Hello from Gillette, WY

Hello from Gillette, WY

Wednesday afternoon July 1, 2009 (First travelogue of this trip)

We are at the Fleetwood Factory Rally at the Cam-Plex facility (map). Actually the rally ended yesterday.

For the past several days we have felt like a yo-yo with some pretty significant ups and downs. As you read this belated blog, you will see why we are mentally drained and “wiped out”.

First, let's catch up on our travels. When we last posted it was May 22^nd and we were on our way home from a couple of rallies in Goshen, IN. Since then we had a family vacation in Dillon, CO from 6/12 to 6/20. We had a ball! During the week, all three of the girls and their families were with us in a couple of condos plus one daughter's family town house. Very relaxing and lots of quality time with the eight grandkids. We usually have the family week in our various campers at a campground, but this was a fun alternative.

For this trip we left on Wednesday 6/24. It is less than 400 miles to Gillette, but we planned to do the trip in two days. We stopped in Douglas, WY. We had planned to stay in a campground since it was pretty warm, but the one we could find was full. We pulled off onto a circle road for an area that was not yet developed. We were not sure if we would be asked to move, but we had a peaceful night. The next morning, a sheriff stopped by and asked if we were OK and then drove off.

We got to Gillette on Thursday and got settled in. Friday afternoon we set up for the show. We had a very good show. I did two seminars and Pat did two craft classes. I was busy the whole show and really did not get to “relax”. Booth traffic always comes in waves and this time the waves were almost overwhelming at times. That is a good problem, but it still causes moments of anxiety when I have to leave the booth to make a customer call at the coach or fill extinguishers when customers are waiting in the booth.

Our plans for this trip were to travel to Ennis, MT for an Eagle bus rally and then on to Bowling Green, OH for the big FMCA rally and a converted coach pre-rally. Unfortunately most of that will not happen. That is the down part of the “yoyo”. Ever since I got the bus on the road, I have had to add some coolant every 1-3K miles. I figured that I had a very small leak somewhere. I recently installed a temporary catch bottle on the pressure relief valve outlet and discovered that the coolant was being forced out of the system. Worse yet, I discovered that the coolant was being turned gray in color. On this trip the problem has gotten worse. I am pretty sure that I have a head gasket issue. I went to the local Detroit Diesel repair shop and they concur. They were kind enough to give me an outrageous quote of $6K-8K!

I have had a few moments during our stay here to think about our problem, post my problem on the various bus bulletin boards and make several calls. I have gotten some good input and this has helped me form a couple of optional plans.

For sure we have canceled the Eagle and Converted Coach rallies. They would have been great fun, but we were not going as vendors, so we would not be loosing sales. The FMCA rally is troublesome. We will probably not be able to get our vendor fees back. We are looking at alternatives to get to that rally.

Today we are staying over at the Cam-Plex grounds and relaxing and catching up. Tomorrow we will head towards home. We will stop at a well known diesel repair shop to see how they might approach the job. In Gillette we had worked out a scheme to take out the rear window and pull the head with the engine in the bus. By removing the bed platform (easy) there is full access to the engine. Worse case, I can remove the engine and take it to a repair shop or do the work myself. I had the engine in and out several times during the conversion, so I know I could pull it in about 8 hours. I still have all the equipment necessary for the job.

I will probably make another post to this travelogue to let the readers know how we will approach the repair of the bus.

That is all for now.