Hello from Springfield, MO

Hello from Springfield, MO

Friday Evening,  May 30, 2014   (First post of this travelogue)

I am staying at the Candlewood Suites (map).  I have two activities that brought me here from Prescott, IA.  The first is to attend an amazing Antique Truck Historical Society (link) annual convention/show.  The second activity was to meet with a person that I am doing some joint work with. 

Let’s step back and catch up with the rest of the trip so far.  We left Denver on Saturday 5/24 after attending our granddaughter’s graduation party.  We left from the Thornton area about 4:00 Pm and drove until it started to get dark.  We parked the bus in a great rest stop in Julesburg, CO.  The next day we drove a bit over 400 miles and arrived in Prescott, IA in the late afternoon.  Our bus is parked in its “reserved” spot at the Birt house.  We spent Memorial Day decorating graves and attending a special luncheon at the local church. 

Thursday morning I drove the PT Cruiser to Springfield, MO (about 6 hour drive).  I will return to Prescott tomorrow.  The ATHS show (their national convention) is amazing.  There are hundreds of trucks.  The photo below is not the best, but it shows a long shot of some of the trucks.  There are all shapes and sizes and years.  I would guess that about half of the trucks are semis.  I have been there for a few hours Thursday and Friday and will go back for a couple of hours tomorrow morning before I start back.

This is my third ATHS national convention.  I have been a member for many years. The national conventions are almost beyond description.  The owners are very friendly and love to show their trucks.  As I said, the variety is amazing.  Each time I make a lap around the huge fairground, I see something new and interesting.

That is all for now.

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Sunday morning  April 14, 2013   (Fifth travelogue of this trip).

When we last posted, we were concerned about running into snow on our drive to Iowa.  Turned out that the weather was OK.  It was cool on the drive, but no snow.  We got to Bill and Jeanne's about 2:30 and got situated. 

Friday was really a whirlwind day for me.  I wanted to talk to a company in the Corning area that I need to have make a couple of metal parts for me.  They have done some projects for me in the past and their prices are very fair.  The project involves shearing and bending some rather heavy plate into frame rails that I will use to lengthen my old IHC truck.  I had remembered that they have some really large equipment.  Turns out that they can bend ½ inch thick plate and shear 1 inch thick steel plate!!!!  Far more capacity than I need {grin}.  I also stopped at a tire store to get some prices on drive tires for the bus.  I really like to do business with folks in that area.  They could use the business, their customer attitude is great, and their prices are very good.

Pat and her cousin made several stops and visited Pat's aunt Jarris.

Yesterday, we drove 650 miles in the PT Cruiser from Iowa to our home.  That was a long day, but bearable.  We had decided to leave the bus in Iowa, since we planned to return for what has become our annual Memorial Day visit.

This trip was a bit less than three weeks.  You would think that there would be some leisure time in that period.  That really was not the case.  There were some periods of a few hours that we got to relax, but most of the time we were on the go.  That said, the activities that we participated in were all very enjoyable!  Our original plans called for a more leisurely trip, but NTT confirmed that the class I was scheduled to teach was a go.  When we laid out the trip, it did not look like they had enough students to justify the class.  Because of the class, we had to break up the trip into two parts.

Now, I must spend most of my time over the next couple of days getting ready for a class that I have not taught in about 10 years.  No rest for the wicked.

That is all for now.

Hello from Prescott, IA

Hello from Prescott, IA.

Monday Morning September 26, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

We have been in Iowa for several days, but I am just now finding the time to write this blog. We left Evergreen on Thursday (9/15) and spent the night at our old standby: Wal Mart in North Platte, NE. We arrived here on Friday. Pat's brother, Jeff and his wife Julie arrived on Friday as well. We are staying at Pat's cousin Jeanne and her husband Bill's house in the bus.

We love to visit Iowa any time, but especially this time of the year. The heat of the summer and the cold of the winter are forgotten for a while and the great seasons (spring and fall) are fantastic. The photo below is the view we see out of the bus windshield. The photo does not begin to do justice to the amazing landscape.

View out the front of our bus

It has been very hectic since we arrived. Saturday and Sunday we did quite a bit of visiting with relatives. Sunday we celebrated Pat's aunt Jaris' birthday at the nursing home. We got to visit with a large number of friends and relatives. Jaris had a ball.

On Monday we took a great tour of the area including visiting some of the bridges of Madison County (see photo). This is scenery was wonderful and it was a great day.

One of the Bridges of Madison County

The weather here has been very cool. Indeed, it is generally cooler than Evergreen. Most of the nights have gotten into the lower 40s and it has been as low as 37 one evening. We even put an extra cover on the bed to stay warm. That said, the days have been comfortable most of the time.

