Category Archives: RV-Travel

Posts related to our active involvement in RVing.

2013_10_07-10 (M – R) Wrap-up and Re-load

Linda did double duty this week (Monday and Wednesday) in the babysitting department as she will miss her regularly scheduled shift next week while we attend an RV rally / photography workshop. So our daughter got Wednesday “off” will fill in for her next Monday. I took the opportunity to work at my desk and finally prepared the various materials that I have to supply to the members of our FMCA Freethinkers associate chapter for our upcoming annual business meeting. We also took care of errands and finished cleaning up from the open house.

One errand I had not ever been on was taking boxes of paper to a shredding facility (Royal Oak Recycling in White Lake Township). This place has you drive onto a scale with your car, drive to a dock and unload your stuff, and then drive back on the scale. I had 10 copier paper boxes of mixed paper and hadn’t really thought about the fact that “20 lb” paper means that a case of 10 reams weights 20 pounds. I didn’t think I had that much paper, but the difference in the before and after weight of the car was 220 lbs. ROR charges 15 cents per pound if you want to watch them shred your paper, or they pay you 2.5 cents per pound if you are willing to just drop it off. Since the papers to be shred were mostly old personal and business financial records, we wanted to verify that they had indeed been shredded, so I paid. They only take cash, so it was a good thing that I had enough to cover the $33+ amount.

At one time I sent updated rosters to the members of our Freethinkers chapter by attaching the PDF to an e-mail. More recently, I decided to put the roster and other documents in my personal Dropbox, generate a link, and just e-mail the link to everyone. That technology works very well, and is capable of even more sophisticated operating modes. But I have also been thinking about, and working on, a website for this group using WordPress. I decided that I would put some effort into giving it some structure and preliminary content, and use it to deliver documents and other materials to the members. The challenge is that some of the materials, like the roster, contain information that is for the members only and cannot be available for public view.

I was able to password protect individual pages, but the protection is less than ideal as web browsers apparently remember these passwords even when you ask them not to. It’s may be that this is being done using cookies, but however it is being done I could not figure out a way to defeat it. I also played around with WordPress user roles, but the only thing that WordPress seemed to have built into it was the ability to require users to log in to post a comment/reply. This is apparently one of the reasons for the “subscriber” user role. If have been looking at a WordPress plug-in called S2, or S2 Member, or S2 Framework, that appears to have the ability to place all or part of WordPress website behind a user login function, but I have not had a chance to install, configure, and play with it yet.

On Wednesday I drove Linda to her babysitting gig in Ann Arbor and then I drove back to Ann Arbor in the afternoon to visit with Madeline and her mom and dad. Shawna had an evening appointment so Linda and I had a quiet dinner with our son and then drove home together.

We spent Thursday re-loading the bus for our trip to Tennessee and Virginia. Phil from Precision Grading came by around 6:30 PM. We talked about the approximate location of the bus barn/garage and he set up his transit so we could measure the contours of the site, the driveway in from the road, and the surrounding yard. Based on his measurements, it looks like our planned site should work very well in terms of drainage, which is always a prime consideration.

Linda spent the rest of the evening working at her desk and following the Detroit Tigers in game 5 of the first round of the American League playoffs. I spent the rest of the evening updating the firmware in our Sony Alpha 100 digital SLR and updating the Sony Image Data Converter and Motion Picture Browser programs.

2013_10_04 (F) Craftsmen & Gamesmen

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I read a book years ago titled “The Gamesman.” It was one of those pop social/psychology works that probably isn’t particularly scientific but none-the-less provides an interesting and even useful framework for looking at and possibly understanding the world, especially the world of work. My take away from that book, which still rings true 30+ years later, was that I am a craftsman at heart who kept finding myself drawn into the gamesmanship of the workplace for which, in spite of not liking it, I seemed to have some aptitude. Today was one of those days were a lot actually got done but I didn’t seem to be the one doing it, i.e., not a craftsman kind of day. At least I made a partial recovery when we got home from Lowe’s and I had things I could install: light bulbs, a curtain rod, and salt for the water softener. Such days leave me tired but not in a satisfied way. Some days are like that, but so far I haven’t had very many of them in retirement.

I fixed two of our toilets on Thursday, but one of them apparently isn’t completely fixed yet. I awoke this morning to sound of water running. The flap had not sealed, causing the tank to not fill and the water to continue to run. I have no idea how much water ran into the septic tank, but it was more than should have. To make matters worse, I wanted to start a load of laundry early this morning only to discover that we had zero (0) gallons of water softener capacity remaining. The softener indicated that it was going to recharge today, which meant around midnight based on how it is programmed, so I decided to start the regeneration cycle manually. That was at 7:45 AM. The cycle finished around 12:45 PM. Yup, 5 hours during which I could not do the laundry, or dishes, or much else other than flush the toilets. That’s why it’s set to run at night. More thumb twiddling.

I checked my e-mail to see what the latest chatter was regarding the RV rally / photo workshop we are scheduled to attend. With the federal government shut down we won’t have access to Smoky Mountain National Park (or any other federal facilities) and there was some thought of cancelling the workshop. The problem is that the RV park where all of us are staying doesn’t give refunds and our deposit is 50% of the total camping fee for the week. Since SMNP is closed the RV park was willing to let us re-book for any time during the next 12 months (that they had openings) for only an additional $25. I wish I had to way to make money for doing nothing.

Our specific interest in this workshop is to learn to more fully use our digital camera (Sony Alpha 100) and to learn something about digital image post-processing software. From that point of view, being in the Smoky Mountains in the fall was simply a bonus. While we like nature, and I have always liked doing nature photography, our objectives for the workshop don’t require any specific subject matter in front of the lens.

We also made plans (and reservations) to meet up with Linda’s sister, brother, and his wife after the rally/workshop for a few days of camping, so we were committed to going whether there was a workshop or not. It turned out that some of the other participants had done the same thing, and the final consensus was that the rally/workshop would go on as scheduled, national park or no national park. That was a relief, but everything was up in the air for about 48 hours while this got sorted out.

Keith came by today to cut/trim the lawn. He usually comes every other Tuesday, and normally would have come next week, but we asked him to pull ahead to the end of this week so the yard would look nice for the open house /warming. He saves Fridays for “make up” work in case he gets rained out during the week. That’s happened to him a lot this summer, but he was here as promised and in spite of the threat of rain. It spritzed a little right after he arrived around 11 AM and then stopped, allowing him to get the whole yard done. He always does a good job, and took the extra time today to get his blower out and blow off the driveways and the deck; a nice touch, and much appreciated. But this was work Keith did, not me, so it was his craftsmanship, not mine.

Keith was done about the same time the water softener finished regenerating, so I finally got my load of laundry in the machine and we headed for Lowe’s and Meijer’s for last minute household items and food. We are trying to prep this event so that the only thing we have to get on Sunday morning is ice for beverages. We stopped at Teeko’s coffee shop before heading home. (At Latson Road and Grand River Avenue, between Brighton and Howell, we have a Lowe’s, Walmart, Staples, Meijer’s, O’Reilly’s Auto, Teeko’s, and lots of other small stores.) Teeko’s has become one of our favorite places to get coffee. They stock “green” (dried but unroasted) beans and roast them at time of purchase. They have a very nifty air-roaster that can produce anything from a very light to a very dark roast, but never burns the beans. They have a nice variety of beans from Africa, Central/South America, and islands like Sumatra and Hawaii. They even keep some 100% Kona on hand (we have some at home). This time we picked up a pound each of a Costa Rica Decaf and Organic Guatemalan Nueva.

Linda made a really nice dish for dinner: Fresh beets roasted with balsamic vinegar, grape seed oil, and a touch of sugar and served over fresh kale, wilted and mixed with couscous. I’m sure there were some other seasonings in there, but those were the main ingredients. Roasted beets are a real treat.

Linda has been monitoring the weather forecast leading up to/through Sunday. The rain never materialized today, but it was very cloudy and humid and the high hit 81. Not Michigan’s October best, but nothing to be done about it other than turn on the air conditioning. Thunderstorms are forecast for overnight, and based on the radar it looks like we will finally get the promised rain. Tomorrow will be a big day, with final house cleaning and lots of food preparation. She has some tasty things planned for Sunday.

2013_10_03 (R) The Sound of Music

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Today was a bakery day for Linda, so I was left to my own devices. I let the Garmin Express update run all night last night. When I checked this morning it indicated there had been an error, so I downloaded the 2014.20 map update, again. It took another 3+ hours, again. It said it downloaded it so I installed it. It said it was “done”, but that the “update failed.” At this point I have no idea if my maps are up-to-date or not. We have had the Garmin nuvi 465T GPS unit for quite some time now, and I really like it. I also liked the desktop docking software that came with it, which always worked fine. The replacement desktop docking software, Garmin Express, is simpler to use but doesn’t seem to work very well. A quick Google Search yesterday indicated that lots of other folks have apparently had issues with it as well.

In terms of getting ready for the open house / warming on Sunday, I am down to what builders call a “punch list.” I don’t know the origin of that term, and yet it seems somehow appropriate. (I always supposed that it came from the idea that the workers were going to “punch these things out,” but that doesn’t make any more sense than the original phrase. The other day Linda made some final selections for artwork for the small bedroom, so today I hung those up. That was one of the items on my punch list.

One of the things that came with the new house was built in speakers, two in the main floor hallway ceiling and two in the Florida room (library) ceiling. The speaker wires for these all run to a basement wall opening where the previous owners had their audio entertainment equipment. We have enough else to do without completely re-wiring the house, so we put some of our audio equipment in the same spot. Linda had asked that I try to wire up the audio system so we could have music on Sunday; another item on my punch list. With the house mostly ready, I decided to see if I could get the built-in speakers wired up, along with a pair of our freestanding ones. I used my volt-ohm meter (VOM) to check for continuity and resistance to figure out which wires did what. As part of the harness wiring harness, there were also two pairs of wires with both ends free that I could use to wire up the local freestanding speakers.

Measuring DC resistance through a speaker does not tell you what its rated impedance is as impedance is a characteristic of a device when AC (alternating current, from an applied alternating voltage) flows back and forth through it. It does, however, give you some idea of what’s at the other end of the wire pair. The amplifier in our receiver is designed to drive two sets of speakers (A and B) and prefers not to see less than 8 ohms impedance at the connection terminals. There is a switch on the back, however, that allows you to select 4 ohm or 8 ohm speakers.

Connecting impedances in parallel results in lower total impedance and connecting them in series adds the impedances. The pair of speakers in the hall has a volume control, and the pair in the library also has one, and it appeared that turning them from one extreme position to the other increased the DC resistance slightly, but not that much. So, just to be safe, I decided to wire one speaker from the hall in series with and one from the library (think “left speakers”) and then repeated that for the other pair (think “right speakers”). I connected the CD changer to the receiver, started a CD, and voila, the sound of music…everywhere!

The main (basement) speakers were too loud relative to the ones upstairs, so I connected the built-ins in parallel, which resulted in more power going to them relative to the main speakers. It also allowed the volume control in the hall to control both of the hall speakers, and only those. Ditto for the volume control in the library. I also switched the amplifier to work with 4 ohm speakers instead of 8 ohm. The name of the game is impedance matching, and if you can’t match impedances choosing a higher impedance load rather than a lower impedance one is generally better for the amplifier (up to a point).

Tom and Tom from TOMTEK HVAC showed up as scheduled around 3 PM to finish the work on the hydronic heating system. This time they had all of the parts they needed: new burner cone, igniter, expansion tank, expansion / quick fill value, shutoff value, fittings, and copper pipe to re-plumb the pressure relief discharge pipe from the domestic hot water tank. I tried to check in on the progress of the work periodically without getting in their way and slowing them down. I always do this when anyone works on anything in our house as I want to know as much as possible about the system. They finished up around 6 PM. While we did not anticipate the furnace / hot water system needing this much work, or this soon, it was fortunate that we had TOMTEK come out for a “routine maintenance” visit and discover/fix all of the other problems as a result.

When Linda got home we were both too tired to even go out, so we had the left over “sloppy Joes” from yesterday’s dinner along with fresh fruit. This particular recipe used textured vegetable protein, known as TVP, instead of the soy crumbles she normally uses. The two products are very similar in taste (nothing strong or characteristic) and texture (kind of like ground beef) and work well in “mock” dishes like chili, sloppy Joes, or anything else that would normally call for ground beef as an ingredient. These products do not work well, however, to make mock “hamburger” patties; there are other products made to directly satisfy that market.

2013_09_28-30 (S,N,M) Gone Fish’in

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No, I have not given up my WFPB way of eating, but one of the things I did on Sunday was to run a new network cable from our main Internet gateway (in the kitchen) to my office (in the basement). I had to pull the cable above a suspended ceiling and then “fish” it up through the floor boards into a wall cavity. There is a special tool called a “fish tape” that is made for this purpose. It’s a thin but stiff piece of metal that is coiled up inside a housing with a small hook on the free end. Because it is relatively stiff, you can push through holes and into wall cavities and other such places until it emerges somewhere, hopefully where you need it to emerge. I have a fish tape (of course) but I can’t find it (naturally) because the garage/workshop will be the last part of our move to get organized. So I improvised, and after several false starts ended using a scrap piece of 3-conductor sheathed electrical cable that was long enough, small enough, and stiff enough to get the job done. But I have gotten way ahead of myself.

As usual, Linda and I went to our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) breakfast on Saturday morning. Well, almost as usual; we took two cars this time as Linda was headed to Ann Arbor to babysit munchkin Madeline after breakfast, and I was headed in the opposite direction to do ham radio stuff.

Madeline’s domestic servants (our son and his wife) wanted to attend a wedding on Sunday in Madison, Wisconsin and thought the three days required to drive there, celebrate, and drive back might work out better for all involved if their daughter did not make the trip. They also figured that Madeline would do better in their absence if she was in her own home. Madeline approved of these plans and gave them the requested 3-day pass. Although Madeline’s aunt (our daughter) provides child care one day a week, a 3-day stint, over the weekend, in a house without television would mean no college or professional football, and would have been heroic beyond necessity. This was clearly a job for GRANDMA, who doesn’t have functioning television in her new house anyway, so she wouldn’t miss it. Besides, when sitting the baby, there’s no time to watch TV (or do much of anything else).

Mike (W8XH) and I had plans to work on the new SLAARC website, but first he had to help Bruce (W8RA) set up his new LP-PAN and integrate it into his ham radio station. Working on Bruce’s ham shack is no small undertaking. I’ve never been in the Space Shuttle simulator, but I’ve seen pictures, and sitting at Bruce’s ham station is a pretty good facsimile. It took Mike a couple of hours, but he got it all working. We then headed to his QTH to do the website stuff.

Mike and I are building the new SLAARC website using WordPress with the help of fellow SLAARC member Larry (K8UT), who is a bonafide expert in such matters. A couple of weeks ago we decided to create the new website as a subdomain of the existing website, which is hosted by GoDaddy, and that was an experience in itself. This would make it very easy, however, to later change some DNS entries and have the original domain name point to the new website. Larry did the WordPress installation manually rather than using the automatic WordPress installer that most web-hosting companies have available (including GoDaddy). As a result it has taken longer to get the new site functional, but Mike and I now have a much better understanding of subdomains and an appreciation for some of the complexity that is “under the hood” when using WordPress. One more call to Larry resulted in some magic on his end, and we were finally up and running. We then spent several hours installing, activating, and exploring themes. We haven’t made any final decisions, but we are starting to figure out what questions to ask. While Mike and I are anxious to move this along, we are not under any external pressure to have it ready by a certain date and want to take our time on the front end. While it is relatively easy to change WordPress themes even after a website is populated with content, there is a point beyond which that is still going to involve a lot of work. I like projects, but I don’t like doing projects over (and over, and over …).

I was still in WordPress mode when I got home, so I did some work on our personal website. I created a tab (main menu item) for “Ham Radio” and created a sub-menu item for “SLAARC”. These are just placeholders for now, but will eventually have content. I have also fleshed out the WFPB tab as I start to build out the main menu structure.

Mike lent me an AmpedWireless dual-band WiFi repeater that he wasn’t using and I spent some time Saturday evening and Sunday morning playing with it. It is a very cool device. In WiFi repeater mode it will pick up a 2.4GHz and/or a 5.0GHz WiFi network and rebroadcast it. What’s really cool, however, is that it will pick up a 2.4GHz WiFi network and rebroadcast it as 5.0GHz WiFi network. I have been looking for a device that will do this for quite some time. Our iPads and smartphones are all 5.0GHz capable, so using them with a 5.0GHz WiFi signal offloads that traffic from the 2.4GHz network, leaving it for 2.4GHz only devices. The 5.0GHz band also has a lot more bandwidth than the 2.4GHz band with very few devices using it, so there is less interference and more reliable network connections. Unfortunately, the device did not work well at our house as it appeared to be in conflict with our WiFi thermostat.

Wireless repeaters, access points, bridges, etc. are all designed so that they can be setup and configured wirelessly through a web-browser. In order to accomplish this they map a specific URL to a specific IP address in the 192.168.xxx.yyy range. In this case, 192.168.1.240. Unfortunately, I think the WiFi thermostat also uses that IP address. There may be a way to work around this, but I did not have time to pursue that today. The AmpedWireless device is actually configurable in five different modes. WiFi repeater is the default, but it can be a Wireless Access Point or a Wireless Bridge, or two other things.

As a result of playing with this device, I think I finally understand the difference between various networking technologies. A Network Switch (NS) is a device that allows multiple devices to be connected together using network cables, with one cable going back to the router (where the IP addresses are controlled through DHCP). A Wireless Repeater (WR) is just that; it picks up a WiFi signal and rebroadcasts it (repeats it), usually on the same frequency and channel, but with a different SSID; no cables required. (The Amped Wireless WiFi Repeater can rebroadcast it on a different frequency and/or channel, very nice.) A Wireless Access Point (WAP) generates a WiFi network and is connected to the main router through a network cable. We have a Linksys WAP running now. A Wireless Bridge (WB) is the mirror image of a WAP. It allows multiple devices to be connected to it using cables (sounds like it’s a NS) and then communicates using WiFi with a wireless router or WAP. This allows lots of equipment to be located remotely from the main Internet gateway/router without running a cable between the two locations.

While Linda continued her marathon munchkin duty on Sunday, I worked around the house trying to check things off my “to-do” list faster than they got added. I didn’t succeed, but I did get a lot done. My main focus was my office, which had become the place where stuff was getting piled so we could feel like we had put other parts of the house in reasonably good order. I either needed to get it organized or close it off for the open house. Some of our fellow hams are coming to the open house and will want to see the ham shack (which is also my office), so closing it off from public view wasn’t really an option.

Monday was odds-n-ends day. I continued to try to clean up and organize my office and the basement, installed two new door closers on the front screen/storm door, and installed new hardware (tracks) for the pair of bi-fold doors on the kitchen pantry. It doesn’t sound like much, but it takes all day. I snagged some replacement toilet flappers from Lowe’s, a nice shelving unit for the bedroom from Staples, and a large quantity of ICE Sparkling Water from Walmart. (It’s not my favorite place to shop, but Meijer’s doesn’t carry this product.)

Mid-afternoon there was a knock at the door. It was a representative from a company that is subcontracting with Consumer’s Energy to possibly run a natural gas main down our street. I walked our property with the guy and explained the rather complicated situation that has led to us having two propane tanks and what they implications of that were for us switching to natural gas. I went ahead and signed up after making sure we could back out if we decided this really wasn’t what we wanted to do. As of now, however, we are definitely interested in switching to natural gas. Consumer’s Energy estimates the equivalent cost for a gallon of propane, which is currently $2.00 + or – $0.40, at $0.77. At that ratio, our infrastructure payback would be about 3 years. There is also the added benefit of having a constant supply of fuel without a truck having to come and fill a tank. Value? Priceless.

In the late afternoon I had a nice chat with Joe from EZ*Connector. EZ*Connector is a small company in California that has designed, and manufactures, a keyed, magnetically retained, sealed electrical connector. It comes in 7 and 14 pin configurations for non-military use and is an ideal solution to the problem of connecting a tow vehicle (bus) to a towed vehicle (car). Our current setup requires two separate electrical cables with mechanical or friction latches. The EZ*Connector will provide a much easier and yet superior connection. They are just now bringing a new 14 conductor cable to market and suggested I wait until early November to order.

