RV Surplus Store, Elhart, IN-Thanks Tom and Nan for the Tip!

Rick and Debbie arrive with their little pop-up

Friday, May 14, I slept like the dead through the rain storm. Bob had to close the window on my side of the bed. The low is 51 this morning. It is sunny and clear when I get up at 7:30. I make Rice Krispy Treats and Waldorf Jell-O Salad from Joanna Flukes "Sugar Cookie Mystery" (Thanks Elaine for turning me onto her books.)

Bob surfs the Net for RV and wheel places so we can repair all of our stuff from yesterday's debacle. Thankfully we don't have to pack up and move today-that sure feels good. After noon we take 120 west all the way through Elkhart enjoying this beautiful drive past the St. Joseph's River. It is dammed up and reminds us of Lake Austin. We get to Hwy 19 on the west side of Elkhart but the Camping World Bob found on the Internet is not there. Some other RV place is on the sign but it is out of business too. There's a lot of that going on in this economically depressed area.

Bob and Rick find a level spot

So we do a bat turn to the place just north where they are selling Landmark RVs. A guy directs us (in a very long-winded way) to RV Surplus located where loop 19 turns east on the north side of town. In spite of his directions we find it! Nan-Marie and Tom told us about this place. They found their coffee table that we admired so much here. We spot one that we're interested in while we browse. We take measurements of it to see if it will work where we want to store it. We find no sewer extensions or wheel hub-caps, or chocks or jack motor.

We backtrack west around the corner, across the street to another place-Factory RV Supply. Voila! They have Rhino extension kits. We get two 5-foot kits for $11.95 each. One was marked $18.95 as that package was never opened but they give them both to us for the lower price. They don't have any of the other items we're looking for but we're pleased to have our hose. Now we can have long showers tonight!

Success!

Next we go east on 19 where we find Bristol Cafe, established 1968, and a cheap, good lunch. Ham Salad on wheat and Ham 'n Bean Soup for me. Bob has a Philly Cheese. Then we take Main Street south of US 20 to Discount Tire. The guy can't tell from Bob's picture of the wheel hub which one he needs to order. So we give up and head home at 2:45.

We have a voice message from Debbie at 1:38 (I didn't hear the phone in my purse.) They are hitting the road today after all. I try her cell phone and then finally reach her on Rick's phone. She got a nap in after work so they are headed out toady and are around Sandusky as we speak. How fun-we'll be seeing our new friends from Ohio last year soon.

First of several pink sunsets at Eby's Pines

Bob goes out to install our new sewer hose extension. Just one of the 5-footers reaches! I get the bugs off the front of the RV from our last three moves and squeegee the windows. Bob fishes the pond, catching 2 bass and 2 blue gill. I cut up veges and make Peppercorn Ranch Cheeseballs. It's 5:45 p.m. and 65 degrees with 33% humidity.

Rick calls from the office just before 6:00. They have arrived! Of course the gal in the office sends them down the wrong way just like she did us. As he swings around behind us he says "Your crap (bikes) is in the way!" He jockeys his sister Lynne's pop-up sideways in the site next to us down the hill. We help them set up and get level. Debbie is feeling poorly. Says it came on her during the trip and she was blaming the swaying of the camper on the back end.

I make a Rock Star Rootbeer vodka concoction for all of us. That may have been too much for Debbie. The guys get firewood from the pavilion and we decamp across the road where the only firepit is located.

Debbie crashes a half an hour before the rest of us at 11:00. I hope she gets to feeling better in the morning. It sure is great to see those guys.

Seems Like Friday the 13th!

Fishing Pond at Eby's Pines Campground, Bristol, IN

Thursday, May 13, I got up and perused recipes until 2:30 in the morning and made a grocery list. I couldn't sleep so I thought I might as well do something useful for our pending week of fun with our friends Rick and Debbie who will join us shortly from near Cleveland, OH. I finally passed out at 4:30 and slept until 8:30. It rained and stormed most of that time but I missed it. It is very unsettling to be here for perhaps a month (at least that's what we paid for) but to be still hitched up, uncertain about this site and have nothing unpacked.

We lounge on this gloomy morning and finally have breakfast around 10:00. We're both tired from moving two days in a row. The electricity is zilch here. Sixty seconds would not warm up a half of a cup of lukewarm coffee in the microwave. Usually that amount of time would boil a half of cup of anything. And the water heater, on electric mode, only got the water luke warm. I get on-line and pay bills and download the bank statements.

We clean up and stretch in spite of the bikes still being in the way in the living room. Then we walk to the office. We meet the owner Chris who asks if we're their new residents. Bob says "I guess so." So she asks us to move to Site #220 and says we can stay there for a whole month. We are all for it as we're hoping for better electric service. Besides, thanks to Bob's quick thinking last night, we are still hitched up on that terrible side-hill slope. We certainly don't want to have to try to re-hitch with that kind of an angle. So we tell her we'll walk over and check out site #220. First we meet Isabelle, a black, people-oriented poodle who fusses if you don't greet her warmly enough.

