Here we are again.  It's July 2005 and we actually got the rig on the road again.  And no, we were not running from hurricanes  (not yet anyway)

Libby and I packed up the old D and headed out of Okeechobee on May 16th.  We were on our way to the Mecca of ham radio, the Dayton Hamvention.   Every year, hams from all over the world converge on Dayton, Ohio for the largest ham radio gathering on the planet.  This year was to be no exception, but that comes later in this story.

We planned to head out of Okeechobee early in the morning of the 16th, meeting with our friends Becky and Harold Hilliard and Joe Lucas and Melissa Gardy.  Joe and Melissa worked with us at the RV dealership all winter and were heading back to Ohio for the summer.  Becky and Harold live here in Okeechobee and are both hams.  They had never been to Dayton, so we talked them into coming with us.

We all met at an abandoned K-Mart here Okeechobee, but things didn't start out too easy for us.  Joe and Melissa showed up with their Dutch Star leaking oil pretty badly.  Just a couple of days earlier they blew out a hydraulic hose and then the air dryer quit.  After having one of our local techs look at the rig, Joe decided to push on anyway, so we all headed north on U.S. 441.  We picked up the Fl turnpike at Yee Haw Junction and rolled north.

Our first stop was a rest area between Wildwood and Ocala, Florida.  Joe's rig was still leaking oil pretty badly, so he dumped some new oil in and we headed on north.

We spent the night at a motel/campground on I 75 in middle Georgia.  Joe's rig was leaking oil pretty badly by then, so I gave him a gallon of Rotella to put in it and then he went looking for a repair shop.  Early the next morning, he and Melissa pulled out to go to a truck repair facility about 12 miles north of the campground.  The Hilliards and Libby and I followed a couple of hours later.

When we got to the repair shop, it turned out that the oil feed line for the cooling of the turbo charger was broken.  The repair guy assured Joe he would have them on the road in an hour or so, and the rest of us decided to wait.  It turned into a couple of hours and the rig still wasn't fixed. Finally, we decided to push on since we were meeting Pappy and Cecile Doughty in Knoxville, TN that night.  We left Joe and Melissa and headed north.

That evening, we were parked in the Escapees Raccoon Valley campground north of Knoxville.  Joe and Melissa caught up to us sometime during the night and Wednesday morning, we all rendezvoused at a rest area just inside Kentucky on I 75.  Pappy and Cecile, of course, had arrived at Raccoon Valley a bit before we did, so now there were four rigs in our caravan.

We spent Wednesday in Berea, KY, touring the town and visiting a couple of nice arts and crafts shops there.

Thursday, we headed north and hit Cincinnati in a tremendous thunder and rainstorm.  Luckily, traffic flowed slowly but safely through the weather and we finally got to our destination of New Paris, Ohio in mid afternoon.

On Friday, we all went to the hamfest except Joe and Melissa, who moved on to their summer home near Cleveland, Ohio.

Saturday, the six of us went to the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton. I have been many times and the last time we did the Dayton Hamvention, Pappy and Cecile were with us and we also visited WP AFB.

On Sunday the boys went back to the Hamvention and the girls headed out for some outlet malls.

Monday, Pappy and Cecile left to head back to Georgia and the Hilliards and Veach's drove the Tracker toad over to Muncie, Indiana and the AMA (RC Airplanes) headquarters. It was quite interesting and they have a wonderful museum of RC planes from long ago to very modern jet models.  Harold and I took turns in a mock up of the Wright brothers flyer. It was fun but uncomfortable.

On our way back to the campground, Natural Springs, we stopped at the Kitchen Aide store in Greenville, OH.  Spent a bunch of money, went back the next day to tour the manufacturing plant.  It turns out that Kitchen Aide, owned by Whirlpool now, is the only American made small appliance left.  Everything else is made offshore. It was a neat tour and we recommend both the tour and the store to anyone who is near that area.

We moved the rig over to Lebanon, Indiana on Friday.  Lebanon is my hometown and so I visited with one of my high school classmates, went to the local Elks for dinner and visited with one of my high school teachers and generally drove around seeing what had changed.  We parked at the Boone County fairgrounds at the Indiana Good Sam Rally.   We had been to this rally once before.

The main reason we attended was that it was a good place to stage our trip to the Indy 500.  Libby and I went to Indy the first year we were married and then we went that following year also.  It is such a cool race and this year was even better due to the performance of Danica Patrick, who placed fourth.  She led the race for several laps near the end and might have one had she had more fuel onboard. This was my fifth Indy 500.  I went a couple of times when I was a teacher in Indiana, back when the earth was cooling.

Libby and I headed south after the race, stopping in Blairsville, Ga for a few day and then moving on to Gaffney, SC where I attended Camp Freightliner.  This was a two day class on the Freightliner chassis  and associated systems just for FL chassis owners.  It cost $100 and was well worth it.

We meandered back to hot and sunny South Florida on Friday, June 18th.  We sure wish we had made a right turn and headed for Montana!

A week or so ago, we carefully watched Hurricane Dennis skirt the west coast of Florida, coming ashore near Pensacola.  We are still watching Emily but at least its going west and we won't be affected.  We fear much damage on the Mexican coast however.

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Our five week sojourn reminded us of how much we love to travel in the Rv.  It had such an impact on us that when we got home, we put the house up for sale and when it sells, we are heading out again to resume our fulltime adventure.  We have been in this house for 11 months, but will realize a tidy profit due to the rapidly escalating real estate prices here in Florida.

Why do you want to do this, one might ask.  Libby and I were talking about our lives since we came off the road last year.  We have fallen right back into the usual routine of home owners.  We go to work, come home, go to work, come home. We rarely get to see our kids and grand kids, we keep buying "stuff" and putting it in the house.  We come home, plop in a chair and watch TV.

I don't even mow the lawn, I use one of Libby's customers who has a lawn service to do that.  While I enjoy having a big antenna and tower system for my ham radios, its not a number one priority for me.

 Its apparent that life is passing us by and we need to rekindle that spirit of adventure that the fulltime Rver lives with everyday.  To that end, we hope to be on the road again sometime in September or October.  The ability to move to a new location, meet new people, hook up with old friends, see that next WOW around the curve coming up in the road, those are the things that we miss. We intend to go to The Ranch sometime this fall and spend the holidays with friends there and then return to Quartzsite in January for the RV show.  There is a Ham radio show in Yuma in February I would like to go to and after that, who knows?

Look for us on the road again in short order, we miss all of you.
 

Libby and John
Okeechobee, FL