Hello from Russell, KS

Hello from Russell, KS

Tuesday evening July 28, 2009 (fourth travelogue of this trip)

Our main purpose for this trip was to be vendors at the FMCA International Convention in Bowling Green, OH. The facilities were great, albeit spread out over a large area. The vendor building (map) was a great building. The official coach count at 2,725. That is up a bit from the past few rallies but far short of the “good old days” of over 7,000 coaches. The attendees seemed quite upbeat and were buying at a reasonable pace. Our expectations for the rally were not good. We are SilverLeaf dealers, but the company had a booth and did the seminar. In addition, our major fire suppression competitor was there. The main reason we attended was “defensive”, so that folks did not think we were out of business.

We were pleasantly surprised in that we sold out of an admittedly limited inventory of most items. The profit did not pay for the trip, but it sure helped.

When we finally made the decision to make this trip, we said that we were going to be tourists as well as vendors. In this post and at least one additional post, we will detail some of the fun things that we have done.

One of the thing we wondered about was what it would be like to travel without our bus. Most bus conversion folks call themselves “Bus Nuts”. Indeed, there are various organizations with that phrase as a part of their title. What would it be like to travel like “normal folks”?

Well, we can tell you that we really miss the old girl!!! Bus folks often say that traveling in a bus is the most economical way to travel. Tonight we went over some preliminary numbers and it looks like this trip cost about twice as much as it would in the bus. Certainly the fuel is much less, but motels and meals really add up!

Speaking of motels, we have had some experiences! We decided to try “lower cost” motels when possible. We have stayed in several Super 8 motels with mixed results. The difference in cost between the Super 8s and Holiday Inn Express (our favorite) is $30-40 per night. Some of the Super 8 motels were just plain bad. The so called “Super Start” breakfasts were a joke. In many cases we had to stop and get something with a bit of protein and that offset our “savings”. A couple seem to be less than sparking clean. Another hotel we stopped at in Greenville, OH had a nice enough room, but the Internet connection was terrible. The night clerk told us it was something with our computers. However, we found the room where the router was and had them let us work in that room – no further problems. Tonight we are at the Russell's Inn, a hotel that has seen better days. The room is OK, but we have seen several bugs that we hope are not cockroaches.

Speaking of Greenville, OH, that is where my dad was born. We decided to spend quite a bit of time doing genealogy research and we hit the jackpot. More in the next blog.

On Sunday 7/26, we toured the US Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH (http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/). This should be on everyone's must do list. I had on my pedometer and it said I walked 4.7 miles. I am not sure how calibrated the unit is, but I suspect it is close. There are four huge hanger type buildings with at least 100 planes, many of which are one of a kind experimental planes. A separate hanger has 9 presidential planes including 4 that you can tour. One is the retired Air Force One (a Boeing 707) that carried Kennedy's body home and where Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. The facility also has a great IMAX theater and we took in two great movies.

That evening we were completely worn out and only drove a short distance to Richmond IN.

While we will be home tomorrow, I will try to finish catching up with another post (hopefully in the next few days).

Hello from Boonville, MO

Monday evening July 27, 2009 (third travelogue of this trip)

We are at a Super 8 hotel in this fun little town. We have stayed here a few times, but we were always in the bus and stayed in the parking lot of the Isle of Capri Casino.

I feel like a race horse trying to catch up on all that has happened since we started this interrupted trip. So let's start with the days leading up to this leg of the trip. As I noted in the last blog, we had to return to Evergreen to work on the bus. I got the engine out and delivered it to the local Detroit Diesel Dealer on Tuesday (7/7). I discussed the terrible findings in our last post to this blog. For the next several days, we went through just about every emotion you can think of. We were dealing with what to do on the bus and trying to make a decision about the major FMCA rally in Bowling Green, OH.

We finally decided to drive to Bowling Green in one of our cars. We had paid for the booth and it would look bad to have an empty booth with our name on it.

