Category Archives: RV-Travel

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2013/12/31 (T) Good Bye 2013

The final day of the Arcadia (Bussin’) Rally featured breakfast, seminars, meetings, tire kicking, preliminary departure preparations, dinner, door prizes, and a New Year’s Eve party with a live band.

Tin Can Tourists.

Once again breakfast was coffee, juice, donuts, and bagels. But we didn’t have to cook it or clean it up, and it was the first social activity of the day, so it hit the spot. The building was already decorated for New Year’s Eve with sparkly signs and ceiling streamers. Although celebrations are really about the people, the room decorations added a festive touch.

CCO meeting.

After breakfast I went over to photograph Frank Morrison’s GMC PD4014 “Cool Cruiser” and interviewed him about it for a possible BCM featured bus article. The coach conversion was originally done by an architect in Flint, Michigan and the interior is different because of that. Frank bought the bus from him.

CCO meeting.

The morning seminar was on GPS and mapping technology with Tom Mason.

Paula and Jack Conrad, Bussin’ Rally founders.

We did not attend the morning seminar because the Converted Coach Owners (CCO), which we belong to, had a meeting at the same time. There were approximately 15 people in attendance. CCO is a small, independent group of converted bus owners most of whom are from the lower Great Lakes area, so this was a pretty good turnout for being so far away from home.

Roundtable discussion with Howard Best.

After the CCO meeting I had the opportunity to talk with Jack Conrad at some length about the rally and get a few pictures of him and Paula. Jack and Paul started the Bussin’ Rally in December 2000 (the 2001 Rally) and turned it over to Bill and Brenda Phelan after the 11^th one in December 2010. Acadia Rally 2014 (Dec 2013) was Bill and Brenda’s third as organizers and hosts.

Bingo!

The afternoon seminar was a roundtable discussion lead by Howard Best. With respect to owner-converted buses the knowledge and experience that assembles at the Arcadia Rally is probably unmatched by any other such gathering during the year. Even with 100 buses and 200 people, the Arcadia Rally was very relaxed and these experts were very accessible. Throughout the rally participants ambled from bus to bus and stopped to chat. Sometimes they pulled up a chair and sometimes you would find their heads in a bay discussing a technical issue. It was just that kind of event, and has been since it started in Dec 2000.

The last meal of 2013.

The afternoon seminar was followed by bingo with Bob Ernst calling the action once again. Linda, Karen, and Kathy came over to play, and Linda had bingo on the first card! I think she’s hooked.

This dress was entirely covered with pull tabs from cans.

As the day went on we noticed quite a few people making preliminary departure preparations and decided we should do the same. We had hoped to not have to dump our tanks until we got back to Williston on the 1^st, but we were getting low on fresh water which usually means our waste tanks are nearing full. We dumped our holding tanks, filled the fresh water tank to the 2/3rds mark, stowed the water hose, and put lawn chairs away. All that remained to do on the outside for tomorrow was stowing a step stool, a couple of mats, disconnecting the electrical shoreline and stowing it; turning on the chassis batteries and engine accessories air switch, and hooking up the car for towing. The inside usually takes less than an hour to get ready and we typically deal with that about 90 minutes before we plan to pull out. We don’t like to do this too soon as once the interior is prepped for travel it is more difficult to use for living.

The food servers for the last meal of 2013.

At 5:15 PM we headed over to the activities building with Bill, Karen, Mike, and Kathy for dinner. A centerpiece had been added to each table and about half of the rally goers had changed into dressier clothes. Like last night’s meal, there was a serving line to get your food. Volunteers staffed the various serving stations, and it was a smooth, quick process. Dinner included spaghetti with marinara sauce (no meat, thank you!), veal parmesan, shrimp, green salad (no cheese, thank you again), and desserts, including fruit cocktail (thank you a third time) with sweetened tea, unsweetened tea, and water to drink. People also brought their own beverages to suit their tastes.

Bill and Karen.

As the band started bringing in their equipment I figured it was going to be a long, loud night, so after dinner I went back to the coach to work in quiet surroundings. In my absence the door prizes were given out starting at 7 PM. After the door prizes were distributed a group of volunteers put the New Year’s Eve party decorations on the tables. These consisted of plastic lei, party hats, tiaras, and noise makers.

Kathy and Mike.

The New Year’s Eve party got started around 8 PM with country rock band Desert Moon. We sat with our dinner group at a table in the middle of the room with good access to the main doors. The room acoustics were very “live” and the volume was dangerously high so Bill and I came and went throughout the evening, finding camaraderie with like-minded individuals who gathered outside the building to talk buses in the cool evening air. The median age of the rally participants was probably between 65 and 70, and many people left long before midnight and of those who remained many were also in and out of the building. There were often more people dancing while the band was on break than when they were playing as the volume of the pre-recorded music was lower. But enough of us stuck it out until midnight to bring in the New Year when Bill and Brenda lowered a sparkling ball from the ceiling while we counted down from 10. At the stroke of midnight (EST) we all said our “Happy New Year’s,” and then many of us went back to our coaches and went to bed.

Desert Moon.

Our children are grown and have not spent New Year’s Eve with us in quite some time, having lives and friends of their own with whom to celebrate the coming of the New Year. Our tradition for more than 10 years now has been to spend a quiet evening at home enjoying some traditional foods, watching the celebrations from around the world on TV, and finally having a champagne toast at midnight. We no longer have those foods since we changed the way we eat and we have been busy enough at the rally that it never occurred to us to buy a bottle of “bubbly.” We did open a bottle of Black Star Arcturos Late Harvest Riesling, which served the occasion just fine, but what we really enjoyed was ringing out the old year and bringing in the new one with old and new friends who share our interest in the converted coach and the lifestyle it makes possible.

2013/12/30 (M) Even More Buses

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: Yes, bus rallies are stylish.

: A technical sidebar in a bay.

: Jimmy Clay giving a tour of the Iron Horse.

: Sadie Clay in the Iron Horse.

: Sally and Roy Langwah Nashville impersonation show.

: Tom Mason seminar on fresh water systems.

: The Love Bus.

: The Jones’ vintage Airsteam pulled by vintage truck.

: The Old Hounds lunch meeting.

: Hunt Jones and Forrest Bone of TCT with Margaret Way.

: South East Bus Nuts meeting.

: Sally Langwah leads the electric slide.

: Inside rear mural on the Iron Horse.

: Rear mural on Never Forget.

: You can check in any time you want, but you can never leave.

: The ultravan is just plain cute.

: Ultravan smiley face.

: Inside the Ultravan.

2013/12/30 (M) Bussin’ Day 2

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Tom Mason leads a discussion about fresh water systems.

The second day of the Arcadia (Bussin’) Rally kept us busy. Breakfast was sponsored by Luke of U. S. Coach & Equipment Sales. (Breakfast yesterday was sponsored by Steve Foster and the activities building is sponsored for the entire rally by Central Florida Bus.) I went to the 9 AM seminar on the use of the on-board fresh water tank, put on by Tom Mason. Tom uses the water in his tank for all domestic purposes, including drinking and cooking, and described the filtration system he uses to make sure it is safe and tastes good. From there it was a Q&A/discussion format, which works well at a rally where there are a lot of very experienced people but the number of attendees at a seminar is not too large.

The Love Bus. Groovy.

The “official” open house was today from 10 AM – noon, but many attendees have had their buses open to visitors since they got here. Linda and I decided not to open our coach because of the cats, who are very stressed by strangers in their home. We visited a few coaches including the Ultravan, the Love Bus, the Cool Cruiser, and two gorgeous trailers–a Spartan belonging to the Bone’s, and an airstream belonging to the Hunt’s—both with highly polished aluminum exteriors.

A vintage Airstream trailer and tow vehicle.

The “Old Hounds” group met for lunch at the Wolfert’s bus, so I stopped by there to get a few photographs. After we had our own lunch, I attended the 1:30 PM seminar; a presentation by John Hunt of Tin Can Tourists titled “Home on the Road.” John had researched and prepared an excellent presentation on how American’s took to the road in automobiles over the last 100 years. The emphasis was on the evolution of where they stayed: think primitive roadside camping (the original boondocking) through the development of various kinds of campgrounds, cabin camps and eventually motels. John’s delivery was very good.

The “Old Hounds” lunch meeting.

The South East Bus Nuts were having a mid-afternoon meeting so I stopped by to take a few photographs. Linda and MaryAnn went to play bingo and had a great time. Bob Ernst was the caller, one of his many volunteer duties at the rally. (Bob also takes care of the coffee all day, and was one of the golf cart drivers escorting buses to their sites.) While the ladies played bingo, I went back to the Iron Horse and spent a couple of hours with owners Jimmy and Sadie Clay. I took additional exterior photos and interviewed them about the conversion project.

Tin Can Tourists, L to R: Hunt Jones, Margaret Way (of Arcadia), & Forrest Bone. Margaret’s parents were original TCTs.

We went over to the activities building with Bill and Karen for dinner around 5:30 PM. As promised, Brenda Phelan had prepared salads for us. We had hoped we might be able to have some corn, but after grilling it (yum) they put it in pans with butter (yuck). The only other thing they had that we could eat was bread, so we each took a piece.

The South East Bus Nuts afternoon meeting.

Dinner was followed by door prizes followed by a break before the evening entertainment started. I used that opportunity to return to the coach and process some photographs. I went back for the evening entertainment where Linda, Bill, Karen, Mike, and Kathy had held on to our table near the front. Normally we don’t sit up front, especially for bands, but tonight was Sally Langwah and her husband, Roy. They did a “Nashville impersonation” show in which Roy did Willie Nelson and Elvis Presley songs while Sally did a range of famous country female singers including Dolly Parton and Patsy Kline. She changed into a different/appropriate outfit for each singer.

Sally Langwah leads a line dance.

Sally and Roy were very entertaining. They both interacted with the audience, who played along wonderfully, and their show lasted about 90 minutes. After their show they provided another hour of music for dancing. Linda and Karen learned a couple of line dances, and Linda and I got up for a few slow numbers (that’s the best I can/will do). Although the crowd thinned as time went on, there were still 30 people there at the end having a great time. Sally and Roy have already been invited back for next year’s rally.

2013/12/29 (N) The Rally Begins

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Coffee, juice, donuts, & bagels.

Although we’ve been here since the 26^th, the Arcadia (Bus’in) Rally 2014 officially started this morning with breakfast at 7:30 AM. In addition to coffee, orange juice (it’s Florida, after all), and donuts (it’s an RV rally, after all) there were bagels, and they were vegan, so there was something we could eat. Linda thanked rally organizer Brenda Phelan for that. While we were finishing our breakfast Brenda approached Linda regarding dinner and offered to prepare a salad for us in place of the main (meat) course they would be serving. We didn’t expect that, but we certainly appreciated it.

Breakfast in the activities building.

There was a memorial service at 9:30 AM to celebrate the life of Fran Mason. On December 16 she and Tom were checking in to an RV park just down the road from the rally site when she had a cerebral hemorrhage. She was air-lifted to a major medical center but did not survive. Tom and Fran had been coming to the Bus’in Rally for years, Tom serving as the Master of Ceremonies, and they were well known and beloved by the regular attendees. Many people contributed photographs and video clips of Fran from previous rallies that were then edited into a slide show. Although we never met Fran, we felt we should attend the service; this rally just has that kind of vibe. It was clear that she was a person who loved life, and John Vickery did a good job of making the celebration of her life was as upbeat as such a gathering can be.

Seven buses, all in a row.

At 100 RVs, the Arcadia Rally is large enough to have seminar presentations and small enough to not have simultaneous ones. The 11 AM seminar was on work-camping. We have been to seminars on this topic before so we went back to our rig where Linda worked on her needlepoint and I finished my photo gallery post for the 28th. A few more RVs arrived today and after lunch I took another stroll around the rally grounds looking for photo opportunities.

Yummm, ice cream.

Linda headed over to the activities building with Karen at 1:45 PM for the ice cream social and I followed a bit later. We did not have ice cream, of course, but I wanted to get photos of the activity. The 3 PM seminar was put on by Forrest Bone from the Tin Can Tourists. It was a well researched and well documented presentation on the history and modern re-creation of that organization, which was a major factor in the beginnings of extended-timing and the development of “house car” tourism in Florida during the 1920s and 30s. The modern incarnation of the TCTs is not limited to any particular type or vintage of RV; anyone interested in the Tin Can Tourists can join. The new TCT is based in Michigan and holds rallies at Camp Dearborn in Milford, Michigan each May and September. The also have rallies in Florida and elsewhere.

A 1954 Flxible arrived late, but they made it.

After the seminar I was looking for more photo ops when I found Jimmy Clay outside the Iron Horse with the door open. I talked with him briefly about having the bus featured in Bus Conversions Magazine and learned that bus was in the magazine some years ago before they repainted the outside. We went inside where I met his wife, Sadie, got the interior tour, and took lots of pictures. We agreed that I would return tomorrow, but not during the official open house, to get some photos of the systems and bays and then sit with them and take notes for the article.

Door prizes!

For dinner Linda fixed angel hair pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and onion in olive oil and served it with a simple green salad and a glass of white wine. We then headed over to the activities building for the opening ceremonies which consisted of a few announcements and lots of door prizes. John Vickery handled the Master of Ceremonies duties. This was followed by “Joy and the Gang,” a band which performed vintage rock tunes to go with our vintage buses. A few couples got up and danced and the band seemed to understand what they needed to play for this crowd. They were scheduled to play from 8:00 to 10:30 PM but we left after less than 30 minutes. Linda and I have no tolerance for loud music, and the acoustics of the activity building were such that the lyrics were unintelligible. We turned the TV on when we got back to the rig and watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Joy and the Gang; vintage rock.

2013/12/28 (S) More Buses

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: The venue sign announcing our rally.

: And now, a word from our sponsors…

: Southeast Bus Nuts headquarters.

: Southeast Bus Nuts fly the flag.

: More buses arriving.

: Buses lined up at the registration area.

: The Iron Horse. The interior is reportedly done like an old train car.

: The Gerrie’s are on track for 50 years and 1,000,000 miles!

: Not just a pretty face.

: Three buses in a row.

: If the bus is big enough and the car is small enough…

: Groovey, man.

: Now that’s a clean engine/bay.

2013/12/28 (S) Historic Arcadia (FL)

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One of the activities that often takes place at RV rallies, especially converted bus rallies, is a scheduled open house. People with owner-converted coaches are like a fraternity, and are always interested in what their fellow coach converters have done since they last crossed paths. We are still undecided as to whether we will open our coach because of our cats, who tend to be wary of strangers, but just in case, Linda decided to clean house this morning while I wandered the rally site taking pictures.

Rally organizers and hosts Bill and Brenda Phelan are expecting 100 rigs to show up and by noon today at least 90 had arrived. More arrived during the afternoon and a handful were planning to come in tomorrow. The rally officially starts tomorrow (Sunday) at 7:30 AM with coffee, juice, donuts, and bagels.

1911 Arcadia (FL) Train Depot.

Late morning we drove to the Arcadia, Florida historic district. Most of the district lies between eastbound and westbound FL-70 from FL-17 west for a couple of blocks. There was a sidewalk market throughout the district and we soon figured out that Arcadia is a center for antiques and collectibles. Much of the original architecture remains but except for a few restaurants and other businesses most of the square footage is devoted to vintage resale. This was perfect for us; lots of people out and about and lots of interesting things to look at, absolutely none of which we had any interest in buying. It helps us stay within budget.

Oak Street, Arcadia (FL) Historic District.

We had a light lunch when we got back to the coach after which Linda sat outside and read while I worked on some digital photographs. Even though it was cloudy, the temperature got up a bit past 80 degrees F and the bus reached 84 inside. I shut the computer and network electronics down since heat is their main enemy and we went over and had a long chat with Mike Muller and MaryAnn Nash who are parked two spots down from us. They are another GLCC couple and Mike is the GLCC VP.

Another view of Oak Street.

We returned to our bus around 4:30 PM to read and write when we felt a few raindrops. We put the folding chairs away and went inside just as it started to rain so we closed up the roof vents. The rain was brief, but the forecast for overnight and through the day tomorrow is for widespread, persistent, and occasionally heavy rain. The combination of temperature and wind has been quite pleasant, and we have had very few bugs, but the humidity has been noticeable. We expected that, this being Florida after all, but the storms forecasted for tomorrow are associated with a cold front, behind which the humidity should be a bit lower.

The old opera house in Arcadia (FL).

As dusk settled over the Turner Agri Civic Center we saw folks out strolling and decided to take our wine glasses and go for one ourselves before dinner. Along the way we met John Silver of Central Florida Bus Sales and Repairs. John has two coaches for sale at the rally; a 1994 Prevost XL (DD 8V92) Royale Coach and a 1997 MCI (DD 60 Series) Vantare. Although it was night by the time we got back to the coach, we had good visibility for walking as the main entrance road to the Turner Agri Civic Center has a long line of very tall, very bright lights. Many of the buses had their interior lights on, and some had exterior lights as well. It made for a pretty sight.

A former hotel in Arcadia (FL) Historic District. Mary Margaret’s Tea & Biscuit to the left.

Many RVers like to dine out, especially at rallies with friends. While we enjoy the company of our fellow RVers, we prefer to dine in as much as possible. We have delicious dishes prepared with healthy fresh ingredients in reasonable portion sizes and at modest cost in the comfort of our own home. Tonight was left over Tofurkey with baked potatoes and mustard greens that Linda bought from the only sidewalk vendor we found selling food in the Arcadia HistoricDdistrict today. We started with a small glass of white wine and ended by finishing the vegan chocolate cake.

2013/12/27 (F) Buses

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: The sign says it all.

: The check in area.

: Keeping track of who is where.

: The activities building (with restrooms). Two of the rally sponsors.

: Our coach next to a neat old bus.

: Rally organizers Bill & Brenda Phelan’s Prevost H3.

: Our coach in the early morning light (Prevost H3-40).

: A Neoplan double decker!

2013/12/27 (F) Arcadia FL

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Sandhill cranes at the Turner Agri Civic Center.

We slept in this morning and did not get up until sunrise; very late for us. I made a big pot of coffee and then went for a stroll to take some photographs in the early morning light. I took photos in the afternoon light too, and I have assembled a gallery of images as a second post for today. When I got back Linda made vegan blueberry pancakes with real Maple syrup and vegan breakfast sausage patties. She does not use these fake meat products much anyone, but occasionally we like to have a more “traditional” breakfast. Starting Sunday the rally provides coffee, juice, bagels, toast, and other breakfast items every morning.