We walk back in the chilly air and decide the site looks good (just goes to show you, looks can be deceiving.) And we walk down the road to see what the turn is like to get to the lane behind us. Then we go home to pack up. You have to do all the same packing if you move 50 feet or 500 miles. It is scary to do it without our checklist. But we lock it down, pull out and circle around to two roads behind where we were. I hop out with the radio to make sure we clear the three electric wires strung over the road; no problem.

We're excited, thinking our problems are over--NOT. We pull into the site and it is more level on the front end than the other one we just left. But our curbside tires are on a tree root so we can't get the wheels on the other side up on enough boards to level the RV. And we can't go forward in the site because the sewer connection is way in the back. It won't reach even where we sit right now but we've been meaning to get a 10-foot extension for our new Rhino hose. We already have the storage tube as Bob put that on in Bastrop, TX, in December. We'll have to find an RV supply place--more on that later. And we can't move backwards because the bikes will be hanging out on the road.

So we study the situation for awhile. Bob says the best solution is to dig out in the soft sand under3r the curbside tires on the RV. So now the search is on for our little garden shovel that we carry just for such a purpose. We haven't seen it since we moved into our new RV. We used to know just where it was in the old RV. It is not in the side storage compartment of course--that would be too easy to get to. So we have to dig "downunder"--I say we loosely as Bob is the one who plays contortionist. It is a back-breaker to get the LaFuma reclining lawn chairs out of there with the truck still hitched up. And it is difficult to look in the drawers with the golf clubs in front of them. But he finds it AND we find the converter for the laptop that we needed in Goreville so we could drive to a hotspot with the truck and use the laptop without a plug-in. We thought we had put it in the Goodwill after our move to the new RV.

We put all of the stuff back downunder so we don't run over it if we ever get unhitched. We pull the RV off the blocks we tried to put it on. We mark the spot and Bob digs trenches under two wheels curbside. Then we pull back up on the blocks streetside, make some slight adjustments and Voila! We're level and in the site. Our problems are over right? Wrong!

We put the front jacks down and unhitch. We try the electric first and boil a cup of water in the microwave in the appropriate amount of time so at least that's better at this site. As Bob tries to lower the back jacks they don't move. The electric motor is completely locked up. As we left site #187 a bit ago, we both thought we smelled a funny odor; like a transformer burning. Yeah, that would be our rear stabilizer jacks motor. So we dig back downunder to find the manual crank. Bob actually comes up with the correct crank (we have manual cranks for all three slides too and are not familiar with any of them yet). But it won't budge even with the manual crank.

So I clean off my shoes again (the rain last night made it a sandy mess.) I put the large living room slide out a half of a foot so I can get the instruction sheet for the rear jacks. It says we have to disconnect one wire of the motor to avoid backlash. Bob can't get the motor loose as the gears are frozen. Meltdown! Us, not the motor. Bob declares "He is done." I'm not sure if he's done moving, done unhitching for the day, or done RVing!

The best plan seems to be to deal with the motor problem later. We take our chances putting out the slides (you're supposed to have the stabilizers down for that.) We set up the outside stuff. Then we consider shooting ourselves but instead we change clothes and head to lunch. When in doubt-EAT! We're tied from 426 miles in two days in the rain and then packing and moving again this morning. We are not happy campers. Whey couldn't that motor have one more raising and lowering in it and we wouldn't have to deal with it for a month!

We stop in the office on the way to lunch and they give us a new campground pass for the windshield with our new site number. I have to sign that I have read all of the campground rules. Geez! Chris directs us to a Jayco RV place. Maybe we can find a sewer hose extension and solve one of our problems even if we can't find a jack motor there.

We turn east on 120 out of the campground to Cty. Rd. 13 and stop at the BP on the corner where we get $61.00 worth of diesel ($3.47 tax is added on at the check out.) The pump price has fine print that says tax-exempt price. I get a South Bend Tribune and a guy in line if front of me says to take 13 south to US 20 and find Jayco. We do-first RV showroom with three RV repair bays we ever saw with no parts department! And we're smack dab in the middle of where every RV in the country is manufactured. Go figure. The gal behind the counter sends us to Middlebury on 13 to a Cargo place across from the Chevy dealer.

This turns out to be a fly-by-night flea market guy who has no Rhino hose connections but he did have some sewer stuff if we get desperate. We take US 20 to 33 south towards Goshen for lunch at Chili's. Our light breakfast has worn off after all of the excitement and we're getting cranky.

Thus fortified we stop in Wal-Mart on Chili's parking lot but find nada. On to Meijor's (I Googled for that this morning before all hell broke loose) since I have my middle of the night grocery list in hand. $138.00 later I have everything I need for all of my recipes I dug out.