Linda called to say she would be home around 7 PM. I put water on to boil to make angel hair pasta with red sauce, and she picked up a salad on the way home. She made the sauce last week, and it was fabulous. (I am not normally a fan of marinara sauce, but this sauce has me rethinking that position.) A glass of 2009 Egri Merlot to wash it down, and fresh plums for dessert made a fine conclusion to a long day.

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

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There is always lots to do around the house when we return from an RV rally, more so since we are still getting moved in to our new (to us) house and trying to get it ready for an open house / house warming. We decided about a month ago to have the house warming as a way to “force” us to accelerate the moving-in process and so far that seems to be working.

Arriving home yesterday we were able to pull in to our pull-through driveway with the car attached, which was very nice. With the added “fines” (sandy silt) material mixed in with the 21aa road gravel, the driveway is now packing together very tightly and easily supporting the weight of the bus. The planned driveway geometry has worked out well allowing us to pull in and out with the car attached. That means we cook hook/unhook the car in the driveway rather than in the street.

Linda babysat for Madeline on Monday while I worked around the house, unloaded the clothes and bedding from the bus, and started doing laundry; not very interesting, perhaps, but satisfying work in its own way. We both spent a fair amount of time on our computers this week, Linda with household accounting chores and RV park research and me with some CEPI work, our website/blog, and websites for several other organizations. Using WordPress to create/manage websites and blogs has really grabbed my interest. I’m not very proficient yet, but I’m leaning.

We hung the last few pieces of artwork for now and spent part of the week opening and moving boxes. Linda was looking for papers we could take to a shredding company and managed to accumulate quite a few boxes of them. At this point we’ve run out of time to open boxes and sort through the contents, so we turned our attention to finding places to “hide” them until after the open house. We’re not there yet, but we are comfortable that the house will be presentable enough by the time it needs to be.

We decided to harvest some of the apples from our apple tree and discovered that a large branch (3-4” diameter) had peeled loose in three places, probably due to the copious amount of fruit on it, the age of the tree, and the fact that it had not been pruned properly (or at all) for years. We don’t know much about fruit trees, but we know that this is not the time of year to prune them. With the tree obviously damaged, however, we decided to cut the branch off and let nature take its course. We took it off in three pieces to make sure we could handle them. The branches of an apple tree tend to get intertwined, especially if it isn’t pruned, so we really had to pull to get the pieces down. That brought lots of apples to the ground besides the ones on the damaged branch. We left the branches and their apples on the ground for the deer and other animals that frequent our backyard.

We collected a large bag of apples and Linda spent time during the rest of the week peeling them, dipping them in lemon, and freezing them. She also made apple sauce and apple bread (both of which were outstanding). She commented at one point that “I am starting to understand why farm wives never got out of the kitchen.” Cooking real food with real ingredients (whole-food, plant-based) is a lot of work. Linda finds the work satisfying, however, now that she has the time to do it, and I certainly find the results satisfying as well. Yummy.

Ed and Betty Burns arrived on Thursday afternoon in their Tiffin Phaeton motorhome and stayed until late Friday morning. This was their second visit in about a month and we really enjoyed having them here again. They have been working at the Middleton Berry Farm and finished their tour of duty on Thursday. I moved our motorhome out of the pull-through driveway so they could pull in and park in a level spot with power.

They got here in time for dinner and Linda put out a nice meal. She served a nice Waldorf style green salad using some of our fresh-picked apples with homemade apple bread. The main course was a lentil loaf with a baked potato and homemade applesauce on the side. I chose the Blueberry Wine from Forestedge Winery in LaPorte, Minnesota to go with the meal. (It only occurred to us later than we had an apple wine from the same winery, which would have really completed our apple-themed meal.) Forestedge Winery is owned by Paul and Sharon Shuster, who are members of our FMCA Freethinkers associate chapter as are Ed and Betty.

Linda made apple crisp for dessert, but none of us had room, so we saved it for breakfast the next day. In addition to the apple crisp, breakfast included Linda’s homemade granola cereal with fresh blueberries, fresh banana slices, and raspberries that we had personally picked at the Middleton Berry Farm a few weeks ago and frozen. A little orange juice and a 50/50 blend of Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe and Kona coffee rounded out the meal.

We decided earlier in the week that we would try Florida for our first snowbird experience. (Snowbird is a term used to describe folks who live in northern climates where it snows and head south for the winter to get away from same. If there is a corresponding term for folks who live in the south and travel north in the summer to avoid heat and humidity, I don’t know what it is, other than perhaps Bridwons. Think about it.) Our decision was motivated by the desire to attend a large converted bus rally in Arcadia, Florida that is held each year from December 26 to January 1st. (The actual rally is Dec 29, 30, 31, but you can arrive as early as the 26^th and departure is the 1^st.) The rally was started by Jack and Paula Conrad, who ran it for the first ten years.

Ed and Betty used to live in Florida so we were eager to draw on their knowledge and experience before trying to book a place or places to stay. Earlier in the week we called the Low-Key Hideaway RV Park and Motel in Cedar Key, but they were not able to accommodate us. We knew about Low-Key Hideaway Cherie Ve Ard’s Technomadia blog postings, and it appears that the place has developed quite a clientele, perhaps in part as a result of Technomadia’s publicity.

At the last two GLCC rallies we had talked at length with Pat and Vicky, who winter in Florida. I also had an in-depth conversation this week with two other fellow RVers (Ed and Al) who winter in Florida and got their thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations. Our friends and fellow H3-40 owners, Chuck and Barbara, have spent the last seven winters in Florida and the last several at Pelican Lake Motorcoach Resort in Naples, Florida. We delayed our return home following the Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise in March so we could drive over from Ft. Lauderdale to see the resort and have dinner with them. It was very nice, as you would expect.

We learned a number of things as a result of this quick “research”. Some of it was stuff we knew, or assumed as a form of common sense, but some of it we did not:

The cost per day generally goes down the longer you stay in one place. The usual breakpoints are week, month, 2-month, 3-month, 4-month, 6-month, and year. (You can also purchase lots, but probably don’t want to calculate the per day cost for that.)
The farther south you go, the more expensive it gets.
The reason for the previous point is the average daily temperate range. In northern Florida it is not unusual for temperatures to drop into the upper 30’s at night, and record lows have been recorded in the teens. That doesn’t happen in Key West, and money tends to follow the pleasant climate.
The closer you are to one of the coasts, the more expensive it gets. You pay a price for beaches and sunrises/sunsets.
No-See-Ums, however, can be a real problem near the coasts, and some folks have very bad reactions to their bites.
If the RV park has “resort” in the name, it will be more expensive, with “motorcoach resort” costing even more, and “luxury motorcoach resort” costing even more than that.
Most of Florida is swampy; being inland or staying at a “luxury” resort does not guarantee that you are not camped in or next to a swamp. Think bugs, snakes, and alligators.
You can almost always rent a deeded site at a higher-end park directly from the owners much cheaper than you can rent it through the park management office. Check the classifieds in the back of FMC Magazine.
Moving every week is expensive and tiring, but gets you access to more of the state.
Staying more than one month at the same place can get a bit boring, but that’s a personal thing.
Some parks are in dense urban areas, others are near small towns, and some are in the middle of nowhere. It’s a shopping convenience versus solitude thing. You can end up having to drive 20 miles or more for groceries if you are not paying attention when you choose an RV park.
Not all parks are “big rig friendly” (even though they will claim they are).
Most parks have punitive refunds polices, so be sure before you know what they are before you book.
Make sure your park of choice is located near things you want to do (hike, bike, kayak, fish, watch sunrises and/or sunsets, or have access to highways so you can visit natural and historic sites in your car, etc.) Tallahassee is not a good base camp for visiting Key West.
Many RV parks are adjacent to a major freeway, railroad track, or airport; sometimes all three. If you don’t think the noise will bother you, you’re wrong.
Some RV parks are gated (if you care).
Whether the residents in a park or nice or not seems to have little to due with the physical appearance and amenities of the place.
There are a lot of older parks with mixed use, i.e., year-round “Park Models” in addition to sites for vacationers and snowbirds.
Check the type/quality of the interior roads and parking pads (concrete, gravel, grass, hard dirt, or sand), it might matter with a big, heavy coach.
The spacing of the sites varies greatly; some parks have sites that are small and close together (but they will tell you they are very spacious).
Find out whether there is any landscaping, especially shade trees around the sites.
Find out whether the roads and sites have trees trimmed up and back sufficiently to not scratch your RV.
Check to see if “lakes” on the property actually have water in them (seriously).
Check on the availability and cleanliness of onsite bath/shower facilities and Laundromats.
Check the availability of onsite activities (which could be a plus or a minus) and facilities such as swimming pools, tennis courts, etc. If you don’t want them, why pay for them?
Find out if the park has pet restrictions, and if so, what they are.
Some parks are 55+ operations, others allow/encourage/cater to families with children. Know which type you are signing up for and make sure it’s what you want.
The photos on the website always look beautiful, but somehow manage to avoid showing you views of the parking sites from a vantage point that allows you to assess all of the factors mentioned above.
Google Earth and other satellite image websites/apps are your best friend and ultimate research tool.

Our goal was to book a park or parks for January and February by the end of the day Friday, but we didn’t make it; too much to ponder and no time to make phone calls. We will get back to it early next week as Tuesday is October 1^st, and January 1^st will only be three months away.

Tom and Tom from TOMTEK HVAC were back on Friday afternoon to finish up repairs on our hydronic heating system. They did not have one of the parts they were going to replace but it didn’t matter as they discovered some additional issues that will require a return visit.

The first thing they discovered was that the propane shut off valve didn’t shut off the propane. We had to turn off the supply at the tank so they could replace the valve before doing anything else. When they removed the propane diffuser cone to clean it and replace the gasket they discovered that the end of the cone had large holes in it. These holes were preventing the propane from burning as efficiently as it should, and if they got bigger could prevent the furnace from working at all. Parts like this for a Weil-McLain GV Gold Series hydronic heating system are not common, i.e., they don’t carry them on their truck or even stock them at their office, so they had to special order it.

As long as they had the combustion chamber open, they went ahead and vacuumed it out. They had me look at it, and it had what appeared to be a couple of inches of rusty debris lying in the bottom, the result of a lack of proper (professional) service over a very long period of time (or perhaps any service at all). They put it all back together and will replace the diffuser cone, gasket, and igniter (along with the part they forgot to bring) when they return next week.

I don’t know if this qualifies as serendipity in the usual sense, but we are lucky that we decided to have the system “serviced” in advance of the start of the heating season. If not, we would not have discovered defects that could have led to a wintertime failure of the furnace with serious consequences for the house.

As I was working at my computer Friday evening an e-mail showed up with the PDF version of the October 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine. The article I wrote on the mid-August Back-To-The-Bricks rally in Clio, Michigan was the cover/centerfold article, the fifth one I have had published in BCM. (See the BCM page of the website for the complete list and information about Bus Conversions Magazine.) That was a nice end to nice week.

2013_09_22 (Sun) Until We Meet Again

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Yesterday was actually the last day of the rally, but with entertainment, door prizes, etc. not concluding until 10 PM no one left until today. There are no activities on departure day, and everyone is expected to vacate the venue by noon. The fairgrounds had another rally scheduled for the coming week, and that groups’ advance crew was due in starting at noon today.

I have described the rally departure experience before, and it was no different this time. The biggest variable is the weather. Sunday morning dawned cool but partly cloudy and the forecast indicated we would have a nice morning for exiting and traveling. Departure morning is often a strange time for us, and our friends have indicated the same. This was no exception. Logistically it was consistent with our previous experience at area and national rallies. Unlike the arrival process, which was highly organized and controlled, the departure process was completely asynchronous, but incredibly smooth and low-key. One-by-one people just broke camp, hooked up their toads, said their farewells, started up their rigs, and drove away; yet there was never a traffic jam or safety issue. We did not even have to wait for a dump station on the way out.

While the arrival at a rally is always filled with anticipation and a certain intensity of compact activity that is a bit exciting, the departure is, well, I’m not sure what it is. It’s not exactly sad or depressing—those emotions would be too strong for the occasion—but it is a time of saying “goodbye for now” to friends that you don’t necessarily see very often and with whom you have just shared an experience. There is a sense of having been there long enough yet not wanting it to be over quite yet. And depending on where you are headed next, especially if it is back to a fixed house and a job or business, perhaps a small bit of dread at all of the work and responsibilities awaiting you upon your return. But that is nature of RVing.

We stood around for quite a while in the morning visiting with our fellow GLCC members, all of whom were avoiding the inevitable departure and getting in one last visit, at least for now. We finally rolled out around 11:15 AM and headed over to the dump stations. The Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds has nine dump stations arranged in parallel and configured so RVs can pull in from either direction and dump from either side. There was only one other motorhome there when we arrived and we pulled right in. Another rig pulled in while we were taking care of business and we decided to go ahead and hook up the toad rather than pull out, stop on the exit road, and do it there.

Using our Rand-McNally GPS we followed a series of county roads and Indiana state highways, eventually getting back to US-20 and then to I-69, I-96, and home. It was a pleasant and uneventful drive; the best kind.

2013_09_21 (Sat) Autumnal Equinox

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Today was the autumnal equinox. The weather today was chilly early and stayed cool as the cloud cover shifted back and forth between overcast and partly sunny. We had occasional drizzles early and blustery, fall like conditions later. So often it seems the autumnal equinox occurs during an Indian summer; but not today. I have always liked fall.

We signed up earlier in the week to drive golf cart shuttles on the early shift this morning from 7:30 to 10:30 AM. That meant we would miss the pancake breakfast, which ran from 8:00 to 9:30 AM, but that was OK as we would not choose to eat what they were serving anyway (buttermilk pancakes and breakfast sausage.) We both bundled up against the chill and zoomed around the fairgrounds for three hours giving rides to folks. We saw lots of people walking this week, which was nice, but the golf carts were there for those who wanted/needed to ride. We were glad to volunteer for this duty as we get to meet a lot of people in a short time, and folks are always appreciative of the service.

The pancake breakfast has to serve a lot of pancakes to a lot of people in relatively small time window. To accomplish this, they hired a company who brought in two conveyor/depositor systems. I got the following photographs from Vicky Lintner:

The pancake depositor at work. That’s a lot of pancakes!

A happy customer.

Two pancake machines in action.

A “smokin’ hot short stack.

Flippin’ ‘n’ catchin’.

The rest of the fixins’.

A nice place to sit with friends and eat breakfast.

The GLCC chapter area.

We chose not to eat breakfast before our shuttle shift, so we had a late breakfast / early lunch in our coach around 11 AM. We planned to attend the noon tour of the ABC Bus repair facility in Nappanee, and needed to be on the road by 11:30 AM. We were a few minutes late leaving, and the trip took a few minutes longer than our mapping software said it would, so we did not get to the ABC facility until 12:08 PM. The entrance wasn’t obvious to us, and although we eventually spotted cars that we recognized, they were behind closed gates that we did not see how to get through or around. We drove around for a half hour looking for an entrance before we ended up back where we started only to discover that the gates were now open.

The ABC Bus Nappanee facility.

But all’s well that ends well, I suppose. When plant manager Mike Papp finished the initial tour (with almost 60 people) he took Linda and I and one other guy (who had been following us in his SUV) through the facility. We probably got a shorter tour, but we did not have to compete with other people to ask our questions.

The ABC Bus Nappanee “Van Hool” operation.

ABC Bus operates two different programs at this Nappanee location, a former Gulfstream RV facility. The operation they are best known for is re-manufacturing of Greyhound buses. This work takes place it its own building and is a very tight, exclusive relationship with Greyhound. We did not get to tour that building, but the work they are doing is very similar for both programs.

The ABC Bus Nappanee Greyhound operation.

I think they are just finishing a run of some 800 MCI 102D3 or 102DL3 buses for Greyhound. They are replacing the original engines and transmissions with Detroit Diesel Series 60s and Allison automatics. This requires all new wiring harnesses and a rebuilt dashboard. They are also rebuilding the entire underside of the bus (suspension, brakes, and axles if they are needed). They are gutting the interiors and putting in new seating with 3-point restraints and updated electronics. Finally, they are repainting the exterior a dark blue color with the iconic Greyhound logo down the side. We were told that if you see a Greyhound bus painted this color, it came from the ABC refurbishing program.

Van Hool operations manager Mike Papp talking to Linda and another FMCAer.

The operation we toured was basically doing the same kind of work as the Greyhound operation, only for Van Hool and other buses. ABC Bus is the exclusive North American dealer for Van Hool. They have sold a lot them and they have taken a lot of them back in on trade. A primary function of this second operation is to rebuild these “stock” coaches for resale. They are also doing this work, however, for coaches that are already owned and they are looking to expand into doing motorhome work; hence the tour. They had several MCIs there, and Mike Papp, the Operations Manager, told us they can/will work on Prevost coaches as well. Basically, if you own a bus, they will work on it, whatever it needs.

A DD Series 60 engine and Allison transmission. Sweet.

Note: I presume they are looking to work on diesel pushers, but they may be willing to work on anything. Anyone interested in their services should contact Mike Papp, Operations Manager, at 574.773.4277 Ext 103 or 407.340.0108 (cell) to discuss their needs.

The business end of a bus being reworked. (Linda wondering if that would fit in our coach.)

I’ve been thinking about pulling the radiator on our coach and having it cleaned or re-cored and replacing all of the coolant lines with new, high-temperature silicon ones. I asked if they could do that work and the answer was “yes, we can do that.” They also have access to an alignment shop in South Bend that does all-wheel alignments on buses. Apparently they were expecting a handful of people, so they were a bit surprise, but pleased, when 60 of us showed up to see the place.

It’s not just an engine, it’s industrial art, and has a beauty all its own.

(BTW: The cost to pull an engine and transmission and replace it with a brand new DD Series 60 and Allison automatic, including the wiring and dashboard work, is $60K – $75K depending on the bus. Depending on what kind of conversion project someone wants to take on, ABC Bus has lots of used buses for sale in the $50K range. That means someone could have a 45 foot coach with a brand new engine and tranny for $110K – $120K as the starting point for a conversion project.

More buses being worked on.

Mike told us that he has approximately 500 daily person-hours that he can assign to projects. Hypothetically (but not practically) he could assign them all one bus for a day. Ignoring the fact that the workers would be inefficiently getting in each others’ way, an enormous amount of work could be accomplish in a very short time. He did not mention their labor rate, but that would probably be a $50,000 day for that coach.

DD Series 60 engines all in a row.

Because ABC is purchasing in volume from Detroit Diesel Allison, and because they want to be able to turn around buses somewhat quickly, they keep a lot of DD Series 60 engines and Allison transmissions in stock.

When we got back from the ABC Bus tour we went to a seminar on Places To Take Your Grandchildren RVing. The presenter had a nice slide show that highlighted places children might enjoy, but did not differentiate places and activities by age range, which would have been helpful. The presenter was also the vendor for SkyMed, so we ended up sitting through a presentation on that as well.

SkyMed is an insurance program that will cover the cost of medical transportation by ground or air for a variety of situations. Like all insurance, it is more expensive than you would like for something you hope you never have to use, but if you ever need the kind of coverage they provide, you will wish you had it. (A typical helicopter med-i-vac flight runs about $25,000 and probably isn’t covered by your existing health, auto, or RV insurance.) There are many nice features to SkyMed, including a Global plan, which I won’t mention here other than this one: you do not have to call SkyMed first. First you call 9-1-1, then you call SkyMed, and as part of your coverage, they will handle almost everything from there. We’ve listened to SkyMed presentations before. We didn’t sign up, but we always leaving thinking about it seriously.

After the seminar we went back to the vendor building to purchase a windshield mounted camera/DVR device, but got there after the vendor area had closed. This seems to happen to us a lot; we delay making a decision to buy something until it is too late. But hey, it’s an effective way to stay within budget. This device will record up to 10 hours of video on a 32 GB memory card. It can be pointed out the window while driving, or at the cabin while parked and away from the coach, to provide video evidence of events that may occur (such as an accident or break-in).