After breakfast we drove into town to find a 10-32 Nylok (stop) nut and other items that had been accumulating on our list. Our Garmin 465T GPS found the Walmart just 2 miles SE of the rally venue. We spotted a Tractor Supply Company and a Do It Best Hardware store on the way to Walmart and made note of other local businesses as we passed by. We found everything on our list at Walmart except for two items, one of which was the stop nut, so we stopped at the hardware store on the way back to the Turner Agri Civic Center. Stop nut and drain stopper in hand, we started back to base camp and remember another item that we had not written down. A quick U-turn back to the Sweetbay Market by the hardware store and we found a small (pocketsize) spiral bound notebook. I needed something I could carry around easily to record various details of the rally for my BCM article.

Back at the coach I replaced the two regular nuts I had used to fix the main patio awning yesterday with a Nylok stop nut. We let the awning sit for a while longer to make sure it was dry and then rolled it back up. We are parked with the passenger side of the bus facing north so the awning wasn’t providing any shade but merely blocked our view of most of the rally.

We then decided to give the coach a quick wash. The temperature was around 70 degrees F and there was a high overcast; plenty of light but not a blazing direct sunlight. We closed up the roof vents and windows, got out the hoses, sprayer, collapsible bucket, brush, dish soap, and microfiber cloths and went to work. The coach had picked up a film of road grime over the last 8 days and 1,300 miles and unlike most campgrounds, there was no problem with washing it at our site. We had planned on doing this at the designated RV/Car Wash station at Williston Crossings when we got back, but now we won’t have to. It still needs more hand detailing, but that can be done at our long-term site.

The washing done we opened the coach back up as it was getting warm inside. We had lunch around 1:30 PM; tofu hot dogs with mustard, onions, and relish along with fresh grapes. Apparently this was a comfort food day, but it was also an easy preparation meal. While we were eating I got a call from Chuck Spera. He was on his way from Naples to Ft Meyers and wanted to come to the rally site to visit and check it out. His ETA was still two hours out, so we went for a walk. I then took the camera and went out again as quite a few rigs had arrived during the day.

Barbara was back in Detroit for the holidays, so once we knew Chuck was coming we knew we would be going out for dinner and did some online research. There are plenty of places to eat in Arcadia, but it is not a dining destination. The Magnolia Seafood Grill appeared to be our best option; rated number one on Trip Advisor. Chuck arrived at 4:25 PM as estimated. Linda opened a bottle of our 2009 Egri Merlot and we settled in for a chat. He had a mobile mechanic (Mustafa, seriously) in Naples replace the water pump, connecting hoses, and thermostat on his Detroit Diesel 8V92TA engine (the same one we have) that morning and had to go to Ft. Meyers to return the old water pump to avoid the $165 core charge.

As the sun set and it started to get dark it also got very cool as there had been a strong breeze from the northeast all day. We headed for the heart of Arcadia’s historic district and found the restaurant. Linda and I split a very nice salad and a very mediocre pasta marinara. Chuck had a blackened Corvina (Cilus gilberti, similar to sea bass) with a baked potato and broccoli all of which he said was excellent. Our waitress, Jackie, was delightful and attentive. She even had the cook prepare our garlic bread with olive oil instead of butter. Chuck had a 90 mile drive back to Pelican Lake in Naples, so concluded our visit around 7:30 PM, made plans to meet again, and went our separate ways. We rounded out our meal back at the rig with some vegan chocolate cake and settled in to read, process photographs, work a few puzzles, and watch a little TV before going to bed.

2013/12/26 (R) Our Recent Travels

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We left Williston Crossings RV Resort in Williston, Florida at 10:15 AM and traveled to the Turner Agri Civic Center in Arcadia Florida for the Arcadia (Bus’in) Rally 2014. Our route took us down US-27 to I-75 to FL-70 to US-17 and over to the rally venue, covering 200 miles in 3 hours and 45 minutes. I-75 had a lot of traffic and a few construction zones, but US-27 and FL-70 we excellent roads with very few vehicles. I have not been posting maps of our daily travels, so here is the route we have traveled starting on the 19^th. We have traveled about 1,300 miles in that time.

View Larger Map

We were met at the check in station by Bill and Brenda Phelan who now run the Arcadia Rally. Linda took care of the paperwork while I introduced myself, indicating that I had been asked by the publisher of Bus Conversions Magazine to do an article on the rally. We unhooked the car and were escorted to our back-in site. We immediately recognized the bus parked behind us as belonging to Bill and Karen Gerrie. They always travel with Karen’s sister Katherine and her husband Mike, and sure enough, they were here too! By the time the rally starts on Sunday we expect there to be other converted bus people here that we know.

We were escorted to our site, backed in, straightened out, and leveled and then went through our usual arrival routine; Linda setting up the inside while I hooked up the electrical shoreline and checked the house battery state of charge and that the inverter/charger was working. We then deployed the awnings.

While opening and securing the main patio awning the front rafter arm started to come off of the awning shaft. Closer inspection revealed that there was supposed to be a retaining pin or bolt holding these two pieces together, but it was missing. Yikes! I looked down and there was a black bolt of approximately the right diameter and length on ground in front of me. Was it possible that this had just fallen out? I looked at the other end of the roller tube and there was the matching part, but with a Nylok nut on the end. I went back to the other end and looked for the nut, but didn’t see it. It probably fell off a long time ago, if it was ever there in the first place. No one has worked on these awnings since they were installed by the Zip Dee Factory outside of Chicago, Illinois in October 2012. It would have been very, very bad if these two parts had separated while we were traveling on the highway.

I managed to get the bolt back through the mating holes, but I did not have a Nylok nut of the correct size in my parts kit. The Gerrie’s have a 1965 GMC bus that they converted. Bill is a very knowledgeable and resourceful guy when it comes to buses, but he did not have an 8-32 Nylok nut either. I did have some regular 8-32 nuts, however, so I double nutted the bolt and snugged it up nice and tight. We added 8-32 Nylok nuts to our growing list of supplies we needed to buy and things we need to do.

With that chore out of the way, we pulled up the chairs and settled in for a chat. I mentioned the Check Engine Light issue and erratic speedometer problem we’ve been having, and quick as a wink Bill had his ProLink/NexIQ engine diagnostic tool out, hooked up to our bus, and we were reading codes. The DDEC II engine computer did not have any active codes set and only one inactive code. The inactive code was for a fuel temperature sensor high voltage. Joe Cannarozzi (our mobile mechanic) and I had replaced the fuel temperature sensor back in the spring but I never got around to hooking up my ProLink and clearing the old code. That little oversight has caused me way too many anxious moments. My bad.

Bill also had a special card for his diagnostic equipment that allowed us to look at the error codes from the ATEC transmission computer. No codes were set, indicating that the vehicle speed sensor was sending a good signal at least as far as the transmission computer. We assumed that was the case as the transmission was working great and the cruise control was working as it always has. The erratic speedometer appears to be either a wiring problem between the computer and the dashboard or the speedometer gauge itself. The easiest/cheapest thing to do would be to clean the connectors on both ends. The next easiest thing would be to replace the speedometer and hope that’s the problem, but that will not be the least expensive solution if turns out not to be the gauge.

Although I had stopped worrying about the Check Engine Light, it was a great relief to know that there were no active error codes being generated by the engine or transmission computer. One of the great things about rallies in general, and converted bus rallies in particular, is that many converted bus owners have done their own conversions and have a special sense of community about their machines. They know their way around buses, travel with tools and parts, and are usually willing to help each other when there’s a problem.

With a potential awning disaster discovered and averted and the Check Engine Light issue resolve, we finally settled in to our chairs for a long, well-deserved, chat. While we were talking four Sandhill Cranes walked by about 50 feet away. These magnificent gray birds have a distinctive red cap on their heads, and can stand almost 4 feet tall. Although they tend to spend summers much farther north in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Canada, we have them on our property in southern Michigan during the late spring to early winter. We also saw kildeer, and several other birds we did not recognize. On the drive down today we saw pelicans and egrets plus the usual raptors that can often be spotted along highways.

By 5:30 PM it was getting dark and mosquitoes started to appear so we wrapped up our conversation and headed inside for the night. With all of the activity and socializing we had managed to skip lunch. Rather than take an hour to prepare something, we had the chickpea salad Linda made the other day. It’s one of our favorite cold dishes and reminds us of egg salad.

Linda turned on the TV and scanned for channels. We are parked facing west with the front OTA TV antenna pointed slightly north of our nose. That’s somewhat in the direction of Tampa St. Petersburg although they are actually northwest of our location. The scanner found 60 digital stations, so she flipped through them to see what was there. We had the PBS trio, a weather station, the usual commercial offerings, and lots of Spanish language stations. Impressive really; if you look at a road atlas Arcadia is 40 miles east of I-75 and appears to be in the middle of huge swamp.

We could not find a usable Wi-Fi signal so we turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi device and got online. If you need to be online while traveling, you need to have more than one way to get there. (Technomadia has the definitive book on the subject for RVers.) We checked e-mail and I worked on this post. We took a few minutes to have vegan chocolate cake with fresh strawberries. We finished up our online work and went to bed early. Although the rally does not start until Sunday, I have to start acting like a reporter tomorrow so I can write a really good article on this event with lots of good photographs.

2013_12_24 (T) Christmas Eve in Florida

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If you had asked me even 10 years ago if we would ever be in Florida on Christmas Eve I would have scoffed at the suggestion. And yet here we are; and loving it. We got up around 8 AM to clear skies and cool temperatures, the overnight low having gotten all the way down close to 50 degrees F. There was a light breeze, and it was a bit brisk, but we were bemused to see people bundled up like they were in Michigan (where the temperatures were near 10 deg F). Speaking of Michigan, there are quite a few people here at Williston Crossings RV Resort from our state, as well as from Ontario, Canada.

I made coffee, as I do every morning, and that got Linda up, as it does most mornings. Teeko’s Sweet Seattle Dreams is a 50/50 mix of their Seattle Blend (caffeinated) and Sweet Dreams blend (decaffeinated). We were the first customers that Jeff made this particular combination for, and he liked the aroma so much he is considering brewing up some to serve by the cup. Not that we’re addicted or anything, but we like to start our day with the smell of coffee being ground and brewed. The drinking that follows isn’t too bad either. I uploaded several blog posts before breakfast and a few more afterwards while Linda went for her first walk of the day. She is very focused on getting in at least 10,000 steps every day, and determined to drag me along. 🙂 We then headed for Gainesville, Florida to do some grocery shopping.

There was a Christmas Eve social at 4 PM in the Activities Building at Williston Crossings RV Resort; BYOBeverage and a hor d’ourves to share. We didn’t have anything with us to share, so we picked up hummus and chips while we were in town. Linda also needed various ingredients for our Christmas eve and Christmas day dinners. Our research indicated that our best general purpose grocery option would be Publix, a large grocery store chain in Florida. There are several in Gainesville (home of the University of Florida and the Florida Gators). There is also an Earth Origins organic market in Gainesville. One of the Publix stores is in the SW corner of the Gainesville area at the intersection of I-75 and FL-121, just 15 miles from the back entrance of the Williston Crossings RV Resort. The Earth Origins market is in the northwest quadrant just north of the University of Florida campus. Between the two stores we were able to find most of the products we are used to getting from the stores where we live, including Whole Foods. We did not look for the Trader Joe’s in Gainesville on this trip, but we know there is one there if/when we need it.

We had a light lunch when we got back. I continued to work on blog posts (I am almost caught up) while Linda entered receipts into Quicken and copied photo files from the NAS to her machine for redundant storage.

We took a roasted red pepper hummus and chips to the Christmas Eve social. Our main reason for going was to be sociable, not for the food, but we always try to take something we can eat on the assumption that there won’t be anything else vegan available. We got there just after 4 PM and left about an hour later. During that time there were approximately 40 people there, enough to fill the room but a small percentage of the residents. All seven people at our table were first time residents at Williston Crossings. One couple was from Ontario and another had recently become full-timers, having sold everything and hit the road this past July. Someone brought veggies, so we had something to eat besides the hummus and chips.

Linda prepared a lovely Christmas Eve dinner of angel hair pasta (somehow appropriately inappropriate for us) with mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes tossed in an olive oil with garlic. A little white wine to wash it down and some fresh strawberries for dessert finished the meal off nicely.

After dinner I went to the Adobe website to see if I could get some pre-sales technical support before deciding whether to order the Adobe Photoshop Photography Program. This program is subscription based and includes Photoshop Creative Cloud and Lightroom 5 for $9.99 per month (with a one year commitment). My Live Chat customer support person indicated that I would be able to use this on my old Windows XP Pro laptop, so I went ahead and ordered it. Adobe was very efficient at taking my money, but as soon as I tried to download Photoshop I was informed that it was not compatible with my operating system. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh. I had a few “words” with the Live Chat person about this. When our Live Chat session was done I was presented with a survey and I made it clear I was not pleased with the pre-sales support I had received which seemed more concerned with “helping” me to place the order than with accurately responding to my technical questions.

The subscription allows us to install the programs on two computers, and I did establish (I think) that we can move it to a new machine if/when we get one. For now we downloaded the Creative Cloud app onto Linda’s much newer 64-bit Windows 8 machine and then used the app to download both Ps(CC) and Lr5 onto her computer. Although Linda will probably not be the primary user of this software it at least got it installed so we can start learning how to use it.

2013_12_23 (M) Williston Walkabout

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The FL-121 entrance sign.

With 3.5 days of hard driving behind us and nothing we had to get up and do first thing this morning, we slept well last night and got up when we were ready. That turned out to be around 7:30 AM, but that was two hours later than the last few mornings. We had a leisurely start to the morning and eventually went on a walkabout to explore the Williston Crossings RV Resort and the town of Williston, Florida.

The new FL-121 entrance/gate.

Besides the beautiful landscaping, the high quality of the sites/infrastructure, the excellent Wi-Fi, and the nice people we have met so far (staff and residents) one of the things we like about Williston Crossings RV Resort is that it appears to be very quiet and relaxed even though lots of people are out and about. The people parked next to us, for example have an outside TV. They were watching it at 7 AM this morning while smoking, which they do constantly, but we never heard the TV and we never smelt the smoke. We only knew they were there because we looked out our window and saw them.

The recycling area.

A couple of bonus features we discovered included the recycling program and the RV/Car Wash station, available for use at no extra charge. Another plus is that the resort is walking distance from Williston, a city of 2,200 residents (not including the RV Resort). We walked downtown this morning and discovered a grocery store, two drug stores, two hardware stores, and a variety of non-chain eateries. When we got back we walked the RV Resort and took pictures. Our estimate is that there are at least 600 sites here so there are, or will be, at least half as many people staying at the RV park during January and February as live in Williston. It’s a BIG park, but you can only see limited portions of it from any given vantage point, so it has much more intimate feel to it.

The RV/Car Wash station.

We also checked out a possible different site (#439) that was available in the old section of the resort and decided to move our reservation to that site. The pull-through site we originally reserved for January – March was in the new section where the tree cover is sparse to non-existent, making the sites much more exposed to the sun. Site #439 is a back-in rather than a pull-through which will save us $400 over the three months we are here. The main reason for moving, however, was that it has the mature trees of the older section, including Live Oaks draped with Spanish moss, which will provide a more attractive setting while affording us good shade from the sun. By the time we got back to our coach we had walked about 6,000 steps. At 2 feet/step that was 12,000 feet or a little over two miles. At 2.5 feet/step it was 15,000 feet, or just under three miles. Either way, we would not have done that at home with temperatures in the mid 20s and lots of snow on the ground.

Linda with the Christmas dolphin near the swimming pool.

The north end of the resort is still under development and the landscaping is sparse compared to the south (older) end. We were told that the northwest corner is being developed with sites that can be purchased. The roads and utilities are in, but most of the sites have not been paved and landscaped. This part of the resort is closer to the club house, swimming pool, and pavilion. At the center of the north section are three full size train cars and a caboose. We do not know what plans the owners have these but they are badly in need of restoration.

Three train cars and a caboose.

The nearest cities of any size are Gainesville (20 miles) and Ocala (25 miles). Gainesville is a college town. It has a Trader Joe’s, a few “health food” stores, several farmers markets, and a Panera so we will be making that trip occasionally for items we cannot find in Williston. We are looking forward to eating a lot of locally sourced fruits and vegetables while we are here. The Nutrition Facts daily video reports for the last few days have been about recent studies on the remarkable properties of berry fruits. It’s worth checking out.

We were surprised this morning when we got an “access denied” message when we tried to view the Nutrition Facts video. Nutrition Facts uses YouTube to make their videos available and had a problem a few weeks ago with a false report of “offensive/inappropriate content” which shut them down for 24 hours until they got it straightened out with the powers that be. We weren’t sure at first if this had happened again or if we were being blocked from getting to YouTube by the resorts Wi-Fi system. A quick check of YouTube directly indicated that the resort was apparently blocking YouTube. As large as the resort is, it is understandable that they don’t want people streaming video content, and YouTube would be an obvious site to block.

(Opinion: People who abuse the ability to report offensive or inappropriate content of YouTube by making false claims should themselves be barred from ever using YouTube again.) Nutrition Facts is now backing up their collection of almost 800 videos to another service (Vimeo, I think) as a precaution against this happening in the future.

Verizon Mi-Fi to the rescue! We always try to use Wi-Fi when it’s available but we have the Mi-Fi device for just those situations where we can’t. As long as we were powering up the Mi-Fi device we did a little experiment: Instead of connecting to it directly, we had the Wi-Fi Ranger connect it and then connected our computers to the Wi-Fi Ranger. Bingo, worked like a charm. More to the point, we were able to watch the Nutrition Facts dot Org video.

We connected back to the resort Wi-Fi system and turned off the Mi-Fi. I then downloaded a new version of a program that was 84 MB without objection from the resort Wi-Fi system. Linda renewed a few memberships that we had not taken care of before we left and I continued to work on cleaning up e-mail. Adobe has an interesting offer available to anyone who wants it for Photoshop CC (creative cloud) and Lightroom 5; $9.99/month with a minimum one year contract. But you have to order by December 31^st. They are no longer going to sell these programs, so if you want them, this is how you will have to get them. You can install on two computers under the terms and conditions. Renewals will be at “current prices”, so no guarantee it that the price will remain at present level.

