May 1,  The Rolling Home is sitting at The Plantation, the Escapees Park in Summerdale, Alabama.  Our friends the Doughty's got in today and we had a nice reunion with them.  They have just purchased a new travel trailer and truck, replacing an older on they had been using.  Nice setup.  They primarily are weekenders and we intend to get them to travel some more.  You might remember them from posts about Blairsville, GA.  They are the folks we went back east to help out last September when Pappy had some heart problems.

Just after we got to The Plantation, and before we backed into our spot and hooked up, we took TRH to the maintenance shed that the park provides for SKP members.  We backed the rig into the shed and proceeded to change the oil and fuel filters. The last time we did this was in Spokane, Washington last June.  The oil change interval on our rig is 15, 000 miles or 12 months. Neither was up yet, but it is pretty hard to deal with 17 quarts of oil out on the road, so we wanted to take advantage of the facilities at Summerdale.

For those of you who wonder about the cost of such things on a diesel, it takes 17 quarts of oil for our engine, the oil filter is about $11 and we have to change two fuel filters that total about $20. So once a year, it costs us about $75 to change the oil and filters.  If we have a commercial establishment do it for us, it costs about twice that.  The last time we had Cummins do it. They charged us $110 for the oil change and I had already changed the fuel filters.  It isn't all that pricey considering the long interval we have to deal with.  In our last gas coach, I changed the oil every 3,000 miles. It cost me about $50 to have it done and about $25 to do it myself.  It really comes out about even between the diesel and the gas rigs since our drain interval is so much longer with the diesel.

Pappy and Cecile got in about lunch time on the 1st, so we hustled them off to Lambert's Home of the Throwed Roll.  They seemed to enjoy the place.  We wrote about it back in some of our early logs from 1999 and 2000.  We also took them to Stacey's Old Tyme Pharmacy and Fountain in Foley.  Pappy liked this place so much that we went back two more times.
 

We toured Ft. Gaines one day.  Ft. Gaines sits on the west side of the entrance to Mobile Bay on Dauphin Island.  This is the area where, during the War of Yankee Aggression, or the Civil War to you northern folks, Admiral Farragot of the Union Navy uttered his famous cry, " Damn the torpedoes.  Full speed ahead".  Federal forces were trying to run the gauntlet of Ft. Gaines on the west and Ft. Morgan on the east side of the bay entrance.  Mobile was one of the last ports where supplies were being slipped in by blockade runners  to help the Confederacy.  Admiral Farragot lashed his 14 wooded hulled frigates together in pairs and flanked his fleet with four ironclad monitors as a screening force.  He started his run through the big guns of the forts protecting Mobile Bay.  The Confederate cannon fire was accurate and deadly,  and the bay had several floating mines ,which at that time were called torpedoes.  One was struck by the the U.S.S. Tecumseh, sinking her immediately.  This caused the fleet to falter and the forts gunners loaded their cannon with grapeshot to rake the decks of the confused and stumbling Union fleet. That is when Farragot uttered his famous battle cry.  The Union fleet ran through the mouth of Mobile Bay and out of range of the fort's guns.  At that point, a Confederate ironclad, the CSA Tennessee attacked the Union fleet. Heavily outnumbered and commanded by Admiral Buchanan who was the pre-war superintendent of Annapolis, the Tennessee fought at point blank range with up to seven Union ships. Finally, she withdrew after taking heavy damage and Buchanan surrendered his ship.

Farragot immediately attacked a third, smaller fort in the bay, Ft. Powell. This fort was blown up by the defenders during the night to keep the Yankees from using it after capture.  On August 8, 1864, Ft. Gaines was surrendered to the northern forces. The fort, which had taken 40 years to build, was now obsolete due to advances in technology and armament.

The weekend we were at the Fort, they were doing a re-enactment of the Battle of Mobile Bay.  Here you can see the encampment inside the fort and also Libby trying to talk a brave Confederate soldier out of his firearm.
 

On Monday the 6th of May, we traveled with the Doughty's to Pensacola, Florida and toured the NAS Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum.   You may notice we do a lot of air museum tours.  We just love to look at old planes!  At NAS Pensacola, we went through the big concrete barricades erected to prevent problems after 9/11 and headed for the museum. Inside is an IMAX theater, so we saw two shows there.  One about the Blue Angels and one on The Living Sea.

After the movies, we toured the museum. Lots of neat aircraft there. One that really got our attention was the N4. This is the actual airplane that made the first transatlantic crossing.  These guys flew what is basically an open cockpit plane from the United States across the Atlantic.  They started with three planes. One turned back very early, one was grounded in mid trip and the N4 made it all the way across.  Quite a feat for that time in history.  Of course, everyone knows about Charles Lindbergh's famous solo flight, but these guys were the first. They just went in a group instead of flying alone!
 

Pappy and Cecile departed Summerdale on the 8th and so did we.  Our plan was to travel up I 65 and stop somewhere around Birmingham. However, we got there just about lunch time, so we kept going and finally stopped in a nice KOA in Pulaski, TN not far north of the Alabama border.

