Relaxing weekend

ornaments

The weather this weekend was rainy all day Saturday and very cool....we spent part of Saturday at the soccer field watching the grandkids play...afterwards we headed to Shipshewanna to get some pretzels from Jo-Jo's (fabulous, fresh, sweet and delicious!), and to visit Lolly's, a terrific quilting store at the Davis Mercantile complex there in Shipshewanna. Lolly's is just one of many cool stores inside the mercantile building. Lolly's is the place you go if you want the latest and greatest in quality cotton quilting fabrics, notions, and books. Yoder's department store is another great fabric store choice, so you have your pick of two! I picked up some charm squares in fall fabrics and a table topper pattern. Seems like I can never have enough projects to keep me busy since I've been retired. I just can't sit still for very long without having something to keep my hands busy!  I've been doing embroidery on ornaments for Christmas, learning to knit myself a vest, and today I just finished knitting a dishcloth. Someone told me awhile back that it was hard to find 100% cotton dishrags any more, so I thought I'd knit up a couple and have them out at my next show, they make great wipeups with their surface texture!....We decided to spend the rest of Sat. evening listening to Watercolours Sirius radio channel (lovely, relaxing jazzy music for a rainy, drizzly evening) and researching inexpensive places to stay near the Grand Rapids General dealer. We came up with at least four places, one a city park in Otsego (Brookside Park) with only four hookup sites...first come, first served and it's FREE. We plan on leaving Tuesday morning for the Grand Rapids area instead of staying and playing the waiting game in Elkhart. The other campgrounds that we are considering are Tyler Creek, Duke Campground and Lakeside Camp Park. We used RV campground reviews website to find these....that is a great tool to find ratings and specs of campgrounds!

Sunday we spent a very relaxing day just working on paperwork, internet research, and then in the evening, we went to a Japanese steak house in Mishawaka called Hana Yori with our new friends Larry and Kay. They drive a diesel Newmar Mountain Air. Larry is a retired diesel mechanic so he certainly can take care of his RV when things go wrong! If we get the diesel, I think we are going to need to take a class on maintenance and how to drive a diesel!

Rainy days sure are great for catching up on reading, researching, etc. I noticed today that Blogger has a "stats" on the tool bar. I had never noticed it before. I clicked on it and found out some amazing things.  I found out for example, that 220 people from Canada read the blog last month! Most people are accessing the blog through Windows and Internet Explorer, some people are using an ipad to view us, and there were over 3,000 page views for the month of August. The pressure is on to keep the blog interesting! I had no idea.....yikes!

Dreamin' of a Tiffin

Repairs are done, but we aren't ready to move back on the road just yet..Both Eldy and I are waiting for eyeglasses to get done...so we decided to head back up to the General RV place in Grand Rapids to just look at motorhomes...we've been pretty frustrated with the lack of storage and kitchen facilities in our motor home...the storage bays on the outside are all different kinds of openings--some swing open sideways, some open upwards on a hinge, some you have to hold open with your head if you are by yourself trying to get something out of a bay....the fridge keeps freezing our food (Total Value says try cleaning the rubber gaskets with rubbing alcohol, so that's on the "honey do list"....either honey can do it)...well, we ended up looking at a beautiful Tiffin, slightly outside our price range...we worked and worked with the budget guys and the salesman trying to get it down, and finally decided that we would look at lesser models. After looking at Winnebagos and a Discovery, we were back to the Tiffin again...decided to bite the bullet and just rework our budgets to curtail eating out, and various other actitivities to be able to afford it. We'll boondock more, we'll stay in cheaper places and with the beautiful kitchen and residential fridge, and me cooking more, we think we can do it...

This morning, Eldy opens up the website to check tank capacities and specs, and low and behold, the Tiffin is on sale, dropping almost $12,000.00 in price, putting it within our budgetary requirements! If Eldy had not seen that, we are thinking that the sales department probably wouldn't have said anything! If this works out, this means we are committed to staying on the road at least ten years....we are really excited. Those photos that went up yesterday, could be our motor home in a couple of weeks! So, we'll see....it's a diesel, it has four slides, a residential fridge, heated bays, king size bed, many more cupboards and drawers, pull out/roll out kitchen counter top, diesel, and it's a four season coach. No more worrying about freezing water pipe lines, and having to worry about cold temperatures...there are two furnaces on board! It has a beautiful, cottage style decor interior in beige and light teal...very beautiful....