I did not order it yet as some of the features appear to require a 64 bit operating systems (Win 7, 8, or Mac). That works on Linda’s laptop, but not mine. I downloaded a new version (18.0) of WinZip this morning, only to discover that it would not install on anything less that MS Vista. I like my existing Dell laptop computer, and I like Windows XP Pro SP 3, but it’s becoming all too clear that I am going to have to get a new machine, probably sooner rather than later. Ugh. In the world of computing one of my least favorite things is the process of moving to a new operating system.

It was pleasantly warm today, in the lower 80s, and bit humid but with a light breeze, so we wanted something light for dinner. Linda walked back to the local grocery store to pick up some fresh greens for a dinner salad and few odds and ends from the drug store. Around 3 PM the grounds crew passed through our area and used a leaf blower to clean the patio portion of our concrete pad. Nice touch. They also mentioned to Linda that the reason the current occupant was vacating site #439 was because one of the adjacent neighbors liked to build a fire every evening and he didn’t like the smoke. We often have campfires at night when we are camping in cooler weather, but decided to check that out after it got dark. We did not see any obvious problem, but we will investigate a little further tomorrow.

2013_12_22 (N) A Rainy Night In Georgia

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Not really; as it turned out the rain forecast for overnight never developed. But around 5:30 AM we got a blast of colder air, probably the downdraft from a thunderstorm, which was the first sign of the approaching frontal boundary. It started raining around 5:45 AM and rained heavily off and on from 6 AM on. The Weather Channel radar showed an unpleasantly large band of heavy rain just to our west stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to our southwest northeastward up the western side of the Appalachian Mountains into the mid-Atlantic states and beyond. The whole line was training from SW to NE while moving to the east, portending a long rain event in Cartersville, Georgia once it started. The southern edge of a severe thunderstorm watch box was just to our north, but we only had a little lightening no thunder. As route would take us south to southeast, there was a chance we could get ahead of the advancing storm line if got started early enough.

I had to unhook in the rain in order to get us on the road at 7 AM; not something I would normally choose to do, but it was OK. There is often an upside to most situations, and in this case there were two. One was that I finally got to use my new REI raincoat and rainpants, and I am happy to report that I finally have raingear that keeps the rain on the outside where it belongs. It was also an opportunity to test whether the leaks in our roof had been found and sealed. So far, so good. Indeed, we ran in and out of rain for most of the drive today, heavy at times, and no leaks appeared.

Besides trying to stay ahead of freezing temperatures, another reason for leaving Michigan a day early was to stick with our plan to drive through/around the Atlanta, Georgia metro area on a Sunday. The Cartersville KOA is about 50 miles north of Atlanta, so leaving at 7 AM allowed us to deal with Atlanta traffic between 8:00 AM and 8:30 AM on a Sunday morning. We did not have the road to ourselves, and traffic was probably slower than normal due to the rain, but this proved to be a good call on our part. We had been told that we could take the bus straight through downtown Atlanta on I-75, and our Rand McNally GPS routed us that way, but in the end we were persuaded to take the I-285 by-pass around Atlanta to the west by a sign that said “All trucks with more than 6 wheels use I-285 by-pass.” I-285 W paralleled I-75 a few miles to the west and I-285 E returned us to I-75. It did not add that many miles, and there were fewer entrance ramps with less traffic merging onto the highway than on I-75 through the city.

By the time we got south of Atlanta it was past sunrise. The rain had let up and the sky was noticeably brighter. We did not manage to outrun the storm front, but the rain became lighter and intermittent until we got into Florida when it finally ended.

We had also been advised to stop in Georgia just before the Florida state line and top off our fuel tank as the price of diesel fuel can be 20 to 25 cents per gallon higher in Florida. We have a Pilot / Flying J discount card, so we tend to look for Pilot Travel Centers and Flying J Truck Stops first. We checked their website the night before and found that they had a Pilot Travel Center at exit 11 and a Flying J Truck Stop at exit 2, both conveniently located to I-75. We have also gotten comfortable with how to get in and out of these truck stops and use the truck pumps. Even when they have “RV pumps” we never use them as access is often a problem and they usually have automotive size nozzles that take longer to fill the tank. We ended up stopping at the Pilot Travel Center at exit 11 at 11:45 AM and were back on I-75 S by 12:10PM. Upon crossing into Florida we did not see a significant difference in the price of diesel fuel, but perhaps the stations near the border try to keep their prices in line with the border stations in Georgia?

Yesterday was the first time I had driven any type of vehicle in Georgia and the first time we have had the motorhome in the state. It was not the first time either of us had been here; Linda was in Savannah once with our daughter’s Girl Scout troop and I was in Atlanta many, many years ago on business. Today was also the first time we have had the coach in Florida. Again, it was not our first time in the state. We had heard about the I-75 Florida Welcome Center, but having just stopped for fuel in Georgia we passed it by. They allow you to stay for up to 24 hours to “rest”—no slideouts; no awnings; no bar-b-cue pits; no lawn chairs—but you can definitely spend the night if you need to and are able to boondock.

Our short-term site at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

We pulled in to Williston Crossings RV Resort just after 2 PM. They had opened a new entrance on SR-121 which caused us a moment of confusion when we saw the sign as the address we had put in the GPS required us to travel another mile through Williston to get to the entrance. The entrance gate was closed, with no room to turn around, but there was an office building with an illuminated OPEN sign, so we turned it. A woman came out to greet us and explained that this was a new entrance and we were welcome to use it. She called for an escort and let us through the gate to wait for the golf cart to lead us to our site. They assigned us a great full-hookup (50 amp electrical service, of course) pull-through site with lots of shade trees. Most of the sites here are paved, and ours was close enough to level to make leveling the coach easy. It is also a very long site and would easily accommodate a 45 foot motorhome with a 25 foot trailer behind it.

The daily welcome board (with our last name misspelled).

Once we were settled we walked up to the office to register and get our packet of materials. There was a white board on the front porch of the office building with the names of all of the people arriving that day. Ours was listed; a nice touch. The resort is a “gated” community. The gates are open during the day but closed at night, so our packet included the gate code. Unlike most RV parks, the resort does not issue stickers or hangtags for the RVs, tow, or towed vehicles. Beside the usual rules, emergency numbers, etc., our packet also included a newsletter and calendar of upcoming events. The resort has an activity building with a workout room, a clubhouse, a pool and covered pavilion, and nice laundry and restrooms. The office has a billiards table, library, reading area, a small kitchenette and dining area, a gift shop, and mailboxes. (See photos at the end of this post.) If we want to it appears there are plenty of things to do here.

Williston Crossings RV Resort was one of several places that had been recommended to us by fellow GLCC member Ed Roelle. Ed and Janet have stayed there in the past and thought it was one of the best RV parks around with reasonable rates for a really nice park in Florida in the winter. We had checked out the website, which always makes a place look good, and described the variety of amenities and activities. We also checked the satellite imagery, so we knew that the park was large and had some nice tree cover. But none of that research gave us a complete or accurate picture of what is here. It is, quite frankly, nicer than we expected.

We scanned for OTA TV channels and found quite a few, including the usual trio of PBS stations. Score! The local ABC affiliate was showing The Sound Of Music, so we watched that during the evening.

Billiards table and mailboxes.

Office/library reading area.

Billiards table and library.

The office gift shop.

2013/12/21 (S) Winter Solstice

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Often referred to as “the shortest day of the year” the winter solstice is the exact same length as every other day of the year. What’s special about it is that in the northern hemisphere it is the day with the least time from sunrise to sunset and the most time from sunset to sunrise. From here to the Summer Solstice the minutes of daylight increase slightly each day.

As glad as we are to be headed south, there are always reasons to stay home. Family tops the list, especially birthdays and holidays, but we took care of that with the cooperation of our families. We have our friends and clubs, of course, but another reason would be the Winter Solstice Special Release Party at Schramm’s Mead in Ferndale. Since we could not be in two places at once, we will just have to hope that Ken still has some Winter Solstice left when we get back. 🙂 If not, perhaps Ken will have a Vernal Equinox Special Release or a Summer Solstice Special Release. Any excuse to buy Ken’s mead.

What we did instead was pull out of the Oh! Kentucky RV Park/Campground at 8:20 AM and drove 0.3 miles to get back on southbound I-75. It was dry but overcast as we started out, but we were in and out of rain for most of the drive. The rain was generally light, but we did encounter heavier rates from time-to-time. We did not experience much fog, but we did have some areas with ground clouds. We made it past Knoxville, Tennessee without the problems we had back in October. This was the farthest south we have been with the coach, and the first time I have driven I-75 south of Knoxville. We made a brief stop for fuel at the Pilot Travel Center in McDonald, Tennessee and continued south on I-75 into Georgia. This the first time I have driven anything in Georgia and the first time we have had the coach there. Even with the rain it was a relatively easy and uneventful drive, except for the continued, almost random, on/off of the Check Engine Light. The coach ran well with good power and all of the gauges indicated normal operation, so we just pressed on. When we get settled in Arcadia for the rally I will pull out the ProLink and read the codes. That should draw a crowd and might even make for an interesting round-table discussion.

At 1:30 PM we took exit 111 and headed west 0.3 miles to the entrance of the Cartersville/Cassville-White KOA, This was our first time staying overnight in the Georgia in the motorhome. Linda had called ahead when we were near Knoxville, Tennessee, so we knew the office would be closed from 11 AM to 3 PM. The office manager left a map of the campground for us in the night registration station with our spot marked on it and the route to take through the campground to get there. She even put an orange traffic cone at the entrance to our site to mark it as reserved; very thoughtful. The temperature was in the low 60s when we arrived and rose to 69 during the evening. Rain was forecast for the later evening and thunderstorms for the overnight. As we have done since before we left, we kept an eye on the weather.

This is the second KOA we have stayed at in the last three months. We tend to think of them as overpriced with lots of amenities that appeal to families with kids, but that we don’t use. Both parks, however, have been very good places for us to stay, with: convenient access; good gravel interior roads with sufficient width and turning radius for our rig; mature trees trimmed up high enough to not scratch our motorhome; pull through sites with 50 amp full hookups; and clean bathrooms with good showers. The one in Natural Bridge, Virginia was full of kids, but it was a weekend near Halloween and we had fun giving away candy to the trick-or-treaters. The current location appears to be no more than 40% of capacity, with no evidence of kids; definitely off-peak season.

As an update to yesterday’s post, I discovered that I was pushing the wrong button and that both windshield washer pumps do, in fact, work. Duh. L The good news was that both windshield washer pumps work! J When we got to our destination I switched the output hoses back to their correct pumps so everything should work the way it’s supposed to tomorrow; except perhaps for those clogged orifices on the lower wiper arms. It’s always something, it seems, and any RVer who is honest about it will admit that. But they will also tell you that it’s part of the experience/lifestyle, and you either learn to take it stride and deal with it or you end up doing something else.

As a final technical note, now that I have started valving off additional circuits on the auxiliary air system, the pressure seems to be holding much longer and thus the compressor runs much less often. It is now at least a two hour cycle and may be holding longer than that. The new auxiliary air distribution/control panel that I built last year and installed this past spring has made it possible to do this.

2013/12/20 (F) Berea, KY

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We left Lakewood Village RV Resort in Wapakoneta, Ohio at 9 AM and drove the 231 miles non-stop to the Oh! Kentucky RV park/Campground in Berea, Kentucky, arriving at 1:30 PM. Even though we encountered light rain at points along the way we were able to travel at 62 mph much of the time, so we did slightly better than the 50 mph average we use when translating distances into travel times. It turns out that 62 mph is a speed that both the drivers and the bus like. As was the case back in October, there was considerable road construction through Dayton, Ohio that required us to slow down, but traffic moved smoothly through the construction zones. There was also still considerable construction along I-75 through Cincinnati, Ohio with posted speed limits of 45 mph, but again, traffic moved very smoothly.

As soon as you cross the Ohio River on I-75 and enter Kentucky you have to climb a long steep grade. This was the only part of the trip where I had to drop the transmission into 3^rd gear as we did less than 40 mph up the grade. I think the bus could have done better, maybe 50 mph, but the big fully-loaded tractor-trailers could not, and that dictated the flow of traffic for everyone else. No problem; after owning a large vehicle for over four years, and having crested the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming at under 20 mph in 1^st gear, we are very sympathetic to what truck drivers have to deal with. Eventually the grade became less steep and everyone was able to travel a little faster, or get around the trucks that couldn’t, but it seems that we were climbing for close to 30 minutes after crossing the river. Kentucky is hilly.

The Oh! Kentucky Campground office and hardware store.

The Oh! Kentucky RV Park/Campground was a modest place, but was perfect for our needs. The entrance was only 0.3 miles from the exit ramp off I-75 and was an easy turn in for us. There were more rigs here than at Lakewood Village RV Resort, mostly 5^th wheels and trailers, but it was also much warmer than where we were the previous night. There were also a dozen or so “seasonals” and a number of long-term campers. We tend to be leery of parks with seasonal (permanent) units as they are often not well kept, but they had a great pull-through site for us with easy in-and-out access and full hookups that included 50 amp electrical for under $30 for the night. Besides, the temperature was 57 deg F when we arrived and went up to 61 deg F before settling back to 57 deg F as the forecast low for the night. It was also very windy.

Our easy access pull-through site.

I walked around the campground, which was not very big, and took a few pictures. I wanted to scope out our exit path and I like to document the places we visit. Linda and I took a leisurely stroll a little later as we usually do at a new RV park. Steve (from the office) stopped by while I was washing the windshields to chat for a minute and compliment us on our “camper.” Linda headed back to the office/store to pick up a few essentials and was addressed as “honey” for the 8^th time. She thought it was quaint. She met one of our fellow campers on the way back, an older woman out walking her dog. The woman was traveling solo pulling a small trailer with a pickup truck. Linda went for a longer walk by herself later and met the woman again, who joined her for the stroll. She confirmed that it was windy there all the time, not unlike what we experienced in Wyoming this past summer.

You meet some interesting people RVing. This woman was from Montana, older, retired, and married with adult children. She had been at this campground since September and wasn’t leaving until April, but her husband was in Florida for the winter. She had a son who lived in central Florida. She tried one winter there but didn’t like it. She had daughter who lived and worked near Detroit, Michigan, apparently also in a “camper.” Small world.

She picked Berea for the winter because it’s mentioned in the Bible (Acts), she had never been to this part of the country, and the price was right. She did not do much other research before booking herself in here for 7 – 8 months, however, and was surprised to discover that it was not in the mountains. The mountains are not far away; you can see the first real mountain range from I-75 southbound as you approach the exits for Berea. Although we did not unhook the car and go exploring, our research indicated that Berea was an interesting place with a famous college and a thriving community of artists and artisans. Perhaps not interesting enough for an 8 month stay, but then there may be enough cultural attractions and opportunities for classes to fill the time. I suppose it depends on what you like to do.

Although it spritzed occasionally, it never really rained so I decided to get the water softener out and fill our on-board fresh water tank. I also cleaned the four windshields and the front side windows. Our lower windshield washers don’t work, so I decided to take a look at that. It’s amazing what you can do when the temperature is 60 deg F! I did not arrive at a definitive diagnosis (which means I wasn’t able to completely fix the problem) but I rigged up a work-around. I may have a multiple failure situation. It appears that the pump for the lower windshields has either failed, and/or the switch on the windshield wiper stalk has failed, and/or the wiring in-between has failed. Figuring it out exactly will take more time and test instruments than I wanted to deal with today. I also discovered that some of the small orifices on the wiper arms may have been inadvertently clogged when they were spray painted. My work-around was to simply switch the output hoses from the two pumps. That allowed me to turn on the lower wipers and then activate the upper wiper pump, causing windshield washer fluid to spray on the bottom windshields. We will be driving in and out of rain all day tomorrow, which means lots of road spray, so I hope this works.

2013/12/19 (R) Snowbirds Take Flight

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Why do people snowbird? I don’t know about anyone else, but as we have gotten older we have become less tolerant of the cold and the work involved in clearing snow from our driveway. We are also not winter sports people, so the main charm of winter for us is looking at the snow. True, now that we are both retired we no longer have to drive to/from work every day, regardless of how ridiculously dangerous the weather and road conditions are, but that does not equate to a particularly active lifestyle. And with the change in the way we eat—to a whole-foods plant-based approach —we are both healthier than we been in decades; so part of the decision to become snowbirds was the desire to be in a place where we could be much more physically active during the winter months.

As I have described in some previous post(s), we decided to try Florida for our first snowbird experience primarily because of the Arcadia (Bus’in) Rally held in Arcadia, Florida between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Although we would have liked to be headed south around November 1^st, family, business, and personal commitments did not make that possible. Early entry for the Arcadia Rally, however, was December 26^th. We often try to take advantage of early entry dates when they are offered and we wanted to arrive on the 26^th and get set up.

Our original plan was to leave on the 20^th, drive to Berea, Kentucky and stay two nights. We would then drive to Cartersville, Georgia on the 22^nd and again stay two nights. The 24^th would find us driving to somewhere in Florida and again staying for two nights. The morning of the 26^th we would then drive to Arcadia, Florida. That was the plan, before the weather forecast strongly suggested a different itinerary.

Based on the national weather forecasts it appeared that if we left Michigan on the morning of the 20^th there was a high likelihood we could have mixed precipitation on the first part of our drive. Me, the bus, and ice don’t mix. Further, there was a strong cold front pushing south which had the potential for us to drive through heavy rain and experience below freezing overnight lows for much of our trip south. Leaving on Thursday the 19^th offered the opportunity to get somewhat ahead of the rain and avoid below-freezing overnight lows for the entire trip. Either way it looked like we were going to drive in rain.

As I mentioned in the previous post we had determined that the Lakewood Village RV Resort in Wapakoneta, Ohio was far enough south to assure overnight low temperatures above freezing. We decided to aim for a Thursday noon departure which, barring any traffic situations, would put us at the RV resort before 4 PM with plenty of daylight left for getting parked and hooked up. From there we would continue on to Berea, Kentucky and Cartersville, Georgia as planned, but only stay one night in each place, ending up at Williston Crossings RV Resort in Williston, Florida where we would stay for four nights before driving to the Arcadia Rally.

