The strong winds that had been hammering northern Indiana Friday continued all night long, and continued through much of yesterday. There was no question about it; we were not getting out on the highway. We really, really wanted to be on the go, but we really, really didn’t want to be blown all over the road and waste a bunch of fuel fighting the wind.

So we spent the day listening to music, cruising the internet and hoping that today would bring us better weather. About noon, our friend Michele Henry from Phoenix Commercial Paint stopped by to visit, and later on we went to dinner with Greg and Jan White. We all got a laugh about the fact that this was our third “farewell dinner” in as many days.

Back at Elkhart Campground, I spent some time studying our planned route, while Miss Terry decided to try making a batch of pumpkin cheese bread in her convection oven. This would only be her second attempt at baking in the oven, as she transitions from the gas oven we had in our bus conversion.

While Terry was using her electric mixer to blend the ingredients, we suddenly lost all electrical power in the motorhome. The Progressive Industries Electrical Management System (EMS) unit I got from Lawrence RV Accessories was showing 125 volts of power coming in. I pushed the button to turn our inverter on so we had power again from the inverter and battery bank, but the battery charger was not working.

I flipped all of the breakers on and off, went out to the campground’s electrical pedestal and flipped the breaker there off and on, but we still were not getting any shore power, just the inverter feed. If I turned off the inverter, we went dead again, though the EMS still showed incoming AC power.

Having exhausted my small store of knowledge, I called Greg and he came over. We ran through all of the things I had done already, and then Greg had me turn on our Onan generator. Still no power to the inverter, except what it was drawing from the battery bank. We both agreed that the problem might well be a blown transfer switch, which automatically switched between shore power and generator power.

After studying the books that came with our motorhome, I logged onto Winnebago’s website, where owners can download electrical and plumbing schematic drawings, along with paint codes and a ton of other valuable resource information for anything Winnebago has ever built.

With still no luck solving the problem at that point, Greg checked our inverter and pressed the reset button for the incoming breaker on it, and suddenly we had AC power again!      

Apparently all incoming shore power is routed through the inverter, which really doesn’t make any sense to me, because if the inverter goes bad, we’d be stuck with no power to the motorhome at all. The way I wired our bus, the inverter was a supplementary power source, and taking it out of the line would not disrupt power to the coach. But we have to learn all about living in a factory made unit again, including engineering designs that boggle the mind.

With power restored, Miss Terry finished making her pumpkin bread, and it came out looking great. She is her own worst critic, but even she said it was pretty darned good! I thought it was delicious!  

While I was enjoying a slice of yummy hot pumpkin bread, Bad Nick was busy with a new Bad Nick Blog post titled A Campaign Ad I’d Like To See. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to God. 

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We all want to get the most bang for our buck when we make a purchase. Whether you’re buying a pair of blue jeans, a television set, or an RV, you want to get your money’s worth, right?

I don’t think anybody I’ve ever met has managed to make a better deal than longtime Gypsy Journal subscriber John Culp, who is here at our rally in the 1947 Westwood West Craft Coronado travel trailer that he bought brand new, and still travels with 62 years later! Yes, you read that right. John has had his RV for over six decades, and the octogenarian and his old rig are still going strong!

John said he lived in the trailer fulltime before he got married, calling it his “bachelor pad,” but when he and his wife got married, they decided after a couple of months that it was too cramped for both of them. Alone now, John pulls the trailer behind a van, and brings it to a lot of the Tin Can Tourists events. I never met anybody whose RV is old enough to draw Social Security!

The wind finally died down yesterday, and by late afternoon we even had blue sky overhead. But it was cold! The thermometer dipped into the mid-30s overnight, and a lot of folks said that as soon as the rally ends Friday, they’re headed south.     

Yesterday evening we had our pizza party, and it always amazes me how fast Miss Terry and her volunteer crew can serve over 90 pizzas to a crowd of hungry RVers. Everybody complimented me on their efficiency.

After we all finished stuffing ourselves on pizza, Melissa and Larry Beahm, who perform as One More Time, entertained us with a wonderful concert that had everybody tapping their toes and singing along to the music.

Melissa and Larry are fulltime RVers, who make their living traveling the country performing at RV rallies, nursing homes, and other events. They will be performing for us again tonight, and have promised a lot of “belt buckle rubbing” slow songs to dance to.

We tried something different with this rally; moving our vendors inside, in the same building where we have the morning coffee and donuts, and where the vendors present their seminars. It has worked out very well, and several of the vendors said it has been an excellent show for them. In fact, Ben and Gay Miller from Coyote Sales sold so many of their Wilson cellular phone antennas and accessories that they had to have more merchandise sent in by overnight delivery!