Grandkids and children came to the Elkhart campground today for a pizza dinner visit...we really enjoyed their company! After the kids left, we sat outside in our lounger chairs and watched the skies for shooting stars...saw a really long streaking one tonight! First clear night in a long time....no campfires at Elkhart campground, (no fire pits)...so we had to enjoy just the stars...which was just wonderful!

Repairs and more repairs

The Brake Buddy

Yesterday, we headed over to Dan's Service Center in Elkhart to find out why our brake assist system kept blowing the accessory fuse in the car. Dan's Service Center is the one that installed our hitch on our motor home. When you travel in a large motor home and tow a car behind you, there are certain states that require a supplemental braking system to be placed in your car, with wireless connectivity to the RV. When the RV brakes, the car brakes also. The states place their braking assist requirements on the weight of the car being pulled behind the motor home. Two states we went through this summer required a brake assist system...Ohio, which requires that any car over 2,000 pounds have a brake system, (our Honda CRV weighs 3,000 pounds) and New York, requiring anything over 1,000 pounds to have a supplemental brake system. For some reason, our Brake Buddy quit working the day we pulled out of the place we bought it from and headed out traveling (isn't that the way things always break down--once you are out of the shop?) We haven't been able to get it back into Dan's until yesterday...it was still under warranty, and it turns out that this $1500.00 system was dysfunctional....the Brake Buddy is  roughly box shaped, it sits on the floor of the driver's side with a pedal mechanism attached to the brake pedal and some wiring inside the car that hooks up to the Brake Buddy when you are ready to get going.  The receiver for the brake buddy is in the motor home. When the motor home brakes, it sends a wireless signal to the brake buddy in the tow car and the car brakes as well, enabling a quicker stop in an emergency. The Brake Buddy was one of the cheaper systems out there and one that was less intrusive to the mechanics of my car, so we chose it. We now have a brand new Brake Buddy, and it appears to be working fine. If you ever had an accident, it would be a good thing to have a working brake assist system on a motor home to prove to the insurance agency, no matter whether it is a gas or a diesel, to prove more responsible driving and braking with a tow car behind. If you plan on traveling all over the country, you run the risk of getting stopped and getting a ticket and/or fine for not having one of these depending on the state you are in....Now, Eldy can rest easy as we are in compliance with the law....I never knew there were so many things we needed in preparation to go full timing! That should take care of it for now....tire compressor, brake assist system, the right grill .....

You wouldn't think it would be difficult to get a good grill for cooking outdoors but we've had our troubles!  We've gone through a couple. Many of them do not have enough BTU's to boil water! Everyone has their preferences---Weber Baby Q, Coleman Road Trip Deluxe, etc. If you are a serious cook, (and I have to say I'm not at the moment due to serious lack of kitchen space and facilities in the Challenger) make sure you have at least 10,000+  BTUs per burner or you'll be waiting all day for the water to boil!  Well, back to Total Value today to see how the floor is coming along...and....IT'S DONE!!!! YAY!!!! But, Eldy's glasses are not...despite a rush order, they were due to be ready so we could hit the road, but now we will be here till Monday to wait on  his glasses...No worries, mate! We are kind of glad to be back in Elkhart to see Eldy's grandkids, his kids, and some friends we met last week at the rally who are still here, and make yet another trip to the storage shed in Fremont to get some more stuff! I did say we were going to unload some things FROM the RV TO the storage place, but it seems we are bringing more stuff BACK to the RV. We're thinking we need more storage space!  Until tomorrow then......

The Waiting Game....

Our bathroom floor is all torn up and it looks like we will be stuck again at Total Value RV today....they have to re-glue the flooring today and put the toilet back in...while we stayed at the motel last night (we couldn't use access much of the coach because of bathroom repairs and the mess involved with it), we came across a really cool tour that is available to the public from Memorial Day weekend until Oct. 1, 2010. We are not going to do this tour as we are from the area and have experienced all the towns and visited quilt shops, etc., but this would be a wonderful tour for anyone interested in gardening/quilting/flowers to take who are in the area or going to be between now and Oct. 1. Our hotel gave us a free CD for the Heritage tour and a map for the gardens and quilts tour. It looks very interesting, so here's a little about it:

