Proving just how hard it is to break a bad habit once it gets established, I was awake by 7 a.m. yesterday morning. That’s about four hours after the time I normally get to bed. This really has to stop!

The weather report had called for scattered thunderstorms in western Michigan, and soon after I woke up, strong winds began to rock the motorhome, followed by rain.

Now we had a decision to make. Do we go ahead with our plan to drive to Elkhart, Indiana, hoping we can find a window of good weather to travel in, or do we sit tight at Fisherman’s Landing Campground in Muskegon?

Normally, we would stay put and avoid traveling in bad weather. But the storm passed by in a few minutes, and the weather report called for more of the same for all of this week. Add to that the fact that our power had been kicking off every few minutes at the campground since the night before, even though we had turned off the TV and Dish network receiver, switched our water heater and refrigerator to propane, turned off our air conditioning, shut down our computers and wireless router, and set the battery charge rate on our inverter to just 5 amps. It doesn’t do you any good to have a 30 amp RV site if the campground is crowded, their power is crappy, and everybody else is running everything they have.

We didn’t feel like paying another $25 to dry camp, and with temperatures in the mid-80s, it wouldn’t have been very comfortable anyway. So a little after 9 a.m. we pulled out, stopped at a Bob Evans Restaurant to meet Berni and Rocky for breakfast and a last goodbye, and then headed south on U.S. Highway 31.

Fortunately, we got a break in the weather, and except for a few sprinkles, we had a nice trip. Well, except for the road construction.

Michigan has two seasons; winter and road construction, and we’re smack dab in the middle of the latter. We hit a couple of construction zones on our trip south. I’ve never understood drivers who come into a construction zone and ignore signs telling them to merge right or left, instead speeding forward until the every last minute, then trying to muscle their way in. All they do is create a bottleneck and make things harder for everybody, themselves included. Just get over as soon as you see the signs and keep on rolling. At least until you have to slam on the brakes to keep from running over the idiot trying to wedge in ahead ahead of you, who didn’t.

We pulled into Elkhart Campground a few minutes before 2 p.m., and the place is packed! A lot of folks are here early, just hanging out before our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally.

By the time we got unhooked, Greg and Jan White had come out to greet us, Jan with a batch of freshly baked cookies in her hand. What a beautiful sight! A pretty lady with a handful of goodies beats the heck out of an angry woman with a revolver, a rolling pin, or a restraining order. Trust me on this!  Several other folks came by to say hello as we were getting set up, but I was busy and didn’t get everybody’s name.

Bob and Gita Patel, owners of Elkhart Campground, have really been busy this summer, adding a lot of new 50 amp full hookup sites, and upgrading older sites. If you’re a regular here and haven’t seen all of the improvements yet, I know you’ll be impressed.

Here is our Winnebago on the right, and Greg and Jan’s American Eagle on the left. Don’t you just love a spacious RV site?

Once we were all settled in, and had time to check our e-mails and rest up a while, we went to dinner at Famous Dave’s BBQ in Mishawaka with Greg and Jan. We like Famous Dave’s because they serve huge portions, and everything on the menu is delicious. We always have fun with Greg and Jan, and the time went by fast as we talked about the upcoming birth of their second grandchild, about our mutual RV travels, and anything else that came to mind.

Back at the RV park, we visited for a while more, and then Greg and Jan called it a night. Soon after they left, Frank and Marlene Hinman stopped in to say hello and welcome us to Elkhart. We love visiting with our friends wherever we may be!

Another couple of wonderful friends of ours, Jerry and Suzy LeRoy, just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, and are spending the summer on their lot at the Escapees co-op in Benson, Arizona. This is monsoon season in Arizona, which was always my favorite time of year when I lived there.  Jerry has some awesome photos of the dramatic cloud formations that fill the sky during monsoon season in their blog. Check them out, I think you’ll be impressed.

Thought For The Day – I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.

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After boondocking in the parking lot overnight, we pulled out of the Flying J in North Platte, Nebraska just after 9 a.m. and headed east on Interstate 80. There were some clouds overhead, but no rain coming down.

For years I have driven under the huge wooden arch that spans Interstate 80, near Kearney, Nebraska, and wanted to stop. Yesterday seemed like the perfect time to do so.

The official title of this impressive work of architectural wonder is the Great Platte River Road Archway, and if you like history as much as we do, you just have to stop here! Displays and audio descriptions inside tell the story of the pioneer trails that all came through here, headed west, and the brave people who set off for a new life in the wilderness.

More contemporary displays cover early auto travelers and tourist camps.

Executive Director Gary Roubicek greeted us, told us a little about the history of the archway, and then sent us off to explore. We had a wonderful time, and I’d love to tell you all about it, but I’m saving this story for a feature in the next issue of the Gypsy Journal!

But I do have to tell you one very impressive fact about the arch. It was constructed in two halves, one on each side of the interstate, and then when it was time to put it all together, the highway was closed at 11 p.m. one night, huge cranes lifted everything into place, set it all up, and twelve hours later traffic was flowing again! What an engineering feat!

Here is a view from the arch, as traffic speeds past under us.