We were up early Thursday morning, had our usual breakfast, and then got right to work loading the bus. We packed more “stuff” than we did for our summer trip out west. Our western trip was only two months with mostly summer climate so we only needed summer clothes. This trip will be closer to four months by the time we get back with temperatures ranging for below-freezing lows to highs in the 80’s, requiring a more extensive selection of clothes.

Although we had 8+ inches of snow on the ground and temperatures in the 20’s when we got up, there was some sunshine and temperatures rose through the morning to just above freezing. The driveway was already cleared as we hired a snow-removal service for the winter and I had spent several hours the previous day removing a couple of additional inches that fell after the snow removal service was there. As we did not expect to have overnight lows below freezing we decided to load fresh water on board which would allow us to use the bathroom and then fully de-winterize the rig once we got parked without having to hook up to an external water supply.

By noon the bus and car were ready. We rounded up the cats, put them on board, and then finished prepping the house. We checked the light timers, stopped the grandfather clock, set the thermostats at 55 deg F (we can monitor and control the main one via the Internet), winterized the toilets and sink traps so they would not evaporate (and just in case), opened cabinets with water lines to aid in keeping them at room temperature, turned off the well pump, closed the water valves, and shutdown the water conditioning equipment. We locked the doors and pulled out of the driveway at 12:30 PM.

Our site at C2C Lakewood Village RV Resort in Wapakoneta, OH.

We drove about four miles to get to Grand River Avenue, picked up I-96 eastbound for about four miles and then headed south on US-23. It took about 90 minutes to reach the Ohio state line and another 30 minutes to swing around the west and south sides of Toledo, Ohio to reach I-75 in Perrysburg, Ohio. We had an easy run south from there to exit 111 at Wapakoneta, and just another half-mile to get to Lakewood Village RV Resort. We arrived at 4 PM, having traveled 166 miles in 3.5 hours. But it was almost due south of our starting point and got us out of freezing temperatures.

Why aren’t there more RV’s here?

The resort was open for business but mostly snow-covered with very few guests. The resort roads and parking lots, however, were clear of snow. We were allowed to pick our spot and found a nice pull-though that just accommodated our motorcoach/car combination and would provide for an easy exit the following morning. We had an early dinner and turned in for the night at 8 PM.

2013/12/17-18 (T-W) Cleared For Departure

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We were planning to leave for Florida (in the bus) on Friday, December 20^th, so by Tuesday the 17^th our attention was starting to focus sharply on what we had to do to get out of town. But first we had to get Marilyn to the airport for a mid-afternoon flight back to St. Louis, Missouri. Linda did the shuttle run while I stayed home and started pulling together stuff to load on the bus or into the car. I also started copying the files from the old Buffalo Technologies LinkStation Pro Duo NAS to the new Buffalo Technologies LS421e NAS. This turned out to take quite a bit of time as I had to do the copying in pieces; there were too many files and too many gigabytes of data to copy and paste them in one move.

We also started watching the weather forecast, both at home at along our route. By Wednesday the 18^th it was becoming clear that we would be much better off leaving on Thursday the 19^th instead of our planned date of the 20^th. We had planned to have company over for dinner on Wednesday, however, so we did not see how we could possibly be ready to leave the next day. Although we were disappointed by a last minute cancelation due to the illness of one of our guests, it changed the situation in favor of a Thursday departure. (We hope you are much better very soon Kristine.)

To paraphrase John Muir, “The driveway is calling and I must go.”

We originally intended to leave early enough on Friday the 20^th to get past Ann Arbor, Michigan before the morning rush hour and make it a campground in Berea, Kentucky before dark. It was clear that we could not be ready to leave that early on Thursday morning, and did not want to arrive anywhere in the dark, so we adjusted our plans. (A true traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving. Lao Tzu). We knew there was a Coast To Coast (C2C) RV resort near Wapakoneta, Ohio. A quick check online indicated that they should still be open this time of year and that we still had enough C2C points in our account to cover the $10 per night cost. A phone call verified that they were open and had plenty of available sites. Although Wapakoneta was only 166 miles from our house it was far enough south to have overnight low temperatures above freezing. It was also close enough that we could leave at noon and be there by 4 PM. That would give us the morning to finish loading the bus and closing up the house.

2013_11-16_12-06 Time Flies

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It’s been three weeks since my last post. We have been incredibly busy, but that doesn’t mean I have much to write about. Sometimes busy is just busy. For my part, I’ve been neglecting our website and this blog in favor of designing, testing, and vetting three other WordPress-based websites; two for RV clubs and one for our local ham radio club. That has taken a lot of my time, but I don’t mind. It’s very interesting work that I chose to take on, and I’m learning a lot, which I enjoy. But it isn’t necessarily all that interesting to write about.

I continue to discover useful WordPress plug-ins and learn how to use them. I am using Participants-Database to create online member directories, WP-Members to block them from public view and require a username and password to view them, and Exclude-Pages to create web-pages that do not appear anywhere in the WordPress menu structure. I am also using Meteor-Slides to create automated slide shows. After a long and frustrating search for a good photo album / image gallery plug-in, I finally figured out how to create galleries using the native WordPress gallery function. That was a major victory and I was so glad I persisted in my search instead of buying one. I have also installed WP-Backup-2-Dropbox, which is automatically doing a weekly backup of all four of the sites to my personal Dropbox account.

Steve was over several times to work on the Linux box and we finally got one of the WordPress websites ported over and working! We had to edit a few pointers in the wp-config.php file and set the permalinks back to default, but that did the trick! Porting over the other three sites will have to wait, but eventually I will be able to install and test new plug-ins on my own local web-server and even develop content which I can then upload to the live site. Working on the local web-server instead of the live web-host has a number of advantages. For one, the system will respond more quickly. But most importantly I won’t inadvertently take down one of my live sites.

Bus Conversions Magazine ran another one of my articles in the December 2013 issue. This one was on the construction and installation of the new auxiliary air panel. You can read more about it on our BCM page.

The new owner of BCM, Gary Hall, has faced and met a whole string of challenges since buying the magazine, but I remain confident that he is on the path to saving the magazine and not just making it viable, but making it better than it has ever been. BCM remains a unique resource for the non-commercial bus converter and I am doing what I can to help keep it in business by subscribing and submitting articles. It’s pretty simple really; the magazine needs subscribers, authors, and advertisers. The problem is that each one of those groups wants the other two groups to be in place before they make a commitment. No one wants to read a magazine with no content (articles and advertisements). Authors don’t want to write for a magazine that no one reads and advertisers don’t support. And advertisers don’t want to spend money placing ads in magazines with no content that no one reads. Fortunately BCM has advertisers, authors, and subscribers, but they could use more of each.

If you are reading this blog post and you own a converted bus, are converting a bus, are thinking about converting a bus, or have a business that sells things that might be useful to people with converted buses, please consider subscribing to or advertising in Bus Conversions Magazine. And if you are specifically converting a bus or working on one that is already converted, please consider writing one or more articles about the work you are doing, and take a lot of pictures to go with it. You do not have to be a great writer or photographer. If you provide them with a starting point the folks at BCM will work with you to turn it into a nice article. And I can tell you from personal experience this past year that it is fun to see your articles in print. In fact, your bus could be the “cover” and “centerfold.” Now really, haven’t you always dreamed of that? 🙂

Starting with the January 2014 issue of BCM there will be another staffing change. It appears that they are going to use my article on the FMCA GLAMARAMA 2013 rally that was held in Goshen, Indiana back in September 2013. While the article is specifically about that rally, it is more generally about the experience of attending an RV rally put on by one of the large RV organizations. Assuming the article runs, it will be my seventh article in 12 months and my third cover article. Not bad for a beginner. I have also agreed to “cover” the Arcadia 2014 Rally in Arcadia, Florida December 29-31. It’s called the 2014 rally because it runs through New Year’s Eve with everyone departing on New Year’s Day. This is one of the largest gatherings of converted buses currently taking place in the country, and it will be the first time Linda and I have attended.

Applying putty to base of Searchlight

The 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st of November saw me back at Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan working on the bus and consulting with Michele Henry on the repair of the body panels and rear bumper fascia. I was invited to spend the night at the house of fellow GLCC members Pat & Vickie’s nearby which saved me the cost of a motel and provide dinner and conversation. Thank you both.

WiFiRanger MT permanent mount

We We managed to fix the front roof-mounted remote-controlled searchlight and get it re-attached to the roof. We also undid the temporary mounting (zip ties) of the WiFiRanger-MT (mobile titanium) and mounted it behind the front TV antenna to the driver’s side using the permanent roof-mount bracketing. I removed the covers from the front and rear over-the-air TV antennas and was finally able to determine and map the direction they point to the numbers on the controller box. That will finally allow us to know where we are aiming the antennas.

Access hole in utility bay floor

My last little project was to install the Critter-Guard. There is a hole in the floor of the utility bay with a ring installed around it that is threaded to accept a screw-in cover. The Critter-Guard consists of a circular piece of high-density foam, a two-piece plastic cover, and small latches to hold the cover in place. I was not able to remove the old screws that secure the ring, so I drilled holes for new ones halfway in-between the old ones. The product came with two sets of slightly different latches to accommodate just this situation.

Critter-Guard parts and instructions

Critter-Guard installed

With the latches installed, the electrical shoreline and fresh water hose were routed into the bay through the hole in the floor. The foam is split along most of a diameter and has two holes in it (along the diameter line), one for the electrical shoreline, and the other for the fresh water hose. The foam fits snuggly around these lines and into the hole in the floor. The two-piece Critter-Guard cover plate is also split along a diameter and has two holes to match the holes in the foam. The plate has a tongue on one piece and a groove on the other. It is fitted around the shorelines on top of the foam and the latches are turned to hold it in place. The net result is that “critters” cannot get into the bay through the utility line access hole. I plan to submit this little project to Bus Conversions Magazine as a short article / product review.

As long as I’m talking about buses, I found a major air leak in Chuck’s Prevost H3-40 Liberty conversion. As with all older buses, he has been plagued with air leaks. Our mobile mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, has fixed a lot of them by replacing air valves and tightening air lines, but leaks remain, and Chuck’s auxiliary air compressor was still running more often than it should while parked. I was poking around in the bay under the driver’s seat—looking for the check valve that is usually installed in the air line from the auxiliary air compressor to the air system—when I heard a distinct hissing noise. I heard it clearly, but it was at a frequency that Chuck did not hear. He had a plastic tube stethoscope and I used it to clearly locate the leak as coming from the pressure control switch. This switch (also known as a well pump switch when used in a water system) monitors the pressure in the auxiliary air system and turns the auxiliary air compressor on and off as needed to maintain the pressure between two set point limits. Once I was able to place the stethoscope at the loudest point, Chuck was also able to hear it clearly. He removed the old pressure switch, got the specs off of it, and I found an exact replacement in stock at Northwest Plumping Supply in Howell, not far from my house. Chuck picked it up, installed it, and … no more air leak, at least not there. The auxiliary air pressure is holding much better than it was before so the auxiliary air compressor is running much less frequently and Chuck (and Barbara) are much happier. They things that make “bus people” happy are different from what makes most people happy. You would probably have to try living in an RV to fully understand.

When Linda went in for her annual physical exam in early November she was able to talk to the nurse and find an opening for me. I was able to get my lab work done a few days in advance, and the results were available in the Henry Ford Health System MyChart website that same afternoon. I like having the lab work done in advance so that I can discuss the results with our doctor. Everything was within the normal range, so I was pleased. I got a new prescription for my nasal allergy medication and had to mail it in to our mail order pharmacy provider as this was the first prescription either of us has had filled since we switched our health coverage to the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System on July 1^st.

The Thanksgiving Spread

We went to our daughter’s house for Thanksgiving with family. Linda and the two kids did all the cooking and we had a nice assortment of dishes, many vegan-friendly. We got a Tofurkey for the two of us and it was very good. (Everyone else had real turkey; boo.) We had fresh grapes, fresh cranberry-orange salad, roasted Brussels sprouts, candied sweet potatoes, regular mashed potatoes, home make Parker House rolls (thanks Meghan!), some yummy cookies, some nice wine, and other things I can’t remember. Both of our grand-daughters were there. It was nice.

My friend and former co-worker, Kate, got back from a week+ trip to Berlin, Germany just in time for us to take her out for a birthday dinner; not exactly on her birthday, but close. We went to Nirmal in Ypsilanti, an Indian restaurant with a health conscious attitude. They had a buffet style setup designed for carryout, but you could also have it dine-in, which is what we did. Linda and I got two vegan entrees (green beans and okra), yellow rice, garlic naan bread, and a small dessert for $5 each plus tea. Kate ordered Makhani with chicken off the menu. We adjourned to the closest Starbucks for coffee, photo viewing (on an iPad, of course), and conversation. Kate had selected 30 photographs to show us, and they were wonderful, as usual.

2013_11_08-15 (F-R) Another Busy Week

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The second week of November was another one of those weeks where we were busy every day from the time I got up until the time we went to bed, but I don’t have a clear recollection of what I was doing each day as I did not always mark it on my calendar. I think that is because I spent a lot of time at my computers working on WordPress websites and installing packages/updates. Some days are very clear, however.

2013-11-08 (F) The “Eyes” Have It

We had managed to snag a couple of appointment times this morning to have our eyes checked by our long-standing optometrist at the Farmington Vision Clinic. Linda’s eyes had not changed very much, but it had been a couple of years since she got new glasses, so she decided to get a pair. I had been experiencing intermittent “wavy” patterns and was a bit concerned about that. The exam did not indicate any issues with diabetes or glaucoma, so that was a relief. The tentative diagnosis was “pre-migraine ocular disturbance” which was interesting because I was not experiencing any headaches, and rarely do. The trigger may be something that I eat, perhaps caffeine or wine, so I may need to keep a food log. Ugh. I like writing about the dishes Linda prepares, but I don’t like “logging” my food intake.

Chuck is in the process of prepping their bus for southbound travel, so I met up with him for lunch. He had also gotten connected to a guy in California whose older brother was living in Michigan when he passed away back in June. The older brother was well known in the Prevost bus community, and had a converted coach stored in the N.E. suburbs of the Detroit Metro Area. The surviving brother needed to deal with as part of his brother’s affairs, and Chuck had offered our assistance on Sunday.

2013_11_09 (S) Schramm’s Mead

But first we had to deal with Saturday, which started with our usual ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon, Michigan. Attendance varies, but we had a big crowd of at least 20 people. After breakfast we decided to drive over to Ferndale and find Schramm’s Mead. I worked with Ken Schramm before I retired from Wayne RESA. He’s still the TV / Multi-media Production Manager there, but outside of normal business hours he is a well-known expert on the subject of mead, having written a well-respected book on the subject, and speaking at international conventions. He and his wife Jean and their daughter Alison have been working for over a year to get Schramm’s Mead open, and that finally happened about 6 weeks ago. They are at 327 W. 9 Mile Rd. in Ferndale, Michigan. The meadery is located in a very “happening” part of town just a short walk west of the intersection of 9 Mile Rd. and Woodward Avenue and should be a good location for them. Parking was plentiful, with both paid and free options. We sampled their complete line of currently available mead products and bought three bottles. I have added a section to the Health & Food tab of this website on Wine & Mead and refer you there for more information about mead and the offerings from Schramm’s Mead. Let me just say here “this is good stuff.”

2013_11_10 (N) Buses & Ham Radio

Sunday found me headed to Chuck’s house near South Lyon bright and early, or at least early. We needed to meet the guy from California at the RV storage lot in Shelby Township, so it took an hour to get there. He was waiting for us, let us in, and led us to the bus. It was a 1997 (~) Prevost XL (40’) Royale Coach conversion with a Detroit Diesel Series 60 engine and 6-speed automatic transmission. It appeared to be in good shape and Chuck and I set about figuring out its state. The chassis batteries had been left “on” and were drained. The house and generator batteries were also “on” but appeared to be in better shape. It did not appear to have much fuel in the tank, but with the chassis batteries drained we couldn’t get accurate readings from any of the gauges. We got the generator started, plugged in the 24V emergency chassis battery charger, turned the house batter chargers on, and set about finding the circuit breakers and switches seeing what worked.

After letting the generator/24V charger run for several hours the chassis batteries showed no sign of coming back to life. We still had enough hours of daylight to do something about it. We located a NAPA Auto Parts Store less than 2.5 miles from the storage yard and gave them a call. They had 8 of the type battery we needed (12V Group 31). We only needed four. We pulled the old ones out of the bus and headed over. By taking the old ones we did not have worry about disposal/recycling of them and avoided a “core charge.” We installed the new batteries and the DD-60S fired right up. That’s was a beautiful thing to hear. The chassis and brake systems aired-up correctly and the gauges all came to life. That’s was a beautiful thing to see.

The bus had about ¼ tank of fuel indicated, or about 40+ gallons, so we decided we did NOT need to drive it someplace to fuel it right that minute. The bus was headed to Staley Coach in Nashville, TN at the end of the week and could stop for fuel early in the trip.

I had a ham radio club meeting at 6:30 PM, and needed to get dinner, so Chuck and I made our exit and headed back to his house. I got home in time to change clothes but not sit down and eat. Linda made sandwiches for us to eat as we drove to the meeting.

Our November ham radio club meeting is a significant one as we elect officers for the coming year. Mike (W8XH) agreed to run for a 2^nd term as president, Paul (N8BHT) agreed to run again for Treasurer, and I (K8BRF) agreed to run again for Vice-President. Marty (KB8JIU) did not wish to run again as Secretary, and Harvey (AC8NO) agreed to run for that position, which he has held in the past. There being only one candidate for each officer, the slate was declared elected. The program for the evening was put on by Mike (W8XH) and Steve (N8AR). They demonstrated the use of Mike’s Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) to examine the characteristics of an antenna by calibrating out the effects of the transmission line.

Technical note: Transmission lines have losses, i.e., they inherently dissipate as heat some of the energy they are trying to transfer from a radio transmitter to an antenna. The losses depend on frequency, and if the transmission line is of low quality it will dissipate more energy per linear foot than a higher quality one at any particular frequency. How much energy it dissipates thus depends on the inherent loss, the length, and the frequency of the signal. When a transmitter sends energy through a transmission line it would ideally like all of the energy to reach the antenna, be transferred into the antenna, and cause it to resonate, producing electromagnetic radiation. It never works quite that well in practice. If there is a mismatch between the transmission line and the antenna, some of the energy will be “reflected” back down the transmission line towards the transmitter. However, if there are sufficient losses in the transmission line the reflected energy never makes it back to the radio, which makes the radio think everything is just fine when in fact very little of the energy the radio produces may get turned into useful RF EM radiation. Mike’s VNA allows the user to “calibrate out” the effect of the transmission line and “see” what is actually happening at the antenna. That’s cool, and that’s a good thing to be able to do.

