Terry did a lot of pre-packing the motorhome Wednesday night, so yesterday morning it was a simple job to run in our bedroom and living room slides, pull up our HWH leveling jacks, unhook our utilities, and get ready to hit the road.

We pulled out of the Hershey Thousand Trails campground, drove west several miles on U.S. Highway 322, then got onto Interstate 83 for a short distance before we left that for U.S. Highway 15, a nice four lane road that took us south to Gettysburg.

We arrived at Round Top Campground about 11:30, and the helpful staff quickly led us to our full hookup RV site and made sure we had everything we needed.  It was an easy driving day of exactly 62 miles from our site at the Thousand Trails to our site at Round Top Campground. 

Our site here is a level back-in with 50 amp electric, and life is good. It’s been about three weeks since our mail has caught up to us, and there was a big box waiting for us when we checked in. Once we were settled into our site, we sorted through it, then made a run to the bank to make a deposit, and stopped for an early dinner before we returned to our motorhome at Round Top Campground. We spent the evening filling the orders that came in with the mail, and watching the season premiers of The Big Bang Theory and Gray’s Anatomy.

Round Top Campground seems to have a lot of seasonal sites, as well as RV sites available; at nightly or weekly rates. It’s just far enough away from town to be quiet, but still only about five minutes to the Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park. 

Gettysburg is, of course, the town where the pivotal Civil War battle took place in 1863. The entire town is a historical site, and over 1,300 monuments, markers, and memorials commemorate the intense fighting that took place here. Everywhere you look, there is a statue, a plaque, or a cannon. It seems like every unit that took part in the battle has its own memorial or statue. And of course, the generals who led those units are also honored with statues, like this one of Union General Meade.
We toured Gettysburg and did a feature story on it, as well as one on President Eisenhower’s farm, a few years ago. But the new expanded National Parks Visitor Center has opened since then, so we want to check it out, and maybe hit a couple of other places we missed when we were here before.

We’ll only be here a couple of days, because we have reservations at Cherry Hill Park in College Park, Maryland for next week, while we tour Washington, D.C. It’s about the most expensive RV park we’ve ever stayed in, but we can buy tickets for the metro in the park office, and a city bus comes through and takes you right to the station. On our last trip to Washington, we found that the convenience is well worth the extra cost.

Meanwhile, Bad Nick is at it again, with a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Being A Woman Shouldn’t Matter. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I thought about being born again, but my mother refused.

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When they stopped working for the day on Tuesday, Chris, the tech assigned to our motorhome, told us that he had a couple of hours left on it, but he hoped to have us out by about 9 a.m. the next morning. So once again we rolled out of bed yesterday morning before the chickens, and at 7 sharp he came knocking on the door to pull the coach inside.

Well, we all know that nothing goes according to plan, and 9 came and went, as did 10. Finally, at 11:30 he came out to tell us that he had the new springs installed for our HWH leveling jacks, but there was still a very tiny leak in one spot in the bedroom slide that he was trying to resolve. No problem, we went into town and dropped off some things at the post office, then grabbed a quick lunch and headed back to the service facility.

More time came and went, and finally, a little before 1 p.m. Chris came out and took us back into the shop to show us where he was at. There is one spot on the bedroom slide that, when run through the high pressure water test bay that Winnebago uses, allows a drop or two of water to get inside. But if he just touched that spot on the gasket with his finger, it stopped. Since the amount of water pressure they use to test with is much more than any kind of a rainstorm outside of a hurricane, and it comes from several directions at once, I really don’t think it will be a problem, and I told Chris that.

He agreed, but Chris and Mike, the service advisor, wanted to be sure, so they called in their supervisor, who thought that as soon as the stiff new rubber gasket relaxes a bit, it will probably seal completely. They also made a notation on our records, so if it does ever becomes a problem, we’re covered under their parts and service warranty.