Pat has been working on Genealogy with Jeanne. We have visited several cemeteries to find grave stones of some of her ancestors. We again visited the house where her dad was born. The people who live there are very welcoming and they both have fabulous collections of all kinds of things. The house has been extensively remodeled, but part of the original house is still evident.

I have had to spend some time getting parts shipped in to fill a nice order. I have made a change to my system and had to have some brackets made here in IA. Fortunately, there is a great manufacturing company in Corning (where Pat was born and about 10 miles from here). I have had them do some work for me in the past, but they outdid themselves this time. The brackets are very nice looking and they did them the same day.

Bill and I have done some project work here at the farm (I love to help in any way I can) and I have been able to get a few things done on the bus and service truck that did not get done before we left.

That is all for now.

Hello from Clinton, MO

Hello from Clinton, MO

Sunday Evening October 3,, 2010 (Second travelogue of this trip).

We left Prescott today about 10:30 and arrived here about 2:30. We could have driven all the way to Springfield, MO (our next stop) today, but we decided to make this a leisurely day. However, driving thought Kansas City with narrow construction zones does not exactly meet the “leisurely” definition.

We are at a Wal Mart (map). Other than the Kansas City part of the trip, the journey went well. This is a pretty time of the year in this part of the country. The colors have not started to change yet. The prediction is that they will not be as colorful this year, because of the large amount of rain. That seems strange, since they are saying the same thing about the aspen in Colorado – except that it is the result of too little moisture.

Shortly after I wrote the last blog, the rain stopped and it warmed up quite a bit. The farmers were able to get into the fields late in the week. Bill started combining corn on Friday and we hit it hard yesterday. So, I got to help with the harvest, albeit for only two days. The yields were very spotty. In the field that we worked on yesterday the yield was about 170 bushels per acre. Not the best, but better that they expected given all of the moisture damage.

While the weather was warm during most of the week, it really cooled down yesterday. This morning our thermometer registered 31 degrees, and wunderground.com (our favorite weather site) reported 32 degrees.

Pat and Jeanne spent a lot of time researching genealogy. They visited a cemetery not far from Prescott and then Pat and I went to one that was close to Brooks, IA. It was a very small beautiful cemetery.

We also got to see most of the relatives. Oftentimes our visits are so hectic that we don't get to see everyone. We also had a ton of fun and ate too much -as usual.

Tomorrow we will stop in Springfield, MO to visit some good friends. On the way we will take a slight detour to visit a cemetery where some of Pat's Kretzinger relatives are buried (Judy, one of the grave is Mary Isabella Kretzinger).

That is all for now.

Hello from Prescott, IA

Hello from Prescott, IA

Sunday Evening September 26, 2010 (First travelogue of this trip).

We set up this blog to detail our travels and a few miscellaneous items. We have reduced our travel schedule quite a bit to minimize our expenses. A significant part of our travel was trade show related, and we often did not cover our costs on those trips. We finally decided to “stop the bleeding”. Because of the reduced travel, our posting frequency has been rather sporadic. Most of faithful readers know that they can sign up for email notification when we post. That will save frustration of checking in on the blog periodically.

We left Evergreen about noon on Monday. We stopped in North Platte, NE for the night at our favorite Wal Mart parking lot. We got a late start on Tuesday and arrive in Prescott about 6:00 PM. We have been going non-stop since then.

We are making this trip to visit family in Iowa and then travel to Branson, MO for an Eagle Bus Rally. From there we will go to Carthage, MO for a second bus rally and then home via a two lane US highway through rural Kansas and Colorado.

We are staying with Pat's relatives in Prescott, IA (map). We always enjoy staying with these folks and visiting all of the relatives. It is so convenient to be able to stay in the bus and still do a ton of visiting.

Prescott is a very small town (population 237). Pat was born about 10 miles west of here in Corning, IA (population 1554). Pat lived in the Corning area for 15 years, so she is used to small towns. For me, it is quite a change of pace, and I love it.

To give you a feeling of the small town way of life, Friday we marched in a parade down the main street of Corning (three blocks long). The parade was to celebrate the high school homecoming. One of the relatives is running for county supervisor and we marched behind a truck with his banners on it. It looked like the whole town turned out for the parade. What a blast.

We left a bone dry Colorado and landed in an area where they have had a tremendous amount of rain. In addition, it has been quite cool at night (43 degrees this morning). With all the humidity, we are freezing at times.

I had hoped to help with the harvest, but because it has been so rainy, the crop is behind schedule. However, we have been very busy doing all kinds of things including looking at auger cart and semi-trucks for the farm. Today we went to an auction run by some of Pat's relatives. This was not a great auction in terms of items, but it is always fun to people watch and listen to the auctioneer's chant.

Thats all for now.

Hello from Snow Central (Evergreen

Hello from Snow Central (Evergreen)

Thursday Morning May 13, 2010   (Second travelogue of this trip).