After touring the arch, we browsed the gift shop, where we picked up some excellent local history books, and then walked outside and across a bridge to view a Pawnee earth lodge. Very impressive.

A huge school of large carp live in the river, and we paused on the bridge to drop some food down to them, and watched as they made the water boil, fighting for it.

Just a short walk from the Archway is the Nebraska Firefighters Museum, and though we didn’t have time to stop, we made a mental note for our next trip. If you are traveling through central Nebraska, take the time to stop and check out the Archway. They have lots of room for RVs to park, and even welcome you to dry camp overnight!

Back on the highway, we continued east, crossed the Missouri River at Omaha, and on the Iowa side we got onto U.S. Highway 30, which took us through several small towns until we connected with U.S. 59 at Denison.

Now, I love traveling the two lane roads, but I have to say that U.S. 59 sucks. I have been on cow paths that were wider and better maintained. We bounced and rattled our way north for 15 miles or so, then the highway suddenly ended in a construction zone and we found ourselves detoured onto a series of narrow county roads that were still much better than the U.S. Highway. Where the heck are our highway tax dollars going, anyway?

Somehow we managed to escape being eaten by a Holstein, and wound our way north to Spencer, Iowa, where we pulled into the city-owned East Leach Park Campground about 7:30 p.m. We had driven 441 miles, which is a long day even on a good road, let alone some of the trails we covered in western Iowa.

We love the campgrounds in small town city parks that we have stayed in from coast to coast, but we were really disappointed in this one. For $15 a night, we got an RV site with water and 30 amp electric, which sounds like a good deal. We had lots of room, since there were only a half dozen RVs in the campground, but even though we were the only RV in our section, the electric power was terrible.

Our Progressive Industries electrical management system (EMS) showed 123 volts of power, then it would drop down to below 106 volts and the EMS would shut done to prevent damage to our coach, which is what it is designed to do. The power would come back on at 123 volts, and then start dropping again any time we turned anything on. We shut down the air conditioner, put the refrigerator on propane, and turned off the battery charger, and at  one point we were only drawing two amps, but the circuit kept tripping. I tried two other outlets with the same results.

If it hadn’t been so late, and if we were not so tired, we would have moved to another section of the campground, but it didn’t look like any of the other places available were any better.

We only have 90 miles to go to get to Forest City, and if we don’t get stuck in the grass from the storm that is just rolling in as I post this at midnight, we should be there early enough in the day to get our names on the list and a head start toward a factory service slot.

Thought For The Day – Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers; what you do today, might burn your butt tomorrow!

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With summer finally here, a lot of us who have been sitting still much of the winter are hitting the road, and weekend warriors are getting their RVs ready for vacations and summer camping trips.

RVs are complex machines, and while I am far from a technical person, even I am capable of taking a few steps to make sure our motorhome is in the proper shape for the long miles ahead. It doesn’t take a mechanic or an RV tech to prep an RV for hot weather travel.

It takes just an hour or so to inspect your RV or tow vehicle’s chassis systems, which is time well spent, and can avoid hours sitting on the shoulder of the road waiting for a tow truck to arrive, and even more time spent in a repair shop.

The first step is to check all fluid levels: engine oil, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, brake fluid, radiator coolant level, and windshield washer fluid. While you’re in the engine compartment, check your air filter. A dirty air filter can really cut down on your fuel mileage, and make your engine work harder, too. Also, check all of your belts and hoses, as well as hose clamps, for cracks or worn spots that can lead to failure (and expensive repairs) on the road. Spend a few moments looking over your wiring. Is anything frayed or loose? Did critters spend the winter nesting in your engine compartment, gnawing on the wire insulation?

Step two is to check your windshield wiper blades for wear, and then turn them on and be sure both are working properly. Then, check all exterior lights, including headlights, turn signals, emergency flashers, brake lights, and marker lights.

Next, check your starting and house batteries to be sure they are filled with distilled, that all cables are tight, and that there is no corrosion on any connections.

Walk around your RV, looking for any leaks, and if you spot any suspicious spots on the ground, check to see where they came from.

Your tires are next. Check for uneven wear, any cracking or weather checking, and use a good tire pressure gauge to be sure all are properly inflated. I use a PressurePro tire monitoring system to make this chore easier, and to monitor my tires when on the road.

Next, deploy all of your awnings. Are they working properly? Are they worn or frayed? Are the anchor clips on your window awnings secure?

Once you are done outside the RV, go inside and make sure that your air conditioner(s) are working properly. Extend and retract your slide rooms. Do the same with your leveling jacks. Check your refrigerator and water heater for proper operation if the RV has been stored all winter. When things sit for long periods of time, the gremlins seem to go to work on them.

No matter where you live, or where you spent the winter before starting your summer travels, it is always easier and cheaper to get a problem fixed at home than it is when you are broken down on the road.

Now that you have your RV ready for the road, take a minute to check out Bad Nick’s latest blog post, Oops! and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – You can only be strong and useful for the people around you if you honor your needs as much as theirs.

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Did I mention that I really, really hate getting up early in the morning? I’ve never been a morning person and never will be. I have never minded working long hours, I just always wanted the night shift, not the morning shift. But I was still awake at 6:30 a.m. yesterday morning. That’s two mornings in a row when I was up with the roosters. Will the madness never stop?

