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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After waiting way too long, due to last minute details we needed to get done, and then bad weather, yesterday we finally hit the road and gave our bad case of hitch itch a mighty scratch!

After a week of gloomy sky, wind, and rain, Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny, with no wind. A perfect day for traveling! Miss Terry stowed away the things inside the motorhome that needed to be secured so they didn’t become a deadly missile in the event of an accident, while I unhooked our water, electric, and sewer connection from the campground’s utility pedestal. Then we hooked up our Blue Ox tow bar, I disengaged the van’s driveshaft disconnect, and turned on the SMI auxiliary brake.

While we were doing that, Gypsy Journal subscriber Herb Staffenski came by to purchase several of our books. It was nice to meet Herb and his wife Anke, and they hope to join us at our Arizona Gypsy Gathering in Yuma, in March.

After running the slides in and pulling up our HWH leveling jacks, we said our goodbyes to Greg and Jan White, and I thanked Greg again for all of his help over the last couple of weeks. It was nice to have the time to get to know this fun couple better, and we look forward to many more good times together in the future.

After a quick scan of our PressurePro tire monitoring system, we pulled out of Elkhart Campground a little after 11:00 a.m., got on the Indiana Toll Road and headed east about 50 miles to the junction with Interstate 69, which we followed south to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and then got on U.S. Highway 30 eastbound, a nice divided four lane highway with little traffic.

We crossed into Ohio and continued east past Van Wert, and eventually came to Interstate 75, and took it south to Dayton. There was a lot more traffic on the superslab, and in Dayton we ran into a long stretch of road construction, with narrow lanes and concrete barriers instead of shoulders. I was glad to leave the interstate again and get onto U. S. Highway 35, another nice four lane limited access road that carried us 140 miles southeast through farmlands and rolling hills to Gallipolis, on the Ohio River.

I said in the blog a few days ago that an ideal driving day in an RV is 250 to 300 miles, but that sometimes when the traveling is good, we find ourselves going past that. And so it was yesterday. By the time we pulled into the Wal-Mart Super Center in Gallipolis and tucked ourselves into the far edge of the parking lot for the night, it was twilight and we had covered 387 miles. We had a bad case of hitch itch, and it just needed to be scratched!

After I wrote about their diesel engine monitoring systems for PC based computers a while back, and included a link to Norm Payne’s excellent article  on the Silverleaf Electronics moitoring system, the nice folks at Silverleaf loaned me one of their VMSpc cables to evaluate and review, and I had hooked it up to a small Acer netbook computer before we hit the road for this trip. The cable plugs into the data port under our RV’s dash, and the Silverleaf program monitors dozens of engine functions with digital displays that you can customize for your own needs.

According to the Silverleaf, we averaged 8.1 miles per gallon yesterday, most of it with the cruise control set at 63 miles per hour, though there were a few times when I was up around 66 or 67 MPH to keep up with the traffic flow.

The more I drive our Winnebago, the more I like it. Even towing our ¾ ton Ford van, the Cummins 350 horsepower engine had no problems coming up a few rather steep hills, down here in southern Ohio, at 60 or 65 miles per hour. I’m impressed!   

Today we’ll cross into West Virginia and continue our trek into new territory to explore and new adventures to discover. 

Thought For The Day – If you do what you enjoy and don’t harm other people, you’re living a beautiful life.

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Yesterday we took our first short trip in our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, and we love it!

The motorhome has so much storage that getting ready to hit the road was a simple matter of pushing a button to stow the automatic satellite TV dish, pulling in the slides and retracting the leveling jacks, and then unhooking the water and electric connections. After a quick scan of all of our tires with our PressurePro tire monitoring system, I fired up the big Cummins diesel engine and pulled out of our regular RV site at Elkhart Campground.

With our bus conversion, we would have to carry Terry’s big Kitchen Aid commercial mixer and some other stuff back to the bedroom, and used a collection of assorted sized bungee cords to lash everything down. Not because they would fall over, the bus has an incredibly smooth ride, but because we didn’t want anything turning into a missile if we got into an accident.

After a stop at the campground’s propane station to fill our tank, we hooked up the van to our tow bar and were ready to go. Ron and Brenda Speidel, in their Winnebago Journey, and Ken and Billie Barker, in their beautiful older Safari motorhome, were already hooked up and waiting to go.

The most direct route to Fort Wayne, Indiana would have been down U.S. Highway 33 from Goshen, but we took the longer (but faster) route east on the Indiana Toll Road to Interstate 69 and south to Fort Wayne. It added 20 miles to the trip, but because we didn’t have any stop and go traffic in the small towns along the way, we made better time. Besides, I wanted to see how the Winnebago handled on the open highway.

I’m happy to say that it handles just fine, with lots of power and a very smooth ride. Passing trucks didn’t affect us at all, and we had plenty of oomph when I wanted to pass a slower moving vehicle. The motorhome didn’t even seem to notice the heavy van it was pulling.

From Fort Wayne, we traveled east on U.S. Highway 30, a great divided four lane highway. We crossed into Ohio, and before long we were in Van Wert. We stopped at the Murphy USA at the Wal-Mart in Van Wert for fuel, which is not one of my favorite places, but both Ron and I were lower on fuel than we were comfortable with.  

With our fuel tanks topped off, we took U.S. Highway 127 south another 25 miles to Celina. We pulled into the Mercer County Fairgrounds with 163 miles behind us, and even more pleased with the motorhome than we were the day we bought it.

We did have quite a problem getting leveled, mostly because of the site we pulled in to. Finally, after running the jacks up and down half a dozen times, Ron had me pull a few feet forward, which allowed us to get into a position where our HWH jacks could get us level.

With the motorhome leveled out and hooked up to water, electric, and sewer, we were all famished and more than ready for dinner. While in Celina last year for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, we had discovered the China Wok Buffet and enjoyed it so much we went back a couple of times. If anything, it was even better this year, and we all abused our diets and our waistlines.

Tomorrow we’ll be hard at work on pre-rally details. It’s going to be a busy week!

Thought For The Day – Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

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