2013_11_11 (M) Odds ‘n’ Ends

Monday was a catch-all day for me while Linda went to Ann Arbor for her regular Monday babysitting duty. I talked to Michele and she was encouraged that she would be able to fix the two expensive body panels that I crunched. I called Prevost and ordered the 3^rd panel that she would not be able to fix. It would ship via UPS and arrive on Wednesday. I updated my LinkedIn account and added all three of our phone numbers to the Federal DO NOT CALL LIST, a long overdue chore. I called Adams Well Drilling and Water Treatment to get new whole-house sediment filters and chlorine tablets for the carbon filter unit. We have a sediment filter housing that takes 10” long large-diameter filter elements. They are a spun polypropylene with a dual micron rating; 50 microns on the outside and 5 microns on the inside. It’s like having two filters in one! The 50 micron portion removes the larger sediment that can quickly plug and filter and render it useless, leaving the 5 micron filter to remove only smaller particles. The flow rate through this filter is excellent, and it’s easy to change thanks to the pre- & post-filter shutoff valves Adam’s installed, and the pressure relief button on top of the housing.

We had previously arranged to meet Kate for dinner. Having just seen her in Ypsilanti, we agree to meet at the Zukey Lake Tavern in Pinckney, Michigan. Linda and I wanted to check it out as our ham radio club had decided to go there for our December holiday meeting/dinner. They have a very average salad bar, but I was able to get plenty to eat at it. Linda had a veggie burger. Not a great choice for us as restaurants go, but it will work well for the club.

2013_11_12 (T) Madeline Comes To Visit

Linda had agreed to babysit our grand-daughter on Tuesday so our son could continue working on a presentation for his department at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. I don’t get to see Madeline as much as Linda does, so our son offered to bring her to our house and work there while Linda and I handled baby duties. Madeline is a busy little girl. She is an accomplished crawler and is working on standing up and walking. She loves her books and toys, and grandma bought some new ones to have at our house for her. She kept us both busy while her dad worked on his computer. He brought her Pack-n-Play and set it up in the bedroom that we have designated for her. She went down for nap right on schedule at 2 PM and slept for ~90 minutes. We got to play with her until sometime after 5 PM when it was time to leave.

2013_11_13 (W) & _14 (R)

Linda had called a couple of weeks ago and managed to get an appointment with our primary care physician for her annual physical due to a cancellation. Her total cholesterol had risen a little from the last visit, which annoyed her given the way we eat, but her HDL, LDL, and triglyceride numbers all looked really good. She was also able to talk to the nurse and find me an appointment time later in the month. I really did not want to wait until late April or May for my next physical.

Thursday morning I went to Chuck’s bus garage to chat with him and our mobile Mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, who had come in from Chicago to complete some work on Chuck’s coach. Joe had also been engaged by the guy from California to drive the bus to Staley Coach near Nashville, Tennessee on Friday morning and bring the guy back to the Detroit area. It turned out that Chuck needed new brake pads for his tag axle wheels. We were sitting around wringing our hands about how to get those in time for Joe to finish the brake job when I realized that Joe was going to Nashville where Prevost has one of their major factory parts and service centers! Phone calls were made, parts were ordered and put on account for will call, and it was agreed that Joe would pick them up on Friday and bring them back with him. Sometimes bus stories do have happy endings.

I spent Wednesday and part of Thursday working at my computers. Larry (K8UT) is a member of our ham radio club and a very accomplished web designer. He had given me the “key” to getting a local web-server running: LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin). I got MySQL and phpMyAdmin installed on the Linux box but was unable to create the databases I needed in spite of spending time with the documentation. By Thursday evening I still did not have WordPress running on our local web-server, but I was clearly making progress in that direction. Sometimes computer stories have happy endings too.

2013_11_01-07 (F-R)A Busy Week

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The first week of November was very busy, enough so that I was unable (unwilling) to do daily blog posts. Covering the whole week in one post makes for a longer post, but probably shorter than seven separate ones.

2013-11-01 (F)

We were supposed to get our bus back from the shop on Friday, November 1. We didn’t. That meant I could not take it to Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan on Monday the 4^th. I was reminded yet again that a true traveler has no fixed plan. With that off the table temporarily, we turned out attention to other things; Ham Radio Breakfast on Saturday, for instance. It was good conversation, as usual, and we finally arranged to have one couple over for dinner in a few weeks.

2013_11_02 (S)

Saturday afternoon Steve and Karen came over to visit and have dinner. They were not able to attend our open house/warming because they were in Arizona where Steve had made arrangements to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon from the south rim and back up to the north rim. Alas, the park was closed and they had to adjust their plans and find other things to do; which they did (true travelers have no fixed plan). We don’t see them very often, so when we do we have a great, long visit. We had a wonderful dinner of enchiladas and Mexican rice, finished off by chocolate cake with raspberry topping made from raspberries that Linda and I picked ourselves at the Middleton Berry Farm back in September. All vegan, of course.

After dinner we looked at some of their photographs (digital) and they looked at some of ours (also digital). Steve brought along a Raspberry Pi computer. It was slightly larger than a deck of cards and had a 16 GB SD Card that served as its solid state hard drive. It had a couple of USB ports, an HDMI port, and some other connections. Steve had a wireless network adapter in one of the USB ports and a wireless keyboard transceiver (Bluetooth, I presume) in the other. We already had an HDMI cable on the TV so he hooked up to that and voila, pictures. He was even able to control the Raspberry Pi using our TV remote! Now you have to admit, that’s pretty cool. We were also delighted to find out that they have spent part of the last few winters in the Venice, Florida area and are returning again this year. We shared our Florida plans and agreed that we would get together.

2013_11_03 (N)

Sunday we worked around the house and on our computers until late in the afternoon when Chuck and Barbara, our friends and fellow Prevost H3-40 converted coach owners, showed up to visit and have dinner. Although they did make it to our open house/warming we did not get to visit with them very much that day. We talked buses, of course, but we discussed a lot of other things too, including Florida, where they have spent the last six or seven winters, most recently in the Naples area. Again, plans were made to meet while there.

As long as I am on the subject of Florida, we started thinking about extending our stay for at least another month because of potential problems with “seasonal weight restrictions” on the roads around our house. I found out from Phil (of the pull-though driveway) that the restrictions usually go up March 1 and stay up until April 15. Most of the roads in our county, and all of the roads we would have to use to get to our house, are subject to these seasonal weight restrictions but the signs never say what that means. As it turns out, it means a weight limit of 8,400 pounds per axle. Our drive axle (four tires) weighs 20,000 pounds and we have over 7,000 pounds on each of the front/steer tires, so there’s actually no legal way for us to get the bus to our house during that 45-day window. What to do? Stay in Florida for another month! Problem solved. New problem: where to stay? New solution: the same place we are already staying, if they will let us extend our reservation.

2013_11_04 (M)

Monday came and went without the bus being ready. While this delayed my plans yet again, it also provided more time to work on WordPress projects. I checked on the WordPress Backup To Dropbox (wpb2d) plug-in and it appeared to be correctly backing up all four of the sites I am working on to our personal Dropbox account. That was good to see. I also started soliciting “beta testers” for each of the sites. I continued working with the WP-Members plug-in and it appeared to be functioning correctly to block access to selected pages/posts behind a user login. Given that, I started generating user lists for each of the sites to generate usernames and passwords and keep track of when I have created those in WP and provided them to each user.

2013_11_05 (T)

On Tuesday Linda was able to extend our stay at Williston Crossings RV Resort until April 1^st (no fooling). We will figure out later how to manage our trip back to Michigan so that we do not arrive before April 16. Sometime during the week I received an e-mail from the Prevost Owners Group, to which we belong, that the Prevost Motorcoach Show would take place in Tampa, Florida on January 13 and 14, with a reception hosted by Prevost Car Inc. the evening of the 13^th. That sounded like an opportunity to finally meet some folks from Prevost in person, and to admire brand new conversions (that we will never buy) from the likes of Marathon, Millennium, Liberty, Parliament, and Vantare. Sometime during the week it also came to our attention that the Prevost Community group we belong to is planning a rally for the first week of April 2014 at LazyDays RV Dealership in Seffner, Florida! Well Bob’s your uncle. It looks like delaying our return until at least April 16 won’t be that difficult at all.

I needed to make an appointment for my annual physical, so I got on the Henry Ford Health System website. They have a new “feature” called MyChart. When fully functional, which it is not yet, you are supposed to be able to directly book an appointment, and see all of your lab results. But first you have to set up your account. I called the number and got an activation code which I then used to create a Username and Password, and was finally able to log in. The direct scheduling feature wasn’t available for my primary care physician, but there was a “Request An Appointment” page. So I did. I asked for an Adult Physical on Mon., Tue., Wed., or Thu. afternoon between Monday November 25, 2013 and Friday December 6, 2013. Less than 24 hours later I received an e-mail informing me that I had been scheduled for a 1:00 PM appointment for an Office Visit on January 15, 2014. Huh???

I used to program computers for a living, and I used to do systems engineering, and I used to do sales and marketing of these things, and I ended my career as a consultant. This didn’t strike me as bad programming; it struck me as bad policy that got translated into a bad systems specification. So I wrote back to HFHS customer service and told them, as politely as I could, that their system was stupid, that is to say, the policies behind the implementation of their system were not “customer-centric.” If I had wanted an appointment in mid-January I would have requested one. So as of now, I do not have said appointment.

The bus was ready to pick up on Tuesday, so Chuck drove me down to W. W. Williams to get it. I took care of the paperwork and left with Chuck following me in his truck. I no sooner hit the highway than I got a Check Engine Light. It came on and stayed on, so I phoned Chuck and let him know that I needed to turn around and take it back if he was willing to follow me and take me back home. He was, so this we did; my plans further delayed. There are worse things that can happen on this bus; the Stop Engine Light, for instance. This light means exactly what it says, the engine is going to stop and you need to get to the side of the road, now, before it does. I’ve only seen that once, shortly after we bought it. We took care of some key maintenance issues and have never seen it again (and I hope that we never do). I figured I wouldn’t get the bus back from W. W. Williams until Wednesday afternoon at best, so any trip to Edwardsburg was now delayed until Thursday. I called Michele to let her know. She had Pato and Tommy lined up to look at it on Friday, so I was getting anxious to get it down there. But there’s nothing you can do until the mechanics (they are now called technicians) are ready to give it back to you. And frankly, you really don’t want it back until they are sure it is fixed.

While I was gone dealing with the bus, we got a call from Steve (mentioned earlier) wondering if he had left his Raspberry Pi computer here on Saturday. We checked. Yup, it was here. Rather than meet him somewhere, we agreed that he would come back to the house on Wednesday to get it and do some work on our computers while he was here.

2013_11_06 (W)

Steve arrived late Wednesday morning, Linux “tools” in hand. The principle target of the work was to install Linux on one of our machines and then install/configure the Apache web-server program. This would allow us to have a “virtual web-server” that I could use to build duplicate installations of my WordPress sites, allowing me to develop and test them before making the same changes to the live sites. That sounded cool. Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for 10 years but I never saw a real need for it until now. It turned in to an all-day project (of course, don’t they all?) due to the age of the machine we decided to use, but that was the machine I wasn’t using for much of anything else, so that’s where it needed to go. Steve got Linux installed and then installed Apache2. We ran out of time to configure the Apache2 program, but that was OK as it will give Steve a reason to come back.

While we were working on the computers we talked some more about Florida. It turns out that the Capitol Steps are scheduled to appear at the Venice Stage Theater in Venice, Florida at the end of January. Our annual get-together with Steve and Karen has often involved dinner and a performance by this group, which specializes in political satire, much of it musical. They said we could stay overnight at the place they rent for winter in Venice if we wanted to go to the performance, which is at 8:00 PM on a Monday evening. The nice thing about traveling with cats is that you can leave them for 24 hours and they are fine. They sleep for 20 of those anyway.

I checked Wednesday afternoon and the bus was reported as “ready to go.” I decided to pick it up early Thursday morning and head directly to Edwardsburg. That meant towing the car so I had a way home, but it also meant that Linda did not have to drive me to W. W. Williams. That worked out well as she had to head in to the bakery on Thursday anyway.

I sometimes get a bit anxious the night before I am going to drive the bus as I don’t drive it every day and we are still finding a fixing “issues.” I used to experience the same thing when we would book one of the Southgate Flying Club airplanes and go flying. Again, I didn’t fly every day. Does this ever happen to you? As I was drifting off to sleep I suddenly remembered that I had planned to fill the fuel tank at the Mobil Truck Stop on I-96 between Howell and Lansing. But that was based on leaving from home. Now wide awake, I got my iPad, pulled up the map application, and zoomed in on the I-94 Baker Road interchange west of Ann Arbor. There are three truck stops there, two Pilots and one Travel America. I was able to examine each one carefully, checking in/out access and pump locations. I decided the Pilot station on the north side of the highway was my best option. I knew I had enough fuel in the tank to get that far easily, so I was then able to go back to bed and finally fall asleep.

2013_11_07 (R)

I must have been sleeping lightly because around 4 AM I was awakened by the faint sound of running water. That’s another one of those sounds that will jolt you awake once you become aware of it. The new flapper in the master bedroom toilet wasn’t quite sealed and the water was running ever so slowly trying to keep the tank full. I was finally able to adjust the flapper a couple of days later and get it to seal, but between the truck stop research and the running water, it turned out to be a short, fitful night’s sleep. Not good preparation for a long day of driving.

I would like to say that the trip from W. W. Williams to Phoenix Paint was uneventful, but Check Engine Lights are definitely an event, and I saw ours come on four times. It eventually went off each time, finally staying off after the 4^th time; once it’s come on I tend to be a bit on edge wondering when I will see it again (or worse).

I stopped for fuel at the aforementioned Pilot truck stop on the north side of I-94 at Baker Road and pulled in behind a truck at the last pump, or so I thought. I sat there for a while until the driver came out and moved it, at which point I pulled up only to discover that there wasn’t a pump at that position. So I pulled out of the truck stop onto Baker Road, came back in the entrance, and got in line behind a truck that was putting fuel in its tanks. That truck finally moved and I was able to pull up to the pump.

Getting fuel at a truck stop isn’t like putting fuel in your car. The gallons and dollars involved are usually an order of magnitude larger and you usually cannot run a credit card at the pump. I went inside, waited in line, and was finally waited on by a nice woman. I told her I probably needed 150 gallons and I failed to recognize that she ran my credit card for $150. I was only half done washing the windshields (the bus has four) when the pump shut off. It had put in 37.9 gallons for exactly $150. So I went back inside, stood in line again, and had her run the card for another $350. Back outside, I restarted the pump, waited for it to finish, then went back inside, got back in line, and got not one, but two, receipts with the dollars and gallons on them. By the time I got back on the highway the fuel stop had taken about one hour. More delay.

No sooner was I on the road then I got a call from Chuck checking on how my trip was going. That was both thoughtful and reassuring; it’s comforting to know folks are aware of you and concerned for your well-being. In some ways, owning a converted coach makes you part of a “fraternity”, if you care to join. While we were on the phone the Check Engine Light came on for the 3^rd time since I had left W. W. Williams. It went off and came on again. I discussed it with Chuck and decided to pull off at MY FAVORITE REST AREA to check the coolant level in the overflow reservoir. (I talked about this rest area in my article in the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine. This is the same rest area where I was stranded while Linda and I repaired the patio awning that came loose a few miles earlier on westbound I-94. Ironically, I was on my way to Phoenix Paint at that time as well. I’m not superstitious, but I don’t like unlikely coincidences.)

The rest stop in question is near Grass Lake, Michigan, about 12 miles east of Jackson, Michigan. It’s a very nice rest stop; I just seem to end up stopping here for less than nice reasons. I popped the rear engine hatch, improvised a dip stick, and checked the level in the overflow reservoir. It was up to the bottom edge of the filler tube, so no obvious problem there. I looked around the engine bay for any sign of a coolant leak, but everything looked dry. I took some comfort in the fact that Bob, the service manager at W. W. Williams (Dearborn) had told me that he and the technicians were very impressed with the condition of our engine; that it sounded good and ran well. They’re real experts, so that’s no small thing.

The rest of the trip really was uneventful. The Check Engine Light did not come on again, the transmission shifted well, the cruise control worked properly (as it always has), the engine coolant and oil temperatures ran normal, and the speedometer suddenly decided to work again! I took I-94 W to I-69 S to M-60 W to M-40 S to US-12 W to M-205 W and pulled into Phoenix Paint just a mile north of the Indiana border around 1:00 PM. I’ve done this trip many times, but it was a very pleasant drive with fall colors still in evidence, light traffic, and nice weather.

Michele got me into the building and parked and had me air up the suspension so they could have easier access to the inside of the wheel wells. She and Pato got right to work removing the damaged panels while I hooked up the electrical shoreline, got the house battery charger turned back on, and activated some circuits for the inside of the bus including the auxiliary air compressor. I stopped to look at things and answer questions as I unloaded some items from the car, and then moved stuff from the bus to car that had to return home with me. What started out as a trip to have paint scratches buffed out had become a trip to also find and seal roof leaks and repair/repaint damaged body panels, so Michele and I looked the coach over and discussed the work to be done. I was there about 90 minutes—a really short visit for me and Michele—and got back on the road for home around 2:30 PM.

I had originally planned to spend a few days at her shop working on some small projects of my own, but that was based on a Monday arrival. We had plans to meet up with our friend Kate in Ypsilanti on Thursday evening to see Roy Blount, Jr. at Eastern Michigan University’s Pease Auditorium. I made it home with just enough time to change clothes, but not to eat, and we headed off to Ypsi. We got there just as Kate and her friend Teresa were arriving and got four seats together. RBJr was very interesting to listen too when we could hear him and understand what he was saying. He speaks somewhat softly, and the PA system for the auditorium was not adjusted properly to compensate for that.