We are back home after our short trip to Iowa for the funeral. 

It rained for most of the first half of the trip home and then again as we got closer to Denver.  Indeed, the rain turned to snow as we got close to the house.  We have over 4 inches of snow on the deck this morning!

It took us about 12 hours to drive home.  We took our time and made some longer than normal stops (one to do some Internet work).  We arrived home last night about 6:30 PM.

Our short time in Iowa was very whirlwind.  We were amazed at how small towns respond to the grieving families.  Some of the families delivered food within a few hours of hearing the news.  The food was abundant!  Folks were very good about delivering the food, saying a quick condolence greeting and then leaving.  They did not overwhelm the family. 

Speaking of family, Joe's family is very large.  We had a family dinner Sunday night and there were over 50 people there.  The minister said a few words and asked for ideas as to what to say the next day at the funeral.  That started an small avalanche of stories.  Everyone was laughing and crying at the same time.

In my last post, I may have given you a slightly distorted picture of Joe.  He was everything I described, but much more.  To say the least, he was a CHARACTER!  He loved life and lived every moment to the max.  You would not be able to pick him out of a crowd, but he was larger than life.  The minister concluded that many of the stories that folks related would not be appropriate for the the service {big grin}.

There were 18 of Joe's cousins (first second and third) that traveled from Denver for the funeral.  That tells you how much our family thought of Joe!

We are off schedule for our travels.  We had planned on leaving for Iowa next Monday for a wedding and then some family travel to Orlando followed by travel to two trade shows.  We will still make the trip, but may not be able to make the wedding.  Part of that depends on how my final testing of the bus goes.  I think I have worked my way through the problems and have a plan. 

I am a little surprised that none of the readers noticed that I posted the wrong month in the text my last post.  Seems anymore I don't know what month it is {grin}.

That is all for now.

Hello from Prescott, IA

Hello from Prescott, IA

Subtitled: We will miss you Joe Holbrook!

Monday Morning May 10, 2010 (First travelogue of this trip).

We had planned to travel to Prescott next week, but those plans got changed last Thursday evening. We received a call that Pat's cousin, Joe Holbrook, passed away quite unexpectedly at age 55. He had had surgery to repair a torn hip muscle. Apparently a blood clot from the surgery caused the death.

We left Evergreen early Friday afternoon after my doctors appointment. We arrive in Prescott at 1:00 AM their time.

Today is the funeral and I will not do well. You see, Joe was a very special person. In a lifetime, a person meets a handful or two of people who are a cut way above any other friend. Joe was one of those people with out question.

Joe was a wonderful husband. He and Cheryl did not have children, but he was a very special friend to every kid he ever met. When we would show up in Iowa with our three girls, Joe would quickly round them up and take them for ice cream. They loved it!!! I suspect there were times that he did not have two nickels to rub together, but he still took them to the ice cream shop. But Joe was much more than that. We went to a family dinner last night (about 50 people) and the out- poring of love was unbelievable. Yes, that happens at other similar times when folks pass away, but it was quite different than that.

Our girls were devastated and immediately made plans to try to be here, in spite of their hectic lives. Two were able to make it, but Judy's family has had some terrible flu going on and they were not able to be here. However, she wrote a wonderful tribute blog (here).

I have searched for a way to describe Joe, and I can't find the right words. I looked up warmhearted in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and it said it was “marked by ready affection, cordiality, generosity, or sympathy”. That certainly described Joe, but there would be a much longer list for him. The term “heart of gold” came up several times last night, but that also fall short. Lets leave it that Joe was a very special person who defied description!

I should also mention that Joe was a very proud Marine. His funeral today will include a Marine ceremony. There will not be a dry eye in the place. He loved his country as much as he loved his family.

WE WILL MISS YOU JOE!

I will continue this travelogue when we again head out to Prescott and then travel to some tradeshows.

That is all for now.

Hello from Monticello, IN

Hello from Monticello, IN

Wednesday April 29, 2009 (Second travelogue of this trip)

As is often the case, we are staying in a Wal Mart parking lot (map).

Our first post of this travelogue was written from our shop when we were snowed in and staying in the bus. We had planned to leave on Sunday (4/19). Obviously that did not happen. We finally got away about 2:00 PM on Tuesday. As we left the house, we noticed that the tow bar was not locking in the extended position on the passenger side. Every time we slowed down, the truck would shift to the driver side about 8 inches and kind of jerk around. Once we got into traffic, it got quite interesting. When I slowed down I would look in the mirror and watch folks try to dodge what they thought was an unhitched big truck coming at them {grin}. It was really not all that funny, but what else can you do to make the best of a bad situation?

