Yesterday we had a party to celebrate Terry’s dad’s 80^th birthday. My father-in-law, Pete Weber, is one of the kindest, nicest, and most loving men I have ever known. Pete is a retired Air Force NCO, and even though he won a battle with cancer a few years ago, nothing slows him down.

He still walks several miles a day, he can do 25 pushups before I could even get down on the floor, and he can outwork most men 30 years younger. In fact, a while back Pete didn’t have enough to do, so he got himself a job as a WalMart greeter, working the graveyard shift four nights a week.

But that wasn’t enough of a challenge, so he volunteered to spend two of his nights retrieving shopping carts from the furthest edges of the parking lot! Here’s a picture of the happy birthday boy

Terry’s sisters Dani and Lisa, Lisa’s husband Jim, Dani’s beautiful daughters Lauren and Andrea, and their guys, joined us. Terry’s twin sons, Casey and Cody, and their ladies came down from their homes in Colorado, and her son Shawn and his girlfriend arrived from New Mexico, to help Pete celebrate his special day. Here is a picture of Terry and her dad. Can you tell how much she loves him?

That many people demand a lot of food, so Terry, Lisa, Dani, and their mom, Bess, prepared a feast that included Miss Terry’s delicious barbecued smoked ribs, beef sandwiches, all kinds of side dishes, and a huge chocolate cake that would destroy anybody’s diet. We all ate until we couldn’t eat another bite, and then we ate some more!

It was a great day, and everybody had a good time. We stayed until after 9 p.m., and by then everybody’s eyelids were beginning to droop, especially the Colorado contingent, who had to get up at 3 a.m. yesterday morning to be at the airport in Denver in time for their flight. I know Pete really appreciated having so many of his family with him for his birthday.

Friday I put a picture of the grapefruit tree at our RV site in the blog, and longtime reader Dave Burman thought I might want to see what life was like in his little corner of the world. Dave and his wife Mary are stuck in Frederick, Maryland, waiting for retirement so they can hit the road next year. Dave said he promised Mary that this will never happen again, and that he will drive their Winnebago Journey to Mexico if necessary, but they will be warm next winter!

I don’t blame you, Dave. We were stuck in Traverse City, Michigan during the wintertime years ago, while Miss Terry was battling cancer, and I don’t think I have completely thawed out yet! Our daughter Tiffany and her family live in Show Low, Arizona, only about a three hour drive from here, and I’d love to be up there spoiling my two granddaughters. But, until it warms up and the snow melts in the high country, that just isn’t going to happen.

Today we’re going back to Terry’s parents’ house to enjoy some more family time, and I bet there are plenty of leftovers we’ll have to wade through. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it!

Thought For The Day – Birthdays are good for you; the more you have the longer you live.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

It seems like we had more rain and cold weather this past summer than we did sunshine. October hasn’t changed that. While we were in Celina we had several rainy days, and though we got a break while we drove back to Elkhart Thursday, it started raining just about the time we finished getting set up in our site at Elkhart Campground. It poured all night long, and most of yesterday it continued to rain.

Somebody posted a thread on the Escapees forum yesterday saying it was raining where he was, and asking what fulltimers do with their time on days like that. I replied that we sleep in, make love, have a leisurely breakfast, sip hot chocolate, watch TV, surf the internet, read books, talk, take naps, and call friends and family. Then I added that I hope it rained again today!

Maybe it’s because of all those years I spent living on the Washington coast, where we averaged well over 120 inches of rain a year, but I like rainy days, as long as we don’t have to travel on them. Eventually I do get cabin fever, but a drizzly day now and then is very relaxing. 

I told Miss Terry once that I’d like to spend an entire winter on the Northwest coast sometime, when the pace is slower, and we could enjoy watching the storms rolling in over the Pacific Ocean. I wonder if we can put a fireplace in our motorhome?

Yesterday we did venture out in the afternoon to drop off some orders at the post office, then we met Bill Joyce and Diane Melde for dinner at Mancino’s, our favorite pizza place here in Elkhart. By the time we got back to the campground it had finally stopped raining, and the weatherman says we can expect clear skies for most of the next week, though it’s going to be chilly, with daytime temperatures in the 50s and nights in the mid-30s.

Once things dry out around here a little bit, we want to spend some time getting the bays in our Winnebago better organized. My buddy Ron Speidel taught a seminar at our Gypsy Gathering rally about how to organize your storage bays, and though I didn’t have time to sit in, I’ve taken a few tips from observing how Ron has things in his Winnebago Journey.

We were pretty ruthless in purging things as we moved from our bus conversion into the motorhome, and got rid of a lot of stuff. So our bays are not crammed full, but we still have a few things to discard, and then we want to rearrange things to make accessing them easier.

Yesterday we also stopped to check out our bus conversion. Now, I know it’s an inanimate object and incapable of emotions, but I swear, it looked real sad sitting there, when it was made to be out rolling down the highway. We are very pleased with our new RV, but we love that old girl. We put in every screw and strung every inch of wiring, and she carried us a lot of miles over the years.

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about solar power, and that we had decided not to transfer our solar panels from the bus to the Winnebago. But the solar setup we installed on the bus sure does a great job. The bus has been sitting for about three weeks and is not plugged in, but with just the solar panels supplying power, our house battery bank was fully charged. Someone asked if we ever had problems running our house style refrigerator off the inverter and battery bank when dry camping, but with this solar array, we never had to worry. It does the job.

Thought For The Day – They say wine improves with age. As I enter my golden years, I say age improves with wine!

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?

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally