came visit. The boys had just turned one the week before and were
they a handful! They are both walking and running, but not in the
same direction. The kids arrived at about 5 a.m. on Friday, having
driven through the night from St. Pete, FL. They figured the grandtwins
would do better in sleep mode for the 600 mile trip to our house.
Anyway, we had a great time with our children and grandchildren.
On July 9, we set sail for Forest City, Iowa and the Winnebago Grand National Rally. We left about 2 in the afternoon and drove to North Carolina to pick up U.S. 64 west out of Murphy. This is a nice 4 lane highway that is only about 10 miles north of our house. However, after you pass Ducktown, Tennessee, the road narrows to two lanes and follows the Ocoee Gorge to Cleveland, Tennessee. The gorge is narrow and twisty with no shoulders and little maneuvering room. There are a number of very sharp turns, one of which is totally blind and has large rock outcroppings on the passenger side. Since this is the major east west route in North Carolina, south of I 40, lots of 18 wheelers use this route to travel into western North Carolina. It can get pretty exciting when you meet another RV or an 18 wheeler coming around one of those turns. There are obvious signs of folks who were too far to the right and had close encounters with those rock faces. The rocks always win.
We spent the night in south central Tennessee near Manchester. As always, it was a social evening. Our neighbor on the right was traveling from Indiana to Georgia to pick up his daughter for a family vacation. A couple of spots to the left, was a minister on his way home from a trip to Michigan in a brand new motorhome. He come over to talk about satellite dishes and the rough ride he was experiencing. The campground was nice, but a bit pricey at just under $20. Lots of tents and kids, but fairly quite. Not great sites for maneuvering big rigs, but lots of shady trees and mosquitoes. Libby got to walk in her first soybean field.
The next morning, we rolled up through Nashville, dodging intermittent rain showers and traffic. We left Nashville, via I-24 northbound. This was new road for us and we enjoyed the northern Tennessee countryside. We passed into Kentucky, following some large Chinook? copters into their base at I believe Ft. Campbell. They were interesting to watch as the flew in formation near the interstate for a while before turning to the airport.
As we crossed the Ohio river at Paducah, KY, I decided we had better pull in for gas. The first exit we picked for fuel had a truck stop named Veach Oil. I almost went there to see if I could get a discount from an obvious relative. I mean, how many of us can there be anyway! We actually stopped at a BP. Talk about sticker shock. I can fill up in Atlanta for around $.85 per gallon. The BP in Illinois was charging $1.195. I guess there are more reasons than just grits for living in Georgia. We traveled up I 55 in Illinois. Terrible roads and the speed limit for RVs was 55. I complained about this the whole time we were in the state, but amazingly, my gas mileage was up a great deal. Imagine that! We headed northwest out of Peoria and decided to look for a place to drop anchor for the night.
We stopped near a small town called Hopedale.
What a neat place. The campground was called Kentuckiana, but was
in Illinois. It turns out the owners are from Kentucky and Indiana, so
they called there campground Kentuckiana. They had a big Good Sam
rally in the park, but there was plenty of space for us in the water/electric
section. They charged me $2 for using my AC and it turned out I should
have saved the money. The temperature was great. It got down
into the 50s that night. This park has a miniature Grand Ol Opry
on Saturday nights, $5 for the locals to get in, free for the campers.
We didn't go, but everyone seemed to really enjoy the show. While
I was in town at the grocery store, Libby walked over and introduced herself
to a cornfield. Being a city girl, she had never been on any type
of farm before.
On Sunday we headed for Iowa, We crossed the Mississippi at the Quad Cities and stopped for gas at the I 80 truck stop. This is billed as the largest truck stop in the world and we believe it. It took quite a while for us to get out of the gas station and back on the road due to the never ending procession of 18 wheelers going to the truck stop. We just love the smell of diesel fumes in the morning! Actually, it was really neat. I don't ever remember seeing that many trucks in one place.
As we were heading toward Des Moines, I saw some signs
advertising the Amana Colonies. I ask Libby if she wanted to go there.
Nodding her head in the affirmative, I assumed she was interested and we
headed north on a two lane road to the Colonies. The campground
had 300 plus sites and no trees. It was across the street from the
Visitor's Center. We set up and then headed out in the toad to explore.
The Amana Colonies were settled by German Immigrants back in the 1800s.
They consist of seven towns, East Amana, Amana, High Amana, Middle Amana,
South Amana, North Amana and Homestead. I don't know how Homestead
sneaked in there, but it did. We saw a fellow thrashing wheat.
Since Libby had never seen this process, we pulled of the road and watched
him for a while. We ate lunch, dinner to the midwesterners,
in Homestead. I had a great porkchop and all the fixings for under
$5. We bought some wine from one of the local wineries and
headed back to our campsite for the night. We should have spent an extra
day here, but I was anxious to head out to Forest City so we packed up
and hit the road on Monday morning.