We departed Evergreen Friday (7/17) at 7:00 AM with almost 1300 miles to cover in 3 days. Everything went well for the first 100 miles. We stopped at a rest stop and during the stop I got a call from a potential customer that was quite intriguing. I decided to start driving while still on the phone with the customer. After we got on the road, I hit the cruise control and the Durango seemed to struggle getting up to speed. I did not pay attention and kept talking to the customer. As it turns out, I had the transmission selector in probably second gear and when I looked down the engine was quite a ways into the red region on the tach. I knew that was not good. We made it another 20 miles and the engine started knocking. We called AAA and had them pick us up on a wrecker. We got the Durango back to the house about 2:00 PM and quickly packed the PT Cruiser with a downsized load and left at 2:45. By this time we were completely numb, but determined to not let a silly thing like blowing up an engine stop us.

That night we make it to North Platte, NE and stayed in a Super 8 motel. Plain ,but it did not matter. This seemed a bit strange to us, since we often stop in North Platte and stay at the Wal Mart in the bus (great parking).

The next day we drove to Davenport, IA and again stayed in a Super 8. We had a great time, as there was a huge car show at the local mall. We even had a great dinner at a local restaurant.

We made it to Bowling Green in the late afternoon on Sunday (7/19 my birthday). We had reservations at what turned out to be the “hotel from hell”. The two rooms they tried to put us in did not have the fridge and microwave we asked for and were very dirty. I don't think many of the “guests” spoke English. We quickly got on the phone with the Holiday Inn folks and found a great Holiday Inn Express in Perrysburg, OH (map), about 15 miles from Bowling Green. Pat negotiated a pretty good rate and we crashed for the night.

I will stop here and we will continue to try to catch up in the next few posts.

Hello From Greenville, OH

Hello from Greenville, OH

Saturday evening July 25, 2009 (Second travelogue of this trip)

I am calling this the second travelogue in spite of the fact that we had to detour home and deal with the engine problems in the bus.

This travelogue will be rather short and is intended to let you know that we have survived some rather traumatic issues with our vehicles (yes plural) in the last month. It will take me several blogs to catch up on all that has happened this month. I have not had the time or inclination to do any posting in the past few weeks. As you read this blog and the ones that will follow, you will begin to see why our heads are spinning like tops.

The Fleetwood rally turned out to be a very good rally for us in terms of sales. By most standards it was a small to medium rally (415 coaches) and a small number of vendors (34). I think many of the vendors did reasonably well, which is a hopeful sign that the economy has bottomed out. This was a Fleetwood sponsored rally which almost did not happen. Fleetwood filed chapter 11 and the courts had to approve the expense of the rally. They now are in the final stages of being purchased by a holding company that seems to have their best interest at heart (an all to often false statement). In any case, the Fleetwood folks seemed upbeat as did most of the attendees.

In our last blog I mentioned our engine problems in the bus. We got the bus home without a problem, arriving there on Friday (7/3). Over the next 3 ½ days I removed the engine and took it to the Detroit Diesel Dealer. The results of the engine tear down can be seen at: http://rvsafetysystems.com/Engine_problems.htm. The quote was over $15K. We do not have that kind of money, so we have been scrambling to find acceptable alternatives. More in another blog.

We drove our car to Ohio for a major FMCA rally. In the process we destroyed the engine in our Durango. We then went back home and loaded the PT Cruiser and headed out again. The rally turned out to be a good one for us. More in another blog (detect a theme here?)

We are currently at the Greenville Inn (map). We stopped here to do some genealogy research. We hit the jackpot with some great information (more later).

Well, that is all that I have energy for right now. I will try to fill in all the holes in the next few days.

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.

Hello from North Platte, NE

Hello from North Platte, NE

Friday evening May 22, 2009 (Fifth travelogue of this trip)

We are at the Wal Mart in North Platte (map). We have stayed here several times. The parking lot is very large and we do not have any conflict with parking for the customers.

We arrived in Prescott last Sunday. As always, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay. Monday we went to visit Pat's aunt Jaris. On Tuesday we went to the Methodist Grove Cemetery south of Brooks where several of Pat's dad's relatives are buried. We put flowers for Pat's dad as well as for us on several sites.