Terry and I were dreading the bill, because they worked on our rig for two half days, and two full days, at $100 an hour shop rate, plus parts. In all, we had new slide seals installed on both slide-outs, both slide-outs adjusted, the fiberglass roof inspected and resealed, our air compressor manifold adjusted, the small floor slide over the stepwell in front of the passenger seat fixed, the front door adjusted (it’s amazing how much you can mess up a door when you use it to break a burglar’s wrist!), the springs in all four of our jacks replaced, and several other adjustments to different things. They also tried to determine why our big power awning is so slow, and deduced that the motor is weak, but that part is obsolete, and no replacement motor is available.

To be honest, we expected to have to fork out somewhere between $4,000 and $4,500, based upon our experience with other RV repair shops. So we were delighted to be handed a bill for $3340. And that also included six nights of free camping at Camp Winnebago!

We are very pleased with Winnebago’s factory service. When you consider the fact that we showed up at the tail end of Grand National Rally week with no appointment, and had a long list of things that needed done, while they had all of those rigs in for service during and after rally, we felt that they did an excellent job of getting us in and taken care of.

And yes, it sounds like we have been spending a lot of money on the RV, but as I said before, a lot of that is because the original owner neglected maintenance so badly. If he would have been taking care of things as needed, a lot of this wouldn’t have been necessary. Like the old mechanic used to say, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.” Still, we bought the coach for something like $30,000 less than any comparable one on the market that we saw, and we still feel that we got a very good deal.

We pulled out of Forest City about 1:30 and drove north into Minnesota on Interstate 35, then hooked up with Interstate 90 and took it east into Wisconsin. We jumped around on a couple of doglegs and eventually got onto State Route 21 eastbound to Interstate 39. Once on I-39, we took it north to Wausau, where we dry camped for the night at a Gander Mountain store, having covered 320 miles.

Today we’ll head over to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and follow U.S. 2 along the Lake Michigan shoreline to the Mackinac Bridge. That is one structure that has really scared me in the past, so I’m not sure if I’ll be driving across, or hiding in the bedroom sniveling, while Miss Terry does the driving. Time will tell.

Thought For The Day – Blessed are the flexible for they will not be bent out of shape.

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Yesterday was a horrible day for me, because I had to get up at 5 a.m. so we could be dressed, and have the motorhome ready to roll when the factory techs came to get it a 6 a.m. Anybody who knows me knows that I hate getting up early in the morning.

I do most of my writing at night, and don’t post the blog until midnight. With the terrible internet connection we have on our Verizon air card here in Forest City, it took me well over an hour to get yesterday’s blog uploaded. (My desktop computer doesn’t have a WiFi card, and I have not loaded my blogging program on my laptop, so I couldn’t use Winnebago’s WiFi signal.) So by the time I got my shower and got into bed, I managed about four hours sleep.

Now, I’d never be so bold as to tell anybody how to run their business, but I’m telling you something, the folks here at Winnebago are missing the boat on an opportunity to double or triple the revenue from their service department. All they have to do is rent cots or hammocks to those of us who have to be up so early to have our RVs worked on, and I’m convinced their bottom line would skyrocket.

I tried to nap in the front seat of our van, since the back end is filled with bikes, kayaks, and a few thousand copies of the Gypsy Journal, but that just wasn’t happening. You’d be surprised how rude people are when you knock on the door of their RV and ask if you can take a nap on their couch! Is that any way to treat a perfect stranger? (Okay, an imperfect stranger, in my case!).  

We have toured several RV factories in our time, and since we now own a Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, and since we are here in Forest City, Iowa, the home of Winnebago Industries, it just seemed like a good thing to do yesterday while our motorhome was in the shop.

First we looked at a small display on company history in the Visitor Center, including this vintage motorhome. It was one of the first Winnebago motorhomes to come off the assembly line.

Then we boarded a bus for the factory tour. It was interesting to see how Winnebago makes Class A and C motorhomes, but, unfortunately, our tour guide wasn’t all that great. He was a nice guy, but he didn’t seem to grasp the concept of using a microphone and bullhorn. He kept letting the thing hang at his side instead of holding it up where the sound would project. If you were standing right next to him, you could hear what he was saying, but five feet away, you couldn’t.