Saturday evening Dane Bailey (The Singing Auctioneer) did a warm-up performance followed by the Harbor Lights focal quintet. Harbor Lights is an a cappella group that specializes in “doo-wop”. They sang for almost an hour and a half without an intermission. Many of their songs were authentic doo-wop toons, and some were doo-wop rearrangements of songs from the 1950’s and 60’s. The members of Harbor Lights are local to north central and northwest Indiana. They brought a lot of energy to their show, and it was a trip down memory lane for many of us. Some of us noticed that they seemed to have trouble holding pitch on the tight doo-wop harmonies, which detracted from an otherwise good show. I suspect it was due to an inadequate monitor speaker system or the lack of wireless headphones, making it difficult for them to really hear each other.

We walked back to our coach under an almost full autumnal equinox moon. Rving is a good life.

2013_09_20 (Fri) Techs and Trains

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The Frustrated Maestros perform each day at breakfast.

I was up early again working on blog posts and finally uploaded several pertaining to early last week. By the time Linda got up it was time to walk over and get some coffee. We tried to catch Michael Canode before his 9:00 AM seminar on digital photograph, but did not get there in time. I missed his seminar yesterday on designing and publishing website, but he offered to bring a copy of the handouts to today’s seminar.

Breakfast was coffee and donuts (rear) with “concert” and table seating.

We headed back to the vendor area, found Lloyd De Gerald, and paid him for the annual maintenance he did on our Aqua-Hot yesterday. We also bought a replacement nozzle to keep on hand. Lloyd suggested that we have the spare nozzle installed at our next annual service and buy another one to replace it at that time. His experience has been that nozzles that sit unused for too long often do work well when they are finally installed.

The morning was overcast and a bit dreary, so there were not a lot of folks talking to the outside vendors. We took the opportunity to chat with Lloyd about our interior remodeling plans and asked him what issues we should anticipate in moving the heat exchangers. He said that the coolant loops can be difficult to prime if they get drained and suggested that once we had re-plumbed everything it might be best for us to have him refill and start the system.

He also indicated that we could have up to three heat exchangers on each of the three zones (bedroom, bathroom, and living room / kitchen.) We have one heat exchanger in the bedroom, one in the bathroom, and two in the living room. We also have radiators in the water bay and the front storage bay. Lloyd indicated that the water bay was probably plumbed in with the bathroom and the front bay was probably plumbed in with the LR/kitchen, but that was not guaranteed. It should be easy enough to determine this by turning on the Aqua-Hot and then activating one zone at a time and checking for heat; I just haven’t bothered to do this yet. He suggested that we add heat exchangers to have three per loop, and that we replace the radiators in the bays with heat exchangers (which have fans). He also said the newer heat exchangers are smaller and much quieter than the ones that are probably in our bus conversion, and that we should probably replace those as well when we remodel the passenger side of the kitchen/LR area.

We needed to kill some time before Michael’s seminar ended, so we strolled through the inside vendor building again. The FMCA booth had shirts on sale, and they were even cheaper with our “rally bucks” coupons, so we bought a matching pair of plum pocket Ts. (The matching clothes phenomenon gets a double whammy due to age and RVing sub-culture.) We caught up with Michael at the end of his photography seminar. Someone had taken the handout he brought so he e-mailed the PowerPoint file to me. We ran into Butch and Fonda. Butch and I decided to wander over to Ron & Meredith Walker’s coach to see if we could fix the new door latch. The part arrived yesterday from Prevost and Ron had installed it, but it wasn’t working quite right. Butch saw what was wrong right away and corrected it. We then returned to our buses where Linda and I had leftover pizza for lunch and I took a nap. (That’s the problem with getting up really, really early; not that I consider taking a nap a problem.)

The Blue Ox technician showed up mid-afternoon to service our Avanti II tow bar and brought my nap to an end. The tow bar is showing signs of stretching in the latch pin holes and will apparently need to be replaced sooner rather than later; but not today. He completely disassembled the tow bar, cleaned it thoroughly, added new rub plates (washer), lubricated it, and reassembled it. I thought that was a pretty good deal for $25. Since I was now awake again, I did more work on blog postings and we had more leftover pizza for dinner.

I have been remiss in not saying more about the trains going past the fairgrounds. The trains have been so constant here that I am hardly aware of them anymore and keep forgetting to mention them. The tracks run along the southern edge of the fairgrounds and the trains seem to be almost constant at times. Linda read online that a train passes through Goshen approximately every 6 minutes, presumably headed to or from the Chicago area to points east and south of here. These are often medium length trains traveling fairly fast in both directions and the sound their horns long and loud at every crossing, of which there appear to be a very large number.

Linda talking with Alma Baker (L) and George and Sue Myers (R) at the reception for officers and vendors.

We went to a 4:15 PM reception for officers and vendors. This was a “ticketed” event, and we got to attend because Linda is the Treasurer of the Great Lakes Converted Coaches, which is organized under GLAMA, and I am the VP/Secretary of the Freethinkers Associate Chapter, which is organized under the International Area (INTO). This was another new feature at this rally, and was another example of how FMCA and its area associations are trying to recognize those who serve and make FMCA function.

Officers reception in the food hall, hor d’oeuvres and beverages on the left, seating on the right.

FMCA has 11 areas and almost 500 chapters, but many of the members do not belong to a chapter and/or have never been to a rally. Not that chapters and rallies are for everyone, but FMCA is very much aware that members who do not get involved in a chapter and/or attend an occasional rally often do not remain long-term members. And why should they? If you don’t engage with the people that are the organization, the benefit of membership boils down to a monthly magazine. This is essentially our relationship with the Good Sam Club up to this point. Our Good Sam membership is paid through 2017, but I don’t know if we will renew it at that time. We have, however, met several people over the last few months that recently attended Good Sam rallies and said they were excellent and that they had a great time. Of course, endorsements are like movie reviews, not very meaningful unless/until you can calibrate your taste with that of the reviewer.

The last light of the day.

The reception provided enough food for our dinner and we returned to our coach to relax before going to the evening entertainment. The last light of the day turned dramatic as we were preparing to leave. The featured performer for the evening entertainment was Sarah Getto, assisted by her father, who drives her motorhome, sets up the equipment, and runs the sound board. He is also a guitarist and adds guitar and vocals to some of her songs. Blind from birth and born with a cleft palette and lip, she is now an attractive, talented, 29 year old singer/songwriter with a music education degree that included training as an opera singer Her preferred vocal style, however, tends to lean towards country, although she does a very good impersonation of Karen Carpenter. She has much richer sound on stage than you would expect from a solo keyboard, as she prerecords richly layered sound tracks and then performs along with them. All of the vocal and instrumental work on these sound tracks is done by her, and her dad was very transparent about the process Sarah uses to create her shows. We enjoyed her performance along with the rest of the audience.

The evening concluded with a 50/50 drawing and door prizes. We didn’t win anything, but that was OK.

2013_09_19 (Thu) And Then The Rains Came

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(Note: There are photos at the end of this post.)

What would an RV rally be without rain? Rain was forecast for overnight into today, and rain it did. We had heavy downpours starting at midnight and lasting until 2 AM, with lighter rain through the rest of the night and into the early morning. Coffee and donuts are traditional breakfast fare provided as part of RV rally fees. We walked over around 8:15 and got some coffee. (I had a donut even though it violates our WFPB way of eating since it contains eggs, but they are my one, true weakness.)

We headed towards the seminar building for a 9 AM seminar on the Rand-McNally GPS unit. Along the way we stopped to chat with Lloyd De Gerald, an independant factory-trained Aqua-Hot technician. We attended Lloyd’s Aqua-Hot presentation at the FMCA rally in Gillette this past June. We have not had our Aqua-Hot serviced since the rebuilt unit was installed in 2009/10 and thought we would like to have him do our annual maintenance if we ever ran across him again. And here he was! So we signed up for an 11 AM service appointment today.

We have one of the first Rand-McNally RVND7710 GPS units built. We pre-ordered it at the FMCA national rally in Madison, Wisconsin in August 2011 and received it in October 2011. It has been an excellent unit, but it has a lot features that we have not taken time to learn to use. I keep hoping I will pick up some useful tips at seminars but they are not necessarily the place to get such specific training. However, Techno RV (Phil and Tracey May) has produced an excellent set of tutorial videos which they make available via an e-mail newsletter even if you did not buy the unit from them. We did learn that the newest model, the 7720, has built-in WiFi which allows it to connect to a cell phone hotspot while traveling and thus acquire some additional real-time information; a nice feature. The price has also come down (of course) and now includes lifetime map updates (naturally).

After the seminar we took a quick stroll through the vendor area. We stopped at the Blue Ox booth and signed up to have our Avanti II tow bar serviced as we have not had this done since we acquired it as part of the purchase of the Honda Element in the Spring of 2010. Directly across the aisle was the Harvest Hosts booth so we stopped to chat with the couple staffing it as Don and Kim Greene were not able to make it to this rally in person. We also chatted with the folks in the adjacent Always-Bright-And-Shiny booth. We purchased our built-in vacuum cleaner from them at a previous GLASS rally and also some of their aluminum wheel cleaning and polishing products. They had a really neat “2-burner” black glass top induction cook surface for sale. It is designed for a recessed installation, but could sit on a counter although it would be rather large. It was a 120 VAC device, although you could not run both heaters at full power at the same time.

We started to run short of time so we returned to our coach to make sure we were they when Lloyd showed up. The weather forecast was for continued heavy thunderstorms and the radar confirmed significant weather headed our way, so we decided to put our Zip Dee Awnings up. Lloyd arrived on time just as it started to rain lightly. I fired up the Aqua-Hot so he could see and hear it start and then shut it down so could listen to that end of the cycle. By then it was raining harder and we decided that he would come back when the weather was a bit more agreeable.

The view out our passenger side living room window.

We had an early lunch and Linda put together plates of three different leftovers, all of which were excellent. Around 11:45 AM heavy thunderstorms moved into the fairgrounds with frequent lightening, thunder, and 2 inch per hour rainfall rates. This part of Indiana had not had rain in a while and needed it, but this was too much of a good thing as heavy rains tend to run off and swell creeks, streams, and rivers. A flash flood warning was issued for Elkhart County.

We had planned to attend a 1 PM presentation on the Silverleaf Engine Monitor Systems. At 12:30 PM we got another band of really heavy rain and standing water started to appear around most of the coaches parked in our part of the fairgrounds. I don’t think the fairgrounds were in any real danger from significant amounts of rising water, but the drainage where we are parked turned out to be less than ideal and a lake started to form in our part of the fairgrounds surrounding motorhomes and cars. By 12:45 PM we decided to stay put and by 1:30 PM the water had reached the bottom of the rims on our Honda Element. Linda decided to move the car to higher/drier ground. Given all of the electrical service lying on the ground, I didn’t think going out into ankle deep water was a very good idea, but she survived the experience. (So did I as I stayed inside and worked at my computer.)

We have a Silverleaf VMS Interface that works with the diagnostic connector for the Engine Control Computer (EEC) in our bus and plugs into a laptop computer running Silverleaf’s VMSpc software (Vehicle Monitoring System personal computer). I have never installed it because I haven’t figured out a good way to mount the laptop computer where I can see it but not have it in the way. I decided some time ago that the best solution would be to mount the computer and interface box remotely and install a secondary flat-panel monitor, which would give me more flexibility with respect to the mounting of both the computer and the monitor. I never finalized my decisions regarding mounting hardware and the flat-panel monitor, so this remains an unfinished/future project for now.

There wasn’t any entertainment planned for this evening so that chapters could have a time to meet that did not conflict with other activities, except perhaps for other chapter meetings. Our Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter social/dinner and business meeting was scheduled for 6 PM in the Elkhart Noon Optimists Club pavilion located at 603 Locust Street (one of the fairground interior roads). Butch ordered the pizzas yesterday from the local Pizza Hut and arranged for them to be delivered to Gate 5 at 5:30 PM. Butch checked in with Linda around 3 PM to see what the short-term weather forecast looked like, and they decided that the pizza party should go on as planned. I suspect that Butch was at the point-of-no-return with Pizza Hut and had to tell them yes or no for this evening. (Butch was kind enough to order two thin crust veggie, no cheese pizzas so Linda and I would have something to eat.)

The other seminar I planned to attend today was at 4 PM on designing and publishing websites. Unfortunately heavy rain continued off and on until around then, and I decided not to go. By 4:30 the sky had started to clear from the north and west, but we had several inches of standing water surrounding our coach and throughout the area of the fairgrounds where we are parked. I was curious to find out how long it would take for this water to disappear as it did not appear to have anywhere to go. The ground here was packed extremely hard when we arrived, to the point where we could not get sign wires pushed into it. While this area needed rain, we do not as a rule welcome inches of standing water substantially softening the ground under our tires.

With the improved weather Lloyd returned around 5:15 PM as Butch and I were getting ready to leave to meet the pizza delivery person. I took a few extra minutes to talk to him. He had access to everything he needed in the bay so I left him to his work. We will catch up with him tomorrow and pay him. Not all vendors are this trusting, but in general we have found vendors at RV rallies willing to lend us a part, like an LED light bulb, to see if it will fit our coach on nothing more than the promise that we will bring it back or return and pay for it. Not all RVers are honest, of course, but we always feel very safe when we are at RV rallies.

I went with Butch to help him with the pizzas, which arrived right on time. We drove them over to the pavilion and unloaded them along with soda pop, ice, and table settings. The GLCC gathering was well attended. Just as we were getting started FMCA national president Charlie Adcock and his wife Gloria stopped by with senior national vice-president Jon Walker (a member of our GLCC chapter). Jane Roush, GLAMA President also stopped by. They didn’t stay long as they had to visit all of the chapter meetings, but everyone appreciated them coming. Judy Czarsty, FMCA past national president, and her husband arrived a little while later and stayed through the end of the business meeting. Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, MI attended as our guest, and Al Hesselbart, the historian at the RV/MH Museum and Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana also stopped by. Folks stayed to talk for a while but eventually the numbers dwindled until there were only a few of us left to pack up and take things back to our rigs. Photos of the event are at the end of this post.

Square dancing was scheduled for 6 PM, weather permitting, and card bingo was scheduled from 7 – 9 PM, but neither of these are activities in which we participate. Linda and Vicky went for a walk after the meeting. I got back to our coach around 8:30 PM and Linda returned around 9 PM. The ground was very wet but most of the standing water had already disappeared.

The Elkhart Noon Optimist pavilion where the GLCC social was held.

L-2-R: Vicky Lintner, Jon Walker (FMCA Senior National Vice-President), Larry Baker (GLCC President).

L-2-R: Larry Baker, Charlie Adcock (FMCA National President), Linda Fay (GLCC Treasurer, Gloria Adcock, Fonda Williams.

Getting the food and pop ready for dinner.

George and Sue Myers (GLAMARAMA shuttle service coordinators). Sue is the GLCC newsletter editor. George is the GLCC immediate past president and is the current president of the Friends of Angel Bus chapter.

Linda Fay (GLCC Treasurer).

GLCC president Larry Baker conducting the chapter business meeting.

The GLCC business meeting in progress.

Pat Lintner (L, GLCC Secretary and National Director, and GLAMA Indiana VP) and Don Crawford (GLCC Founder/first president, and former GLAMA President and national area
VP.

L-2-R: Larry Baker, Ron Walker, Judy Czarsty (FMCA past national president) and her husband.

2013_09_18 (Wed) Under A Harvest Moon

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I was up early this morning to check e-mail and work on my backlog of blog posts. The WiFi at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds is excellent; our WiFi Ranger is picking up nine open fairground signals, with five of them quite strong. Even so, WiFi always works better when fewer devices are trying to use it.

A 1948 Spartan and aour1990 Prevost.

Linda was up in time to go to the registration building at 8:00 AM with the intent of reserving one of the pavilions adjacent to where the GLCC chapter is parked. Alas, they were both taken. She and Vicky scouted out the ones that were still available, selected one, and reserved it for our Thursday evening pizza social and business meeting. We will be meeting at the Elkhart Noon Optimists building, 603 Locust St, by the big blue Fish Fry sign. While they were taking care of this I brewed a pot of coffee using two parts Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe to one part Columbian decaf, a very nice blend that cuts down a little on the amount of caffeine. When Linda returned we had a light breakfast of her very yummy homemade granola and fresh orange slices.

Don and Sandy Moyer’s restored 1948 Spartan bus conversion.

Mid-morning Linda, Fonda, and Vicky drove to the Shipshewana flea market, which is only open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I took that as an opportunity to wander the fairgrounds and photograph the arrival and parking activities. Today was the official beginning of the 2013 GLAMARAMA and motorhomes arrived all through the day. The arrival and parking process appeared to go quite smoothly, which makes for a good start to a large RV rally. The all-volunteer parking crew put in long hours, but were patient and cheerful throughout.

Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds.

While I was wandering around I found Ron and Meredith Walker’s Prevost XL-45. They just joined our GLCC chapter this past summer, but are not camped with us at this rally. Ron is the conductor of the Frustrated Maestros, who are doing several scheduled performances during the rally, so the FM chapter is their primary focus while they are here.

A motorhome approaching the fairgrounds entrance from the east on IN-34 / Monroe St.

They were home but rather busy. A muralist was air-brushing a mural on their rear cap and their front entrance door was partially disassembled. Meredith had me check out the mural and then Ron filled me in on the door situation. The main door handle had failed that morning while he was outside talking to someone, as a result of which he was locked out and she was locked in. They managed to find a technician who was able/willing to climb in a bedroom window and disassemble the door enough to get it open. I looked at the mechanism to see if there was anything I could do to fix it. There wasn’t, of course, but I told them I knew someone who might be willing/able to help.

Welcome to GLAMARAMA at the Gate 5 entrance.

I returned to the GLCC camp to see if Butch would be willing to lend some assistance to fellow GLCC members. He was, of course; RVers tend to be helpful to other RVers when they can, but converted bus owners really tend to look out for one another. We went back over to the Walker’s coach and Butch determined that a weld had failed. While he couldn’t fix the latch on the spot we realized that the whole mechanism could be unbolted and moved out of the way so it couldn’t engage the latch pin on the door frame. Ron did the work, and that temporarily removed the lockout problem until they could get a new latch assembly from Prevost. In the meantime they could lock/unlock the door from inside or outside using only the deadbolt.

The staging area where towed vehicles get unhooked.

When the ladies got back from Shipshewana we pulled our camp chairs into a circle by Butch and Fonda’s MC-9 and spent a relaxing afternoon visiting with our fellow GLCCers. While we were sitting there, Frank and Sandy Griswold arrived in their Prevost H3-45 Vantare conversion along with Dean and Cindy Chipman in their Holiday Rambler Endeavor motorhome. A bit later Scott and Tammy Bruner arrived in their MCI MC-12 conversion. This completed our set of nine GLCC rigs that would be camping together for the duration of the rally. Our chapter had originally requested 8 spots, but the parking crew did a great job of getting nine coaches parked.

The holding area where RVs are queued for entry and escorted to their sites.

During the afternoon conversation someone asked how long we had owned our coach. That’s when we realized it was our 4th anniversary; we purchased our Prevost H3-40 on September 18, 2009. We met the owner at a restaurant in western Pennsylvania, gave him a certified check and got the title. The coach was at Creative Mobile Interiors (CMI) just south of Columbus, Ohio where it had been sitting for about two years. The owner had taken it there for service and then decided to sell it instead of fix it. CMI allowed him to leave it there while they advertised it on their website and tried to find a buyer. I described some of this story in the cover/centerfold article of the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine.

A caravan being assembled for entry. They will be parked together.

We eventually broke for dinner and a little quiet time before heading over to the opening ceremonies. Linda made a simple green salad and a bow-tie pasta dish with olive oil, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes. The Arcturos Late Harvest Riesling from Black Star Farms in Michigan’s Leelanau peninsula was the perfect accompaniment. Their late harvest Riesling and pear wines are two of our all-time favorites.

A different kind of motorhome, called a Class D, with a fancy paint job.

A group of us from GLCC walked over to the evening activities building around 7:00 PM and were greeted with handshakes and hugs by Jon and Sondra Walker, Charlie Addcock, and Jane Roush. That may not sound like a big deal, but it was. Hugs are an Escapees RV Club tradition, not something we had ever seen before at an FMCA rally. When Charlie and Jon were elected to national office they promised a new tone and new direction for FMCA, and it appears they are putting themselves behind that in a very personal way.