The guys at RV Renovators were on duty at 7 a.m., and they had one heck of a job getting the Norcold refrigerator in our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage loose enough to tilt forward so they could do the recall upgrade. Miss Terry had to empty the unit before they started working on it, and it’s a good thing she did, because judging by this picture it all would have been in a big jumbled mess otherwise. Fortunately, RV Renovators had a refrigerator and a separate  freezer that we could store everything in to keep it from spoiling. 

The techs had to almost crawl inside the access panel opening in the side of the motorhome to get the job done. By late morning they had the upgrade finished, and we started putting everything back inside the refrigerator. Then Miss Terry noticed a problem. The refrigerator would not ignite on propane, and kept giving us an error message. Oops! Now what?

A couple of techs tried to diagnose the problem without success, so they called in Bob, the “old timer” at RV Renovators. It only took a few minutes for Bob to figure out that the air tube directly over the burner was full of crud, and with all of the jerking and pounding to get the refrigerator out, some of it had fallen down and blocked the gas valve. They cleaned it out, and voila, the propane fired right up and we were in business.

For most of our many years as fulltimers, we have had a residential refrigerator, so there is a learning curve to RV refrigerators that we are still working on. Bob told me that the refrigerator burner air tube should be cleaned every year to prevent this kind of problem. I didn’t know that, did you? 

With that problem out of the way, we were ready to go. I would feel confident in recommending RV Renovators to anybody in need of RV service or repair. They took very good care of us, and we will call on them any time we’re in Arizona and need work done. Thanks Cinda, Jesse, Bill, Bob, and everybody else for all of your great service.

From RV Renovators, we drove a few miles east to Apache Junction, where we took a site at Happy Days RV Park, a nice Passport America campground with 50 amp full hookup back-in sites on gravel, with a concrete pad at each site. The place is pretty empty, but we’re only going to be here a few days while we visit with Terry’s parents.

Once we were hooked up and settled in, we drove to their house and spent some time with them. It’s always nice to have family time. By then it was late in the day, and we were both pretty hungry, so we hit our favorite Chinese buffet in this area, #1 Eastern Super Buffet. Even though we don’t live here, we’ve been there so many times during the last two winters that the staff knows us when we go in. I would rate it up with the top four or five Chinese buffets we have found nationwide.

Between two nights with little sleep, and getting up early, along with a full tummy, by the time we had finished eating, I was barely able to keep my eyes open. Terry drove back to the campground, and we had a quiet night watching TV, I wrote my blog, and we were in bed early. Or at least early for us, anyway.

Thought For The Day – There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going.

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It’s time to go shopping for house batteries for our Winnebago motorhome. For those armchair travelers or newbie RVers, I’ll give you a quick explanation, keeping in mind that I am not a technical person.

Most motorhomes have two separate battery banks. One bank is called the “coach” battery bank, and is used to start the engine and power the headlights, taillights, etc. on a motorhome. Depending on the size of the motorhome, this bank usually consists of one or two 12 volt batteries.

The second battery bank are the “house” batteries, which power the 12 volt interior lights, the fans for the furnaces, supply power to start the refrigerator when operating on propane, and provide spark to light the water heater, among other tasks. Again, depending on the size of the motorhome, the house battery bank can be anything from one battery to as many as you can carry.

House batteries can also be 12 volt batteries connected in parallel, or 6 volt batteries wired in series. Connecting two or more batteries in parallel keeps the same voltage of the individual batteries, but doubles (or triples) their capacity. Connecting two or more batteries in series doubles the voltage, while keeping the same capacity, as I understand it.

Anyway, when we bought the Winnebago, the previous owner told us that he had put three new deep cycle house batteries in a couple of months earlier. Terry and I have noticed that the batteries do not hold a charge very long when we have done any dry camping, so while we were visiting with Mike Steffen a few weeks ago, we pulled out the battery tray and discovered that the house batteries in the motorhome are actually starting batteries, which do not hold up to RV service.

In our bus conversion, we had three huge 8D Lifeline Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) batteries, which provided a lot of power and served us very well. The Winnebago cannot accommodate such large batteries, it has the smaller Group 31 size.

As with all RVers, our needs have changed over time, and we do not expect to do as much dry camping as we have done in the past. Back when we did a lot of boondocking, we once spent over seven straight months off the grid. But these days we may spend two or three nights in parking lots as we make a trip, or at an RV rally, but that’s about it. We prefer to be in an RV park, so we do not feel that we need to spend the extra money for AGM batteries. We will probably go with regular deep cycle RV batteries, which cost much less than AGMs.

I stopped at a battery store yesterday, and they carry Deka batteries, in both standard RV style deep cycle, and in AGM. I’m not familiar with the Deka brand, but in looking online, I see a lot of good reports on them. I think they are better known in the eastern half of the country. Does anybody here have any experience with Deka batteries?

Once we get the batteries replaced, we’ll be tire shopping, but that’s another day, and another blog.

While I was out battery shopping, Bad Nick was home posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled The Tennis Ball. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

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