After the event we headed over to the Sweetwater Café, just a short walk from the auditorium, for coffee. They had some nice looking veggie rollup sandwiches, so Linda and I had a late/light dinner. We finally got home around 11 PM, a long day for me.

Although my health is better than it has been for the last couple of decades, I do not pretend that I am not in my 6^th decade. I can still do the all-day-drive thing, but I am much more tired at the end of it, and it takes me multiple days to recover from it.

2013_10_25-31 (M-R) FOOD At The Phase Place!

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Sometimes I get busy and don’t keep up with my posts. When I go back even as little as a week, as in this post, I find that many of the details are already lost in the continuous flow of daily living.

With the bus work in Williamston wrapped up, I turned my attention to figuring out what body panels and small parts I needed to order from Prevost to fix the damage I did to the passenger side of the bus leaving the campground in Townsend, TN. I spent a fair amount of time in the Prevost CatBase Viewer database. There were enough parts involved that I made an Excel spreadsheet. I called Prevost U.S. Parts and got Roger Anderson on the line. After discussing this for a while, we decided that it would be easiest for me to e-mail him the spreadsheet.

Next up was final preparations for the annual business meeting of our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter (FTH), of which I am the vice-president and secretary. There are a surprising number of documents that are involved in a simple meeting of a small group: an agenda (from the president), minutes from last year’s meeting, financial statements (which Linda and I prepare based on data from the treasurer), proposed amendments to the bylaws, and an updated roster. All of these get converted to PDF files and uploaded to a folder in our Dropbox account. I have provided a link to that folder to all of our members.

We made our usual trip to South Lyon on Saturday morning for breakfast with members of the South Lyon Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC). Linda worked on recipes. I installed the WP-Recipes plug-in and she has started using it to capture and publish recipes for some of our favorite whole-food plant-based (WFPB) dishes. She is evening taking a photograph of the finished dish and adding it to the recipe page. (Click on the Food & Health Tab and then on Recipes in the dropdown menu.)

While Linda worked on recipes I worked on WordPress websites. Besides our own, I am working on websites for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter (FTH), our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches Chapter (GLCC, of which Linda is the Treasurer), and our South Lyon Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC).

WordPress is constantly releasing updates and new versions. This generally a good thing, but they always strongly advise that you backup your site (folders/files/database) before installing an upgrade. I haven’t been doing that, so I decided on Saturday that I should. The GLCC website is an add-on domain for our primary/personal site, so I was able to back it up using the backup utilities in the QTH.com cPanel. The FTH website is hosted by iPower and the SLAARC website is hosted by GoDaddy, neither of which use cPanel nor appear to have built in backup utilities. There is some provision for backup built in to WordPress.

When I used the cPanel backup utility to backup our primary/personal site and the GLCC site it was about 1 GB. We only had 2.5 GB on our free Dropbox account, so I signed up for the 100 GB Dropbox plan. I then went on a search for a WordPress plug-in that would do the backups on a schedule. I selected WordPress Backup To Dropbox (WPB2D) and then installed and activated it on all four sites. I am going to test it for a couple of weeks and see how it works. I hope it works well as it is a very simple plug-in to use.

Our FTH meeting was scheduled as a conference call for 6:00 PM EDT on Sunday evening, October 27. We have 40 memberships in the chapter and needed 10 to make a quorum. 6:00 PM came and went and at 6:15 PM we only had 8 people on the line. The president polled the group and decided we would try again the next night; same time, same place.

Our SLAARC information net is held every Sunday evening at 8:00 PM. I was a regular participant up until we moved to the new house. Although I have our 2m/70cm base station antenna mounted on the old TV tower, I do not have the coax run to the ham shack in the basement. Hooking up the radio is inconvenient, especially in cold/dark/wet conditions, all of which we now have. I would like to have the ham shack set up and functioning, but it has not made it to the top of the list yet.

On Monday I drove the bus to W. W. Williams in Dearborn, Michigan to have them look at the auxiliary air system and the speedometer. They thought the constant cycling of the main engine air-compressor was either the governor or the air-dryer purge valve. Since the governor had just been replaced, I authorized replacing the purge valve. They thought the speedometer issue was the “tone wheel”, the sensor, or the gauge. The sensor was just replaced, so I authorized them to check that it was installed correctly and to pull the output shaft housing on the end of the transmission to check the tone wheel.

I called Roger back at Prevost U.S. Parts. He had filled in my spreadsheet and prepared a Prevost quote, so he e-mail those back to me. I decided to hold off ordering until Michele at Phoenix Paint has a chance to look at the damage and decide if she can fix it.

Linda and I had staked out the size/location of our planned bus barn and driveway. We adjusted the stakes slightly, moving the barn 5 feet farther from the road and squaring it up. It’s currently 32 ft. wide by 56 ft. long with a driveway that includes a spur for turning around. Phil from Precision Grading came by Monday evening, measured the area, and dug a couple of test holes to see what soil conditions we had. He said we had 13 inches of good top soil in that area. This will have to be removed and replaced with crushed concrete and 21AA road gravel, so we discussed possible locations on our property for the top soil. Some of it will go in a depressed area behind the proposed barn location. This area forms a lake whenever we get heavy/persistent rain. Some it will probably go on the west side of the main garage driveway, which currently drops off more than we would like, and somewhat unevenly. There are also low spots on the far west end of our property, and some of the topsoil will likely go there.

I spent the rest of this period working on the various websites. In particular, I finally figured out how to configure and use the WP-Members plug-in to restrict access to selected portions of a WordPress site based on a Username and Password. With that feature working, I focused on design (structure) and content for the FTH and GLCC sites. I got sidetracked on Halloween with the idea of installing a “slider” (automated slideshow) in place of the default graphic in the RESPONSIVE Theme I am using for the GLCC site. I selected and installed Meteor Slides based on its demonstration by the authors of RESPONSIVE. It had the appearance of being very simple to install and use, and it was/is once I figured it out. It took me 5 hours to do that, but I did. The site is not ready for viewing yet, but I will share the address when it is.

2013_10_24 (F) 50/50

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We were up early this morning as Linda had to go to the bakery today. I stopped by the post office on my way to Williamston and arrived around 9:15 AM. Joe was already working on the coach and I got busy working on some small items. I needed some WD-40 and neither of us had any, so it was off to the store. As long as I was out I picked up coffee at Panera. Yum.

No, today was not a 50/50 raffle, although those seem to be regular features of large RV rallies and ham radio meetings. Today was a day of even odds as to whether new parts would solve some nagging bus problems. As of the end of the work day the score was parts 0, problems 2. That doesn’t mean the day was wasted, not at all. We have a new governor (pressure regulator/controller) on the main engine air compressor and a new speedometer sensor on the transmission. We also had a new hub gasket on the driver-side drive axle and dynamic wheel balances on all six positions. The chassis had been lubed, the side-view mirrors had been tightened, the entrance door latches were tightened, and the passenger-side engine compartment door latch assembly was lubricated, as were all of the bay key locks. That’s a lot of stuff taken of.

The auxiliary air system, however, still bled down quickly to just under 100 PSI each time the air-dryer purged and then slowly built up pressure to 130 PSI and the repeated the cycle. I called Joe as soon as I got home to let him know. He called someone that he relies on for advice and was told that it was most likely the unloader valve in the head of the air compressor. The valve is not an expensive part, but replacing it requires a lot of labor. The air compressor is bolted to the transmission end of the main engine block and the head is tied in to the engine cooling system, so not only is it difficult to get to (in a bus), the coolant (antifreeze) has to be drained at least to the point where the air compressor head is empty so it can be removed without making a huge mess. Ugh.

As for the transmission speed sensor, the speedometer continued its bizarre, random behavior as I drove. It stayed at zero (0) MPH when I first started driving, as it usually does, then jumped around erratically independent of vehicle speed, then decided to sit at 85 MPH (maximum on the gauge) regardless of vehicle speed, and then jumped around a bit up there. It never did settle in to the correct speed on the whole trip back. In other words, exactly what it was doing before we changed the sensor. Ugh, ugh. But at least we know the problem is somewhere else.

Chuck drove out to Williamston from Novi and arrived just before 1:00 PM. Joe needed to test drive the 2002 Prevost XL LeMirage he’d been working on, so he drive the three of us to lunch in it. That was the first time I had ridden in an XL and the first time I had ridden in a converted coach powered by a Detroit Diesel Series 60 engine. The ride was very nice and the engine obviously had a lot of torque. The thing I noticed most, however, was how quiet it was without windshield and door gasket air leaks.

While Joe finished the front end work I finished putting trim back on the wheels, packed up my tools, and reloaded the car and the bays. With all of the work done, Joe guided me out of the garage and I pulled around into the driveway where I could hook up the car without blocking anyone. Eventually there was nothing left to do but pay Joe and leave, so that’s what I did.

Centramatic dynamic wheel balancer on driver-side front wheel.

I got back to house late afternoon, got the car unhooked, unloaded the bus and the car, stripped the bed, and started a load of laundry. Retirement may mean that someone else fixes your bus, but it doesn’t mean that some else does your laundry.

I did not get a chance to winterize our coach while it was in Williamston. Overnight low temperatures have been dropping down near freezing, and were forecast for the upper 20’s tonight. The living area in the coach will stay above freezing just from retained heat and the heat put out by the refrigerator, but I was less sure about the bays. There are still water lines in the front bay from the old combo washer/dryer so I turned on the electric bay heater. The water tank bay does not have an electric heater, which I thought was odd, until I realized the Aqua-Hot is in test bay and has an electric heating element, so I turned that back on as well.

Linda left the bakery around 5:00 PM, which put her in the middle of the afternoon rush. I’m not sure why it’s called rush hour since traffic mostly moves slowly or not at all. While on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia last week we were reminded of similar reversals, made famous by George Carlin, such as why we drive on Parkways and park on driveways. And we wonder why non-native speakers gave trouble with English? I sat on the couch and worked on this blog posting and Juniper (our female cat) curled up beside and went to sleep; very unusual for her. We had a heavy downpour of rain and sleet that lasted for 20 minutes, but Linda finally made it home at 6:37 PM.

Dinner was pan grilled onions and extra firm tofu slices in Bar-B-Que sauce served on a whole wheat bun with a mixed green salad, a few Tostitos whole grain dipping chips, salsa, and a small glass of white wine. The odds of that being a really tasty meal were much higher than 50/50. Simple yet simply delicious.

2013_10_23 (W) Williamston MI Bus Garage

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Today started out complicated but settled in as it progressed. Linda had to babysit today as we were still out of town on Monday and our daughter took Monday instead. Normally Linda would just get up and drive to Ann Arbor, but our son borrowed her car just before we left for Tennessee and still had it. She could have taken my car had I not needed it. But I did, so I got up early and drove her to Ann Arbor. But first I started a load of laundry. (Even retired people sometimes have to multitask in order to get everything done that needs doing.)

An early morning trip is always an excuse to stop at Panera, especially as we so rarely do this anymore. Bagels and coffee in hand we were back on the road. I’m not driving all the way to Ann Arbor and not see my grand-daughter, so stayed for a while and watched her play. She is a very active 10-month old and was either looking at her book collection or crawling around the living/dining rooms the whole time.

I eventually headed back to the house, put the laundry in the dryer, cleaned the cats’ litter tray (but forgot to feed them), gathered up the various things I needed to take with me, loaded them in the car, and reconnected it go the bus. The laundry wasn’t dry yet, so I spent some time repositioning the stakes that we placed last evening to mark the outline of the bus barn and driveway. It took longer than I expected, but that’s almost always the case, so I am used to it, and OK with it. I hung up the dried clothes and prepared to drive the bus some 40+ miles WNW to Williamston, Michigan.

The reason for the trip to Williamston was that our mobile mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, was already there working on another customer’s coach. The customer had a 2-bay bus garage with heat; no small thing given that overnight lows were forecast to hit freezing or below. Joe had all of his tools unpacked there, and was staying in the customer’s coach, so it was a much better place for him (and me) to work than our driveway.

Joe was wrapping up a conversation with John, one of the seven (7) partners in the partnership that owns the coach, so I unhooked the car while they talked. I got to meet John and see the coach, a Prevost XL-45 LeMIrage “entertainer” conversion. It was a nice conversion and they have had Joe do a fair amount of work on it. John had never seen a motorhome bus conversion, so I gave him a brief tour of ours. I also showed him the generator bay as they are also facing a soundproofing redo. As a token of appreciation for letting Joe work on our bus in their garage, I gave John copies of the February and May 2013 issues of Bus Conversions Magazine and the summer issue of The Gypsy Journal.

Joe and John concluded their business and I 3-point turned the bus and pulled it into the left bay of the garage. I then pulled my car into the other bay. We unloaded tools and parts, raised the bus high enough to get the stands under it, and set it down on them. Joe needed food so we went to get lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant. Joe had a full meal while I had a salad of dark greens (mostly spinach) with sun-dried tomatoes and olives and a homemade Italian dressing. It was quite good.

Linda called to let me know that two boxes had arrived from Prevost as promised. I asked her to drive them out to where we were, which she did. Joe then put me to work removing the “beauty rings” and lug nut bling from the wheels, after which he started removing the outside dual tires/wheels and the tag axle tires/wheels so he could install the Centramatic dynamic wheel balances.

While Joe muscled the tires around I dug out my metric hex wrench set and tightened the outside rear view mirrors. (Prevost Car, Inc. is located in Saint Claire, Quebec, Canada and their coaches are an interesting mix of U.S. and metric parts.) The passenger-side mirror, in particular, had been just loose enough for a long time that it vibrated while driving (slightly irritating) and wouldn’t hold its position (very irritating), dropping down beyond the limits of its remote adjustability to the point where I couldn’t use it to see down that side of the coach (dangerous). Like many “little things”, however, I kept forgetting to fix it once we got home as we are very busy immediately after returning from a trip.

I opened the garage door to call Linda and check on her progress only to discover that it was raining lightly and watched the rain turn to snow right before my eyes. When I arrived there was a little bit of graupel falling. Welcome to Michigan in October.

Linda arrived with the parts, visited for a few minutes, and headed back to work on thank you cards for our open house guests. Joe removed the driver-side outside drive tire, examined the oil leak evidence, and said he thought I only had a gasket leak. He pulled the axle flange and we discovered that it didn’t have an axle flange gasket. The last time someone worked on it (before we owned it) they used “form-a-seal”, a thick liquid that you squirt out of a tube like caulk or toothpaste, and it was obvious that there were areas where no effective seal existed. Joe said that this is a “common” practice, but his preference was to use the appropriate gasket, several of which I now have in stock.

We cleaned off the remnants of the old form-a-seal and then Joe reassembled the hub, installed the wheel balancer, and reinstalled the outer dual tire. I cleaned the oil from the inside of the beauty ring, as we did not want the old oil residue making us think we still had a leak, and then Joe reinstalled that as well. We were short one washer, it was late, and Joe was tired, so we called it a day. I packed up and left, taking one of the washers with me so I could buy more of the correct size.

I stopped at the Home Depot in Brighton, found the split-ring lock washers I needed, and finally got home around 8:30 PM. Linda had picked up an Amy’s Roasted Vegetable pizza. It is absolutely the best vegan pizza I have ever had. It was real treat and a good end to a good day.

2013_10_22 (T) A Good Day’s Drive

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Today was the final leg of our 12-day trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and back by way of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and the mountains of West Virginia. We had 276 miles to travel and figured it would take us 5.5 hours as our planned route was mostly US highways with some Interstate highway legs and a little bit of surface roads. We planned to leave around 10 AM and arrive home between 3:30 and 4:00 PM. We actually left at 11:19 AM and arrived home at 5:00 PM. Although we were approaching Ann Arbor from the south around 4:15 PM and encountered increasingly heavy traffic, we slowed down to the posted truck speed of 60 MPH and sailed right around.

The drive from Chillicothe, OH to Columbus, OH on US-23 was very pleasant. The highway was 4-lane divided most of the way, and often limited access. The terrain was still gently rolling and was very pretty with fall colors under nice sunlight. Lunch hour traffic around the outskirts of Columbus on I-270 was moderate but not congested, even in the construction zones. We exited I-270 at the northwest corner of the Columbus area onto US-33 headed northwest. Again, an excellent multi-lane divided US highway that rolls through some lovely countryside and passes just next to the highest point in Ohio.

We stayed on US-33 until it intersected I-75N at Wapakoneta, OH. From there it was 90 miles to Toledo, OH but we exited before reaching Toledo, heading west on I-475/US-23 which turned north towards Sylvania, effectively bypassing Toledo. Crossing the border into Michigan it always feels like we are almost home, but we are not. The shortest distance to a border from our house is about 60 miles, which gets us to the bridge or tunnel from Detroit to Windsor, Canada. But the shortest route to a bordering state is US-23 to Ohio which is straight north/south shot to our community. Even so, it was 70 miles and another 80 minutes of driving, or about 25% of our trip today.

While it is always nice to return home, it is often the worst part of the trip in terms of roads. Many of Michigan’s roads are not in the best shape, and US-23 from Ohio to Ann Arbor is one of those roads. It’s not only annoying (our tax dollars not at work), it’s embarrassing.

We pulled into the driveway around 5:00 PM, plugged in the electrical shoreline and unloaded much of our stuff. I got a load of laundry started while Linda put groceries away. We still had some daylight, so we grabbed our box of yellow plastic stakes and a 100 foot tape measure and marked the approximate location of the proposed bus barn and driveway. While Linda fixed dinner (black beans and rice from leftovers) I called Phil at Precision Grading to let him know he could stop by at his convenience to measure the layout for estimating purposes.

On balance it was a good 12-day outing. We learned quite a bit about using our digital SLR camera in conjunction with powerful but free image editing software. We were in scenic parts of the country at an ideal time of year for photography. We got to do some sight-seeing, hiking, and captured some nice photographic images. We got to spend time with new friends and with family. And the coach ran well.

2013_10_21 (M) I-64, Do U?

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We had decided yesterday that we would try to return home from the Lexington, Virginia area via I-64W across West Virginia to US-35 N into Ohio, branching off on US-23 N towards Columbus, Ohio and eventually getting on I-75 N and following US-23 N through Sylvania, Ohio (by-passing Toledo, Ohio), into Michigan, and home.