There is construction on 33 so we take it south to Goshen and then take 15 north back to 120 east to the campground. Whew! It's 5:30 p.m. How did that happen? We unload the groceries. A bag of oranges and miscellaneous stuff falls out as we open the truck door but no harm done. I stow the groceries ending up with a capacity crowd in the refrigerator.

Bob chops the big tree root out from under the RV steps before we kill ourselves on it. Besides, he got to beat on it with a claw hammer. I was thinking about asking for a turn. Then he finds the right sized punch and was able to knock out the pin to get the jack motor free. Hallelujah! He cranks down our rear jacks manually. So of course we had to pull in all of the slides (making sure everything was clear again.) Then we start the levelling process from the beginning. Success! Over 24 hours after arriving here we can finally unpack. I can't live like this.

I'm putting out decor around 7:15 when Rick calls They are coming Saturday instead of Friday afternoon so Debbie can get some sleep after working her shift. Sounds like a good plan. Bob asks him to bring a BIG hammer so he can straighten out our Steadyfast footpad. Looking forward to seeing them both.

I carefully get some leftovers out of the crowded refrigerator without upsetting my delicate balance in there. We watch Flash Forward and The Mentalist. Oh yeah, we moved,so the antenna had to go down and the electricity was off so we head to rescan all of the channels-on both TVs. Geez!

It's 8:53 p.m. The sun came out around 1:00 and it got really warm; muggy in fact. Some days are better than others in the RV lifestyle. The neighbor behind us comes down the road in their Hummer and barely misses the bikes on the back of our ladder rack. We'll have to move them tomorrow.

Movin' On to Bristol, IN

Wednesday, May 12, when I get up at 7:00 a.m. the front has already passed through. It is cloudy with light rain. The group of five leave between 7:15 and 7:30 in the rain! That seems crazy to arrive late last night and take off again so early. They must have a destination--perhaps a class reunion.

I have coffee and work off-line on February 2009 journal pages(yes, the rest of 2009 is still not posted on-line.) I finally get a connection and check Facebook and email. Bob gets up and looks at the weather. We decide to leave late morning and let the front get east of us. It looks like there's a clear spot behind us to the west. This is the second time in our new RV that we had a serious rain delay in the RV Park. Bob still hasn't had a chance to fish the pond here.

On our first time to stay hitched to the truck overnight our morning jpacking up is easy except for mud, wet and rain. The rain has subsided by the time we leave. I get out to make sure we clear the low-hanging overhead limbs. We try to stop at Marathon station on I-70 but they have no diesel (truck grade diesel but not the ultra-low sulphur we need.) So we pull a bat-turn to BP. We're the only one in the station and Bob wonders if people are boycotting them due to the oil platform explosion and continuing spill off the Gulf Coast. We put 21.5 gallons in our 26 gallon tank and head east on I-70 to the 435 loop around Indianapolis.

Construction signs say to "choose an alternate route; expect long delays on 435 north." But Bob makes a command decision to take our intended route around the northwest side of the city as we saw these same signs last year on our way west through Indianapolis. It turns out to be a good decision as most of the construction is complete and we encounter no delays. We pick up 31 north, the same route we took with our old RV when we came around the east side of Indianapolis a few years back on our way to South Bend, IN.

We stop for lunch again at Bob Evans in Kokomo. Now I can't get that crazy song out of my head. We park in the Mall lot behind Bob Evans and enjoy a nice lunch break. Then we continue north on 31. We get into a bit of rain but not too bad. This time we take US 20 east towards Elkhart (last time we went west to South Bend.) And we stay on US 20 to Hwy 15 north five miles to Bristol, IN, where we take 120 east for three miles to Eby's Pines RV Park and Campground, 14583 State Road 120, Bristol, IN 46507, Elkhart County, (574) 848-4583, N41 43.359' and W55 44.503'.

Sue in the office, who is new here, gives us site #187 that is available until June 1st, the day after Memorial Day. But we really want to stay a month. So we pay the monthly rate of $435 and stay hooked up to the truck again so we can work it out with Chris, the owner, in the morning. Sue sent us down the wrong way but we mange the sharp turns between the pines and get pulled in. We have to jockey and the truck is on a mighty slant. It may be hard to hitch back up so I'm thankful Bob had the presence of mind after our 200 mile journey to suggest we just stay hooked up until we see what the fall-out is tomorrow.

We are set up by 6:35 EST. We walk to the office and get two rolls of quarters and The Elkhart Truth. Then we take a walk around the campground. The Little Elkhart River, that is stocked with trout, rolls through the campground. There are hiking trails that connect to Bonneville Mill Park down the road. There is a fishing pond and two swimming pools with 340 sites. It's hard to believe they will all be full for Memorial Weekend as no one is here now. It is chilly as we walk around. It's 8:01 p.m. and 51 degrees with 74% humidity and plenty of daylight left in this time zone.