Here we are, September 2002 already. Where has the summer gone? Maybe down the holding tank!
We left Happy Hollow on Wednesday after Labor Day. The day before, we had an appointment with Cummins NPower, formerly Cummins Great Lakes, in DePere, WI to find out why I saw a lot of oil on the bottom of the engine when I crawled under there to change the air dryer filters.
It turned out that we had several oil leaks, the oil pan, the air compressor and the AC unit all were loose. While we don't know what caused these leaks, we do know that Cummins repaired them all under warranty (five years, 100,000 miles) and the total bill to us was $39 for labor to install the air dryer filters that I didn't replace while under the rig. Libby and I left the rig with them for several hours and went to dinner and a movie while they were working on the coach for us. About 9:30 that night the second shift guys came out and told us we were ready to roll. We settled up and drove back to Happy Hollow (about 5 miles) in the dark. We think this is the fifth time we have driven our rig after sunset. Not bad for our fourth year of ownership.
The gang was mostly in the office as we were ready to depart Happy Hollow, so we stopped in the office and did hugs and handshakes all around. George and Barbara, the other workamping couple, had departed the day before us, towing their fifth wheel and a trailer with an old Harley Davidson golf cart that George bought while at Happy Hollow.
We pulled out about 9:30 or so and headed for Madison and I 39. We stopped for lunch on an interstate rest area and used that stop to run the KingDome to find the satellite tv. It seems that the system likes to be used and finds the satellite faster if you run it every few hundred miles. We drove on down to U.S. 24 and headed east toward Indiana, spending the night at a nice little private campground in Onarga, IL.
On Thursday, we rolled on east into Indiana and stopped for lunch in Kentland
at a local cafe. Two local police officer were walking in at the
same time and offered to let us park in their respective yards so they
could babysit our rig. We had a nice conversation with them about
fulltiming. It seems lots of folks have this dream that we are living.
For those of you who are still wishing, our advice is: Just Do It!
We got to Thorntown, my father's hometown and once again stayed at the Old Mill Run rv park. Nice folks and a nice park. While there, we visited with an old high school chum of mine who works as a pharmacist in Thorntown. She and I used to ride the bus to high school before we were old enough to drive. I think it had been at least 30 years since I last saw Janie. It was fun to talk about old times, our kids and grandkids. Of course, Janie has one in college and one in high school, so we tried to have some empathy with kids still at home!
The next day we drove the car to Lebanon, about 10 miles away and my hometown. We did our mandatory visit with Mike McGinley who runs an auto repair shop in town and graduated in my class in 66.
Right next to Mike's garage is the Lebanon Elks lodge, so we went in and got a free beer as visiting Elks. The next night we had dinner at the Elks. Good food, reasonably priced and we ran into one of my old high school teachers, Carl Riggs. Mr. Riggs was my home room teacher when I was at Lebanon High School and maybe taught one of my classes. I just don't remember. Anyway, it was fun to see him again.
We also visited my aunt Norma and uncle Buster who have lived in Lebanon for their entire lives. They are both about 80 and live in a house across the street from the one I remember them living in when I was only a few years old. It is always fun to get back to my hometown and visit with some old friends and relatives. Before we got to Lebanon, I exchanged e-mail with John Goodwin who teaches at the high school and was also a 1966 graduate and Susan Feller, who taught at Perry Worth School when I was a teacher there. It was fun to contact them. The next time we get to Lebanon, hopefully, we will get to see them.
We left Boone County on Saturday, filling up with fuel at the Flying J in Lebanon. This was the first diesel fuel we had purchased since May in Wisconsin. We stopped in Clarksville, IN to visit with Norm and Linda Payne and to install a KingDome Satellite TV dish for Don and Liane Holder who were staying at the same park.
We left Clarksville on Sunday and headed on to Bowling
Green, KY for our Discovery National Rally. The D rally was
a park called Beech Bend that has been around for a long time. The power
was terrible and the sites were not level. The weather was hot and
many folks had to run their generators to keep the AC units working.
Other than that, and the rain we had the last day
that flooded our end of the park, we had a good time. We conducted
a seminar on Communications on the Road and another on FullTime RVing.
We had a great time doing these seminars and look forward to conducting
more in the future. We have done the Communications Seminar three
times now, but the Fulltimer seminar was a first for us.
We left Bowling Green on Monday the 16th and headed
north to Cloverdale, IN to visit my mother. My cousin Lavonne lives
with her and Mom is Lavonne's caretaker. We spent a nice two days
visiting with them. 