We needed a place to stay this evening, and I needed to order some parts for the coach from Prevost Car, Inc. so Linda researched campgrounds while I looked up part numbers on the Prevost CatBase Viewer. I got the parts ordered and she identified two possible fairgrounds: the Gallia County Junior Fairgrounds near Gallipolis, Ohio and the county fairgrounds near Chillicothe, Ohio. She called the phone number for the Chillicothe fairgrounds but never got an answer. A woman answered when she called the Gallia Country Junior Fairgrounds and said they had 50A full hookup sites and we were welcome to stay there for $20. Deal! Gallipolis is only a few miles into Ohio on US-35N and the fairgrounds were only a mile or so off of the highway with good access from a major road. She also found a listing for a Good Sam RV Park near Chillicothe, but the listing said their season ended on October 15.

L-to-R, me, Linda, Marilyn, Mary, and Ron.

After a light breakfast we prepared the coach for travel and helped Marilyn gather and move all of her stuff back to Ron and Mary’s mini-van as they got their A-liner ready to travel. Checkout time was 11 AM, and we had both planned 5 hour travel days, so we were in no hurry to leave. We were all packed by 10:30 AM, so we took a few group pictures, had our goodbye hugs, and made our exits just before 11 AM.

Welcome to West Virginia!

The weather was perfect today, with clear blue skies and temperatures climbing into the 60’s. I-64 through Virginia and West Virginia is a designated scenic route, and it should be. On the trip through western Virginia and into W. Virginia we often had the highway to ourselves. This is mountain country and the road is rarely straight or level. We had numerous long grades (up and down) and several that were marked 7% for up to 5 miles. Reminiscent of our travels through the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, I was downshifting manually a lot, and on one long uphill had to drop into 2^nd gear to keep the RPMs around 2000. Unlike the trip over the Bighorns, I knew better how to drive mountains and the engine coolant temperature never climbed above 198 and the exhaust pyrometers stayed below 1000 degrees, typically 900 degrees or less.

I-64 joins up with I-77 in central W. Virginia and becomes the West Virginia Turnpike. Traffic got noticeably heavier from here on. We paid two tolls of $3.25 for a motorhome towing a car. The WVT has toll booths staffed by real people, no tickets to take, no machines to feed money into. Nice. We tend to avoid toll roads not so much because of the cost, although that can be excessive, as the unattended mechanisms make it very difficult for us to pay tolls.

Welcome to Ohio! (The bridge over the Ohio River was being resurfaced and down to one lane in each direction.)

We found the Gallia County Junior Fairgrounds easily and pulled in around 3:40 PM. The place was deserted except for one car and a “campground” was not obvious. Linda called the phone number she had used in the morning and did not get an answer. We both walked around, peered in windows, knocked on doors, but nothing. She eventually found signs with trailers and arrows and followed those to what might have been a campground, but no evidence of 50 A full hookups as we had been told.

The stop gave us a chance to rest and nibble, but after about 45 minutes we decided we needed to make other plans. Remember, a true traveler has no fixed plan… In looking at our (out-of-date) Trailer Life Directory (2010) we returned to the listing for Sun Valley RV Park near Chillicothe, OH (a Good Sam Park). It said they closed October 15, but we called anyway. They were still open! And they had space! And they were only another hour up the road! And that was the direction we needed to go anyway!

Sun Valley RV Park near Chillicothe, OH as seen from the driver’s position in the coach. Our site was ahead to the left but we had to circle around to the right get lined up so we could back in.

So that’s where we went. It was less than 2 miles from an exit off of US-23 which was only 4.5 miles from the junction of US-35 and US-23, so it was not out of our way to come here. We arrived around 5:45 PM. Although the sun had disappeared behind a thickening cloud cover it was still daylight. We opted for a back-in full hookup 50A site as the pull-through sites did not have sewer connections and getting to the dump station from those sites the next morning would be more difficult than we wanted to deal with.

We unhooked the car in front of the office where the road was widened for large RV to pull over while they registered. I walked the route from the office to our site to check for adequate turning radii and an absence of encroaching tree limbs. It all looked good, and we were got parked and leveled easily. After hooking up the electricity and sewer line and making the interior ready for use we went for a walk around the park, as we often do. Sun Valley is mostly seasonal trailers and park models, but it was in nice shape (which is not always the case).

We had leftovers for dinner, but really, Linda’s leftover meals are still a treat. She was very tired and went to bed early while I stayed up and worked on photographic image post-processing, redoing the picture of our coach on our website home page, and catching up on writing blog entries. I also had a long conversation with Joe Cannarozzi, our mobile mechanic, who will be working on the coach starting on Wednesday.

2013_10_20 (N) The Blue Ridge Parkway, VA

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The Beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway headed south.

After breakfast we arranged ourselves in Ron and Mary’s Honda mini-van and around 10 AM headed up I-81 towards Waynesboro, Virginia and the Blue Ridge Parkway. We had beautiful blue skies, with no threat of rain and highs forecast to be in the 60’s. We exited I-81 N at US-250 and headed east through Waynesboro to the northern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Our merry little band of intrepid hikers.

Our first destination was the Visitor Center at Humpback Rocks. We spent a few minutes there looking at the indoor exhibits and used the “facilities.” We set Marilyn up in a comfy chair with her book. Ron, Mary, Linda, and I then walked through the period farmstead on our way to the Humpback Rocks Trailhead.

Interior of an early 19th century mountain farmstead cabin.

The Humpback Rocks are a rock outcropping near the top of a mountain that requires a 0.8 mile hike with a 900 ft vertical elevation gain. Most of the trial was in excellent shape considering the number of hikers who were using it. It was entirely wooded, with natural rock “stairs” in some places and steps that clearly showed the hand of man, but were very well done. Parts of the trail near the top were wet and the rocks were slippery but passable.

Mary, Ron, and Linda on the Humpback Rocks.

The Humpback Rocks are devoid of trees and provided a panoramic view of the valley to the west and the mountains beyond spanning more than 180 degrees from south to east of north. Unfortunately, we were there around noon to 1 PM and the lighting was not ideal for photographing the valley and mountains. We spent an hour up there enjoying the view anyway before heading down.

Linda, Ron, and Mary on the Humpback Rocks.

The hike down was harder in some ways than the hike up. Uphill hikes are generally about leg muscles, but the pace is naturally slower and it’s not too hard to find good footing. Downhill hikes are about impact on joints, and footing is tricky, especially on the wet/slippery rocks we had to deal with in a few spots along the way. Ron and Mary use adjustable hiking poles, and had an extra one for Linda, which she needed. I should have used one, but didn’t. We have a pair of adjustable poles at home, left over from a previous era of winter camping and cross country ski backpacking, but we added a new pair for each of us to our “next time” list.

We made it back to the Visitor Center around 2 PM and had a picnic lunch that we had packed that morning, rested for a while in the warm sun, and eventually made ready to continue down the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A red berry bush along the Blue Ridge Parkway, VA.

The rest of the afternoon we drove south along the Parkway, stopping at some of the scenic overlooks to overlook the scenery and take photographs. The time of day and angle of the sun were not ideal for photography, but that did not take anything away from the views.

We exited the Parkway at US-60 and headed south through Buena Vista on US-501 to Natural Bridge, where we vectored off on VA-130 over to US-11 N and drove the few miles back to the entrance to the Natural Bridge / Lexington KOA.

Tonight was Linda’s turn to prepared dinner and she opted to make her Farro with mushrooms which is a favorite of mine. She added leafy greens to the leftover salad from the night before, and served the dish with whole grain bread. A little wine helped wash everything down. Ron, Mary, and Marilyn finished the pie from the previous evening and Mary sliced up some fresh strawberries for me and Linda. Ron and I did the dishes, after which we started a campfire and sat around until late in the evening talking and enjoying our last night in camp together.

2013_10_19 (S) Lexington VA

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As I mentioned yesterday, we are camping with family at the Natural Bridge / Lexington KOA. We let Marilyn sleep until 8 AM, and then got up, got dressed, and started moving around the coach. Ron and Mary came over around 8:30 – 8:45 AM, Panera Bagel Pack in tow, and we had breakfast in the coach. Based on the weather forecast, which was overcast for today and a bit sunnier for tomorrow, we decided to go to Lexington, Virginia about 10 miles north of our campground.

As is true of much of the United States, I did not know anything about Lexington. That turned out to be a bit surprising to me as there are three universities there, and it has a strong connection to the Civil War. It is full of old, but well preserved/restored architecture, and has become the center of an active artist community. All of these things combined to give it a very nice look and feel.

The backyard of Stonewall Jackson house, Lexington, VA.

Our first stop was at the visitor center where we picked up some maps and got some tips from the staff. From there we headed towards Main Street, stopping at the home of Stonewall Jackson. We didn’t tour the inside ($) but the yard was open for an apple cider event. A trio (banjo, fiddle, and guitar) was performing, and a hand-cranked apple press was in operation. We walked the rear garden and got to taste some freshly pressed, unpasteurized apple juice.

Above photo with “oil painting” effect.

While we were at the Stonewall Jackson house, we started hearing loud truck horns. At first I thought they were emergency vehicles on their way somewhere, but we quickly found out that there was a truck parade going down Main Street. We walked the short distance to the corner and stood there watching tractor after tractor go by. Most of the rigs were tricked out, polished up, and looking good. Owning/driving a highway bus doesn’t automatically make you a gear head, but it does tend to heighten you awareness and appreciation of large tractor-trailers.

Linda, Ron, and Marilyn in front of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Chapel, WLU, Lexington, VA.

We walked a little farther up the street to the campus of Washington and Lee University, where Robert E. Lee and many other members of his family are buried in the Robert E. Lee Memorial Chapel. The founding of the university pre-dates the American Revolution and most of the buildings feature simple, pre-revolutionary era, architecture; red brick with white trim. It was a very attractive campus, and the house that Robert E. Lee lived in when he was president of the university is still there.

The Jackson Cemetery, Lexington, VA.

From WLU we walked back to South Main Street to Nikko’s Restaurant, which Linda found on HappyCow.net as a “vegetarian friendly.” She had a vegan sandwich and I had a portabella mushroom sandwich. Both were very good.

Stonewall Jackson Chapel, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA.

After Nikko’s we walked a little farther south to the Jackson Cemetery, where Stonewall Jackson and a number of his family members are interred. We then walked back to the car and drove to the campus of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), a public 4-year undergraduate college offering a military style education. Here we visited the Stonewall Jackson museum, which included an excellent collection of firearms ranging from pre-revolutionary era to the present day.

Stonewall Jackson Chapel, VMI, Lexington, VA.

We finished up our time in Lexington with a short drive through the ante-bellum house district and then found the local Kroger supermarket. Linda and Mary picked up a few things for upcoming dinners and some candy for the kids back at the KOA as they are doing “trick-or-treat” from 6:30 – 7:30 PM this evening.

Native American Flutes handcrafted by Ron Lott.

We gathered in our coach for a while and Ron surprised us with gifts he had made and brought along. He has become quite expert at making Native American flutes, and had made one for Marilyn, Linda, and me. He had also made a small harp for Marilyn. All of them use pentatonic scales, so almost anything you play sounds good, and harmonizes well with what others are playing.

Ron and Mary’s Aliner trailer, with lots of custom interior modifications.

Ron and Mary fixed dinner this evening. They pan-fried vegetables for veggie fajitas, and had black beans, rice, refried beans, salsa, and guacamole, along with chips and a nice green salad. They also had sour cream and chicken strips for the non-vegans. We gathered at their Aliner trailer and had dinner on the picnic table. The trick-or-treaters came around as we were eating and we enjoyed seeing their costumes and giving them the small candy items we had purchased earlier.

A flower.

After dinner, Mary and Marilyn did the dishes while Ron got a nice campfire going using scraps from his woodworking shop. Kiln dried hardwood makes a nice fire and we sat around it for a few hours talking about whatever and listen to the screams of joy from the “spooky trail” the campground had set up for the kids. Sometime around 8 PM music suddenly started up. It was far enough away to not be obnoxious, but loud enough we could hear it clearly. It took us a few minutes to figure out that it was a live band and not someone’s entertainment system. The band wrapped up around 11 PM and so did we.

2013_10_18 (F) Not Our Best Day Ever

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Today was a travel day for us. We were not in any particular hurry to leave this morning and yet seemed pressed to get on the road as we had about 300 miles to travel. We also figure an average travel speed of 50 MPH even when traveling routes that are mostly Interstate Highways. We don’t usually travel more than 62 MPH and often slower due to traffic. The 50 MPH average also seems to make an adequate allowance for surface roads, stop lights/signs, rest areas, and truck stops for re-fueling. We try to avoid major cities whenever possible, and to go through them at off-peak times when we cannot. We also like to be where we are going before it gets dark.

We had a wonderful time this week participating in the SKP Photographers BOF workshop/rally at the Tremont Outdoor Resort in Townsend, TN. The resort itself was OK, although marginal for our motorhome. I was able to get us in, parked, and leveled last Sunday but not without adding some scratches to the upper body paint. I got us out of our site this morning and onto the entrance road where we hooked up the toad. All was well until I made a right turn onto TN-73 and cut it a little too tight to avoid a car in the oncoming lane, and clipped the body on the passenger side.

We did not know the extent of the damage until we pulled into a rest stop on I-81 northbound (still in Tennessee) to switch drivers. I clipped the lower panel of the last bay on the passenger side just in front of the drive tires, damaging the panel, a smaller body panel just behind it, and part of the wheel well trim. Ugh. Getting paint scratches buffed out just became the least of our problems. The rest of the day went fine, but this sort of thing tends to put you on edge and take some of the joy out of the lifestyle, at least temporarily.

Linda took the driver’s position and continued on I-81 N towards our destination in Virginia. She test drove the bus when we first looked at it, and did just fine, but had not been behind the wheel in the four years since then. She drove for about 150 miles, getting us to a rest area at MM109 in Virginia, and she did great. We still had 70 miles to go to get to Natural Bridge, VA and needed to stop for fuel, so I moved back into the driver’s seat to finish the trip. We stopped at the Pilot Truck Stop at exit 150 on the northwest corner of Roanoke, VA. This particular location was smaller with more congested access than we usually encounter, but we got in and out just fine.

We pulled in to the Natural Bridge / Lexington KOA around 4 PM, so we averaged just about 50 MPH for the six hours between “wheels up” and “wheels down” (aviation lingo for takeoff and landing). We do not generally seek out KOA facilities for a variety of reasons, cost being number one, but this particular KOA had a nice look and feel to it. It is built on hilly, wooded terrain, but the roads were wide enough for us to get through and the trees were trimmed up high enough that we didn’t scrape. The sites are cut into the sides of hills, but are close enough to level that we had no problem leveling the coach. Part of the reason KOAs are pricier than other RV parks are the facilities, which are designed to make them attractive to families with children. That often means congestion and noise. The campground is near full, but so far has been very quiet. There are campfires burning, as there were at Tremont Outdoor Resort, which reminds of our tent camping days many, many years ago.

The reason we are here is that KOAs accommodate everything from large motorhomes to tent campers, and we are meeting up with family here for a weekend of camping. They are camping in an A-liner in a site close to ours.

For dinner Linda improvised a quinoa-based dish with potato, squash, bell pepper, tomato, mixed dark greens, and Cranberry Thokku, a spicy/hot Indian relish/sauce. Earlier in the week we installed the WP Ultimate Recipe plug-in on our website/blog and started playing with it. Linda plans to add the recipe for this dish as her first entry. She is preparing a Farro dish on Sunday and will add that as well.

Linda’s sister (Marilyn) and brother (Ron) and his wife (Mary) arrived at 7:30 PM, got their camper parked and set up, and then came over to visit for a couple of hours. We discussed options for tomorrow and decided to make those decisions after breakfast. Ron and Mary returned to their trailer for the evening and Marilyn stayed behind as she is sleeping in the coach on the pull-out couch.

2013_10_16 (W) GSMNP

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I was up late last night post-processing images for the yesterday’s blog and downloading/installing 32-bit versions of the some of the free 64-bit software Lou had provided via flashdrive for SKP Photographers Workshop. As a result we slept in a bit and, not having anything we had to do today, Linda made her yummy vegan pancakes and served them with real Maple syrup.

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park (GSMNP) re-opened this morning, and is supposed to remain open through at least Sunday. We are camped about a mile outside the Cades Cove (Townsend, TN) entrance, so we decided to go for a drive in that direction. We left around 10 AM, and in spite of the RV parks (and motels) around here not being full, due to the government shutdown forced park closure, lots of other people had apparently stuck around in the hopes the park would re-open and had the same idea about where to head. Most of GSMNP is not accessible by motor vehicle, and Cades Cove has always been the major tourist draw for those who are sight-seeing in a car.

Giant fungus (18” diameter) along the Cades Cove Loop Road, GSMNP.

Traffic on the 11 mile long road to/from Cades Cove was bumper to bumper and moving slowly-to-not-at-all; but we were not in any hurry and it was fine with us. We eventually reached the Visitor Center at the end of the Cades Cove Loop Road, found a parking spot (not a guaranteed thing), and walked around the area looking at and photographing the old buildings. We stopped in a few pull-outs along the way and I shot a few landscapes and a babbling brook, but the day was heavily clouded with low light levels and color vibrancy and I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired photographically speaking. We were also a little tired and did not do any of the waterfall hikes. Besides, there were no open parking spots at many of the trailheads and vantage points.

We eventually made our way back to our starting point in the park and then continued on through the park on Scenic TN-73 towards US-441 to the northeast. This was a very nice drive, but not really suitable for a large motorhome and we did not see any on this leg of the journey. I mention that only because part of what we were doing today was scouting our exit route. We eventually got to US-441 and headed north towards Gatlinburg. Gatlinburg is an attractive tourist town with bumper-to-bumper traffic that moves slowly, but persistently, allowing me to gawk as I drove. (Linda usually does the tourist toad driving, but her hip was bothering her, so I took over after Cades Cove.) It’s also small enough that we were out the other side in a reasonable amount of time.

One of the two Baptist Churches we passed in Cades Cove, ca. 1839, GSMNP.

We continued north on US-441/US-321 to Pigeon Forge, home of Dolly World, to the point where US-321 South split off and headed back to Townsend. We went this way partly for the scenery, which was nice, and partly to check out the road, which semi’s were advised on either end not to use. While most of the road was fine for a larger, longer wheelbase vehicle, there was a stretch where the bus would not have gotten through easily due to narrow lanes and hairpin turns. Also, for much of its length there was little-to-no shoulder and places where the branches overhanging the road had not been trimmed up and would have damaged the coach.