The Frustrated Maestros performed from 6:45 to 7:30 PM. The opening ceremonies began at 7:30 PM with Dane Bailey, The Singing Auctioneer, as the master of ceremonies, a role he will be performing for the duration of the rally. We had the usual opening consisting of an invocation, Canadian national Anthem, and U.S. national anthem, the posting of the colors by the local VFW color guard, and the chapter parade. There were 12 chapters officially in attendance. Notably by their absence were the Michigan Knights of the Highway, who formerly ran the GLASS rally. Dane then introduced Jon Walker, the FMCA Senior National Vice-President, who welcomed everyone. Jon was the GLAMA president and FMCA area vice-president until this past July when he was elected to the senior national vice-president office. He and Sondra are well-liked and well-respected within the Great Lakes area, and remained as the co-rally hosts for this event along with Jane Roush. (Jon and Sondra are also members of our GLCC chapter and Jon was our National Director for a while.) Jon announced that we had 469 coaches in attendance, although Vicky told us that one more had arrived. (Pat and Vicky were the official coach counters.)

FMCA National President Charlie Adcock was introduced next and said a few words. Charlie is a very enthusiastic, upbeat guy, as is Jon. Charlie administered the oath of office to Jane Roush, who was elected as the GLAMA president when Jon resigned to take his new national office. Charlie acknowledged the long list of VIP attendees, which certainly helped the rally coach count. The rally was budgeted for a break-even point of 400 coaches, so everyone involved in the planning and execution was very pleased with the turnout. I suspect that many of the VIPs were here as a show of support for this first ever attempt by GLAMA to organize its own rally.

With the opening ceremonies concluded Sgt. Daniel Clark, The Singing Trooper, was introduced. Dan is a former U. S. Marine and retired Massachusetts State Trooper, but has been singing since he was a child. He was clearly a trained opera singer and mentioned that he spent time at Tanglewood. He did a very tightly constructed and energetic show of patriotic and sentimental American favorites, ending with a medley of U. S. armed services theme songs, including the one for the U. S. Merchant Marines. The evening’s activities concluded, we had a leisurely walk back to our coach under a harvest moon.

And that is part of why we go RVing.

2013_09_17 (Tue) To Goshen We Go

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We awoke this morning to temperatures in the mid 40’s. As we had no reason to rush we stayed under the covers a bit longer than usual. Lazy mornings are always a source of consternation for our cats who, in spite of the obvious presence of food in their bowls, expect us to get up at the first sign we are awake and attend to their perceived need for fresh(er) food.

I turned on the electric toe-kick heater in the bathroom to take the chill out of the air, but then decided to fire up the Aqua-Hot instead to warm up the entire coach and preheat the main engine. At a seminar in Gillette, Wyoming this past summer we learned that the Aqua-Hot needs to run with some regularity in order to run well, so this was an opportunity to do that and to check my work from yesterday for leaks. The Aqua-Hot ran quite well, but as I feared there was a small leak at the gasket between the two halves of the check valve. I will try one more time to get a couple of wrenches on this part and tighten it, but if that is not successful I will have to install the new check valve, which would take another entire day. Ugh. I like doing projects, but I don’t care so much for doing them more than once.

We had oatmeal for breakfast, which is always nice on a chilly morning and has a certain staying power for days when lunch is uncertain. After breakfast we got our coach ready for travel while Butch and Fonda did the same with theirs’. We departed Twelve Mile, Indiana a little before noon with Butch and Fonda in the lead and headed for Goshen, Indiana to attend the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) 2013 area rally (GLAMARAMA13).

Our route was IN-16 (Co Rd 700 N) westbound to N Co Rd 600 E northbound to IN-25 northbound to US-31 northbound to US-6 eastbound to IN-15 where we stopped for a stretch break. We moved into the lead and continued northbound on IN-15 to Goshen with Linda navigating based on directions provided by the rally organizers. We had been advised by FMCA to follow the directions they provided in order to avoid a bridge that was out on the main road to the fairgrounds from the west.

We tend to travel on Intestate and US highways, but have also found State highways to generally be good for travel. Even county roads are OK if we know in advance we will not encounter weight, height, or width restrictions. This is where it is helpful to have local information from folks familiar with the roads. It also helps that our Rand-McNally RVND7710 GPS is configured to know the parameters of our rig, so we are able to travel with some confidence that we will not encounter unexpected obstructions. As an added feature it also provides real-time traffic information, especially near larger metropolitan areas.

The trip up IN-15 brought us quickly into the outskirts of Goshen with heavy, slow traffic. This presented a challenge for us as the buses do not accelerate that quickly and the lights do not stay green for that long. It was important that I not lose Butch at a light as Linda had the detailed directions for getting to the fairgrounds. As we came to downtown Goshen there was construction with lanes closed and traffic rerouted through barrel lined jiggy-jogs. We pressed ahead none-the-less as we needed to go east on IN-4, just three short blocks beyond the construction. We made it through but it was the kind of situation that adds a bit of stress to the usual pleasure of driving the coach.

We continued east on IN-4 looking for Co Rd 29 southbound. Along the way we spotted an official looking sign that said “RV Rally and Fairgrounds” with an arrow pointing down a nicely paved road to the south. I slowed down and considered taking this road—even though the turn looked a bit tight—until I noticed the “NO TRUCKS” sign on the adjacent pole. We are never sure whether or not we are a “truck” so we generally decide one way of the other depending on what is to our advantage. In this case I took a “pass” and continued on down IN-4 to CR-29. We headed south on CR-29 until it ended at CR-34 where we turned westbound back towards the fairgrounds. Our directions said to enter at Gate 3, but as we approached the northeast corner of the fairgrounds an orange-vested parking crew member motioned us to turn in. I hesitated again, but decided to follow his directions. The parking procedures are usually well thought out and the crews usually know what they are doing. The whole arrival/parking experience generally goes much more smoothly if you simply follow their directions.

(It is worth noting, however, that as with a boat or airplane the driver of an RV bears the ultimate responsibility for it’s operation and is the ultimate decision authority with respect to that operation. If the driver is unclear or uncomfortable with what parking crew are asking them to do, the correct response is to STOP, ask for clarification, and not move until they are certain they understand where they supposed to go and are comfortable (willing and able) going there. Arguing with parking crew, however, is counterproductive, and ignoring them and moving the RV is potentially dangerous. Parking crew are there to move large numbers of RVs efficiently and safely to planned parking areas and drivers should always give them their full cooperation but never surrender their ultimate decision authority.)

We arrived at the rally venue a little before 2 PM. The usual procedure is to unhook a towed vehicle and drive it, separate from the motorhome, to the site or a designated parking area. And so it was today. They had changed the entrance gate to channel us into an area where there was more room to unhook our towed vehicles. With the cars unhooked, we proceeded to the holding area where we queued up and waited to be escorted to our site. For this rally parking areas had been reserved for chapters so they could park together without having to arrive together (caravaan style). We were part of the reservation for the Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter (GLCC). The parking crew was friendly and efficient and we “wheels down” (an aviation term) in our site by 2:30 PM with the coach set up and ready to use by 3:00 PM.

The reserved parking was an unusual feature of this rally, and an attempt by GLAMA to be as accommodating as possible in spite of the added complexity of this arrangement. If you have not been to an RV rally, you won’t fully appreciate how nice it was to be able to park with “our group” without having to coordinate our arrival with everyone else. Generally if RVs want to park together at a rally they have to arrive together in a caravaan. The only aspect of their parking that is usually pre-arranged is the area of the facility they will be in based on the hookups (electricity, water, sewer, generator use) they have paid for as part of their pre-registration. Even with a small number of RVs caravaning can be a challenge. Wile some rallies provide an arrival area where RVers can meet up and form their caravan, many rallies do not have the space for this. In that case, the RVers first have to find a place to rendezvous. (Walmart is a popular choice, especially if folks are staying overnight there anyway.) They then have to make their way to the rally site while trying to keep the group together at stop lights (which isn’t possible with more than two rigs). GLAMA is to be applauded for trying this new approach.

Goshen is the county seat for Elkhart County, Indiana and the home of the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds. We had been to this facility once before for The Escapees RV Club Escapade in September 2010 and it is a nice facility for an RV rally. Access to the fairgrounds is good, and the interior roads are more than adequate for large motorhomes (and converted buses). The campgrounds can provide 30 Amp power and water for a large number of rigs (800+), and there are also some full hookup, 50 A sites. There are many buildings and covered outdoor areas available for entertainment, vendors, seminars, and meetings. And yet all of this is neatly contained in a surprisingly compact space that makes the venue very walkable while the paved roads make for good driving of toads and courtesy transportation golf carts.

This is the first Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) rally being organized by the officers and volunteers of GLAMA. For many, many years the Great Lakes Area Spring Spree (GLASS) rally had served this purpose. Held at the Berrien Springs, Michigan youth fairgrounds, GLASS was a nice rally at a nice venue held over Memorial Day weekend and consistently drew 800+ motorhomes until the last few years. Unlike most FMCA area rallies, however, the GLASS rally was organized by the Michigan Knights of the Highway, the 4th FMCA chapter ever formed, and the oldest FMCA chapter still in existence. MKH handled the registration process, and any financial benefit (or loss) went to them, not GLAMA.

GLAMA takes in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario Canada, so obviously it does not include all of the states that border on the Great Lakes. Even so, it covers a large geographic area with lots of FMCA members. GLAMARAMA 2014 is also slated for the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds in Goshen, but the intent is to then rotate it to each state and Ontario for two years each. That will entail more work for GLAMA organizers, but will open up the chance for more people to attend and build a stronger sense of ownership across the association.

Today was early entry day, so there were no official activities beyond arrival and registration/check-in. Pat and Vicky Lintner were already parked at the GLCC area as Pat is the GLAMA VP for Indiana and part of the rally organizing committee responsible for all of the rally specific signage. We pulled in next to Pat and Vicky, followed by Butch and Fonda. Mike and Laurie Minnick pulled in shortly thereafter in their 1968 MCI MC-7 bus conversion. Don and Sandy Moyer then arrived in their 1948 Spartan bus conversion.

[Note: The Spartan bus was built for three years, post World War II, in Sturgis, Michigan. The owner/president of the company was the chief test pilot for the B-25 bomber. All of the engineers and craftsmen came from the aircraft industry and the bus was designed/built much more like an airplane than a motor vehicle. Only 57 Spartan buses were built and most of them ended up being used outside the U. S., including some used to make a 12 hour daily run from Damascus, Syria to Baghdad, Iraq and a 12 hour run back, making it the fastest bus line in the world at the time. The Moyer’s bus was the last one built, a 28 foot model. It was destined for a bus company in Wisconsin but they never took delivery. It left the factory as a seated coach, was driven out of the factory, and the front tires came off the ground because it was too heavy in the rear end. Within two years someone had purchased it, taken out the seats, and had it converted to a motorhome. Many of the details suggest that it was “professionally” done, but the Moyer’s have not been able to track down who did the conversion. It was eventually parked and left to rot for 35 years until Don and Sandy rescued it. Based on their research there are no more than 12 of the original 57 buses still in existence and theirs’ is almost certainly the only motorhome. Don worked 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 18 months to put it back in usable condition. It is a truly unique RV.]

GLCC reserved space for eight motorhomes and the other three planned to arrive tomorrow. The chapter will have more members/rigs in attendance than that, but they will be parked elsewhere. George and Sue Myers are parked within close sight of our group, but are located for their convenience in running the golf cart courtesy transportation service. Don and Kathy Crawford from Ontario are in the VIP row as Don is a past president of GLAMA, which also entailed being the national vice-president representing the Great Lakes Area. Ditto for Jon and Sondra Walker, who was the GLASS National Director until he moved on to become GLAMA President. Jon was elected the FMCA Senior National Vice-President this past summer at the FMCA national convention in Gillette, Wyoming, so the number two national FMCA officer is a GLCC guy. Ron and Meredith Walker, who just joined our chapter, are also here but are parked with the Frustrated Maestros. Ron is a retired K-12 music teacher and is the conductor of the FMs.

Linda made something new for dinner: firm tofu slices pan fried with onions and Bar-B-Que sauce. She served it on a sesame seed bun with a side of sweet corn on the cob and some Sam Adams Cherry Wheat beer to wash it down. Sometimes simple is best.

2013_09_16 (Mon) Home Away From Home

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Buses at Service Motors in Twelve Mile, Indiana.

Service Motors in Twelve Mile, Indiana has become something of a home away from home for our motorcoach, having spent quite a bit of time there since we bought it. As I have mentioned previously, Butch is very handy and has lots of tools, including a machine shop where he can custom fabricate things if needed. He has been very generous with his time, talent, and facilities, giving me a good place to work on our bus and helping me with it when I need it (which is most of the time). We often stop there enroute to other places, especially rallies that Butch and Fonda are also attending. Once again, we spent the day camped there.

Service Motors is Butch and Fonda Williams’ Crosley automobile parts business. They are the only full-line parts supplier for these wonderful little cars, last made in the early 1950’s, and have an active customer base. They rarely close their business, but decided they would for the week while we attended the FMCA GLAMARAMA13 rally in Goshen, Indiana. (Butch and Fonda are basically the same ages as us and were married one day before we were. They have run Service Motors for 20 years and would like to retire and move in to their 1989 MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion, which they have done themselves from scratch. The business and facility are for sale.)

Linda worked with Fonda on some accounting issues while Butch attended to various bus and business tasks. I spent the day repairing a leaky fitting on the fuel return line from the Aqua-Hot to the fuel tank. This fitting had been leaking since I installed it as part of the fuel polishing pump project. It looked like a simple enough project, which meant it would take me most of the day; and so it did.

The fitting in question was on the lower end of a check valve (back flow preventer) at the back of a small compartment, which made access difficult. (I mentioned this project in a blog post in early June 2013, and have an article about the Parker Fuel Polishing Module queued up to run in some future issue of Bus Conversions Magazine.) The compartment was covered by a beauty panel with a door, so the actual access opening was even smaller. “Luxury” motorcoaches often conceal functional systems behind “beauty” panels so that the bays look impressively sleek and shiny when the doors are opened. What I see, however, is something that blocks my access to systems that I need to work on so I decided to remove the panel, permanently. This is why simply projects take all day.

The panel was held in place by four “L” brackets concealed on the inside (of course). I borrowed an angle drive from Butch which allowed me to remove the screws fairly easily. However, when I installed the electrical feed and switch for the fuel polishing pump back in June, I drilled a hole through this panel, ran a wire through it to the pump, and mounted the switch on the outside of it. I dismounted the switch and removed the ring terminal from one of the wires as it would not fit through the hole otherwise. With the switch and wires out of the way I was able to remove the panel after cutting loose some old rubber caulk along the bottom edge. This is why simple projects take all day.

The “compartment” in question is just the extra bay space at the business end of the Aqua-Hot. In addition to the fuel polishing pump it houses the coolant expansion reservoir and fuel filter / water separator for the Aqua-Hot as well as the fresh water pump for the domestic water system. Fortunately the cover on that end of the Aqua-Hot slides off easily after removing only three easily accessible screws (it happens occasionally). This made access to the leaky fitting much better.

The fitting was NPT male on one end, for threading into the bottom of the check valve, and barbed on the other end for attaching the fuel return line from the Aqua-Hot. Barbed fittings are designed for a one time, press on installation of a rubber line, i.e., once the line is pushed on it does not leak and it does not pull off. To remove it I had to cut it just below the fitting. I was then able to unscrew the fitting from the check valve. I was fairly certain that this junction was the major source of the leak. The threads still showed remnants of Teflon thread tape, but not much.

The other potential leakage point was the seal between the two halves of the check valve itself. The check valve is a two-piece body with internal parts, and there is a gasket between the two pieces of the body. I had inadvertently loosened this joint when installing the fuel polishing pump and had not been able to re-tighten it in place because of the limited access. Although I had a spare check valve, I decided to try and tighten the one that was already installed as replacing it meant cutting additional tubing and un-threading/re-threading additional joints.

Butch’s brother John came over in the morning to help Butch (and me) with anything that needed to be done. Butch had him change out the element on his main engine fuel filter / water separator while he worked on other bus and business issues. Fonda split her time between business things and loading their stuff on their bus. Even when they are closed, there is business to attend to. By the time I finished my little project it was well into the afternoon. Butch and Fonda worked a while longer and then we headed off to Rochester for dinner at Alejandra’s Mexican-American restaurant. It was 9 PM by the time we got back to the coach and we headed off to bed.

2013_09_15 (Sun) A Re-tired Travel Day

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We were up early today anticipating our departure, but also still having some things to do before we pulled out. I switched the outside faucets to provide treated water (filtered and softened) and 125 gallons of fresh water on board. I also checked and adjusted all of the tire pressures on the bus and the car while Linda finished loading food, coats, and toiletries. In the past we have pulled the bus into the street and then hooked up the car for towing. With the new pull-through driveway finally working as intended, we decided to hook the car up before pulling out. This allowed us to do our light check before bringing the cats out and starting the engine. (The cats do not like it when the engine is running or the coach is moving, so we wait as long as possible to put them on board.)

Ready or not, you reach a point where it’s time to go. We’ve done this enough that we now accept that we will forget something and hope it is something small that we can do without or easily replace on the road. The cats do not fall into that category, of course, so we put them on board, started the engine, and pulled out around 10:40 AM. The driveway worked as planned and the bus made it out with the car attached with plenty of clearance.

We headed out our street to Hacker Road and headed south to pick up I-96 westbound from Grand River Avenue in Brighton. (We would normally take M-59 westbound to I-96 westbound, but M-59 is under construction and traffic flow is not good.) The trip to Twelve Mile, Indiana is about 250 miles and normally takes us about 5 hours including a stop for fuel somewhere along the way. We decided to stop at the Mobil truck stop at M-52 and I-96, only 22 miles up the road, to top off the tank. This ensured we would have more than enough fuel for the round trip and also operate our Aqua-Hot hydronic heating system and/or our genset if needed.

The weather was overcast with occasional light rain, but made for good traveling. We prefer driving on partly cloudy days as it is easier on the eyes. Being Sunday morning, traffic was light, which also made for good travel. Sunday morning is a preferred travel time when we can do it, especially if we have to go through a major metropolitan area. The drive was uneventful and we arrived in Twelve Mile around 3:45 PM. We got the car unhooked and backed into our space next to Butch and Fonda Williams’ MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion. (NJT stands for New Jersey Transit. These buses have a special front cap with a destination sign above the windshields. They were specially built for the New Jersey Transit Authority and used as commuter coaches throughout the state.) Butch and Fonda have a large paved area where they keep their bus with room for two more if needed. A year or so ago I helped Butch wire up a pair of “50 Amp” RV electrical outlet boxes, so we have a nice electrical service when we are there.

Fonda returned home with Bell as we were arriving, and Butch returned from a gun show not long after while we were still setting up. Butch and Fonda understand RVing etiquette, and left us along until we had “made camp.” As soon as we were parked and the engine was off the cats reappeared from their travel spot under the passenger seat and were up looking out the windows. They don’t seem to mind living in the RV, they just don’t like it when we move it around.

Linda and I had not met Bell before and the three women sat and visited while Butch and I did the same. Bell went to fetch Bill and we met up with them for dinner at the Hibachi Grill Chinese buffet in Logansport. It sounds like it was an easy enough day, but by 9 PM we were tired. I was reminded that retired means re-tired, as in, “I was tired, and now I’m tired again.” But it’s a good kind of tired; different from that associated with working a full-time, stressful job.

2013_09_14 (Sat) Ready, Set, No Go

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We were up early Saturday morning to attend the standing breakfast gathering of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club at the Senate Coney Island in South Lyon. I was discussing our cell phone signal situation with Scott, AC8IL, and he suggested I try a passive booster system before putting money into an active repeater. The idea behind the passive booster system is to connect two antennas (of the same characteristic impedance) together with a co-axial cable (of the same characteristic impedance). One antenna goes outside and the other goes inside. The inside antenna will generally be omnidirectional, since you could be anywhere in the house/building with your phone, but the outside antenna will likely be directional since it can be pointed at the most favorable cell tower. Highly directional antennas have “gain” compared to omnidirectional antennas, which is to say, they provide a strong signal at their co-ax connector than an omnidirectional antenna placed in the same location. This signal will be transmitted down the matched co-ax cable to the other antenna where it will tend to radiate back into space. It works in the other direction as well. The nice thing about this potential solution is that if I purchase antennas and coax cables that will also work with an active booster (repeater) then I only have to buy the active booster if the antennas alone are not adequate.