Winnebago was the first RV company to use an assembly line, which revolutionized the industry. They have it down to a science, and while other RV manufacturers have closed their doors in the last couple of years, Winnebago keeps right on chugging along. They have cut their work force to deal with a lower volume of sales, but they are still producing top quality motorhomes every day.

It is interesting to stand on the viewing platforms, high above the factory floor, and watch their skilled employees bring a raw frame in and turn it into a home on wheels.

Today we have a bit of a reprieve, since they won’t be taking our coach into the shop until 7 a.m. Whatever will I do to fill that empty hour in my life? Hmmm… snoring sounds like a good idea!

We are having quite a bit of work done, all the result of a lack of maintenance on the part of the former owner of our motorhome. The list includes new seals on both slide rooms, re-caulking the fiberglass roof, and new springs on all four of our HWH leveling jacks. It’s not going to be cheap, but we got the motorhome at such a good price, that we feel we still got a great deal.

The techs working on our coach say they hope to have the job done today, and if they do, we’ll be hitting the road Wednesday morning. If not, we’ll just hang out here at Camp Winnebago another day.

Thought For The Day – There is a difference between being broke and being poor.

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As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, Wednesday was a long, hard day on the road. We covered over 440 miles, and some of those roads were narrow, rough, and uncomfortable.

Then we had a hard day’s night at the city owned Leach Park Campground in Spencer, Iowa. It was humid and sticky hot, and the electric power was terrible, cutting out every few minutes. We finally decided to heck with it, turned off just about everything electrical in the motorhome, opened up our windows, and put our three roof vent fans on high sped, just to move some air.

About midnight it began to rain, and a few minutes later a strong thunderstorm hit us. We have been in some really nasty storms in our lives, and I even survived a tornado once, but this one was probably the worst storm either of us could remember. All night long the thunder boomed, lighting was hitting close all around us, and the rain just poured down. We had to close all of the windows and the roof vents, because rain was blowing in from every direction, which turned the motorhome into a sauna.

We also discovered that the leak around our living room slide, which Duncan RV in Elkhart had said was fixed, is still leaking, along with several new leaks that came from the driving rain. To be honest, it was coming down so hard, I think it would have even gotten wet inside a bank vault. We brought in the living room slide, both to try to minimize the leaking, and to present a smoother profile to the wind.

We were up most of the night, because it was impossible to sleep. Since we were parked on grass, near a river, we debated whether we should just unhook and drive to the nearby WalMart, where we’d at least be parked on pavement. But with so much lighting all around us, we were worried about going out to unhook the water and electrical connections.

We debated firing up the generator so we’d at least be able to run our air conditioner, but since we were plugged into shore power, I wasn’t sure if the automatic transfer switch would allow us to get power from the generator. At one point, I told Miss Terry that I had had worse nights in my life, but back then people were shooting at me!

Finally, dawn broke, and the rain stopped for a few minutes. I looked outside and we were surrounded by pools of water. I knew that every minute we stayed on the grass brought us closer to sinking, as more rain was on the way.

I started the Winnebago to let it air up, then went outside to unhook the water and electric connections, slogging through water over the tops of my shoes. While I was waiting for the leveling jacks to come up, I tried to move the van out of the way, and the rear wheels promptly sunk. Hmm… that’s not a good sign. If the van got stuck, I knew that there was no way our heavy diesel coach was going to get through the soft ground in front of us, to make it to the road.

The ground seemed a bit firmer behind the rig, so I had  Terry guide me as I very carefully backed across the grass to a gravel roadway. Once I got the RV moving, there was no way I was going to stop until I was on something solid. I left some deep ruts in the grass, but I made it, and I sure felt better once I had that hard packed road under me!

Then it was time to get the van free. With me pushing, and Terry gingerly using the throttle and transmission to rock it, we managed to get it moving and back onto firm ground.