Wednesday Pat and Jeanne went to Des Moines to do some shopping for food that will be served at a Memorial Day meal at the Birt's church. Bill started planting soybeans, trying to beat the predicted rain storms. It was very late for planting, and the fields were marginally muddy, but he was able to work most of the day. I helped by loading the seed beans in the truck and taking them to the planter. We repeated the exercise yesterday while the girls placed flowers at the other cemeteries. Bill should be able to finish planting today.

I am attaching several photos. One shows what the Amish call “bank barns”. They are constructed on a hill so that there is a bank trail into the second story of the barn. We saw many of these in Europe. Another photo shows Cody (Bill and Jeanne's grandson) feeding a calf with a bottle. The calf is only a few days old. They are going to work with it in hopes that the kids can enter it in 4H competition.

I have also included several photos from our tour at Amish Acres in Nappanee, IN.

We will be home tomorrow.

That is all for this trip.

The Round Barn Theater at Amish Acres

Our Tour of the Amish home in Amish Acres

School House at Amish Acres



Bank Barn at Amish Acres

Pat and Jeanne at Methodist Grove Cemetery

Cody and "Cow Cow"

Hello from Eureka, IL

Hello from Eureka, IL

Saturday evening May 16, 2009 (Fourth travelogue of this trip)

We are parked in a vacant lot in the little town of Eureka, IL (map). This morning I made my last trip to Elkhart to exchange a rear view camera that I had purchased earlier this week at one of the salvage stores.

We have had almost non-stop rain for the past few days. Indeed, it rained most of the days we were in Goshen. As I had mentioned, we were parked next to a small river. It was at least 15 feet below our level when we pulled in, but this morning it was up at least 5 feet over the original level we experienced. On our way here, we saw many fields that were severely flooded. Some spots on highway US 24 had several inches of water in the low spots.

It had also rained a great deal in Iowa on our way out and then on the way to Goshen. When I went to drive the truck, it ran terribly. It took several minutes for the engine to get hot enough to dry out the ignition.

It rained most of the way today as well. We are ready to get back to the dry Colorado weather!

On Mothers' day we went to Amish Acres in Nappanee. This is a preserved Amish farm as well as a theater and large restaurant. We had made reservations for the play (Nunsense II: The Second Coming) and then dinner. The theater has been converted from a huge round barn. It seats about 400 people. The play was about 5 nuns and their lives. It was a very fun and enjoyable play, We took the walking tour which also included a wagon ride pulled by an old Farmall tractor. Dinner was another great Amish-style dinner. Pat got her play ticket free, since it was Mothers' day.

Monday we spent the morning setting up our booth for the Monaco America rally. In the afternoon we did some tourist type things in Shipshewana and then went to Elkhart to the salvage store (again).

The rally was Tuesday through Thursday. We had signed up for the meals which included 3 breakfasts and 3 dinners. The breakfasts and two of the dinners were catered by the Essenhaus which is the restaurant we mentioned in our last post. Great food!

The Wednesday dinner was really a great experience. The group split up and went to various Amish homes for dinner. About 70 of us went to the Yoder Home. Another great Amish meal. The Amish were typically farmers, but their population has grown so much in recent years that many have started cottage industries, since there is not enough farm land available to support all of the families. These group dinners are one of those industries. They build buildings separate from the house. Electricity is not allowed in the house, but the dinner hall can have electricity. We are not sure if our building had electricity. The lights were gas fired and we did not see anything in the kitchen powered by electricity. We did see a small generator working outside the building, but it was not big enough to run any kitchen appliance.

The people at this rally were very welcoming and friendly. Several of the ladies made sure that Pat knew that she was welcome to attend their Tea. When she won a small door prize there were quite happy. Often times, the vendors are considered outside folks and virtually excluded from any of the activities. As has been the trend over the last year, our sales not that good. That was true of almost all of the vendors. The economy has really affected people's spending habits.