When we got home we continued working on preparations for our trip and the open house by hanging the last piece of wall art, at least for now. When going to rallies Linda often prepares dinner meals ahead of time and freezes them. This simplifies our evening meals and leaves open the possibility of going out to dinner, which RVers do a lot (at least at rallies). Between food, clothes, toiletries, and miscellaneous other things there was a lot of “stuff” to put on board even for a short outing. I helped pull stuff together and get it on board while attending to the updating of our Rand McNally RVND7710 GPS unit. The map update said it would take 14+ hours to download. It ran for about 8 hours and was indicating that it had 1 hour and 29 minutes left to go when it hung up and quit downloading. 🙁

Our AT&T High Speed Internet / Digital Subscriber Line (HSI/DSL) service is a bad joke when it comes to speed and may be at the point where I need to file a service request/complaint. It’s only real benefit is the 150 Gb monthly data allowance. But the service seems to be so slow that I’m not sure I could transfer 150 Gb of data in a month if uploaded and downloaded 24/7.

[A note about RV “stuff”: The truth is that full-time RVers also have “stuff”, but it is limited by their available space and does get loaded and unloaded before and after each “trip”. (Full-timers don’t go on trips; they just move they home around the country.) They also have “spring cleaning”, although it can occur at any time of the year. For many this is an annual ritual of completely emptying the RV, examining all of the “stuff”, deciding what not to put back, and re-configuring the storage of the rest.]

2013_09_12 (Thu) A Crowning Achievement

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Thursday we worked around the house and started getting the bus ready for our upcoming outing. One of the problems with not blogging every day is that the details of older events get overwritten by the details of more recent ones. The problem with blog posts that cover more than one day is that the either get very long or end up very sketchy. In reviewing my appointment calendar while writing this post, I was reminded that I had a new crown installed that morning. You would think that would be easy to remember, but it was a short and uneventful visit and the crown fits very nicely and works quite well, so I am already unaware of it being there. I also put some additional time into the CEPI ATR project.

2013_09_08 (Sun) All Ham, All Day

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No, we have not given up our WFBP way of eating in favor of “pigging out.” Today was almost entirely about ham (amateur) radio for me, and partly so or Linda.

One of the things that some hams like to do is attend “hamfests”, also known as swaps or swap meets, although mostly stuff is bought and sold rather than traded. Like any hobby, amateur radio has many aspects, and hamfests are one of them. Today was the Findlay, Ohio hamfest, which has been held each September for many years. Six of us from the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) car-pooled, and another member followed with his family (dad and both kids are hams). Steve (N8AR) drove and picked me (K8BRF) up at an agreed rendezvous point at 5:50 AM. We met the other four passengers (Russ, N8EEA; Chris, K8VJ; Jim, N8HAM; and Marty, KB8JIU) at a ‘park-n-ride’ on US-23 at 6:10 AM and headed on to Findlay, arriving around 8:00 AM.

Public service and emergency communications are two of the reasons amateur radio exists at all. Goodwill is another; ham radio is a worldwide activity and many hams simply enjoy making friendly “contacts” with other hams using nothing but the radio waves they are able to generate and receive. Some hams make contacts in pursuit of specific awards offered by various organizations. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), for instance, offers the DXCC award for making verified contact with hams in 100 different countries (technically “entities”) as internationally recognized. (DX is ham shorthand for “distant” and CC stands for “Century Club”.). Some hams are into “contesting” where they compete with other hams to try and make the most contacts during a specific date/time window using particular methods on specified frequency bands.

Other hams are into making “QRP” contacts (low power of not more than 5 watts and often quite a bit less). They typically use CW (Morse code) or other “digital modes”. QRPers often design/build their own equipment, and this ability to experiment is another reason ham radio continues to exist. Amateur radio has been around for over 100 years, and has made significant contributions to the art and science of wireless communications. Rebuilding ham radio equipment and related gear, like shortwave receivers, is another aspect of the hobby and rebuilding/using vintage equipment is a specialized aspect of that branch of the hobby.

This brings me back to hamfests and swap meets. Much of what is available at these events is used equipment, parts, and materials, and they tend to draw hams involved in repairing, rebuilding, and experimenting in addition to those looking for deals on used radios or components for their ham shack. The older radios were all tube based, for instance, and there are always folks with large assortments of tubes for sale. There is usually a fair amount of computer and network technology as well, albeit prior generation stuff. Today I picked up 100 foot lengths of both category 6 and category 7 network cable, with connectors, for very little cost ($10 each), and a 35 foot length of 50 ohm “superflex” co-axial cable with “N” connectors on each end for less than $1/ft, a “super” good deal compared to retail.

We left the Findlay hamfest around 12:30 PM and were back at the Park-n-Ride by 2:30 PM. Linda had gone to the Tanger outlet mall at the west end of Howell, but didn’t find the things she was looking for. She had taken some additional photos of the front of the house in better light than the ones we had and we settled on one to use in the invitation for an open house/warming we planned to have.

To complete our ham radio day, we attended the SLAARC monthly meeting after dinner. For the program portion of the evening Russ (N8EEA) showed photos from the summer the trip he and Emily (his XYL) made to the Yukon and Alaska. The main purpose of their trip was to attend the 50^th wedding anniversary of a close friend and fellow ham, but they also took an HF transceiver and antenna and made contacts with members of the club along the way at scheduled times. Following the slide presentation there was a discussion of the technical aspects of these “scheds” and how this concept might be improved should any club members make similar trips in the future. For some reason a number of members thought this might be particularly applicable to members who had bus conversions RVs.

2013_09_01-04 Driveway Success, Raspberries, And Old Friends

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Sunday September 1^st found us at our son and daughter-in-law’s house for a Labor Day family pot luck along with our daughter, son-in-law, and step-grand-daughter. Grand-daughter Madeline handled the crowd pretty well, but still was still wary of Grandpa Bruce, so I had to be content with mutual admiration from a distance. She is starting to crawl and pull herself up to a standing position, and is fascinated by books, especially ones she can try to eat.

We awoke Monday morning (Labor Day) to overcast skies and the threat of rain. We had planned to drive to Middleton Berry Farm near Ortonville to pick raspberries and decided to go in spite of the weather. Ed and Betty, our RV friends, were working/staying there and we had said we would try to stop by. The rain never materialized and the overcast skies made the picking experience more pleasant.

Neither of us had ever picked raspberries, or anything else other than apples, pumpkins, and Christmas trees. We enjoyed the experience, collecting 12 pints of fruit between us. At $4.00/pint it seemed expensive until we checked raspberry prices at the grocery store and Door-to-Door Organics and saw them ranging from $5 – $6 for 6 ounces. We didn’t weigh our pints, but Linda estimated that it would take three of the 6 ounce contains to match one of our pints.

It seemed appropriate that we were laboring on Labor Day, even though this is the one day of the year that labor typically doesn’t labor, but rather relaxes and celebrates importance those who labor and the work they do. Although we have been sourcing fresh fruits and vegetables from local farmers markets when we can, it was very satisfying to personally harvest even a small portion of our own food from a living plant. It also gave us an appreciation for those who do this kind of work for a living. As we were checking out we also bought a fresh pepper and tomato.

When we got back to the house Linda washed, dried, and froze all put three of the pints of raspberries. With that task initiated, we turned our attention to the pull-through driveway. It had not rained for the past several days, and it was time for the BIG TEST. We unplugged the electrical power from the bus, pulled the chocks, fired it up, and backed it out of the driveway and down the street, positioning it to drive in to the pull-through driveway. Linda watched the tires as I drove in, and seeing nothing more than tread marks I brought in, across the pad, and out the other side, back on to the concrete driveway. Success!!!

We inspected the pull-through driveway. In some places there was no evidence that the bus had just been there, in others only tread marks, and in a few spots a slight channel of not more than 0.5 inches. Phil had told me previously that compaction of up to 1 inch might be possible but would indicate that the driveway was finally locking together, so we were very pleased with the result. I pulled the bus out and around again, but this time I tried to go back and forth over slightly different paths on the approach and then again on the parking pad area. I did not pull the bus all the way this time, but got it lined up on the pad with Linda’s help and parked it with the entrance door opposite the front door of the house.

I e-mailed Phil Jarrell (Precision Grading) to give him the good news. Phil has been an absolutely outstanding guy to work with, standing behind his work, and doing what was needed to fix what turned out to be a problem with the load of 21AA road gravel used in the project. Besides building this pull-through driveway for us, he dug up and repaired our septic tanks and regarded an area in the back yard to help move water away from the area outside out basement doorwall. We plan to eventually put up a bus barn to house the motorhome, and we plan to have Phil do the site prep, driveway(s), and final grading.

Linda spent Tuesday baby-sitting Madeline while I worked around the house, trying to clean up and arrange the ham shack/office and get all of the technology hooked up and working. I made good progress, but I didn’t get it done. It’s never done. I took time out to have a long chat with my best friend from high school. J. C. has lived in Olympia, Washington for years with his wife, Julie and their three girls, but we have managed to stay in touch. He was my best man at our wedding and I was his best man at theirs. In the early years we corresponded by letter with an occasional phone call, but that was in the days before cell phones and “unlimited local and long distance” plans. Eventually it was by e-mail. We tried instant messaging, but it doesn’t work well for me. We’ve even Skyped once or twice, but it requires broadband to work well, and we don’t have that at the new house. We’ve even had an occasional but all-too-rare face-to-face visit. I drove to Ypsilanti to meet up with Linda and our good friend Kate de Fuccio for dinner. Kate is a former colleague from my educational service agency days, the graphics designer for the agency and a very talented photographer. She is also a kindred spirit traveler, excellent researcher, and perhaps the most considerate person I know. We don’t see her enough.

Kate had suggested Nirmal Indian Cuisine in Ypsilanti and Linda had checked out their menu online, which has become standard practice for us. Nirmal has several vegan dishes, and others that can be made vegan, so we agreed to give it a try. They also serve chicken, but their specialty appears to be goat. They place is a bit “preachy” about the health benefits of Indian food, but the way they do it is kind of innocently cute and we enjoyed that aspect of the place; it’s true after all, and we are sympathetic to the sentiment. Most importantly, the food was excellent, and the staff was very attentive. We had a leisurely dinner which was fine with us as it gave us lots of time to talk. We adjourned to the Starbucks just up the street and continued our conversation.

Wednesday was errand day for us. We picked out stain and paint colors for the rear deck, which Jim Pipoly is going to redo later this month. Jim did all of the painting on our old house and new house. He’s the only guy we use, and friends and family use him too. When you find a good contractor you stick with them. We dropped off old prescription and over-the-counter drugs at the Livingston County jail, where they have a special “no questions asked” collection barrel. The Howell Recycling Center is only open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so we stopped there. We don’t have curbside recycling like we did in Farmington Hills. We’ve been recycling for so long that it doesn’t feel right to throw things in the trash that can be recycled so we gladly paid the $22 annual membership fee. We picked up some drawer cabinets for the office, a free-standing cabinet for the basement bathroom (which has no other storage), and unpacked the wine refrigerator and plugged it in. We always seem to have just enough bottles of wine that they can’t all go in the regular refrigerator so they end up in the pantry where they take up space we need for other things. They are not cooled, which is bad for storage, but even worse in terms of limiting our choices when we decide we want to open a bottle. It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted and it just wasn’t that expensive. I am now trying to figure out where the popcorn machine will go in the basement rec room. After dinner Linda continued to work on finding an RV park/campground where we can meet up with her brother and his wife in October and I worked on configuring our e-mail SpamExperts and updating this blog.

2013_08_31 (Sat) Our New Online Home

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From mid-afternoon on Thursday 29^th through late evening on Saturday the 31^st I was occupied with moving our domain {website/blog and e-mail} to a new web-hosting service. That wasn’t all we did, of course, but the process involved a lot of back and forth and everything else seemed to fit in around it.

Like many things in our modern world, we tend to take our communications technology for granted, after all, most of the time it just works. But just like losing power to your refrigerator, you don’t really understand just how dependent you are on technology until it doesn’t work. Unlike a refrigerator, which either works or it doesn’t (and it’s usually obvious which condition it is in), our e-mail failure was more subtle. We continued to receive e-mails from some recipients if they originated them (but not always) and recipients typically received e-mails that we originated (but not always). But we did not receive replies to e-mails that we sent. What was particularly strange was that the person sending the reply did not get a bounce-back or other error, so to them it looked like they had sent the reply successfully. We didn’t know if they got the original message, and they assumed we got the reply.

I do not know what went wrong with our e-mail accounts at iPage, and never will, but they were definitely malfunctioning and iPage was unable to fix the problem and ultimately unwilling to move it to a sufficiently high level of technical support to figure it out. I have nothing against overseas technical support as long as it is technically competent and customer supportive. In my support ticket interactions with iPage I never corresponded with the same person twice. The problem with the “big name” hosting services is the same as a lot of mutual funds. Huh? Way too much time and money put into marketing, way too little into a high quality, reliable offering. It’s a numbers game, and my number was 1, as in, I am only one customer. We will almost certainly lose money in this transition by not getting an adequate refund from iPage, but one of the secrets to life is knowing when to take your losses and being willing to do so and move on. In the end we had no choice but to move our domain.

In the two weeks prior to reaching that decision I had two completely independent recommendations for QTH.com as a web-hosting service. “QTH” is ham radio lingo for “location” and Scott Neader, the guy behind QTH.com, has amateur radio call sign KA9FOX. The company is located in Wisconsin, and so is the technical support. In the move from iPage to QTH I exchanged numerous e-mails with Scott, who personally handled much of the set up and transfer. Moving our WordPress installation (website/blog) turned out to be particularly tricky because of how iPage had it installed. I would not have been able to do it by myself, but Scott got it done. By 8:00 PM EDT Saturday evening I had confirmed, as best I could, that everything was working and began sending out e-mails to a selective group of recipients asking for replies to validate the correct functioning of our accounts. With the exception of a couple of e-mails that got blocked as SPAM (one in each direction) all of our e-mails were received and successfully replied to.

Chuck Spera, a fellow H3-40 owner in our area, found a place locally to make a screen for the awning style window in the main entrance door of his coach. I drove down to his bus garage in Novi and borrowed it to check the fit in our coach. It was good, so we are getting two of them. It’s a custom fabricated part, and it’s easier to get a spare up front. These are not rectangular screens; they have five sides and are basically trapezoids (top and bottom parallel) with one upper corner cut off to make the 5^th side. The local shop made and checked a template in Chuck’s coach before fabricating the actual screen. They used a sturdy aluminum channel, and in spite of having five joints, the frame does not flex very much. This is a significant improvement over the flimsy, poor-fitting we have lived with for the last three years.

I finished editing drafts of two more articles for Bus Conversions Magazine, selecting/inserting the photographs and writing captions for them, and uploaded them to my Dropbox account. We enjoyed a lively breakfast with our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club as we do most Saturdays. We are trying to get ready for a house warming in early October, so we continued to unpacking boxes and find places for things. We are managing to identify a few things for disposal, recycling, or donation, but that continues to be a challenge for me, which is one of the reasons we are not full-time RVers.

2013_08_29Av01 (Thu) Moving Our Domain

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Ed & Betty’s Tiffin Phaeton in our pull-through driveway.

Ed and Betty joined us for breakfast and we continued our lively conversation from the prior evening. Around 10 AM they turned their attention to preparing for departure. An important piece of RVing etiquette is to leave folks alone when they are making or breaking camp. Every RVer (who has used their rig more than a couple of times) has developed routines for each of these situations. Engaging them in conversation during these routines is a distraction that creates a risk that something will be overlooked. It’s dangerous and it’s rude, and seasoned RVers simply don’t do it.

The view from our front door.

With their preparations finished, we talked a bit more about future plans and when they might be back this way. They wanted some pictures of themselves in front of their coach, and so did we, so we helped each other out with that.

Ed & Betty Burns in front of their motorhome.

Because our bus is in our garage driveway blocking the exit from our pull-through driveway, I had to have Ed back their motorhome out. As the name implies, the pull-through driveway wasn’t really designed for backing a 40 vehicle out the way it came in. The entrance to the driveway is at an angle to the road that makes it easy to get in when coming towards our house from the main road. It’s designed so that we can pull out going forward onto the concrete driveway and make the turns needed to get us pointed back out towards the main road.

Us in front of our bus.

Because of this design, I had to have Ed make a “12-point turn”, jockeying their coach forward and backward until I could get the front end clear to pull forward onto the road while being careful not to have his tires get off the edge of the driveway or have his rear end hit the neighbor’s mailbox. We managed to accomplish this in a reasonable amount of time with minimal damage to the approach portion of the driveway, which wasn’t designed to have a heavy vehicle sit in one place and turn its steering tires. This part of the driveway was still very wet from the heavy rains we had two nights ago, and we ended up with deeper ruts than I had hoped, but not enough to get them stuck.

With the coach extracted from the driveway, Ed got it parallel to, and near, the edge of the road and Betty brought the car up. Again, we left them alone to go through their toad hookup routine. More hugs and they were on their way around 11:30 AM. If things work out as planned we will see them again on Sunday or Monday when we hope to visit the Middleton Berry Farm and pick some fresh raspberries.

My plan for the rest of my day is to sign up with our new registrar/hosting service at QTH.com. QTH.com is owned and operated by fellow amateur radio operator Scott Neader, KA9FOX. (QTH is ham radio shorthand for “location, destination, or home base”, as in “I just arrived at my QTH”, so it’s a clever name for a hosting service.) The process should be relatively smooth, but there may be a window of time during which our website/blog URL and e-mail addresses are unavailable. My plan is to position that window near mid-night this evening. Since there is always the possibility of something going wrong, or it just taking longer to complete the switch, I am ending this post here around mid-afternoon while I know I still have access to the website. I will do a second post when the transition is complete and everything is working correctly again.

2013_08_18 (Sun) Every Rally Has An End

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Every rally has an end, and today was the last official day of the Back To The Bricks Rally in Clio, Michigan. One of the differences between larger national/area rallies and smaller chapter/SIG rallies is the ending. Larger rallies often end with entertainment or an activity on the final evening. There are no official/planned activities on departure day. Attendees have generally come from a large geographic area and sometimes have long distances to travel upon departure, so RVs start leaving first thing the next morning, often as early as 6 AM. Smaller rallies, by comparison, are often attended by people who are somewhat more local to the rally site, and are already acquainted with the other attendees. The final day of the rally usually includes breakfast, after which there are still lots of conversations. RVs start to leave based on personal commitments, but the departure is slower and a bit more spread out. Some folks may even remain for another evening or so, depending on the rally site.

And so it was with the 2103 BTTB Rally. Departure day was the fancy breakfast day. We still had coffee, juice, muffins, Danish pastry, bagels, and fruit—just like we have had all week—but today there were also pancakes, scrambled eggs, and sausage. (Not for us, of course, but they were enjoyed by most everyone else.) Even as conversations continued all of us started putting the venue back in order. Grills were loaded onto trailers, leftover food was divided up among those who wanted it, and we carried six or seven picnic tables from the pavilion back to the meeting building.

I left mid-morning in the car and drove back to the house to get Linda. A few coaches had left before I did, and more were gone by the time we got back around 1 PM. By mid-afternoon most of the attendees had departed and by dinner time there were only two coaches left; ours and the Lintners’. Marty was still at the site dismantling the temporary power drops he had installed for the rally and we invited him and Pat to join all of us for dinner out. We went back to Sullivan’s Black Forest restaurant in Frankenmuth and had a nice meal enhanced by good conversation. The Linderman’s Framboise Lambic Belgian wheat ale was just as good tonight as it was this past Wednesday.

Marty dropped us back at our coach and he and Pat went on home. Pat, Vicky, Graciella, Linda, and I sat outside and talked until it got dark and the mosquitoes started to bite. Graciella came in our coach to play with our cats and chat for a while until her grandma decided it was time for her to come to their coach and settle in for the evening. So ended the official last day of the rally for us. Sometime tomorrow we will dump our holding tanks at a nearby RV business and then head back to our house; we just don’t know exactly when we will do that.