Like any other town we visit, there is a "famous" place in Cloverdale.
The lay claim to the oldest continuosly operating drugstore in the state
of Indiana. 
We spent two days with Mom and then headed northeast to the Huggy Bear
Campground just east of Van Wert, OH.
We were joined at Huggy Bear by Norm and Linda Payne, Pappy and Cecile Doughty and Rich and Diane Emond and Dave and Sally Stribling. Don, Liane and Tom Holder were already there. We weathered a couple of severe storms including the touchdown of several tornadoes nearby.
While we were at Huggy Bear, we went to Delphos, a little town just east of Van Wert and attended their Canal Days festival. The Miami-Erie Canal Company built a barge canal through this town back in the 1800s and the locals celebrate with a big street party every year. The weather was great, the folks were nice and we had a wonderful time. We met some local ham radio folks and talked electrons with them for a few minutes.
On Sunday, we all moved over to the Fairgrounds in
Van Wert, OH for the Fall Escapade. Libby and I have been to four
Escapades now and didn't really feel the need to attend the seminars.
Libby went to one on Line Dancing and I attended none! Instead, the
RV Solar Electric guys needed installers, so I installed solar panels for
two days, picking up a few bucks in the process. We ate out
with our friends, hugged folks we hadn't seen for a while and volunteered
to drive the tractor and tram for three hours one day. It was fun
and we shared these tasks with the Doughty's, the Striblings and the Emonds.
On the last day of the Escapade, it rained pretty hard during the night. I kept waking up thinking about driving out with a thousand other rigs across a wet field. We did leave about 8 a.m. and as we were driving out, the tractors began to pull some folks out of the mud created when heavy, big RVs drive across a wet field. This rain was the leftovers from a that came out of the Gulf of Mexico early in the week. It rained long and hard and the roads were full of departing RVs, so we decided that not driving on Friday was a good idea. We moved about a mile west to the Van Wert Walmart and spent the next 24 hours with several other rigs in the parking lot of Wally World.
The weather cleared that afternoon, so we took the Doughty's with us and went back over to Decatur, IN and took the American Coach tour at Plant 44. While parked at Huggy Bear, we had gone to the plant to tour the line where the Discovery is made. It was quite enlightening to see our model coach built and then see the high line rigs come off the line. Pappy and Cecile were duly impressed with RV assembly and how complex these rigs are. The tour guide was excellent. This makes plant tour number 7 for us. We had previously toured Winnebago, Monaco, Newmar, Country Coach, and Safari. I think our next tour will be ForeTravel in Nacadoches, TX or maybe Tiffin in Red Bay, AL. It is fun and enlightening to see how the different manufacturers handle assembling their respective coaches.
The weather was better on Saturday, so we headed out and moved south to I 75. We picked up the interstate somewhere north of Cincinnati while the Doughty's stayed on the red roads. We met at the Cincy South KOA, which is really in KY. We stayed at this park a couple of years ago, so it wasn't a new experience for us. Nice folks and the park has Super Sites for big rigs. We didn't really need one, since our coach is 30 amps, but we did appreciate the very long pull through. We didn't have to unhook the toad, so when we left Sunday morning, it was an easy move.
We spent Sunday night at the Racoon Valley Escapee park near Knoxville. Our friend Peggy was workamping as an office person at the park. We met Peggy in 2001 at The Ranch in New Mexico. I helped her with her solar panels and with some tips on charging and battery maintenance. Then we ran into her again this year in Deming, NM at the Dream Catcher Escapee park.
We left Knoxville on Monday and proceeded down I 75 to Athens, TN, where we cut over to 411 and then turned east on U.S. 64 for the always exciting drive up the Ocoee Gorge. We arrived at the Lake Nottley RV Park in the early afternoon for our fourth October visit here. It is just hard to believe it was four falls ago when we spent three months in this park while I was finishing up at work.
October will be filled with Dr appointments, Dentist visits and the Optometrist. We also will likely eat our way around north Georgia, visiting with friends and eating out a lot! The Stribling and Emonds are due to arrive here at the park in October and the Champs have a RV lot near Blairsville, so we expect to visit with them also.
We know some of the pictures this month are a little fuzzy. We left our digital camera in the motorhome when we went to Delphos, so we bought a disposable one. We shot all the pics in it and had it developed on a floppy disk. I guess you really do get what you pay for!
Camping $349.00
Diesel Fuel $178.58
LP
$0