We were lucky. These folks were parked in an RV site right in front of us, and this huge tree limb came down, narrowly missing their trailer, but taking the side view mirror off their truck! I guess they were lucky too, it could have been much worse!

We hooked the van up to our Blue Ox tow bar as it started to rain again, and set out eastward on U.S. Highway 18. We ran in scattered rain showers all the way to Forest City, 91 miles away, but at least the wind had died down.

We arrived at the Winnebago Visitors Center and were assigned a back-in site with good, reliable 30 amp electric, and then walked down the hill to the Customer Service building to put our name on the list for a time slot. It looks like our fast trip across the country will pay off, because we were given an 11:30 a.m. standby time for today. That means that as soon as another job gets finished, we’ll get called in. If we don’t get in today, I’m sure we will on Monday. Since we were originally told it might be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week before we got on the list, we’re glad we rushed to get here.

Once we were we parked and hooked up, our pals Ron and Brenda Speidel came by to give us much needed hugs, and to show us around the grounds. The annual Winnebago-Itasca Grand National Rally ends today, and they have 1,750 Winnebagos and Itascas of every model here for all of the fun. We have never seen so many Winnies, all in one place!

We even saw a rare vintage Winnebago fifth wheel!

Mike and Elaine Loscher, wonderful friends who have helped us so much with our Gypsy Gathering rallies over the years, are also here, and later in the afternoon we went to dinner with them. It was a treat to have some quiet time with this sweet couple, away from all the hustle and bustle of a rally.

Terry and I were worn out from the fast trip across the country, 950 miles in 2 1/2 days, combined with our long, scary night. Back at the motorhome, we felt like zombies. I wrote my blog post, downloaded some photos from our digital cameras, and Terry caught up on e-mail. We sure were looking forward to getting into that bed and getting some sleep!

Thought For The Day – Daughters hold your hand for a little while, but they hold your heart for a lifetime.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of far off rain, and then I realized that it wasn’t rain after all, but rather the sound of the wind in the tall pine trees here at the Show Low Elks lodge campground.

Yes, it was windy again in northern Arizona, as it is all too often this time of year. The weather report included a high wind advisory for the entire region until 8 p.m., and  they were monitoring more dust storms along Interstate 40, which has been closed numerous times in the last few weeks. I don’t like driving a motorhome in the wind, so I was glad we drove up from the Phoenix area the previous day!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, we have a nice site here at the Elks campground, but it isn’t very level, and even with our jacks extended all the way, we were still decidedly low in the rear. We weren’t in danger of anything falling off the walls, but we were out of balance enough that our shower wouldn’t drain correctly. We’ve encountered this before and I wanted to do something about it.

So we went to Lowes and bought an eight foot long piece of exterior grade treated 2×12 board, and I had the store cut it into one foot lengths, giving me a total of eight squares.

Back at the motorhome, I pulled in our slide rooms and retracted our HWH leveling jacks, and then we put four of the wooden squares under each rear jack. Then I hit the automatic jack button, and we leveled right up. 

I was wondering how speeds would be on my my iPad here in Show low, as compared to in Apache Junction. While our Verizon phones and air card are on high speed EVDO here, the iPad is on AT&T’s extended network. There is a noticeable reduction in speed, no doubt about it. But it is not as slow as our air card is when we’re away from an EVDO signal and are on Verizon’s slower National Access service. The GPS and all other functions on the iPad work fine here, even on the slower extended network service.

Later on, Tiffany came by with her girls, and we had a nice visit. Here are Hailey and Destiny relaxing on the couch after a hard day at school and preschool. Destiny always looks to her big sister for direction on how to act like a big kid. Hopefully she won’t copy Hailey and break her arm too!

Tiffany’s husband Jim works the night shift, and he was up all day helping Tiffany with her job, so he was home sleeping before his shift started. We took the girls out to dinner, and by the time we left the restaurant, it was getting really chilly. Note to self – keep a jacket or sweater in the van.

Bad Nick was busy yesterday too, posting a new Bad Nick Blog edition of the Dumb A$$ Report. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!