2013_08_17 (Sat) BTTB Rally – Day 3

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We continued to have a good weather streak for our rally. Cool temperatures overnight made for great sleeping and the brisk morning air made the coffee taste especially good at 7:30 AM. The breakfasts are simple, help yourself, affairs with enough variety that everyone can find something they like while no one is burdened with fancy preparation. A toaster and bagels ensure that a warm breakfast choice is available.

Carl and Cara Muntean’s MCI MC-8.

As soon as we left the coach to get coffee, a distance of 40 feet from where we are parked next to the pavilion, we realized that two additional buses had arrived since we turned in last night. Carl and Cara Muntean’s MCI MC-8 was parked alongside the other building, and behind the building we could just see the nose of a late model Prevost H3.

Coach Quarters (Mike Middaugh) Prevost H3-45 Marathon Executive Coach.

The Prevost turned out to be the 2007 H3-45 executive coach that belonged to Coach Quarters from the Columbus, Ohio area. Mike Middaugh had the coach in the Detroit area representing Prevost and NASCAR at the Woodward Dream Cruise, and came on up to our rally when he was done with that work. Mike is a member of GLCC and CCO.

A water distribution manifold, Marathon style, where function becomes art form.

This particular H3-45 is a Marathon conversion with an interesting history. It was in a bad accident and was further damaged while being towed under a low overpass. It was considered a total loss, and Coach Quarters acquired it. Mike, however, has been in the converted coach business for a really long time and knew how to get it repaired and back in service.

Marty explaining to Graciella who John McCann is and what it meant for his campaign to use this H3-45 executive coach as their presidential campaign tour bus.

The final result was a very nice executive coach that Coach Quarters rents out for day use by up to 14 people who need to conduct business while being driven somewhere. The coach is used to represent Prevost at events, including the Woodward Dream Cruise. For example, Prevost is the official motorcoach of NASCAR. The most famous use of this coach, however, was as John McCain’s presidential campaign bus.

The H3-45 galley features high levels of craftsmanship and style.

Mike positioned the coach by the pavilion and opened it up for rally participants to see, including the interior, the engine compartment, and all of the bays.

Late morning I drove Linda back to our house as she had agreed to babysit our 8-month old granddaughter this evening. I contacted our driveway contractor to see if he’d had a chance to come look at our problem. He had been there, and had already formulated a game plan for fixing it that involved some additional material with finer particles to help lock the gravel in place followed by compaction by some heavy roller. Due to current commitments it will take a week or so for him to get back to the house with material and equipment. I drove back to the rally site and arrived around 2 PM.

Don tracked me down to see if I was still interested in going to see Bill’s bus barn. I was, and so were three other folks plus Don. He arranged with Bill for us to head over. Bill’s barn has doors on both ends, and a concrete floor with a pit. The pit is not full length, but more than adequate to work on the underside of one end of a bus at a time. It’s a “pole barn”, but the main poles that support the 12 foot ceiling are set in from either side, with lower sections on either side for storage. I’ve looked at enough bus barns at this point to see that a concrete floor with a maintenance pit is probably a necessity. It would also be nice for it to have an 18 foot ceiling so I can work on the roof, and be long enough for a 45 foot coach with a car attached behind it. A pull-through design with access roads on either end would also be nice, but not necessary. What I don’t think we need is the extra square footage for storing as much stuff as the barns I have seen.

GLCC president Larry Baker (standing, rear) conducting a chapter information meeting immediately following dinner.

From 4:00 – 5:30 PM was the official “open house”, although most of us had already seen each others’ coaches earlier in the rally. Dinner was pot luck, with grilled chicken provided as part of the rally fee, and there were lots of good things to choose from.

Pat Lintner, GLCC National Director, addressing the members.

Immediately following the meeting GLCC president Larry Baker held a brief information meeting. Pat Lintner, the chapters National Director, also spoke and gave a brief update on the national convention that was held in Gillette, Wyoming in June and the upcoming GLAMARAMA rally scheduled for mid-September in Goshen, Indiana.

CCO meeting about to convene following the GLCC meeting. President Mark Reid seated, right.

As soon as the GLCC meeting was done most of us moved our chairs over to Mark Reid’s coach for a CCO business meeting. There was discussion of the upcoming Halloween rally in mid-October, and further discussion about rallies in general.

Some of the CCO members at the meeting.

All of the RV groups/chapters we belong to are facing the same challenge of getting members to host and attend rallies. No doubt the two things are related and determined in part by peoples’ personal financial circumstances and their general feelings about the economy. This seems to be a particular problem for groups that are formed around common interests, such as converted buses, rather than a limited geographic area, although even geographic groups are struggling. Several of us continued to discuss this informally after the meeting, but no one seemed to have a full grasp of the problem or any really good ideas as to what to do about it.

As with every other evening of this rally, the temperature cooled off quickly after the sun went down. Someone had a “Chinese lantern”. They lit the firepot and turned it loose. The flag at the rally site indicated no wind, but as soon as they turned the lantern loose it took off to the west. It rose to quite an altitude and we estimated that it was moving west at 20 – 30 MPH when we finally lost sight of it. Most folks turned in for the night after that except for a small group that stayed up and talked until sometime after midnight.

2013_08_16 (Fri) BTTB Rally – Day 2

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We had another cool night overnight that was great for sleeping. 7:30 AM found the coffee brewed and the bagels, fruit, muffins, and Danish pastries awaiting the rally participants. This isn’t a “fancy” rally in a fancy place, but it sure is a nice one.

Mike Mullen’s Flxible (on right), the only one at this rally.

Two more buses showed up today; Mike (GLCC vice-president) & Mary Ann Muller and Mark (CCO president) & Diane Reid. Linda took off with a group of the women to search out garage sales, but came back empty-handed. (She is not a garage sale person.) Over the course of the morning bay doors were opened on various buses and small groups of (mostly) men could be found peering deep inside. These sessions are sometimes for the purpose of seeing/admiring someone’s latest handiwork, and sometimes for the purpose of trying to help diagnose a problem and fix it if possible. There was some of both today. On Wednesday, for instance, someone blew a transmission hose just as they were pulling into their parking space. With the help of some of the other participants, a new hose had been custom made by a local supplier and installed, tested, and verified as operational in less than 24 hours. Today several guys worked on diagnosing a severe vibration problem someone in the rear of a GM 4104.

Bill Gerry’s Harley Davidson with Leyman trike conversion. Bill is in the center of the photo, directly behind the bike (dressed in black, of course).

Mid-late morning Bill Gerry showed up on his Harley Davidson Leyman trike conversion. He left the Toronto, Ontario area around 6:00 AM for the 4.5 hour trip plus several fuel stops. As you can see in the picture, it’s a gorgeous machine. Bill is the de facto “ring leader” of the Canadian contingent that usually attends this rally, but he and Karen could not come this year because of a 50th wedding anniversary party being held tomorrow for some of their best friends back home. (Karen stayed home to help with the preparations.) Still, I think it says a lot that Bill thought it was worth driving 9 hours round trip to hang out with all of us for a few hours. Such is the attraction of the bus conversion community, and the camaraderie of those who choose to be part of it. As mentioned yesterday, Dennis and Bernadette did make it to the rally in their Class B, so our Canadian friends were represented.

Late morning conversations in the pavilion.

Everyone was on their own for lunch today, so Linda and I had some sun-dried tomato hummus wraps with onions, lots of onions. Because we knew we would only have a 20A connection, Linda planned the meals we would have to provide for ourselves around not having to cook things. With the way we eat, however, “no heat don’t mean no eat.” It was a bit warmer by lunchtime than the last few days, and the cold dishes were particularly satisfying under such weather conditions.

Since most of the rally participants were now on site, I decided to bring out the copies of the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine and the May-June issue of The Gypsy Journal to distribute to those who don’t already subscribe to them. We left home in early June with about 60 copies of the BCM issue and picked up about 100 copies of TGJ in Gillette, Wyoming. We have been carrying them with us every since and passing them out at campgrounds and rallies. After today’s distribution we have less than 10 of each left.

Almost everyone was present for the roundtable discussion, which lasted two hours.

At 1:00 PM (Ed time) we circled up the chairs for our roundtable discussion. This has been a regular Friday feature of the rally since it began. We had 20+ people in the circle, 30 total in the pavilion, and almost everyone participated. Someone was having a problem with a 2-year old leather chair that was peeling, and the group helped problem-solve how to deal with the vendor, who was being very reluctant to make good on the situation. We ended up on speaker phone with them, and made it clear that 30 of us were listening to the conversation. By the end there seemed to be a greater willingness on the part of the vendor to try to make the situation right.

Other topics of discussion included electrical shorepower and how to build/use a combiner box to plug a “50A” connector into two smaller capacity outlets (30A, 20/15A). Some of us indicated that we also carry long, larger gauge extension cords with 50A RV/marine twist lock connectors that have the L1 and L2 pins internally jumpered. There’s no magic to this—20A is 20A—but it does allow power to be applied to both legs of the coach’s electrical system so that everything onboard is able to receive electrical power (except for any 240VAC devices). That doesn’t mean you can run everything; 20A is still just 20A after all.

We had an extended discussion about supplemental braking systems. While everyone present indicated that they use one, there were several different types represented, and questions about each of their methods of operation, and opinions about their relative merits. Like any other vehicle, buses have brake systems designed to safely stop their GCWR (Gross Combined Weight Rating). This is the maximum amount of weight the bus is designed to move and stop, including anything it is towing. Most states and provinces require supplemental braking for anything being towed that weighs over a certain amount, with 1,500 pounds being a common specification. A major consideration is break away situations, in which the toad breaks loose from the bus. Many supplemental braking systems are designed to apply the car brakes hard and keep them applied in this situation.

Several discussants had issues with their pneumatic systems so those were put forward and discussed. At lot of things on buses operate on air, including suspensions, brakes, accessories, and even engine throttles. The universal reality about air systems seems to be that they leak, so the issue is never IF, but HOW BAD? Many air leaks are small enough that you can live with them, but not always.

The subject of Coach-Net came up. Many FMCA motorhome owners have Coach-Net emergency roadside service policies. What the policies cover is actually fairly limited, but does include towing (a huge benefit for a bus or large motorhome owner), fuel (if you run out), and telephone technical support. If you need a roadside repair they will try to get the right person to your location to do it, but the cost of the repair is not covered. Several of our GLCC members had recently had their service canceled, in spite of not having made any claims. The reason they were given was that Coach-Net had changed their policy and would no longer cover buses (specifically?) that were more than 40 years old. Pat indicated that he had talked to Jon Walker, a member of GLCC and the recently elected FMCA National Vice President, and that the contract between FMCA and Coach-Net had ended as of July 1 and not been renewed. The rally participants who were affected by this had no problem signing up for Good Sam Emergency Road Service.

There was a question about solar panels (photovoltaic). The question generated a lot of comment, but no definitive recommendations. It was a systems sizing question that was simple to ask, but not simple to answer without specific analysis and calculations. Finally, several rally goers reported on recent, successful service experiences and gave positive recommendations for the service providers.

After the roundtable ended around 3 PM Bill said his farewells and left for Toronto. Folks returned to their coaches, resumed their conversation groups, and returned to their “bay watch” patrols and repair work.

L-to-R Gordy, Marty, and Glenn cooking up the burgers and hotdogs for dinner.

Dinner this evening was classic summer fare; grilled hotdogs and hamburgers with the fixins’, potato salad, baked beans, and potato chips. Some raw veggies were left over from the other night as well. We supplied our own tofu hotdogs, which Glenn grilled up for us very nicely. We garnished them with fresh raw onions and mustard. Potato chips and raw veggies rounded out our meals, which, while not exactly whole-food, plant-based, were definitely vegan.

Prepping the buffet line. There were a few young folks at the rally, although not as many as in past years.

Not long after dinner Bill Foley stopped by. Bill is a CCO guy who lives nearby but was not able to attend the rally with his bus. Bill has a bus barn that Don has been trying to arrange for some of us to go see. I ended up at Ed’s coach and had a long chat with Ed, Bill, and Don. We discussed bus barns, but we also talked about the situation with our driveway at some length.

I eventually returned to our coach to sound of the nearby race track. We have heard these vehicles at various times most days, presumably making practice runs, but we assumed tonight were actual races. Some of the rally participants started playing bingo in the pavilion around 9 PM. They were done by 10:15 PM, after which conversation continued along with the racing. RVers, or at least the ones we hang out with, tend to be up early and turn in early. This particularly rally, however, tends to keep folks up a bit later, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. We are gathered out in the country, not in a commercial campground or state park, so we have only our fellow rally participants to answer to, and no one objects to conversations extending into the evening. Eventually the rally site quieted down and the only thing that disturbed the nighttime silence was an occasional train. (For those who don’t know, it is a requirement that wherever two or more RVs are gathered, there must be an active rail line nearby. If there isn’t, I think there are special crews that get dispatched in the middle of the night to quickly build one.)

2013_08_15 (Thu) Back To The Bricks Rally – Day 1

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Today was the official first day of the Back To The Bricks Rally (BTTB), and more of the attendees arrived today. The BTTB rally is a joint gathering of the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter (GLCC) and the Converted Coach Owners (CCO), an independent group of folks most of whom have done their own bus conversions.

With 22 rigs expected this is one of the largest GLCC rallies of the year and has become an annual event. It is organized and run by Ed/Janet Roelle, and Marty/Pat Caverly. Bob Shafer was also one of the original organizers, but now spends his time in Florida and is unable to attend.

The day started with breakfast in the pavilion starting at 7:30 AM, provided as part of the rally fee. We had coffee, fruit, bagels, Danish pastries, and muffins. The air temperature was in the upper 40’s to start, but the coffee was very hot so it all balanced out.

Arrival day at an RV rally is always exciting as each new arrival reconnects friends, makes friends of acquaintances, and provides new acquaintances who may become future friends. Around mid-morning a group of the women went looking for garage sales in the area; a tradition at this rally.

Larry and Alma Baker pulled in around noon; the first new arrivals of the day. Larry is the current GLCC president. Pat and Vicky Lintner pulled in with their grand-daughter Graciella, around 12:30 PM. Pat is the current GLCC national director. (For the record, Linda is the current GLCC treasurer.) More arrivals followed and by dinner time we had 15 rigs and folks from Wisconsin who came by car as their bus was out of commission.

As more people arrived, conversation groups formed and disbanded throughout the day. Converted coaches are usually works in progress, so when converted coach owners get together there are always tours of interiors and lots of looking in bays, and so it was today.

The evening meal was provided as part of the rally fee. We had a variety of fresh veggies, chips and salsa, fresh fruit, bean salad, and several main dishes including Swedish meatballs and nachos. Ice cream with toppings was served for dessert.

Most of the attendees gathered in the pavilion after dinner for continued conversations, but it cooled off quickly after the sun set. Folks who arrived today were also tired as traveling, arriving, and setting up are a bit of work. By 9 PM everyone had retreated to their RVs for the night.

Larry (L) talking to Ed (R) in front of Ed’s coach.

Bill and Barb’s GM schoolie pulling in.

The schoolie with the Clark’s 1955 GM 4104.

Dennis and Bernadette’s Class B. (They left their big bus at home.) Notice the very nice temporary power panel, thanks to Marty’s work.

Two more rigs in the arrival area. The driveway into the Fireman’s park can easily handle four rigs with toads and this is where we unhooked our cars.

Preparation of fresh veggies for dinner.

A couple of conversation groups before dinner.

Another group under a patio awning.

The long dinner table. (There was a shorter one off camera to the right.)

Ice cream and toppings for those who wanted it (which was almost everyone).

2013_08_14 (Wed) No Way To Start An RV Outing

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We planned to leave today around noon for an RV rally in Clio, Michigan, about an hour’s drive north of our house. We spent most of the morning with final preparations, loading food, clothes, technology, toiletries, and finally the cats. We also put fresh water on board and checked/adjusted all of the tire pressures.

The tires were holding their pressures fairly well, but I discovered that the Pressure Pro Tire Pressure Monitoring System was reading 1 to 3 PSI low on most of the sensors compared to my tire gauge. I have a very good gauge and had its calibration checked a couple of years ago at the Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally, so I tend to trust its readings. Besides, when it tells me two tires have the same pressure and the Pressure Pro TPMS tells me the pressures are different (from each other) I tend to go with the gauge.

The rear end buried up to the frame.

The last thing is always to disconnect and stow the shore power line and lock up the house. I fired up the engine, put it gear, and got stuck in our brand new gravel driveway! We tried to extricate ourselves, but that only made it worse and the drive tires ended up buried in the loose gravel. I called the guy who did the driveway work for us to let him know of our predicament and see what he could suggest. He didn’t have the equipment needed to get us out, but recommended a towing company that could handle vehicles our size. He also indicated that he would stop by the house tomorrow evening and survey the situation. Clearly something (else, additional) will have to be done.

The winch really worked!

I called Woody’s Towing, and they said they would have someone there within 45 minutes. While we were waiting for the tow truck, I engaged the level low system and aired the suspension all the way up. This got the chassis up enough that we could dig out some of the gravel from around the tires and under the rear end. The tow truck showed up on time. It didn’t look like a big enough truck to do the job, but it turned to be up to the task. The secret was the very substantial winch and the use of multiple pulleys to multiple the pulling force.

Impressive tires holes. We clearly were not getting out of this situation by ourselves.

The technician had to position the truck three times to finally get us out. This was because we had to make a hard left turn onto the concrete driveway that would then take us out to the street. The first pull was straight forward using both attachment points under the front bumper with the bus engine running, the transmission in 1^st gear, the tag axles UP, and me applying power as directed. This was the hardest pull as we had to get the drive tires out of the rather deep holes they had made for themselves. The second pull was from the driver side attachment point at an angel toward the driver’s side to get us started in that direction. This got our steer tires onto the concrete driveway. The third pull was again from the driver’s side attachment point at an angle, pulling straight out towards the street. This pull finally got our drive tires off the gravel and onto the concrete. The holes where the tires had been were very impressive.

The technician from Woody’s clearly knew what he was doing. He got us out without any damage to the coach, and we were glad to pay the $175 charge. We hooked up the car and were on our way around 1:30 PM.

We made it less than four miles from our house and encountered a major construction-related traffic jam on M-59 just west of US-23; a one lane road with a flagger. With no way to turn around and no alternate route there wasn’t anything to do put patiently move ahead when we could. In what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only 15 minutes, we cleared the construction zone and were northbound on US-23 at 62 MPH, my preferred highway travel speed. US-23 merged into northbound I-75 at the southwest corner of Flint and we continued on our way. Things were looking good until about six miles south of our destination exit, when another construction zone had the left two lanes (of a 3-lane highway) closed down. There was a warning sign some miles before, but almost no indication of the actual lanes closures. No barrels placed a mile or so before the work to close down one lane at a time; just the sudden loss of two lanes of the highway. Highway work crews should not be allowed to do this.

Some folks, most perhaps, get on their brakes and stay/merge to the right. But there are always those “other people” (who are obviously more important than the rest of us) who try to speed by on the left for as long as possible and then merge in at the last moment. Well, not today bunky. I was already in the right hand lane when I became part of the traffic crawl and I watched with some delight in my driver side rear view mirror as several vehicles teamed up to block all of the other lanes, including the left shoulder. We patiently worked our way through the blockage for what seemed like our second eternity today, but was again probably no more than 15 minutes.

All set up at the Clio Fireman’s Park.

We exited I-75/US-23 at M-57 and made our way east through Clio, Michigan. On the east side of town we headed southeast on Saginaw Road. About three miles down the road we spotted the Fireman’s Park and made our turn. The Clio Fireman’s Park is a nice little rally site. It has an open pavilion with power surrounded by fairly level grass and gravel surfaces, all hard packed. There is a long driveway leading in that provides an excellent place for arriving RVs to stop and unhook their towed vehicles. We did just that and while Linda parked the car and went and found Marty Caverly to find out where we should park. Marty and his wife, Pat, are one of the two that organize and conduct this rally.

All of the other early arrival buses except ours.

Today was early arrival day and there were only five other motorhomes there (all converted buses) so we had our pick of spots. We chose one we had used before, next to the pavilion and with good access to 20A power. Marty is an electrician and had been working for days to install permanent and temporary power drops so everyone would have a legitimate 20A connection. In warmer weather we would not be able to function on a 20A connection, but the weather has been, and is forecast to be, cooler than normal for this time of year with highs in the 70’s and lows of 50.