Our Trucker’s Atlas indicated that this stretch of US-321 is a truck route, and we had hoped it would be passable by a large motorhome as it in the direct/short route from where we are to where we need to go on Friday. Linda found some online reviews that corroborated the warning signs; this was not a road for semi’s and motorhomes. As a result, our confidence in being able to rely on our Trucker’s Atlas is somewhat reduced, and we are inclined to believe posted signs.

The water powered mill at the Cade Coves Visitor Center area, GSMNP. The mill was operating, demonstrating the grinding of corn into corn meal.

Although I am not thrilled at the prospect, our route out of here on Friday morning will be to backtrack on US-321/TN73 S/W to US-66 N to Maryville and pick up US-129 N to Knoxville where we merge onto I-40 E which takes us to the southern terminus of I-81 N and on to Lexington, Virginia. I have really studied the satellite images of the highway system in Knoxville and the US-129 N to I-40 E transition should be a no-brainer unless the highway signs are completely screwed up or they have a road closed with a poorly marked detour.

Linda made a whole wheat penne pasta dish with homemade marinara sauce, pan-fried eggplant, and garlic. She made the marinara sauce a couple of weeks ago and froze some of it. I raved about it when she made it, and it was just as good thawed out and re-heated.

The Little River along Little River Road en route to US-441, GSMNP.

The photo workshop participants reconvened at 8 PM in the resort classroom building to go over the agenda for Thursday. With rain forecast to move in for the afternoon, the plan was to drive about 15 minutes in the morning to a nearby waterfall, capture some images there as interest and weather permitted, and then return to camp for lunch, followed by another 3 – 4 hours of classroom demonstration and discussion. Lou showed some photographs he took on his cell phone and demonstrated several cell phone camera apps that he uses. We agreed to meet for breakfast at 8 AM at Riverstone Family Restaurant, just up the road from our resort, and leave for the falls from there.

2013_10_13 (N) A Fork In The Road

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We spent a quiet night with only an occasional car passing by. Someone nearby must have a pack of dogs and fed them around 6 AM as I heard them howling in the distance. At first I thought they were coyotes, but it wasn’t the right kind of howl. We finally got up around 8 AM to cool temperatures and light fog. I checked the house batteries state of charge (I really need to get the Magnum ME-ARC remote panel installed up in the house) and it was 71%, not bad for having powered the coach for 8 hours.

Sunrise at Acres of Land near Richmond, KY

A nice sunrise lit up the bedroom and by 9 AM the fog had burned off as we ate our breakfast of Linda’s homemade granola with fresh bananas, orange juice, and a cup of coffee. This morning’s coffee was the Breakfast Blend from World Markets that Kathy brought to our open house. It was delicious and already ground. We generally grind our coffee beans, but it’s always nice to have ground coffee on hand, especially when we only want to make a couple of cups.

We had 186 miles to travel today, and check-in time at Tremont Outdoor Resort was 1 PM, so we targeted 10 AM as our departure time. We left a little after 10 and took KY-876 east back to I-75 and continued south towards Tennessee. Just after crossing the border we started down a long, steep grade but had to come to a complete stop before reaching the bottom. We sat still, or moved along very slowly, while police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and emergency management vehicles sped past us on the right shoulder. We eventually had to move to left as the accident was in the right lane, and got the ire of an SUV who apparently felt we had cut them off. Sorry. It was an accident scene everyone in the right lane had to move to the left. Here’s a tip for folks driving cars: when a semi or large RV puts on its turn signal, you might want to consider letting them move over. These are large, slow vehicles and they need your cooperation to operate safely.

When we reached the accident scene there were two motorhomes on the side of the road, one with a towed vehicle that had the driver’s side smashed in, and a small white car that had been rear-ended and squashed pretty bad. We tried to move through the accident zone as quickly as traffic allowed, but were not able in that short span of time to surmise just what had happened, other than something bad.

The rest of the trip to Knoxville was uneventful although traffic was heavier as cars and trucks cleared the accident scene and tried to make up for lost time. We finally left I-75, picking up I-275 through the city to where it was supposed to join up with I-40, which we thought we would take west and shortly thereafter pick up US-129 headed south towards Maryville. That was the plan. Remember plans from a recent post? The Knoxville highway system is complex, and we were following the directions on our Rand-McNally RVND 7710 GPS while Linda double checked what we were doing on her Samsung Galaxy III smartphone. Everything was fine until we came to a literal fork in the road and the GPS failed to tell us which way to go. Intuitively we needed to go to the right, but that exit sign said “Downtown” and that didn’t seem right so we took the exit to the left and ended up…downtown. Not just downtown, but on a very steep hill going up where we had to stop at a red light. I don’t know what the grade of this hill was, but the bus was barely able to get moving from a dead stop.

On the plus side, while we were stopped there, a man crossed the street wearing a nice suit and bow tie and smiled and waved to us. Also on the plus side, Sunday afternoon traffic was very light, so we didn’t have any further difficulties driving the 1.8 miles through the University of Tennessee campus back over to US-129 southbound.

At that point we were back on plan. Just north of Maryville we picked up TN-35 which links up with the E Lamar Alexander Parkway, US-321 / TN-73 eastbound, which continued on as TN-73 and took us to Townsend. Although the road got narrow and twisty in places, it was a pleasant and pretty drive. All told, the accident scene and the Knoxville sight-seeing delayed our arrival at the Tremont Outdoor Resort by about 45 minutes from what the GPS originally predicted and we pulled in around 2:30 PM.

We turned off of TN-73 and crossed a bridge over a small river to enter the resort, at which point the GPS alerted us that we exceeded the weight limit of the bridge. There were no weight limits posted on this bridge, so we are not sure what that was all about. We pulled up to the check-in area, scraping the top of the coach with the low over hanging branches that they assured us on the phone they did not have, and Linda went in to take care of the paperwork. I could see from the driver’s seat that the roads in this RV park were not generous and might be problem. When she returned with the map we unhooked the car and drove the route they wanted us to take to our site. Right. There were trucks parked where they shouldn’t be, and a maintenance golf cart by the restrooms that block part of the road. I backed up and took the left fork in the entrance road, pulled up the tag axle, and made the hard left in sections B & C of the park. From there I made a hard right, scratching the passenger side of the coach on some low pine/fir branches, finally got lined up, and back down into our section and into site B3.

The reason I mention all of this is that when we call to make a reservation we are very, very specific with people about the size and weight of our coach and specifically ask about overhead obstructions such as tree limbs. (We always call, never book online, because of this.) People consistently tell us that “you won’t have any problem” and it is, quite frankly either an ignorant response (they have no idea if we will have a problem or not) or they just plain lie about it. I am also convinced that when we tell them we are 8.5 feet wide, 40 feet long (closer to 60 feet with the car in tow), 13 ft 2 inches tall, and weigh about 41,000 pounds those are just numbers that don’t mean anything to them.

But we got parked, leveled the coach, shut down the engine, and “made camp.” I pulled out our Kenwood TH-F6 HTs (small hand held ham radios known as handi-talkies) and gave Lou, K9LU, a call on the previously agreed frequency of 146.550 MHz. He was monitoring the frequency and came right back to my call. Lou is the founder of the SKP Photographers BOF, and the organizer of the photography workshop we are here to participate in. We went for a stroll around the RV park, as we usually do when we first arrive, and eventually made our way to Lou and Val’s 5^th wheel where we had a nice chat.

We skipped lunch today, so Linda started dinner preparations when we got back to the coach. She improvised a dish of diced potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, onion, and garlic, seasoned with basil and pan fried in a little bit of olive oil. She served it with a side of broccoli and glass of red wine. A couple of hours later we had some more of the wonderful blackberry pie we bought on the Fulton Farm Market on Friday. I will be sorry to see the end of that pie, it really has been that good.

Since we are here for a digital photography workshop, I presume we will have more photographs to post over the next few days, but not today.

2013_10_12 (S) Acres of “Land”

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We had an issue last night that I didn’t mention in yesterday’s blog post. With the generator running the microwave/convection oven would not operate correctly. It would run for a few second and then start to pulse. We are not sure what the problem is, but presume it is the microwave and not the generator/inverter, which seem to be working fine otherwise. We won’t be able to diagnose this any further until we get to Tremont RV Park and can hook up to shore power.

We knew last night that the Fulton Farm Market was expecting a busy day today with lots of folks showing up to buy pumpkins and other seasonal items, so this morning around 8:30 AM we fired up the engine and repositioned the coach where there would not be any cars blocking our exit. I also started up the generator to recharge the batteries, and all of the engines running spooked the cats a bit, so they went under the front passenger seat.

The Market was scheduled to open at 10 AM and we were originally thinking of sticking around until 11 AM. By 9 AM it was obvious we had made the right decision to move, based on the activity of the employees, and decided to move our departure time up to 10 AM. They pull wagons with tractors out to the pumpkin patch where folks can pick their own pumpkin, and they were blocking off parts of the parking lot with cones to create pickup and drop-off stations for the wagons that we originally thought we would be able to use as exit paths.

Around 9:15 Linda noticed that the OPEN sign on the store building (barn) was already turned on, so we wandered over to get some coffee. The gal who runs the coffee shop showed up right behind us and put on some decaf to brew. We had a nice chat while we waited, and 5 minutes later we were headed back to the coach with our coffee. We chatted briefly with one of the cashiers on the way out. We made the coach ready for travel and at 10 AM, with cars showing up, we started up and pulled out. No fixed plan.

We turned out onto OH-202 headed south and eventually came to I-70 where we headed west back to I-75 and continued out southbound journey. We had 184 miles to travel today and figured it would take 4 hours with a lunch stop. There was a lot of construction in the Dayton area and again in Cincinnati, but we made it through without any difficulty. Southern Ohio is hilly and northern Kentucky even more so, with a good climb up away from the Ohio River right after you cross at Cincinnati.

I-75 in Kentucky is a very good road with smooth surface. It goes up and down and back and forth as it twists through the rolling terrain, and it was a fun drive with no stress. We pulled in to a rest stop north of Lexington to have a bite of lunch and stretch our legs. Another hour and we were at exit #87 just south of Richmond. We headed west on KY-876 (Barnes Mill Rd) and 6 miles later pulled into the gravel parking lot on the south side of the road across from the Acres of Land Winery. It was 2 PM.

Our parking spot across from Acres of Land Winery, a Harvest Hosts location.

We had looked at satellite images of the site last night, so we knew what to expect when we got there. The driveway in from the road was steep, but we did not bottom out. The gravel parking lot was a long two long parallel rows with a loop around at the end. What we did not expect was the extent to which it was overgrown. It was mostly tall grasses, but it was obvious that this lot had not seen any use in quite some time. We also noticed a large concrete pad at the near end. We found out later that they had a serious fire in 2009, and we suspect that the pad is where the winery was and the gravel lot was where customers parked. All of that activity now takes place on the north side of the road.

We pulled all the way around and back near the entrance. The site was not quite level enough, so I leveled the coach before shutting down the engine. I checked the battery state of charge (SOC) before shutting the generator down. I figured it would be 100% since the generator had run the refrigerator all the way down allowing the Magnum 4024 to just charge the batteries, but it was only at 94%.

Restaurant and Tasting Room, Acres of Land Winery, Richmond, KY.

We opened windows and turned on ceiling fans and headed over to the winery. Acres of Land is owned and operated by Lowell and Katherine Land. Lowell grew up in the white farm house not far from where we are parked, and is the 3^rd generation of his family to farm this property. Originally a tobacco farm, tobacco growing started moving overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor and the Land’s started looking for an alternative crop. The property turned out to be suitable for growing grapes and they converted the farm into a vineyard and winery.

Our coach viewed from a front window of the tasting room.

They charge $2.50 to taste three wines and $4.50 to taste six. We decided to only taste three and to split the tasting. The way they do the tastings is quite different from what we are used to in Michigan and other places. We circled the three wines we wanted to try on order slip and then found a table where we could sit. The wines are served in small wine glasses (brandy snifters?) placed in hanging holders that hold three or six glasses, depending which tasting you ordered. There is a white laminated disk around the base of the holder on which they write the number of the wine from the order form so it is under the corresponding glass. In our case, Katherine brought the wine sampler to our table and chatted with us for a little while. What we liked about this approach is that you could actually go back and forth between wines if you wanted to.

In our case we had their Red Robin, Vignoles, and Late Harvest Vignoles, and sampled them in that order. The Red Robin was sweet but very full and had a lovely mouth feel. The Vignoles was equally nice, refreshing but not thin. Both were well done in our opinion. The Late Harvest Vignoles, however, was a more complex and unusual wine, and was my favorite of the three. As much as I would have liked to take home several bottles of each, we decided to buy just one of the Late Harvest Vignoles for $18.

One of the 10-yr-old Bourbon barrels being used to age a special red wine.

About the time we finished our tasting Lowell was assembling a group for a tour of the winery. We have toured a fair number of wineries, so we did not see anything here that we hadn’t seen before, except for one thing; Acres of Land has a wine that they age in used bourbon barrels. The particular barrels they use come from a Kentucky distillery that used them to age their 10-year-old bourbon. We did not get a chance to taste this wine as it wasn’t on their tasting menu. We might not have liked it anyway as neither Linda nor I care for bourbon or whiskey, but Katherine thought it was a uniquely divine product.

This was our 4^th Harvest Hosts location, and we are big fans of the program, but the challenge for us is to make sure our “free camping” doesn’t turn out to consistently be the most expensive stops we make. We don’t buy things we don’t like, and need is a pretty relative concept, but you can drop a lot of coin on wine very easily. We like the idea, however, of trying wines and other local agricultural products as we travel, and it fits our lifestyle to buy things we can consume rather than “collect” things we then have to find a place for in the house.

Dinner was a nice salad (Swiss chard, kale, and spinach) with carrots, celery, cucumbers, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, and fresh strawberries with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Dessert was another serving of the blackberry pie we bought at the Fulton Farm Market yesterday. Being in the refrigerator for 24 hours had helped it set up so it wasn’t so juicy.

I left the generator off until 8 PM by which time it was down the house batteries were down to 67% SOC. I checked that the Magnum 4024 AC Input was set to 50 Amps and reset the maximum charge rate from 80% to 90%. Ideally the batteries should be brought back up to 100% SOC every time. But the last few percent is done at a low current float charge rate which can take quite a while and is not a particularly efficient use of the generator.

Linda scanned for other-the-air TV channels and found one that was carrying game one of the ALCS between the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox. We are in very pleasant country, but we are not wandering the in wilderness, at least not yet.

2013_10_11 (F) Fulton Farms

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Our plan was to be almost completely packed yesterday with only a few things to load this morning. It’s good to have a plan as long as you don’t take it too seriously. Lao Tzu supposedly said that “A true traveler has no fixed plan, and it not intent on arriving.” I love that sentiment, but I think most people interpret this as “the journey is more important than the destination.” Or perhaps that “one should not have a plan”, but I don’t think it says that. I think the emphasis is on not having a fixed plan. At any given moment you need to have some idea of where you want to go next, or you would just sit in one place and never move. And having decided to head there, you should have some idea of how you might get there. But once the planning is done it’s time for the trip. And it is a certainty that you will have opportunities along the way that you did not plan for and could not even have anticipated. Whether you experience those will depend on whether you are flexible with regards to your plan. You may not even make to your original (planned) destination, but if not, it will be the result of a thousand small decisions made along the way, not because you are lost. As another quote goes “all who wander are not lost.” I like that one too.

In other words, we woke up this morning with a plan to be on the road by noon but with lots still to do. We were not in a panic about it, but got at it right away and it was a busy morning. It helped that Linda had kept a running list yesterday of stuff we needed to load on the bus, and things we needed to do around the house, just before departure. Although the morning was a bit more intense than I would have like, we pulled out about quarter past noon, so it all worked out OK.

We decided yesterday to divide up the trip to Townsend, Tennessee into three roughly equal segments of about 200 miles each and spent part of the afternoon researching places to stop for the night. Given that we needed to be at the Tremont RV Resort in Townsend on Sunday, our route choices were basically determined; I-96 E to US-23 S into Ohio and onto I-75 S all the way to Knoxville, and then Tennessee highways from there into Townsend. Our first leg would ideally put us somewhere just north of Dayton. We are still learning to “boondock” (camp for the night without hookups and without paying for a site) so we looked for opportunities to do that. A Walmart is often a possibility, but we always look for Coast-to-Coast resorts, where we can stay for $10/night, and Harvest Host locations where we can stay for free.

Exterior of Fulton Farms Market.

There is a Coast-to-Coast resort in Wapakoneta, OH, but it would have made our first leg about 150 miles. We decided to head for the Fulton Farms Market instead. They are located southeast of Troy, Ohio on Highway 202 about 6 miles from I-75 and 20 miles north of Dayton. The market was still open when we arrived around 4:30 PM, having made a rest stop and a fuel stop along the way, and there were still plenty of customers there even though they close at 5 PM.

Linda talking to Joyce Fulton.

Fulton Farms Market is owned by Bill and Joyce Fulton and is a host location in the Harvest Hosts program that we belong to. We went inside to let them know we had arrived and bought some apples and a blackberry pie (after reading the ingredients label very carefully). We also got to meet Joyce and had a nice chat with her. She was very gracious and glad we had stopped as they have not had very Harvest Hosts visitors in the time they have been a host location.

Interior of Fulton Farms Market.

The Fulton Farm Market is a very nice place with a large, level, paved parking lot that easily accommodated our bus. I recommend it to anyone passing through the Troy, OH area with or without an RV. This is the third Harvest Hosts location where we have stopped. The second one was the Forestedge Winery near Laporte, Minnesota which I wrote about previously. Same thing; great place, great people, great products, and we were the first Harvest Hosts members who had ever stopped there. HH is a great program, but I worry that host locations will drop out after a time if no one ever stops, and who could blame them?

We are headed for another Harvest Hosts location tomorrow in Kentucky, but that’s another story for another day. Our main concern on this end will be repositioning the coach in the morning, without unhooking the car, so we are able to exit the premises after customers start showing up in their cars around 10 AM. Our drive tomorrow is only about 180 miles and should only take about 4 hours, so we don’t want to leave here too early and Joyce made it clear that we welcome to stick around in the morning.