from website quiltgardenstour.com

The tour is called Quilt Gardens and Murals...and it is a driveable tour that combines quilting, gardening, and art into a one-of-a-kind event/tour along the Heritage Trail--all around the heart of Amish country--the cities of Elkhart, Bristol, Middlebury, Shipshewanna, Nappanee, Wakarusa and Elkhart South. You will see 17 supersized quilt inspired gardens, 17 handpainted quilt-themed murals, and see 90,000 blooming flowers. This is the 4th annual Quilt Gardens...along the Heritage Trail. The Heritage Trail is one of Life Magazine's Most Scenic Drives....free maps are available at each official garden site, and a free CD to pop in and play gives you a historical narrative to enjoy as you drive the Heritage Trail on your own. The website link below gives you the sites and where to get the CDs and guides for the tour. While the quilt gardens and murals are located on the Heritage Trail, they are not featured on the CD. This is a flexible, self-guided adventure---sounds like fun and a beautiful way to spend a day on the weekend or even the entire weekend! Check out the link to see some more about the quilt gardens tour....since this is a mac, not sure the link will work directly, but if you copy and paste, I think it will....will have to ask my techie brother about mac links!

from website quiltgardenstour.com

http://www.amishcountry.org/QuiltGardensTour2010

A Funny thing happened on the way to the pavilion...

Forgot to tell the story of what happened to me on the way up the hill this past holiday weekend. I was heading up to the top of Hidden Ridge's campground on my bike, when I spotted a dusty old, weathered wallet at the side of the road. I was glad to take a rest for the moment, as it was about the third time on my bike that day that I had labored up the hill to get something at the pavilion.  The wallet looked like it had some money peeking out of it, and I thought, oh, dear, someone better turn this in. There was a trio of guys at the closest site to the location of the wallet, so I hollered out, "Is anybody missing a brown wallet?" One of the guys sitting at the campsite replied, "No, I guess you might want to think about turning that in. I'll bet someone is wishing they knew where it was." I said, "Yeah, I'll do that.." I bent down to pick up the wallet, and WHOOSH! The wallet scooted three feet past me into the grass. I went, "WHAT THE HECK???!!!!" looked up, and three guys are laughing hysterically. As I pointed my finger and shook it at them (NOT the index finger, people!) one of them said, "Works every time!" They had a fishing line on the wallet and were trolling for unsuspecting passersby to yank the wallet out of reach! That was their entertainment for the afternoon--waiting for someone to fall for their trick. I sure did!

I'm writing the blog today as Eldy is driving. Technology sure is fun when it works well! I've called my insurance guy this morning while on the road, surfed the net, answered emails and written the blog all while traveling "down the road again" on highway 131. Today might be a short blog.....we will be sitting in Total Value RV waiting for our rig to get the fridge fixed, the fender fixed, and the floor fixed in the bathroom. (What's with all the F's today?) Hopefully, we can get it done in one day. If not, we will stay outside in the sites with free hookups tonight provided by Total Value and be back in the waiting room Thursday morning if necessary. We might drive over to Fremont later today to check our storage shed for some items we need for my business. We STILL don't know where we are going after Elkhart...it's kind of fun not having any particular destination in mind at the moment, being free from responsibilities of having to be somewhere at some particular time....that's one of the great things about RVing...we can just go or stay...if it's too windy, we stay...if it's too hot, let's go find somewhere where it's not...we like some place, we stay, we don't like it, we pack up and move! But we're getting antsy to get going again...it's great to be in a large city and have places and stores available to get whatever you need, but we have found we really don't need much of anything but the basics....see you tomorrow!

Eldy and Jeannie

Windy City and it ain't Chicago!

We had wind gusts today all day up to 45-50 mph....glad we were staying put! We have the Weather Channel app on our phone and it advised not traveling if you have "a high profile vehicle"...not that we were going anywhere today in the motor home...We decided to go in the car over to General, a huge RV dealer just to dream....we looked at Winnebagos and Tiffins in their lot. It was just fun to see the different floor plans and to see what a difference a diesel makes in the amount of storage! They have HUGE compartments and roll out trays in the bays...and a residential side by side refrigerator--wow!

Tiffin motor home kitchen

Tiffin living room

Afterwards we hit the mall in Grand Rapids for a while...nice mall! Great tavern in there called Bar Louie's...I had carne asada (steak) tacos..yum! Eldy had his fish...I never saw anybody eat so much fish in my life...that's probably why he has such great low cholesterol levels and excellent blood pressure. He almost always gets fish wherever he goes....Back home again-- we found out that in our absence, the power was knocked out and had been for several hours. No problem...We fired up the generator and we have full house power. I just needed to be able to have electric for awhile to do the blog today. We could run on batteries for overnight, but the park is about empty after the holiday on our side, so the noise of the generator is not going to bother anybody at the moment. In some parks you cannot run your generator at all, or only during certain hours. No restrictions here and this is an exceptional situation with electric out all over the campground.. We found out that their buildings on the high ground had power, so this was a good time to do laundry which was situated next to the pool. I swam laps in the beautiful pool which was empty while I was waiting on the laundry.....ahhhh....what a life!....we are really lovin' retirement! Tomorrow we head to Elkhart...it's a good thing...the refrigerator has been added to the repair list! It's freezing everything and we don't know why...P.S. photos are NOT our motor home--these are from the Tiffin we looked at today...this is Eldy's dream coach...a diesel pusher....40 foot...king bed in the bedroom, separate toilet room from the shower, air bag ride,  residential fridge, deep counters, pantry, shower stall seat, excellent quality cabinetry, FOUR slideouts, dual pane windows, heated bays and an outside TV...etc. etc. etc.   It sure was pretty!

Rainy Day Monday

It rained all morning..we decided to go to the Apple store in Grand Rapids, a half an hour away. We've been wanting to get software updates for the mac. With an air card, it was going to take six to eight hours or maybe even longer, to get the upgrades into our computers. Our Verizon air card plan allows us 5 gigs each month in data transfer/downloads, and we've never come too close, as we don't download movies at all--the system is too slow for that! The most data we've ever used is about 3 gigabytes. So we decided to get our software updates on their faster network. The store allows you to come in and hook up to their wi-fi which is pretty speedy, and so we did...it took about an hour to get the updates down, we browsed the store while we were waiting. They were incredibly busy to us, but they said it was actually a slow day, even though it was a holiday! They had at least a dozen ipads out for people to play on, which people of all ages were doing. One of my brother's favorite games is "Angry Birds" which is the #1 paid app (.99) for iphone. After seeing it on the ipad, (which is awesome!), it just doesn't have quite the same fun quotient on the smaller iphone display.

Where else did Eldo go today? Over to AT & T to figure out why we constantly kept getting an "incorrect password" voicemail text message on both our iphones every time we opened up something on the phone! This involved a two minute fix to each phone by a very capable AT & T rep to reset the password by dialing into the voicemail system...now we don't have to do anything to get our voicemails, we can just play them.  Next, over to Sears to purchase an on board portable air compressor which would handle our RV tires. Our tires take 90-95 psi and an ordinary air compressor, one that you would plug into a cigarette lighter (12 volt) would take us forever to get the tires pumped up. We found a good one for under a hundred dollars, and it will do the job...it was on sale, which makes it even better! We've had a lot of trouble finding adequate tire inflation places while on the road. Ordinary tire inflation stations are hard to get to the pump/inflation device with the motor home, they are starting to charge money, and we've found truck stops not as easy to find when we need air.  So this compact compressor will be readily available for our tow car, the bikes, and the motor home. I'll bet we end up using it to help other people who may need air at one point or another and aren't fully equipped yet for this.

Last, but not least, we get back to our car, and I started to retrieve my voicemails...couldn't hear anything! Yes, the volume was up all the way, and I still couldn't hear them. I'd been having problems all along with the voicemail so back into the mall to the AT & T store to find out what was wrong. I would hit the button to play the voicemail and--- nothing! Now, I pride myself on being pretty tech savvy, I taught myself how to make lots of things on the computer, digital scrapbook, and problem solve lots of things with computers. I can do a power point presentation, I can optimize my PC to run better, yada yada yada. Even made the transition to the mac without too much difficulty...But for some reason, voicemails and hearing them were eluding me. I showed the guy in the store my problem...."See? I push this button and....NOTHING!" I was a little irritated to say the least. I need my voicemail! I have a business and I depend on voicemail for people who want to reach me and place orders! My problem is, I'm a little too quick to push buttons...He smiles and says, "The triangle stops the voicemail,  and the double bar starts the voicemail." I was doing it backwards!  I'm not as smart as I think I am! Wonder what else I don't know about my iphone?!...my brother, the tech savvy computer consultant/programmer, tells me I need to watch the tutorials provided for the phone...yep! I sure do! and yep, I sure will! On the next rainy day...one more day here at Hidden Ridge, and back to Elkhart, IN on Wednesday for repairs....can't wait to get "On the Road Again" (Eldy's favorite song).....where? we'll see!