Part of the protocol of RV rallies is that folks tend to leave you alone while you get parked and set up, but once you are done there is lots of meeting and greeting. We are expecting 22 converted coaches, and the balance of them will be arriving tomorrow, so there will be lots more meeting and greeting.

Sullivan’s Black Forest restaurant and brew pub.

The pre-planned dinner event for this evening was the Black Forest Restaurant in Frankenmuth. The 13 of is figured out car pooling arrangements and we rode with Paul and Claudiene Elbisser.

The 13 early arrivals at dinner.

I had a raspberry/strawberry Belgian wheat dessert beer and it was freaking awesome! (I am not generally a big fan of beer and have finally figured out that I don’t care for the bitterness of hops.) It made a great “cocktail beer” too; think strawberry daiquiri with a hint of beer after taste. Linda and I ordered a 16” think crust pizza, no cheese, with mushrooms, onions, and pineapple. What they brought to the table was a pizza with a crust 2” thick. 15 minutes later we got the pizza we ordered, and it was pretty good.

Everyone (except us) enjoying ice cream under the pavilion.

Back at the rally site, we got a tour of Paula and Claudine’s MCI MC-5 conversion. We last saw it two years ago at this same rally, and they have made a lot of progress on it. It‘s a very nice design, and Paul is a superb craftsman. Ed Roelle set up to serve ice cream with toppings, and everyone brought their camp chairs to the pavilion and set them up in a big circle. Ed and his wife, Janet, are the other rally organizer couple. We passed on the ice cream, of course, but enjoyed the camaraderie. As the sun set it got very cool, and folks gradually peeled off from the group to hunker down for the night.

2013_08_06 (Tue) Back Home (For Now)

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Today was the final leg of our summer 2013 extended RVing trial run. We had less than 250 miles to travel, all of it in Michigan, so we were in no hurry to leave the Tiki RV Park in St. Ignace. We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, checked e-mail, visited favorite websites, and eventually prepped the rig for travel; a typical “retired and RVing” kind of morning. 🙂

We dumped the waste tanks and added our usual cleaning solution and some water, and put a ¼ tank of fresh water on board “just in case” we needed it. We didn’t; there were plenty of rest stops on I-75. We had spent the last six nights not connected to fresh water or sewers. We had not been conserving fresh water or minimizing waste water as we had water and sewer available on three of those six nights, but we wanted to see how long we could go to try to gage our ability to boondock. Water, both fresh and waste, is our limiting factor for boondocking. Our fresh water tank had just reached empty this morning and our waste tanks were not completely full, so it appears that we could go 7 or 8 nights, possibly 9 or 10 with careful resource management, before having to dump and fill.

The Mackinac Bridge connects Michigan’s two peninsulas.

We left Tiki around 11 AM and headed north out of St. Ignace, the same way we had come in. It’s only a few miles to the I-75 interchange and this approach avoids driving through downtown St. Ignace. Large profile vehicles can make it through Main Street with no problem, but there is a steady flow of traffic that stops frequently for pedestrians and for vehicles making turns. About three miles after getting on southbound I-75 we crossed the Mackinac (pronounced “Mac in naw”) Bridge, affectionately known to Michiganders (or Michiganians, depending who you ask) as the “Big Mac.” I believe it had that nickname long before a certain fast food chain introduced their heart-attack-on-a-bun by the same name. The bridge is five miles long and spans the Straits of Mackinac. The speed limit for “loaded trucks” is 20 MPH, and this is one of those times when we chose to consider our bus to be a truck. It doesn’t sound like anything special, but the bridge crossing took 15 minutes at that speed. That’s either a long time to enjoy the view, or a long time for the navigator to keep her eyes closed. 😉

The coach in the new pull-through driveway in front of the house.

In times past crossing the bridge with a 3-axle motorhome towing a 2-axle car was expensive as they charged by the axle, making the price for the combinaton the same as for an 80,000 lb semi. As a result, many RVers would disconnect their towed vehicle form their motorhome before crossing the bridge, drive them across separately (if they had two drivers), and reconnect them on the other side. More recently, the Bridge Authority changed the toll for a 3-axle motorhome to $19. The normal price for a 2-axle car is $4, and they now charge $23 for the combination, eliminating any reason to disconnect the toad.

Ahhh, electrical power. The bus likes to be plugged in.

The day was cloudy to overcast with a threat of rain that never materialized. It was cool when we left St. Ignace, and afternoon high temperatures climbed into the mid-to-upper 70’s as we traveled south. There were several construction zones along the way, but we were able to travel through most of them at 60 MPH, which is the speed we like to travel even when the speed limit is higher. All-in-all it made for another pleasant travel day, with the added anticipation of returning to our house. The largest construction zone was over and past the Zilwaukee Bridge near Saginaw where the southbound lanes are closed and southbound traffic is being re-routed to the northbound lanes. The southbound road south of the bridge is gone and being completely rebuilt for several miles. The northbound traffic is being re-routed onto I-675 through Saginaw, a relatively short detour.

The coach in front of the house, waiting for its next trip.

AT the southeast corner of Flint US-23 splits from I-75 and heads due south towards Fenton, Hartland, Brighton, Ann Arbor, Milan, and eventually Sylvania, Ohio and on to Naples, Florida. We took US-23 to the M-59 exit near Hartland and headed west for two miles to Hacker Road. A short trip south on Hacker and we were back to our street. The last ¾ mile was slow as our street is dirt and has potholes, but we finally arrived at our house around 3:30 PM. We stopped in the street to move the barricades that blocked access to the new pull-through driveway and pulled the coach in; the first time it (or any vehicle) had parked on the new driveway since it was finished in early June (just before we left).

We unhooked the car, repositioned the coach slightly, and plugged it in to the 50A power outlet we installed as part of the driveway project. Ahhh, power. We unloaded the cats and reminded them of where their litter tray, food, and water were located in the house. We then started unloading the house portion of the coach, bringing in only those necessities that we did not also have in the house. With the front door of the coach parked opposite the front door the house and the coach plugged in to electricity, there wasn’t any urgent need to unload it. As much as we liked our previous house, the easy of arriving and unpacking confirmed that we had made a good decision to move.

The view from our front porch, just the way we like it.

We had been tracking the weather while traveling, and it appeared that S. E. Michigan was having a cooler, wetter summer than normal. This was the first time we had seen our new property during the summer, and the trees, plants, and grass were all lush and doing well. Linda added some Swiss chard, mushroom broth, and garlic to the end of the Farro dish she made some days ago, and while we enjoyed that with the end of our bottle of Yellowstone Howlin’ Pear wine three young deer chased each other back and forth through our backyard.

2013_08_05 (Mon) A Quiet, Easy Day

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Today was our last full day on the road for this trip. We celebrated by sleeping in, waking up slowly, and having pancakes for breakfast. Yum.

Main Street, St. Ignace, MI.

The WiFi at the Tiki RV park was surprisingly good, and I worked on various computer chores, including updating the roster for our FMCA Freethinkers chapter. Whenever a new member joins, I update the roster and send it out with a request for any corrections. I typically get corrections from a dozen folks, plus or minus, and end up having to re-issue the roster. And that’s OK; we are a small chapter and I understand that keeping me informed of these kinds of changes is not a high priority for anyone. What I hope to do someday is make the roster/directory online and interactive, i.e., allow members to log in and add, change, delete their own information, access the directory, and print a copy to take with them if needed.

Part of the waterfront boardwalk in St. Ignace.

Late morning we drove into the main part of St. Ignace, parked, and walked the town. Street parking is metered, but just behind the buildings on the west side of the street is free public parking. There is a wonderful boardwalk that runs along most of the waterfront from one end of town to the other and it is lovely place for a stroll on a 66 degree day with partly cloudy skies and very light winds, which is just what we had!

The St. Ignace public marina.

Even though this is the height of the tourist season in Michigan, Monday in St. Ignace was fairly quiet. We stopped at The Garden, one of the two additional restaurants opened by Java Joe’s. We wanted to try It as they offer various vegetarian and vegan dishes, but they were not open. Perhaps they only get enough of “us” on weekends to justify being open.

The boardwalk to the marina entrance and light.

No problem, Linda fixed some of the Farro dish that was left over from the other night. She cut up some Swiss chard, lightly steamed it in mushroom broth, added it to the leftovers with a little garlic powder, and heated it up. Dishes made with Farro seem to hold up well as left overs, and may even improve by being allowed to sit and meld the flavors. Was it good? Would I being writing about it if it wasn’t? It was great!

Linda in front of the Colonial House.

Java Joe’s 3^rd restaurant in town is Jose’s Cantina. We went there for dinner and had taco salads with “soy grillers”, hold the cheese. It was good enough for the price. We had a table with a view of Lake Huron and Mackinac Island, which was nice. The place had a steady flow of customers. Our server, Shantel, was from Manchester, Jamaica, and most of the other wait staff was also Jamaican. We remembered that on our last trip to St. Ignace we chatted with one of the workers at Java Joe’s (a cook, we think) who was from Jamaica. What we didn’t know then, but we do know now, is that when the last cruise ships stop visiting Jamaica sometime in April, the tourist dollars dry up as well. Still, it is a bit surprising, and at the same time delightful, to encounter Jamaicans in St. Ignace, Michigan in August.

A unique RV. (My picture is crooked, the trailer was fairly level.)

We have seen some unusual RVs along the way, but this was a first. It’s a pop-up pickup truck camper mounted on a flatbed trailer. It has front and rear porches, with the front one serving as storage. I chatted with the owners briefly, and they said they had reached the age where getting it on and off the pickup truck was just too difficult. I gave them a copy of The Gypsy Journal and dropped off eight more copies in the campground office.

2013_08_04 (Sun) Return to Tiki

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Today we drove US-2 from Ironwood, Michigan to St. Ignace, Michigan, a distance of approximately 317 miles. We were on the road for about 7 hours, including rest/food/fuel stops, and lost an additional hour to the time zone change from CDT to EDT. That’s more miles and more time than we prefer, but we have done 400 mile days when we needed to. 200 – 250 miles seems to be the sweet spot for us at this point, at least until we get better driver/passenger seats in the coach and seal up the wind leaks around the windshield and entrance door. (The bus is 23 years old after all.)

Most of US-2 through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.) is good, 2-lane road with occasional 4-lane divided and 5-lane (center turn) stretches. There are also lots of passing lanes, which are needed due to the hilly nature of the western U.P. and the volume of traffic in the central and eastern U.P. There are places where the surface is rough and bouncy, but on balance it’s a good road to drive. The speed limit is 55 MPH, but you have to slow down for the small towns. Even so, we actually prefer traveling on US and state highways rather than Interstates when we can. And this route gets us home in a reasonably direct way while keeping us as far away from Chicago, Illinois as possible. My life will not be incomplete if I never drive in, through, or even near Chicago in the bus ever again.

[ A note on Michigan drivers: speed limits appear to be lower bound suggestions. One of the nice things about this, is that if you are driving a large vehicle at the posted speed limit, when you get to a passing lane the cars (and trucks) behind you don’t screw around; they step on the accelerator and get around you. By the time you get to the end of the passing lane, all (or at least most) of the traffic that was behind you is now in front of you. We did not encounter any blatant bone-headed drivers today, and that helped make for a better and more pleasant drive for us. ]

We had excellent weather for this leg of our trip. It was 45 degrees F when we woke up this morning. We pulled out of Curry Park, the city-owned RV park/campground in Ironwood, Michigan at 8:19 CDT. There were enough discrete clouds to make the sky interesting and the high temperatures only made it into the upper 60’s. There were plenty of hills and turns in the road, but the bus ran well; it really likes this type of weather and roads.

Although we are trying to learn to be more about the journey than the destination, the reality is that you have to end up someplace each night. Most of the small towns we went through yesterday and today had signs about not parking overnight on streets and the one Walmart we checked in Ashland, Wisconsin did not allow overnight parking due to a city ordinance. We took a chance last night (no reservation) and it worked out. The sites at Curry RV Park were first-come, first-served, but we were in early enough to snag a “full hookup” site even though we only needed/used the electrical connection. These sites were the only ones that would accommodate our size and turning radius. That made four nights in a row of boondocking, at least with respect to water and sewage, and three nights for electrical. We passed several casinos and more than few RV park/campgrounds. Tonight, however, we wanted to make sure we could get into a RV park/campground with legitimate full hookups as we will need to refill the fresh water and dump the waste tanks before our final leg back to the house on Tuesday. We also wanted to be positioned so that one more driving day would get us back to our house in southeast Michigan.

Our target was the Tiki RV Park on the north end of St. Ignace, Michigan. We have stayed at the Tiki before when we had our Itasca Sunrise motorhome, and we liked the park. We also like the town of St. Ignace, which sits at the north end of the Mackinac Bridge (Big Mac). St. Ignace is a nice town on the water facing Mackinac Island which lies close by in Lake Huron due east of the town. It has a marina, which is always interesting and pleasant. There are plenty of things happening during the summer tourist season. Like all of the U.P. it never feels crowded and is an unpretentious place.

The five mile long Big Mac connects Michigan’s Lower and Upper Peninsulas, bridging the Straits of Mackinac (pronounced Mack in naw), and is high enough in the center span for very large lake freighters to pass under with lots of room to spare. We like both of Michigan’s peninsulas, but they are very different. The U.P. is much more sparsely populated and has a cooler, harsher climate (especially during winter). Trees and other vegetation tend to be shorter, and in many places it has an “edge of wilderness” feeling.

In spite of previous good experiences, we had an issue with our site at the Tiki. We had walked to the site to make sure the coach would fit and not encounter any obstructions, but we did not walk the entire route to get to the site. Big mistake. The narrow gravel road took us around a sharp curve that did not leave me room to maneuver when I found myself facing low overhanging branches from a fir tree. Pressing forward, the branches dislodged the top half of our broken searchlight. Once parked, I had to get the ladder out, climb up, and redo the rescue tape that has held it together since I did this same temporary repair in Gillette, Wyoming back in June. While I was up there I discovered that the limbs also scratched the paint on the driver-side of the roof. The scratches are not visible from the ground, but that is not the point. I consider the RV park responsible for this damage as Linda very clearly explained to them the size of our rig, both when making the reservation and when checking in. We, however, should have known better than to take their word for it that our coach could make it to and into the site without any difficulties. We are learning, sometimes the hard way, that we should never discount or dismiss even a minor concern that either one of us has about a situation, and to never take someone else’s word that our coach “will be just fine.”

Once settled in our site, we walked down the hill to Java Joe’s. Java Joe’s is on the main road at the bottom of the hill leading up to the RV park, and is great place to get coffee, breakfast, etc. It’s about 1.5 miles from there into town, a flat and very walkable distance on a nice day. On our previous visits here the place was hopping, but it was mostly empty and quiet this evening. The owner is a “parrot head” and has a Jimmy Buffett concert playing in an endless loop on a TV monitor the last time we were there. It was still playing. We went for coffee as we didn’t have any this morning, but ended up getting a couple of dinner salads, sans cheese, as we had not had sufficient greens for the last few meals. Since the last time we were here the owner has opened a second location just down the street called The Garden that serves “vegetarian and vegan friendly” food. We were told they are only open Friday through Monday, 11 AM to 3 PM, so we will probably have lunch there tomorrow. BTW: I’m not sure what “vegan friendly food is.” Either it’s vegan or it’s not.

When we got back to our coach we opened the bottle of Yellowstone Howlin’ Pear wine we purchased at the store in Fishing Bridge, Yellowstone National Park and each had a small glass. It was a very acceptable wine given that we did not get to taste it before we bought it. As with accepting other people’s opinions about RV sites, purchasing wine without tasting it first is generally a risky proposition.

We will be at the Tiki RV Park for two nights and then head for home on Tuesday morning. We have nothing planned for here except to relax and enjoy the local area.

2013_08_03 (Sat) Across The Northern Tier

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Today was a travel day, and an uneventful one at that (the best kind). Linda spent some time last evening and again this morning researching places for us to stay tonight somewhere between Ashland, Wisconsin and Iron Mountain, Michigan. The choices appeared thin; the Walmart in Ashland didn’t allow RVers to overnight due to a city ordinance, and there did not appear to be a Walmart anywhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. (I know, I know, that doesn’t seem possible. It turns out there is one in Ironwood, and probably others we haven’t discovered yet.) As our route eventually put us on US-2 we settled on a city RV park in Ironwood, Michigan, just over the border with Wisconsin on the north side of the highway. Based on available online information, this park appeared to have a variety of sites from “full hookup pull-thru” to “no hookup tent site.” (Note: Full hookup in this case meant 20A electric power, barely sufficient to recharge our house batteries, and run the refrigerator, and run the air compressor.) The sites were first-come-first-served; no way to make a reservation. And being a city park, there was no one to call for information on a Saturday, the city offices being closed. So we did something very unusual for us, we started driving with no guarantee that we would be able to get a site, much less one that our coach would fit in, or if the park was even still open.

We left the Forestedge Winery (very reluctantly) at 9:19 AM CDT and headed south down MN-64 towards Akeley where we picked up MN-34 heading northeast to Walker. MN-34 ends at MN-200 in Walker and we headed east on MN-200 from there. MN-200 appears on the map to run straight east-west, but in actuality it bends to the left and right, and goes up and down, through lovely forests and past bodies of water, large and small. The forests eventually gave way to shorter, scruffier growth and marshy areas that reminded us a great deal of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. MN-200 ended at US-2 and we merged on headed southeast to Duluth, Minnesota 52 miles away.

The roads were generally very good, with smooth, quiet surfaces, and we rolled along at 55 MPH except for the occasional idiot who seems unconcerned about pulling out in front of a 41,000 pound vehicle traveling fast enough to turn their sub-compact into a splotch on the highway. No, we didn’t hit anyone, but one of the things I do not like is having to suddenly get on the brakes. Buses do not stop quickly (in a short distance) when traveling at highway speeds. I know that–and I generally try to drive very, very defensively–but I have no control over what other motorists do, and I find in particular that it is not always possible to anticipate what a stupid/oblivious person might do next. One or my other pet bus peeves?; drivers who wait until the passing lane is about to run out and then decide to try to get around you. One &%$*(#! did that to me today and he ended up facing oncoming traffic. I am not going on the shoulder and risking putting a 41,000 pound bus in the ditch for someone that stupid. I did not encounter the most common peeve situation today, however, as it involves entrance ramps on limited access highways; people who don’t get up to speed and pay not attention to the traffic that is already on the highway and into which they are required to merge, i.e., get up to speed and blend in.

BTW: The weather today was almost perfect; blue skies with lots of white puffy clouds (enough to create plenty of shaded areas on the highway) and afternoon temperatures in the low 70’s.

Paul had told us to just stick with US-2 east and we would soon find ourselves in Wisconsin, and so it was. As you approach the northwest corner of Duluth MN-194 splits off to the left and US-2 goes to the right. Signs make it very, very clear that trucks are to use US-2 to get into, around, or through Duluth; they are NOT to get on MN-194. One of the interesting things about driving an motorhome that’s really a commercial bus, is there are times when you are not a truck (such as highway weigh scales), and other times when you are, such as any road situation that involves height, width, length, or weight restrictions. Toll roads are a toss up; some go only by axles, thus treating you like a commercial semi, while others have special fares for RVs and the things they tow. Also, if you have a Jake Brake (we don’t) local noise ordinances prohibiting their use apply to you the same as they do to commercial vehicles. If you don’t believe it, try using yours.

US-2 takes you to I-35 south of Duluth. From I-35 you travel a couple of miles north and onto the Bong bridge which takes you into Wisconsin, or 10th state. It’s a fairly high bridge, but an easy one to drive over (sorry Nick).

The drive on US-2 across northern Wisconsin was a bit tedious. The road is rough and noisy in a lot a places, and each town you go through seems to stretch out along the highway for miles and requires you to drive 30 or even 25 MPH. It will be nice to be back in Michigan where speed limits are almost universally ignored.

We arrived at the Wisconsin/Michigan border around 3:15 PM CDT, returning to our state of origin. As advertised, we found Curry Park right where it was supposed to be, and it was open for business and mostly empty. We spotted a pull-through site with good ingress and egress and made pulled in. It appeared to be an electric only site, so Linda filled out the form and put the required $15 in the envelope. Turned out that it was full-hookup site, which is $20 per night and the camp host came around later to collect the extra $5. Even though we only needed the electrical hookup, we were not about to move.