I am posting a few photos. The first one is from the RV Museum mentioned in our last post. The picture of the “wild” male turkey was taken at Amish Acres. Another photo shows the ruts in one of the roads around Shipshewana. The horses seem to travel in the same path on the road and their steel shoes wear a distinctive pattern in the pavement. We found many of the roads in the area had these wear patterns. Another photo shows our group dinner at the Yoder house. If you look closely, you will see the gas light in the ceiling.

Probably our favorite photo is the buggies in front of the Wells Fargo Bank in Shipshewana. As I mentioned in our last post, I went into the bank and there were several Amish folks doing their banking. At that time there were six to eight buggies at the same hitching rail as that shown in the photo.

Pat and I don't know exactly why, but we are very fascinated by the Amish lifestyle. It is not possible to put into words how their very basic lifestyle is somehow comforting to us. When we left today is was kind of sad.

We will probably be back in Prescott, IA tomorrow for another visit with our relatives and then back to Evergreen.

That is all for now.

RV Museum in Elkhart



"Wild" turkey at Amish Acres



Ruts in the road from the Amish horses pulling the buggies



Diner at the Yoder Home



Amish buggies outside the Wells Fargo Bank in Shipshewana

Hello from Goshen, IN and a happy Mothers' day!

Hello from Goshen, IN and a happy Mothers' day!

Sunday morning May 10, 2009 (Third travelogue of this trip)

We are at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds (map). If you zoom in on the satellite version of the map, you will see that we are parked next to a small stream (Rock Run Creek). Just on the other side of the creek are the main railroad tracks for trains running from the east coast to Chicago. They are less than 30 yards from our bus. At least 20 trains a day pass by. We are used to almost no noise at the house, so this is quite a change! However, both Pat and I love the sounds of trains, and even though I am quite a light sleeper, it has not bothered us at all. Maybe it reminds us of the great train sounds in Europe.

We arrived at the fairgrounds on Thursday (4/30). Our set-up day for the rally was Friday. The actual rally (for the vendor area) was Saturday through Thursday. That is a long show. This rally was for Holiday Rambler Motorhomes. Those are up-scale motorhomes and we had hoped to do well. There were over 120 motorhomes, but the owners were not ready to open their billfolds very wide. We were not skunked (many vendors were).

We spent Friday and Saturday doing tourist type things in this area. Goshen is the hub for touring Amish country and it is rich in places to visit.

Friday we went to Elkhart which is considered to be the RV manufacturing “capitol” of the US. It has been the focus of lots of political visits, because it is so hard hit by the drastic downturn in RV manufacturing. Several of the manufacturers have filed for bankruptcy or gone out of business. It is really sad to see all of the empty buildings. Our first stop was a very famous RV surplus store. They have tons of what some folks would call junk. Almost all of it is from overruns of suppliers to the industry. One would think that there would be lots of new stuff from all of the manufactures who have gone bankrupt, but those products are tied up in the courts.

While in Elkhart we toured the RV/MH Hall of Fame museum and library. It is housed in a fantastic new building and has a great collection of historic RVs. Some of the motorhomes date back to 1915!!!

From there we drove to Middleburg, IN and had dinner in an absolutely fantastic Amish restaurant. It is a huge facility that serves their meals family style. The food was so good that we went back yesterday for breakfast and again for dinner!

Yesterday we went to White Pigeon, MI to another famous surplus store. We then spent the day driving the back roads and shopping in Shipshewana, IN. As we drove, we saw at least 50 Amish horse drawn carriages on the road. On the narrow roads, where they can not travel on the shoulder, the horses shoes have actually warn distinct grooves in the pavement. In Shipshewana (and many of the towns we toured), there are hitching railings where they tie up their horses. As we drove we saw several 4 horse teams pulling plows in the fields. The farms are very well maintained. The landscaping and buildings are a sight to behold.

I went to the a Wells Fargo bank and it was great fun. There were about 6 carriage parked outside and several Amish people inside. One lady had her three small girls with her and they were dressed in traditional Amish fashion.

Today we will tour the Nappanee Amish acres where we will attend a play (Nunsense II: the second coming) and eat some more great Amish food.

Monday we will set up for the Monaco rally here at the same fairgrounds.

That is all for now.