolling the awning up. Finally, brute force accomplished the deed and we got the roller filled with awning to lock into place on the side of the coach. Except the screws that I needed to put back in place could not be reinstalled. The holes absolutely refused to line up. I did check with a local RV dealer. They could get to me in about two weeks. What we did was to fasten the arms of the awning to the frame on the side of the coach with zip ties so they wouldn't flop down on while we were driving. AND then we taped the end of the rolled up awning with duct tape to (hopefully) keep the air from unrolling it while we drive home on Friday and then to the dealer who will fix it on Saturday. We'll find out tomorrow if our jury rig will work. If it doesn't ... .

Time Flies When You're Busy and Having Fun!

WOW! My last post was June 24 and here it is July 4. A whole lot has happened in the intervening time. Let me bring you up to date on the travels and travails of Forrest and Mary.

We left Blackhawk COE (US Army Corps of Engineers) Campground on the Mississippi River and drove to within 20 or so miles of home in Beloit and camped at Blackhawk Valley Campground on the Kishwaukee River. It was a nice one night stop and from there we headed on to Goshen, IN, and the Fleetwood Motorhome Association Rally. Why did we stop so near home and not go there? It seemed more fun to keep on camping instead of getting caught up in whatever was happening at home. And it was even closer to Goshen than Beloit.

We got to Goshen, IN, on Tuesday, June 26, and got assigned to a site. Before we could even get registered, we ran into Bob and Deb Norman from Franklin, IN. We first met Bob and Deb at last year's FMA Rally in Shawnee, OK, and they quickly became friends. It was a  delight to renew our friendship at Goshen and we hope to see them again late in August at the FMCA Rally in Indianapolis. They are a great couple of folks with interesting stories to tell. And while we were still getting set up on our site who shows up but Keith and Jan Penner from Texas whom we also met last year in Shawnee. We had a great time visiting with them too and know we'll see then again down the road. It didn't take long, either, to run into Hugo and Donna Lusten from AZ. We first met Hugo and Donna in DuQuoin, IL at our first FMA Rally, when they were parked right behind us and we saw them again last year in Shawnee when they were parked right beside us.  Great folks.

The FMA rally ran from Wednesday through Saturday night. On Wednesday, we actually got to tour the Fleetwood factory in Decatur, IN. It was a two hour bus ride to Decatur, but the tour was interesting and informative. Of course, Fleetwood thinks they have the most effective and efficient way of making motorhomes of anyone in the industry. Uh huh. They didn't ask me my opinion on that. (More about that later.)

RV rallies consist of educational seminars, displays (trying to sell you something), coach displays (also trying to sell you something), social events to meet up with old friends and make new ones. Brian and Melanie Low of Holland, MI, were new friends we met and had a good time getting to know. RV rallies also provide you with a chance to get some service work done at reasonable rates for labor and parts (unless, of course, they are covered by a warranty).

The big news of the rally was that we did NOT buy a new coach, having done that last year. However, our friends, Hugo and Donna bought a new coach, an Excursion 33C  diesel. It was a real beauty and we were so happy for them. They used to own a 2007 Fiesta 26 very similar to our first coach. Keith and Jan Penner also owned a Fiesta and, lo and behold, they showed up at the rally in a new Tioga! The Fiestas are falling fast!

Mary cornered one of the Fleetwood reps at a listening session they were holding and told him that if he were to come over to our coach and say he was proud of what he saw she'd call him a liar! That evoked an immediate response from Larry Rogers and almost before we could get back to the coach he was on our doorstep. He agreed that a patched carpet did not look good (it was delivered from the factory that way and we didn't see it where it was covered up). There were a few other things we could point out that should not have been wrong on a new 2012 coach. Consequently, some time in late August or early September we are going back to Decatur to the Fleetwood factory to get some extra work done to improve our coach's construction. We're looking forward to that.

We left Goshen on Sunday, July 1, and drove over to Lake Shelbyville Lone Point COE Campground. I'll pick up there next time I can write. Have a happy 4th of July!

Peaks and Mounds

Sunday, June 24, 2012. Today was a hot one. We are still camped at the Blackhawk Park just outside DeSoto, WI. We drove 30 miles south to Prairie du Chien and had a great visit with a good friend today.

Where We Are On the Mighty Mississippi

We went to Pikes Peak! Pikes Peak StatePark, Iowa, that is. It's named after the same Zebulon Pike for whom the western Pikes Peak is named. He did a lot of the early exploring and mapping for the US Army in the westward expansion of the United States. Pikes Peak State Park is on the Mississippi River with gorgeous views out over the river from very high bluffs. It is located right at the confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers near McGregor, IA, and across from Prairie du Chien. After looking off the bluffs and over the rivers, we took a walk in the woods to the “Crows Nest” (another lookout) and Bridal Veil Falls.

Confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers from Pikes Peak SP, Iowa

Bridal Veil Falls, Pikes Peak SP, Iowa

After our visit to Pikes Peak State Park, we drove into McGregor, IA, and had lunch at the “Old ManRiver Brewery (and Restaurant)” where they promised brewery tours after church on Sunday. We passed on the tour and went straight to lunch. It was a good thing too, since it too forever and a day to get our meals. The service was prompt from the wait staff taking our order, but there must have been only one cook in the kitchen since we had a LONG wait until our food was served. I guess it was worth the wait, however. I had a pulled pork BBQ sandwich that was quite good, but I have to say it did NOT compare to Whitt's BBQ in Murfreesboro, TN, which will always be the standard against which I measure all BBQ. Mary has some kind of Salmon sandwich and our friend had a Philly. Both reported that their food was good.

From lunch, we drove just a little north to Effigy Mounds National Monument. Effigy mounds are the earthen mounds built by early Native Americans in the shape of animals which had special significance to them. Effigy Mounds has a number of bear mounds and some bird mounds. There are also other kinds of mounds to be found.  The real highlight, however, of our trip to Effigy Mounds was our relative close encounter with a very young fawn (deer). It was so young that it still had its spots. We were within ten feet of it. We spooked it into running but it only ran a few feet and then tried to hide. We walked on and later, as we returned on the same piece of trail, managed to spot the young deer as it lay where it had tried to hide from us. Can you see it? Its eyes are visible in the center of the photo and you can see its body in the left center.

Fawn in the Bushes

After seeing some of the sights of Prairie du Chien (second oldest city in WI), we headed back to the campground and a slow evening. Tomorrow we'll head east, planning to get to a campground south of Rockford, IL, which is about halfway to our Tuesday destination of Goshen, IN.