We decided to travel the red roads as much as possible through Iowa. Leaving the Amana Colonies, we headed west on 221, then north through the farmland. We picked up Iowa 30 and turned west toward Aimes. We followed this road to I-35 at Aimes and then jumped back on the interstate for the trip to Forest City. We were surprise that we had not seen more Winnebagos headed for the rally. Our concern evaporated as we pulled into Forest City. Winnies were everywhere. The instructions we received for attending the rally told us to unhook before entering the rally grounds. Unfortunately, they did not really tell us where to do this, or where exactly the rally was being held in relation to anything else. We found the place and pulled in with our toad still attached. The folks at the main gate were very nice and just asked us to move to a specific area and unhitch. They sent a couple with us to collect the prerally fee etc. It was not a very good start to our experience. The lady collecting fees had the personality of a rock.
After we unhitched, a follow me golf cart led us to section
C row 12 site 14. They pulled us in directly behind a Vectra from
New York. Directly behind meant we were about 12 inches from this
guys bumper. The parking fellow waited until I shut the engine down
and got out of the coach to tell me that he wanted me to pull up another
3 inches. Ok, I'm game. I got back in the rig, started her
up and moved about 3 inches. That seemed to satisfy him, so we went
ahead and put down the jacks and got set up. The field for RVs at
this rally is an old farm. Winnebago has installed about 1600 electrical
hookups and water is available at the end of most of the rows. We
arrived with a full tank of water and empty holding tanks. We sat
in that spot for 11 days. That is the longest we have ever stayed
in one place with any of our RVs. Over the next few days, the place
began to fill up. By Saturday, there were about 1350 motorhomes on
site with the biggest day yet to come.
Unfortunately, it started to rain on Saturday and rained
off an on until Wednesday night. No more coaches were allowed in
on Sunday. Winnebago parked them on their test track, there delivery
lots and some other large areas around the plants. These folks seemed
to complain a lot about not being on the rally grounds, but by Tuesday
when the rest of us were slogging around in old farm mud up to our @$%@,
they decided that being off the grounds was not too bad after all.
Winnebago was great in dealing with this whole thing. They ran shuttles
to the off site areas, shuttles from the rally grounds to town and the
visitor center. They had people movers running the three loops within
the rally grounds. All in all, they did just a great job handling
around 1800 coaches despite the weather.
We started out right away getting the important sites in town zeroed in. The eating establishments.
We did a farm tour in the prerally on Thursday. It was very educational. We started at the Co Op and then went to a field planted by the Co Op to do research and demonstrations. Then we went to four farms. Each was a little different, all were run by families that included parents, children and grandparents. It was a very informative tour, although several of the farmers decided to make political statements about low prices and what it is doing to the American farmer. While I have sympathy for them, it appears that the main culprit is over production. Our farms have become so efficient, that they produce more product than the market needs, thus, using the old supply and demand process, prices are depressed. Perhaps, taking large chunks of these enormous farms out of production would alleviate this problem. On the other hand, large investor groups are buying old family farms and running them since the individual farmer is having such a tough time. I don't know if there is a good solution to this problem, but it is obvious that change is in the offing for the American farmer. Good, bad or indifferent, life on the farm is not going to be like is was in the past. Those of us in telecommunications understand change. The farmer seems to want more government involvement to help them out and we would like less government involvement in other business. I guess it just depends on your economic situation as to where you stand on these issues.
Despite the rain, we had a great time. We attended tire seminars, Libby took a driving class, I went on a test lab tour and we both toured the assembly plant. We sat in on the A Weigh We Go seminar and learned some valuable tips on weight distribution and tires. We had our coach weighed at the end of the rally. I guess I did ok loading it. We were 10lbs heavier on one side in the front and about 100 in the rear, but both ends were within the weight limits of the tires and axles. We are only 130 lbs below the GVW of the rig however, and we have a lot more stuff to put in the coach for fulltiming. This astounding fact has led us to begin looking for a new coach on a heavier chassis. The P30 has a great deal of Net Carrying Capacity, about 2500 lbs. This is excellent for that chassis, but a comparable Ford chassis can give us between 3500 and 4100 lbs of NCC. Our search began in Forest City.
On the way back to Blairsville, Libby drove several hundred miles. We did the red roads for most of the day. After we crossed the Mississippi into Illinois, I took over. Libby wanted to know how she did. I commented that she did very well since she had never really driven this coach. However, she was too far to the right many times. Of course, this means that when I took over, in the first hour, I clipped a barricade in the interstate. Only some cosmetic damage, but Libby was glad it was me and not her.
We stopped in Lebanon, Indiana to visit some of my relatives and then rolled down I 74 to Cincinnati, where we picked up I- 75 to Cleveland, TN and on to the house.
On the way back, while we were in Illinois, our realtor called and told us an offer had been made on our house. We negotiated a little and came to an agreement. We signed the contract last Monday. Today (7/29) those same folks bought another piece of property we have for sale. I guess we are really going to do this fulltime thing.
We will close in a few weeks and then move into Winnie
II or maybe Winnie III for the last three months of the year.