Hello from Junction City, KS

Hello from Junction City, KS

Friday Morning July 2, 2010 (eleventh travelogue of this trip).

The Fleetwood rally was both fun and rewarding. We did a little bit of touring of the small town of Du Quoin – mostly to go eat or have ice cream. The Du Quoin fairgrounds are well equipped and nicely landscaped. However, it is quite spread out, and not easy to walk to everything. They had tractors pulling passenger trailers and that helped. Some folks drove their cars or golf carts. It was pretty darn hot and humid, so most folks did not walk to the events. Indeed, the attendees at these rallies have a few years under their belt and walking can be a challenge. The huge building we were in was well equipped including good air conditioning. The building was large enough to have a dining area for over 1000 people, the vendor area and several display motorhomes – and not be crowded.

They had two nights of entertainment. The first night seemed way too loud and we left early. The last night of the rally they had a great group. It was three guys that played perhaps 20 different instruments. They played a wide variety of music and the drummer mimicked some famous artists with very humorous skits.

The fairgrounds are the site of the Illinois state fair. It has several barns, a horse trotting track and a full horse race track. We saw several trotting horses (with the carts) working out on the track right in front of the bus.

I was able to ride my bike quite a bit and that was fun. Daughter Judy wrote a comment to one of our blogs that she was glad that we were getting some exercise. I suspect that her idea of exercise and ours is a bit different {grin}.

At the smaller rallies, we set up a double booth. On one side we have our fire suppression products and on the other side we have the SilverLeaf (http://www.silverleafelectronics.com/) products. The SilverLeaf products take the vast amount of engine data from the diesel engines data port and display them in the form of an electronic dash. It is a top notch product that folks really love.

This was a unique situation where the owner of the company spent a great deal of time in the booth. He was attending the rally because Fleetwood is a significant customer. In any case, Martin is a great guy. He fits the description genius very well, but he also has a great personality. His being in the booth probably helped our sales.

Speaking of sales, we did pretty good. That was also true of the Fleetwood rally last year. Guess we will keep this on our “attend list”

In a recent post, I mentioned our '87 trip back east in our '56 Chevy. I am including a picture we took at the end of the trip. You will notice that Pat and the girls are in poodle skirts. The event we traveled to dedicated to the '50s era. Pat made the outfits and had each girls initial on the sweater (think Lavern and Shirley TV show). Of course, Lisa's sweater had an “L” and she got ticked off every time asked if she was Lavern {big grin}.  BTW, I still have the Chevy.  It needs a complete makeover, but it is still fun to drive.

Our Family and the '56 Chevy in '87

We departed Du Quoin Wednesday and drove a bit over 200 miles to a favorite stop: Isle of Capri casino in Boonville, MO. Yesterday we drove to Junction City and are staying in a Wal Mart (map)

That is all for now.

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.