The next day, we traveled on to the Ohio River and stopped in Clarkesville, IN, just across the river from Louisville, KY to visit with Norm and Linda Payne.  Norm was scheduled for surgery to remove cancer in his jaw later in the month.  We had a nice visit with Norm and Linda and left the next day.  (Norm has come through the surgery just fine and is now home recuperating 6/12/02)

We traveled on to Indy and turned northwest on I 74.  We stopped at another KOA in Crawfordsville, IN, the next county seat west of my home town of Lebanon.  We drove south in the toad to Cloverdale to visit with my mother and cousin who lives with her.    After a nice visit with her, we went back to the campground to watch it rain!  It rained for three days and all the creeks and rivers were above flood stage.

We did manage to get up to Lafayette, Indiana and go to a Best Buy to turn in a trouble report on our laptop battery.  Normally, I am not a fan of extended warranties, but we did buy one on the laptop when we purchased it in Arizona last year. They replaced the battery for us at no charge, so we got our money back from the warranty.  The new battery was over $200!

We left Crawfordsville, on Monday the 13th and headed west into Illinois.  We turned north at Bloomington and rolled on to Wisconsin. We had intended to stop in Madison for a day or so, but we were only a few hours from our final destination of De Pere, so we filled up with fuel in Madison and just kept going.  We did put stabil in our last tank of fuel as we might not drive the rig anywhere for over three months.

We zipped past Oshkosh and Appleton and then found our exit, number 154 off of U.S. 41 and turned off on county road U.  We crossed Apple Creek and Libby said, "there is the campground".  Too late, we were already past the turn.  We headed on down the road to find a place to turn around.  We managed to luck out and find a cul de sac near the neighboring golf course that we could turn our 50 plus feet of motorhome and toad around in.  We came back to the Happy Hollow Camping Resort and pulled up to the office.

Inside was a nice lady who turned out to be Judy Boldt.  She and her hubby Dave are the leasees of the RV park.  While we were a day or two earlier than we told her we would be, she was glad to see us.   We moved the rig to our assigned space, Libby backing it in between two maple trees that still thought it was winter.  It turned out the trees were correct as we had several nights of close to freezing weather.

The park is very nice, with a pool, horseshoe pits, a fishing pond for kids, a nice playground and a volleyball court.  We have no 50 amp service (ok for us, since we are a 30 amp coach) and no sewers. There are some full hookup sites, but they have 235 gallon holding tanks buried in the ground for dumping.  On Mondays and Thursdays the outside crew, Dave Boltz, George and John go around sucking all the stuff out of the holding tanks and also emptying the tanks in rigs parked for more than a week. Luckily for me, on Monday, we mostly do gray water except for the folks who request a black tank pump out and the holding thanks. On Thursday, they do both tanks.  It really isn't that bad a chore, but you do learn to be careful when taking a cap off a dump valve. Many folks have leaking valves and you can have black tank surprise if you just yank the cap off!

So far, I have mowed grass, pumped holding tanks, pumped LP, repaired some equipment and fixtures, rewired some sites, bundled firewood,  created some schedules for the weekend crowd (computer work) worked the cash register, selling candy, cokes, supplies, ice cream and other items to the campers.  I also learned how to make shakes and tornadoes at the fountain.  Libby works the front desk taking registrations, checking folks in, stocking the store, cleaning the fountain area, selling stuff out of the store and generally making nice with the campers.  She has been kidded a number of times about her southern accent (which she claims not to have).  The folks in Wisconsin don't talk like the folks in Georgia and you cannot get grits at breakfast.

We both are having a lot of fun with our workamping experiment, making a little money and not spending very much since we are not traveling nor are we paying for our campsite.  If fact, we will be able to put several thousand dollars a month back into our savings account.  A good thing after last year in the market!

We have learned a lot about running a campground. I always wanted to own one, but Libby didn't think it was a good idea. She is right!  We have decided there is definitely a hierarchy in camping folks. I won't post our thoughts on it until we leave here!

We are right next to the Mid Vallee golf course and we have played that course a number of times.   The course is 27 holes and one of them is right next to the campground.  We could walk to the course and we do walk the course when we play.  We are certainly getting a lot of good exercise this summer.

Late in May, we drove south in the Tracker to Oshkosh to visit the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) museum.   This is the site of the famous EAA fly in that happens during July.  10,000 to 12,000 light planes fly into the airport at Oshkosh and spend a week doing airplane stuff.  A huge campground springs up at the same time with thousands of RVs and tents dotting the landscape of the airport.

The place is just fantastic. It is full of old airplanes and lots of the experimental planes I used to read about in Popular Mechanics when I was a kid.  They even have an aerocar.  Of course, Libby had to fly in an F22 like she flew the Blue Angels F4 when we were in Pensacola.    Actually, we did try to fly in an open cockpit 1929 TravelAir, but just as we got to the field, it started to rain and they didn't go up.   We will do that before we leave Wisconsin in September.

They also have a program called Young Eagles.  The little white plane in front of the hangar is the one they used when we were there for that program. They take children up in the airplane for free just to get them interested in flying.  Good idea and lots of fun for the volunteer pilots and the kids.

The small planes were built by one of the pilots and are used for very young children. The girls in these are a little big for them!  The Sputnik is real!  Apparently the Soviets built a half dozen besides the one they launched in 57.  This one was sold by the Russian government to the EAA.

We will finish up this month with some pictures from the EAA.   See if you can find the AeroCar!  The next three months will be devoted to our workamping experience, golfing in Wisconsin and our days off sightseeing adventures.  The Rolling Home won't really roll again until after Labor Day. (unless we decide to drive it on our days off from the campground!
 

Fuel for May          $156.29
Camping for May  $213.25
LP for May              0