Our neighbors on either side appeared to be off doing whatever it is RVers do in the late afternoon, so we ran our generator for a while to at least bulk charge the house batteries before switching to shore power. Linda went for a walk around the park and I put the finishing touches on the blog posting for yesterday while keeping an eye on our batteries.

We have to be very thoughtful about how we use the coach and its various (electrical) systems when we only have a 20A electrical connection. Not cooking dinner avoids having to use power, so Linda (the smartphone/Google queen) found a well-reviewed restaurant in town that was a four block walk from the park on the same side of US-2, and had pizza on the menu; Federico’s MIKES. Winner. Well, maybe. Since we don’t eat dairy products we order our pizza withOUT cheese. That is guaranteed to get some strange looks and even questions, and the outcome is always a bit of a gamble. (We had a fabulous vegan pizza in the Black Hills of South Dakota back in June but we have had others that just were not very good.) The waitress took our order—16” thin crust, no cheese, with onions, mushrooms, olives (black and green), and pineapple—and a young man in the kitchen who obviously loved making pizza threw himself into the task. He even came out part way through our meal to see if we liked it. We did, and we told him so. We saved a few pieces for lunch on the road tomorrow as it will be another travel day for us, boxed it up, and walked back to the park.

Tomorrow we have another travel day, and then plan to stay put for a couple of nights before our final leg back to the house.

2013_08_02 (Fri) To Hibbing And Back

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The west is high, dramatic, stunning, stark, “gorgeous”, awe-inspiring, etc. It is also dry, hot, and barren in many places. Northern Minnesota and the Great Lakes Region in general, are beautiful, wooded, lush, green, cooler, and wetter. Not as good for the sinuses, but every place has its tradeoffs.

We fired up the generator at 0630 CDT to recharge the house batteries after using them all night to run the refrigerator, auxiliary air-compressor, and any small miscellaneous loads that were still on. I always like to bring them back up to full charge, and I have been determining that by waiting until the remote control/display shows that the charger has gone into “float” mode. Yesterday I figured out how to find the State Of Charge (SOC) meter, so I can now monitor directly the SOC of the battery bank.

One of the outside buses…This must be the place!

Since Paul and Sharon offered to let us remain boondocked at the winery beyond the normal 1-day Harvest Host period we decided to drive the car to Hibbing, Minnesota to visit the Greyhound Bus Museum. I have wanted to visit this museum for a while but Hibbing, quite frankly, is not really on the way to anywhere. Besides the museum Hibbing is home base to the Hull Rust Mohoning iron ore mine, largest open-pit mine in the world. Up the road at Tower is an underground state park that houses an advanced physics laboratory where scientists are catching quarks.

The Greyhound Bus Museum, Hibbing, MN.

The drive to Hibbing took 2 ½ hours. We spent two hours at the museum. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but we felt like we more than got our monies worth for the $5 adult admission. The museum is housed in a nice building with seven buses inside, a nice display of Greyhound artifacts, and lots of information about the origin and development of Greyhound, specifically, and bus transportation in the U.S. more generally. They have another six buses or so in a fenced lot behind the building. Most of the buses are open so you can go inside them. Here are some photos:

They started with a Hupmobile.

The museum has lots of model buses.

An early route map. It didn’t take long for the business to expand beyond Hibbing.

Uniforms for drivers came early and changed over the years.

A 1956 PD4501 Scenic Cruiser. This is the iconic Greyhound Bus.

A DD 8V71 with numbered parts and a key.

The Detroit Diesel 8V71 series engines are pre-computer control machines and are still in operation today.

(See http://www.technomadia.com ; they have just had theirs rebuilt and have reported on the experience.)

All of the inside buses lined up in a row, oldest to newest, far to near.

The lobby features an old time ticket office diorama.

An MCI MC-12 that operated in Canada. I have never seen an MC-12 converted into an RV.

An MCI MC-5 specially made for use in Saudi Arabia. Note the double roof. Its purpose was to “shade” the main roof and dissipate heat to help keep the interior cooler.

A pair of 1947 ACF Brill buses in a terminal mockup.

Greyhound used Yellow Coach buses in the 30’s and some ACF buses, but eventually used GMC buses (many different models) until GM stopped making them in the 1970’s. Somewhere along the line Greyhound started using MCI buses (MC-5, 7, 9, 12, and later 96- and 102- series) and over the years bought and used a lot of them. The MC-5 and MC-9 were particularly popular with bus converters. Commercial converters, like Custom Coach in Ohio, also did MC-9, as well 102- series, conversions.

An Eagle Chassis and Complete Bus.

Greyhound also ran Eagle coaches. These became popular with some do-it-yourself motorhome converters because, unlike the GMC buses, the skin was non-structural and could more easily be removed and replaced. The chassis (skeleton in picture) was made of mild steel, so it was easy to cut and weld to replace rusted pieces or make modifications. The problem with mild steel, of course, is that is very prone to rust.

A Caterpillar 170 ton mine hauler with 10.5 ft diameter tires. They also make a 240 ton with 13 ft diameter tires. I don’t feel as bad now about replacing the 315/80R22.5 Michelins on our rig.

The Hull Rust Mohoning Mine Visitor Center is just a mile up the same little road that leads to the bus museum so we drove up there. To get to the visitor center we drove through a city park that had nice shaded RV electrical hookups. It was empty except for one tent. We saw the same thing Wednesday evening in Buffalo, North Dakota; a nice little city park with nine RV sites with electrical power, and it was empty. These parks seem to run $15/night, cheaper by the week or month. Not that we would want to stay that long, but the price is right for what you get, especially if there are things you want to do in the area. The challenge is finding these facilities.

The 2,200 HP 16 cylinder Cat engine that moves the mine hauler.

The wheels on the mine haulers are driven by electric motors. The Caterpillar power module consists of a 2,200 HP 16 cylinder turbo-charged diesel engine that drives an electric alternator (the large cylinder lower left in photo) and a radiator and cooling tank. The power module with radiator, as shown, weights 28,000 pounds. In operation it burns 28 gallons of diesel fuel per hour. The hauler can reach a top speed of 30 MPH while carrying 170 or 240 tons of mined material. I think the 6 MPG we get from out bus is pretty good!

A small portion of a big hole in the ground, currently about 600 feet deep.

We spent about 45 minutes at the mine looking at the equipment displays and the big hole in the ground. Our GPS says it’s a huge lake, and at one time it had water to a depth of 325 feet, but it is still an active mine and they pumped most of the water out so they could work. Part of the original town of Hibbing had to be moved because of this mine, and it was the split into two pieces that led to the formation of the business(es) that became Greyhound Bus Lines and successor companies.

Hibbing is also the home town of Bob Dylan so Linda pulled up some information about his childhood home on her smartphone. It was supposed to be at 7^th Avenue E (Bob Dylan Avenue) and 21^st St., but we could not locate the house. On the drive up and back we passed through Grand Rapids (Minnesota, of course) and discovered that it was the birthplace of Judy Garland. Everybody is from somewhere.

An interesting note about Hibbing and the mine; if you look at the Minnesota state highway map and peruse the area around Hibbing, you will see brown lines that demarcate the boundaries of the three watersheds that are found in Minnesota, namely: the Mississippi River, the Atlantic (via Great Lakes / St. Lawrence Seaway), and the Hudson (Bay). About two miles NNW of the mine visitor center and viewing area is the point, unique in North America, where these three watershed boundaries meet. Depending on exactly where a raindrop falls, it will end up in one of three very different places (assuming it doesn’t evaporate and soak into the ground).

[18 L We were parked next to this aspen grove while at Forestedge Winery, a most appropriate name for the place.]

We were parked next to this aspen grove while at Forestedge Winery, a most appropriate name for the place.

We got back to Forestedge Winery before they closed and sampled some of their Plum wine, which we had somehow missed yesterday. Sharon had left for Iowa for her mother’s 93^rd birthday so we invited Paul to dine with us and he accepted. Linda made a nice salad and a Farro dish with sun-dried tomatoes, kale, onion, garlic, and Italian seasonings. Paul brought a bottle of Headwaters Red wine, his rhubarb and chokecherry blend. The meal was yummy, the wine was just right, and the conversation went on for quite a while. This is one of the reasons we retired and decided to hit the road. It isn’t just about spectacular scenery and historically interesting places; it’s about encounters with spectacular and interesting people. Thank you, Paul and Sharon, for your hospitality.

2013_08_01 (Thu) A Short Drive And A Winery

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Jasper on the couch.

We only had 168 miles to travel today to get from Red Trail Vineyards in Buffalo, North Dakota to the Forestedge Winery in Laporte, Minnesota so we were in no particular hurry to leave. I was up by 7 AM, however, so I could turn the generator on and top up the house batteries before we hit the road. I also wanted to add air to the driver-side front tire as I noticed yesterday when I checked the Pressure Pro Tire Pressure Monitoring System that it was starting to read a little lower than I would like.

Juniper by the windshield.

Since I was up I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the property to replace the ones I inadvertently did not take yesterday and updated yesterday’s blog post with a few of them. I also took some pictures of our two cats, Jasper and Juniper, who have been with us on this whole trip, but have not received the attention they deserve in this blog.

Adding air to the tires accurately, however, requires that they are cold and all at the same temperature. It also requires the main engine to be running to get the air tanks up to 120 PSI. We were parked facing north, and by the time I got around to this task the passenger-side tires were already reading 5-6 PSI higher than the driver-side due to the heat of the morning sun.

I checked the pressure in the driver-side front tire with my tire gauge, and it was reading 110.5 PSI. This was adequate, but the lower limit of what I want to run, and at least 3 PSI lower than the passenger-side tire. I hooked up the air hose and chuck to the auxiliary air fitting in the driver-side front bay and tried to raise the pressure in the tire. In spite of the manifold gauge reading 120 PSI, all I managed to do was lose a few PSI from the tire. Although the tires have held their pressure fairly well, they have lost a little bit over the course of our trip. It has become very clear to me that we need to travel with an auxiliary air compressor that is capable of producing at least 150 PSI at the air chuck if we are to have any ability to adjust tire pressures while away from home.

We pulled out of the Red Trail Vineyard around 9:15 AM and continued east on I-94 towards Fargo, ND and Morehead, MN. Just three miles shy of the border, detoured south on I-29 for ½ miles and exited to go to the Pilot / Flying J truck stop where we topped off the tank. They have air pressure lines at each pump, and I started to get the air hose, chuck, and gauge out but decided not to. We have had our PP-TPMS longer than we have had the bus, and in general it works quite well. It has one major downside, however, namely, that the “baseline” pressure for each tire is determined by whatever pressure is in the tire at the time the tire pressure sensor is threaded onto the valve stem. Had I removed the sensor at the truck stop, added air, and reinstalled the sensor, it would have reestablished the baseline pressure at a value that was way too high due to the tire already being hot from being driven 35 miles on I-94. Later, when the coach sat overnight and the tires cooled off, it would have given us a “low tire” alarm, which would have been annoying. Newer competitive products have addressed this issue by making the baseline pressure something the user programs into the receiver. The other major downside to the PP-TPMS sensors is that the batteries are not user replaceable. At some point they will stop working and have to be replaced at a cost of $35-$50 each. At that point, we will probably just buy a different system with programmable baseline pressures and user replaceable batteries.

Minnesota, our 9th state on this journey.

We returned to I-29 north to I-94 east and crossed into Minnesota, our ninth state (including Michigan) since we left in early June. We had a very pleasant and uneventful drive through very pretty country; the best kind. Eastern Minnesota was a combination of green rolling crop lands, lovely lakes and ponds, and northern mixed forests. Our route was I-94 to MN-336 to US-10 to MN-34 to MN-64, and the roads were all very good except for a short stretch of MN-34 with seams at regular, and annoying short, intervals. The bus ran very well, and the transmission even behaved the way I think a transmission should, shifting between gears on hills as needed with the cruise control set and no intervention from me. This primarily occurred on stretches of MN-34 and MN-64 where the speed limit was 55 MPH. Apparently the transmission is willing to drop out of D into 4 (or at least out of torque converter lockup) when climbing hills, something it does not do as often when I am cruising at 62-64 MPH.

The one thing I noticed on this trip was the auxiliary air system pressure gauge I had installed in the cockpit was indicating that the system would reach 120 PSI and then fairly quickly bleed down to about 105 PSI and then re-pressurize to 120 PSI, over, and over, and over… At the same time the primary and secondary tank gauges indicated that these tanks were holding 120 PSI until I applied the brakes.

Entrance to Forestedge Winery near Laporte, MN.

We arrived at the Forestedge Winery around 1:00 PM, pulled around back per Paul Shuster’s e-mailed instructions, got the car unhooked, and got the bus parked and leveled. We went over and introduced ourselves to Paul. He was busy serving wine to potential customers, so we went back to the coach and had a bite of lunch. We then went for a stroll around the property and worked our way back to the tasting room, where we were able to sample most of his wines.

This driveway goes behind the winery, which is where we parked.

Paul and Sharon have a very nice operation in a beautiful setting at the edge of the Paul Bunyan State Forest, and across the road from Lake Benedict. It’s a tourist/vacation/recreation area, and there was a good flow of traffic through the winery. There is a nicely gardened sitting area outside and besides tasting and purchasing bottles, you can buy a glass of wine and sit outside and drink it.

Our coach and car parked by their Bluebird next to the forest.

Forestedge makes only “fruit” wines, and has 13 or 14 products. Although grapes are obviously fruit, this label is used to indicate wines made from any other fruit than grapes. (Mead, of course, is wine made from honey.) They started with only rhubarb, and their rhubarb is still grown on the property, but their offerings now include raspberry, strawberry, cranberry, blueberry, chokecherry, black currant, apple, and pear in addition to rhubarb, as well as blends of some of these. We sampled most of these, and purchased some of the white cranberry, blueberry, chokecherry, black currant, plum, and rhubarb/blueberry. We won’t be able to do this at every Harvest Host location where we stop, but Paul and Sharon are also members of the FMCA Freethinkers chapter which Linda and I belong to, so there was an additional connection here. Besides, we liked their wines! And we decided early in our trip that we were going to purchase wines as our major travel “souvenirs.” We can enjoy them while traveling, or once we return home, but eventually they are gone and we don’t have to find a long-term place for them in the house.

I finally shut the generator off around 3:30 PM. I did not let it run long enough this morning to bring the batteries back up to full charge. In generally it is not good for the batteries to only be partially recharged so I wanted to make sure I did so this afternoon.

The tasting room, art gallery, and patio.

The weather here was wonderful; blue skies with puffy white clouds and temperatures in the mid-70’s. We are parked behind a winery, alongside what appear to be a grove of white birch (paper birch) trees, in view of orchards and gardens. This is no part of this not to like. While I was resting outside in one of our folding campchairs a Bald Eagle soared overhead.

The tasting room and patio looking towards their house.

Paul invited us for dinner, so we had to explain “the vegan thing.” Sharon rose to the challenge, making a green salad with fresh picked greens from her own garden, zucchini and onions sautéed in olive oil, and black beans and rice accompanied by their own Raspberry Rhubarb wine. We had a long, great conversation over this meal, including some tips on what to see and on our visit to Hibbing, MN tomorrow. As we left their house to return to our coach his final words for the evening were to not be surprised if we heard wolves howling. We can only hope.

2013_07_31 (Wed) Our First Full Month On The Road (revised)

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Although we left S. E. Michigan on June 9^th, today was the last day of our first full calendar month on the road. And what better place to spend it than at the Red Trail Vineyard near Buffalo, North Dakota, the first time/place we have (finally) used our Harvest Hosts membership. But to get there, we had to travel 290 miles from Medora, ND along I-94.

North Dakota is a very pretty place; not as dramatic as the mountain west, but different doesn’t mean lesser. They have had a lot of rain in parts of the state, so the fields are green and ponds seem to be full to overflowing. On a map I-94 appears to run straight east and west, but it actually curves left and right quite a bit and for most of this leg was rolling up and down long hills. As we headed east from Medora the rugged landscape of western ND gave way to major agricultural use and man-made structures became increasingly evident. I-94 was a good road with very little construction, so I set the cruise control at 63 to 64, and the bus ran strong all day. Good bus.

The entrance to Red Trail Vineyard, Buffalo, ND – a Harvest Hosts location.

The Red Trail Vineyard is two miles north of exit 317 on I-94. Just north of the winery is where the original/historic Red Trail passed through this area, thus the name of the winery. Proprietor Rodney Hogan was there when we arrived but had to go take care of some things. We got parked so that we would have an easy exit in the morning, started the generator to bring the house batteries back up to full charge, and then went for a walk through the vineyards.

Our coach in the parking lot of the main building and tasting room.

When Rodney returned we chatted with him a bit. He suggested we visit the town of Buffalo and gave us a pamphlet on the 1916 high school building that is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He recommended a place in town to eat, the Old 10 Saloon, and invited us back for a wine tasting at 7 PM since another group had made arrangements for this evening.

The main building and tasting room.

We paid a visit to the old high school building and met the two ladies who run it on a volunteer basis. They were expecting us (Rodney told them we might be dropping by). They have a collection of donated things for sale as a way to raise money for the continued restoration of the building, but we didn’t find anything we could use. They also had fresh cucumbers and Linda took two. They were free, but we left a donation. They gave us a pamphlet with a map of Buffalo and descriptions of some 16 buildings dating from between 1880 and 1920, all of historic interest to the town. We drove through the town and looked at the buildings, but did stop at the saloon for dinner as that rarely works out well for us.

The front porch looking towards the north vineyard.

Back at the vineyard, Linda prepared a simple green salad and whole grain shell pasta with portabella mushroom and onion red sauce. By the time we finished dinner the other party had arrived, so we joined them in the tasting room. The building is an old grain storage shed that was moved to the vineyard from 12 miles away and then redone for its present use. The surface of the “bar” is pine and Rodney has engraved a copy of old map of the Red Trail into the surface.

A walk among the south vineyard.

We spent two hours tasting five different wines and having a really fun evening talking with Rodney and the three ladies who were there, all of whom graduated from high school here in 1979. One of them was related to Rodney, which is why he opened the tasting room on a night when they would normally be closed. Rodney was an interesting and talkative fellow. We found two wines that we liked and bought a few bottles. We were glad that Kim and Don Greene, the owner/operators of Harvest Hosts had personally recommended this vineyard as a stopping point when we were chatting with them back in Gillette, WY six weeks ago.

(BTW: I had no pictures to share from today. We were off-loading photo files last night onto our computers and forgot to put the CF card back in the camera. I have never done that before, and apparently the Sony Alpha 100 is perfectly happy to let you click away with any storage media installed. I took some photos the next morning but have updated this post to include them here.)

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Category Archives: RV-Travel

2013_10_07-10 (M – R) Wrap-up and Re-load

2013_10_04 (F) Craftsmen & Gamesmen

2013_10_03 (R) The Sound of Music

2013_09_28-30 (S,N,M) Gone Fish’in

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

2013_09_22 (Sun) Until We Meet Again

2013_09_21 (Sat) Autumnal Equinox

2013_09_20 (Fri) Techs and Trains

2013_09_18 (Wed) Under A Harvest Moon

2013_09_17 (Tue) To Goshen We Go

2013_09_16 (Mon) Home Away From Home

2013_09_15 (Sun) A Re-tired Travel Day

2013_09_14 (Sat) Ready, Set, No Go

2013_09_12 (Thu) A Crowning Achievement

2013_09_08 (Sun) All Ham, All Day

2013_09_01-04 Driveway Success, Raspberries, And Old Friends

2013_08_31 (Sat) Our New Online Home

2013_08_29Av01 (Thu) Moving Our Domain

2013_08_18 (Sun) Every Rally Has An End

2013_08_17 (Sat) BTTB Rally – Day 3

2013_08_16 (Fri) BTTB Rally – Day 2

2013_08_15 (Thu) Back To The Bricks Rally – Day 1

2013_08_14 (Wed) No Way To Start An RV Outing

2013_08_06 (Tue) Back Home (For Now)

2013_08_05 (Mon) A Quiet, Easy Day

2013_08_04 (Sun) Return to Tiki

2013_08_03 (Sat) Across The Northern Tier

2013_08_02 (Fri) To Hibbing And Back

2013_08_01 (Thu) A Short Drive And A Winery

2013_07_31 (Wed) Our First Full Month On The Road (revised)