We did some shopping ourselves here at the rally. One piece of equipment I consider critical in an RV is an Electrical Management System (EMS) from Progressive Industries. The unit is designed to shut down incoming power to an RV if it detects high or low voltage, an open ground or neutral, or other problems that could cause serious damage to the RV and its electrical systems.

The EMS in or bus conversion saved us from damage several times over the years, and as impressed as I was with the unit itself, I was even more impressed with the service from Progressive Industries and their vendor, Daryl Lawrence, from Lawrence RV Accessories.

Two years ago while we were in Quartzsite, a board went out in our EMS, and even though it had been out for warranty for years, someone from the company drove several miles from town to where we were parked in the middle of the desert and replaced it for us! So yesterday we had Daryl install an EMS in our Winnebago, and now I’ll feel a lot more comfortable when I plug into a campground’s electric pedestal. Thanks for the great service and peace of mind, Daryl.  

Thought For The Day – The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat sensibly, and lie about your age.

We left the fairgrounds in Sedalia about 10 a.m., followed U.S. Highway 65 north to Interstate 70 and took it east to Columbia, where we unhooked the van and left the bus in the parking lot of the Bass Pro Shop while we found a bank to make a deposit, and then had lunch at Culvers.

If you have never had a Butter Burger at Culver’s you have no idea what you are missing. There are only a couple of Culvers restaurants in Arizona, so we had only been to one since we left Indiana last year and it was long past due. In our opinion, they make the very best fast food burger in the world, hands down.

We had considered spending a couple of nights at the Boone County Fairgrounds in Columbia (listed in our RVers Guide To Fairgrounds Camping), which has 575 RV sites with water, electric, and dump stations for $10 a night. But they had two small RV rallies going on, one a Good Sam and the other a Holiday Rambler event. There were still a lot of RV sites left, but it was early afternoon and we decided to continue on to Mark Twain Lake.

We followed U.S. Highway 63, a good divided four lane highway, north from Columbia to Moberly, and then we took U.S. Highway 24 east. In Paris we were supposed to pick up State Route 154 and follow it to Perry, but somehow we got messed up and missed our turn. Five miles later I spotted Highway U and a sign for Mark Twain State Park, and turned off onto it.

Highway U is not exactly a super highway. It was a very narrow two lane road that climbed up one short hill and then dropped down another, but nine miles later we came to the state park and found State Route 154, which we followed to Perry. From Perry it was only a few miles north to Ray Behrens Campground, a Corps of Engineers campground on the shore of huge Mark Twain Lake.

Most of the sites are electric only, but we knew the campground had a few full hookup sites too. But since we arrived about 4 p.m. on a Friday, we really didn’t expect to find a full hookup site open. As luck would have it, they actually had three full hookup sites available! We chose a nice 50 amp site, got parked and settled in. At $12 a night with either a Golden Access or Golden Age pass from the National Park Service, it’s a heck of a deal.

I would never consider having an RV without an Electrical Management System (EMS) from Progressive Industries. Our EMS has saved our bus several times from bad campground wiring. When I plugged in at the campground, the EMS went through its setup procedure, and then shut down the incoming power because it detected a problem, showing an error code.

When this happens, you can bypass the EMS by flipping a switch on the model we have, and for some people I have known, that is their first response. But to me, that’s a recipe for disaster, sort of like ignoring your antivirus software alert and downloading a suspect e-mail attachment.

I called Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories, who is an EMS dealer, and described the problem. After making a phone call to the manufacturer, Daryl called me back and we deduced the problem was low voltage on one leg of the 50 amp power. We could have moved to one of the other open full hookup sites, but we really don’t need 50 amps to live comfortably. So I put on a 30 amp dog bone adapter, and we were good to go.

Daryl, thanks to you and Progressive Industries for your help and for such a great product. Folks, if you don’t have an EMS system in your RV, go to Daryl’s website and order one right now. You never know, the very next time you plug into a campground outlet may be the time you fry your RV’s electrical system and everything you have plugged in inside of it. Our EMS has saved us from damage more than once, and you’ll find very few companies in this industry that stand behind their products like Progressive Industries does.

Our friends Pam and Smokey Ridgely are workamping nearby at Mark Twain Landing, and we called to let them know we were in the area, and Smokey said they were just going to have dinner at the restaurant at their RV park. Never one to pass up food, I told him to give us a few minutes and we’d join them.

It was great to see our friends again after so long, and the food was as good as the conversation. Pam and Smokey introduced us to the campground’s managers and arranged for us to leave several bundles of sample issues for their guests.

By the time dinner and desert were finished, we were both tired from our long day, and the long week of vending we had just finished, so we said our goodbyes, promised to get together again while we’re here, and headed back to our bus and bed.

Thought For The Day – When you’re finally holding all the cards, why does everyone else decide to play chess?

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