We had planned on stopping to get the bus emission test done (mandated and always a frustrating and expensive experience). While I waited for them to do the testing I contacted the tow bar manufacturer and they told me how to disassemble the arm. Problem was, the parts were corroded in a way that they were “welded” together. The folks at the truck service location that did the exhaust testing used some BIG tools to get the parts separated. I worked on the parts a bit, and gave up since we needed to get down the road.

We drove to Ft. Morgan, CO which is only about 100 miles from Denver. It was getting late, and I was tired and frustrated and needed to work on the hitch. We parked in a Wal Mart lot. The next morning I cut some steel bar that I had with me and jammed the bar on the arm so that it was forced into the extended position, holding it with radiator clamps. It worked like a champ for the rest of the trip to Iowa.

Our next stop was York, NE. We again stayed at a Wal Mart. On Thursday we drove the rest of the way to Prescott, IA where we stayed with our relatives. This is always an enjoyable stay. The first day it got into the 80s. After that, it turned cold and rainy. Indeed, it rained over 2.5 inches in three days. There was some minor flooding and the farm sustained some damage to the terraces.

During our stay, I completely disassembled the tow bar and cleaned all the parts. There was a lot of rust scale in the tube portion of the arms and that probably caused the problem. It now works great.

We visited with a bunch of folks and generally had a great time. As always seems to be the case, we really fell off the diet wagon. Food in IA is always great, and Jeanie (our host) is a great cook. I even got the run the tractor for a couple of hours. That machine is sure a lot more sophisticated than my old International this I use to plow and mow.

On Tuesday (4/28) we left about 1:00 PM and started heading towards Goshen, IN where we have a couple of trade shows. Our route was planned so that we avoided the Interstate system in the Chicago area. Our route took us on US 34 and then US 24. Lots of folks enjoy traveling on two lane highways. This leg of the trip (SE IA to Goshen) is a bit over 550 miles and we allowed three days for the travel. Thus we were not pressed for time and really enjoyed the rolling farm land and great small towns that you travel through. We would like to travel in this mode more often. We just have to plan our travels accordingly.

Last night we stayed in Mt. Pleasant Iowa at a Wal Mart (detect a theme?). We are only a bit over 100 miles from Goshen. Tomorrow we will get the bus parked in the fairgrounds and be ready to set up on Friday.

That is all for now.

Happy Fourth of July!!!

Hello again from Amana, IA

Friday Evening; July 4, 2008 (Second travelogue of this trip)

We are still at the Amana Colonies RV Park (here). We will be here until Monday.

We scheduled this week to be here in order to meet with the owner of SilverLeaf Electronics (http://www.silverleafelectronics.com/). I have become a dealer for them. I have followed their company since its start over 10 years ago and have used their VMSpc engine monitor system since we have had the bus on the road. One of the main reasons I wanted to go with their products was that they are developing a tire pressure monitor system that will replace the product I have carried in the past. There is some information on my website (http://www.rvsafetysystems.com/Silverleaf.htm). This product will compliment my system and could possibly lead to additional business relationships.

I also wanted to be here for continued a dialogue with Swaims. They have helped me make some major business decisions. We knew that we had to change the way we did business, because we were not close to making a profit and had considered the possibility that we would have to shut down the business. There are lots of major changes we plan to make. One of them is that I will become an installer. That is where the money is. I had avoided that option, but it has become clear that it must be part of the business. We have worked out the details so that I feel comfortable expanding into this end of the business. We will charge a fixed rate and I will be able to do the install at a more leisurely pace than those I have been involved in so far. It will require a large adjustment in our scheduling, but that is a positive, since it will give us more time in an area to explore.

Suffice it to say that my head is swimming. BTW, Pat has had a lot of great input into these major decisions and I really appreciate that! There are lots of other business details, but I will keep the blog more travelogue oriented {grin}.

This campground is a huge facility that was created in 1988 for the World Ag Expo. It is also used for the Farm Progress Show. There are nearly 500 camp spots. We were lucky, that we have not had next door neighbors. We have 50 amp service, so we have been able to do several loads of wash. The campground office sustained some pretty significant damage during the recent severe floods. Many of the surrounding fields are totally destroyed by the flooding.

There are several RV rallies going on here. The Safari brand motorhome had their rally most of the week, and now the Beaver brand rally has started. Some of you may recall seeing Safari motorhomes, since many have distinct animal murals on them. We had always admired the murals, and assumed they were decals of some sort. It turns out that they are all air brushed by hand by the same family members that have been doing it for years. Apparently it was a factory option for about $2500. The artist is here doing a few motorhomes. He does about one a day. The murals have unbelievable detail. The photo below is an example. We watched him do this one. Not only is the mural extremely detailed, but he hides small animals in the mural. This one has 13 hidden animals. I talked to the owner and he has found all but one.

In the next travelogue I will discuss the Amana Colonies in a bit of detail.

That’s all folk!