May 27, 2008

Yesterday we had another Bounder owner park next to us in our campground. I noticed they had the same modification to the discharge hose from the holding tanks and discovered they were this fantastic couple, George and Marge Pippin; we met at the Bounder Sedalia Rally in 2007. George had shared this modification with several of us at that rally and it sure makes it a lot easier to use and stow the dump hose.

Because the inside height of new motor homes has increased in the past few years, it is difficult for some to reach the ceiling vent controls. George also shared a tool that Marge uses and I made for Char. It is easier and safer than using a stool to reach the fan.

This is George at Sedalia in 2007 showing us the vent tool. Thanks, George, for the great help making our motor home more user-friendly.

May 23, 2008

Our advisor from Fleetwood called and asked us to meet with him and some repair people to discuss the water problem. They still were not able to find the cause. We met for about a half hour and they tried some of the things we discussed. Good news, the problem was a build up of calcium or lime or something in an elbow coming from the water heater. They cleaned that out and put on a new check valve and everything seems to work properly now. We will be able to tell better latter when we use the shower. Now we have our motor home again and are very happy to be in Michigan City with family.

May 21, 2008

Today I made a new power cord to use in the RV. The original cord is 25 foot long and I wanted an additional shorter one only about 4 foot long. It was easy to make when you have a nice shop like Bill’s to work in. Below is a picture of my new power cord lying in front of our Hughes Autoformer. For those who don’t know, an Autoformer is a device connected between the campground power box and the RV to boost the voltage when the power available is too low to safely operate the electric appliances in the motor home. It also is a surge protector. We needed it last summer and now with the shorter cord it will be easier to connect everything in the small basement compartment on our motor home.

We talked with our advisor at Fleetwood today. He said they completed the adjustment of the slide and it doesn’t need to be repainted. Also, they can see the water flow in the shower decrease but haven’t figured out what is causing it yet. Hopefully they will get it fixed and we will have our home back this week.

May 20, 2008

Today, we went shopping with my Mom. She found a sofa and chair she liked and ordered a new twin bed. We had a fun morning shopping and then went to Denny’s Restaurant for lunch. After lunch we stopped at Sears and Mom bought a new vacuum. It is self-propelled and lots easier for her to handle. Here are pictures of the new furniture.


In the evening, we went to Charlotte’s brother’s house for dinner. Bill and Jeanette had found some wild morel mushrooms and Jeanette grilled some steaks to go with them for dinner. WOW! What a fantastic dinner. We had not had morel mushrooms for over twenty years they were just as great as we remembered.



It would be wonderful if everyone could have family as terrific as Bill and Jeanette.

May 19, 2008

We are in Northern Indiana and having fun with family. We have been busy the last few days. Today, we took our motor home to the Fleetwood Factory for some repairs.

They will be looking at two problems that couldn’t be fixed at Lazy Days in Florida when we purchased our RV. The main slide needs adjusting and the hot water in the shower isn’t working properly. In the interim we are staying at our nephew, Todd’s, house. Thanks Todd. We really appreciate what you are doing for us.

Bill and Jeanette love to collect everything especially if it is old or of historic value. Bill and I put a plaque on his garage celebrating a historic fact about this location from the late 1800’s.

The plaque reads: “On this site in 1897 nothing happened.”

While we were doing this Char was helping Jeanette plant some flowers in the garden. One of Char’s favorite hobbies is to work in the garden. She loves to care for plants and watch them grow into bountiful vegetables and beautiful flowers. This was a real treat for her because she doesn’t get do much of this while on the road.

May 17, 2008

The camp host told us this morning to expect rain this afternoon and evening. How can that be possible on the day my cousin is getting married? He was wrong. The weather was nice with no rain and the sun came out to help make this day perfect. The temperature was an ideal 72 degrees. It was a great day for an outdoor wedding. We enjoyed a wonderful ceremony with a beautiful bride and handsome groom.

This is my cousin, Tony, and her new husband, Robin.

This is my cousin Tom and his wife Karla with our Uncle Russ (Tony’s Father).

This is my cousin Patty and her husband Pat with their two girls Natalie on the left and Leslie on the right with my Uncle Russ (Patty’s Father).

On the left is Tony’s son Mike, in the middle is my cousin Doug (Uncle Russ’s Son), on the right his son Zack.

Uncle Russ with Char and I.

It was nice to be able to see family we haven’t seen in many years. It is very nice to have a magnificent family spread across this great country but it is even better when you have the opportunity to get together and share with one another. Uncle Russ lives in Indiana, Tony and Robin live in Ohio, Doug also lives in Ohio, Pat and Patty live in Arizona and Tom and Karla live in Indiana. We traded information and promised to do a better job of keeping in touch.

May 16, 2008

We’ve had a good time at the Bounders of America Rally in Richmond, Indiana. There were 140 Fleetwood Bounders of varying ages and it’s nice that everyone has the same great taste in motor homes. The rally theme was “Boundering In The Spring”. Early May is still springtime therefore we had cool weather and rain. We parked on grass so the mud wasn’t bad.


There was entertainment two nights. On Wednesday we listened to three guys playing acoustical guitars and singing songs from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. This revived good memories for all.

On Thursday, we were entertained by a delightful family quartet, the Mossburg Strings. This is a group of brothers and a sister that play the violin and viola. They were fantastic. They played classical, patriotic, inspirational and pop music.


Here are a few more pictures from the rally.

The official rally photographer.

The BOA General Business Meeting.

The ice cream social.

Our new friends, Don and Betty Asendorf from Pennsylvania.

We met a lot of great people, had plenty of good food, great entertainment, informative seminars, the opportunity to meet with vendors for the latest and greatest gadgets and fixes for our motor homes and attended a wonderful seminar on health and wellness for people of all ages.

This morning, Charlotte’s brother, Bill, and his wife, Jeanette, surprised us by stopping at the Fairgrounds in Richmond where we are with our rally.

They have been touring Ohio with their Model T and were on the way home. They will be at the fairgrounds in August for a Model T Rally and Swap Meet and stopped to check out the facilities.

Because of all the rain the last few days, a few motor homes leaving this morning were having trouble getting out to the road. They were getting stuck in the wet grass and mud. Luckily, no one needed a wrecker. They used the coach jacks to raise the motor home and put boards under the wheels then move as far as possible and repeat the procedure. We left in the afternoon and didn’t have any trouble. There was a nice wind blowing and the area had dried up a little by the time we started on our way to Ohio.

Tonight we are at Alton RV Park in Alton, Ohio. This is a very clean and cozy park with only 35 sites. We had an escort to our site and short time later the camp host came to see if we needed help hooking up to the utilities. They really work hard to see their campers have a good experience.

They have this beautiful lilac tree growing near the office. It is almost as beautiful as the lady standing nearby. If you get close to the picture you can almost smell the intoxicating fragrance of lilac.

We will be here for two days so we can attend a wedding of Ray’s cousin in Grove City, Ohio near Columbus tomorrow. We look forward to a great day celebrating a marriage and visiting with family.

May 12, 2008

We are about 125 miles from the Bounder Rally. We can relax tonight, sleep late in the morning and still have easy drive tomorrow. We are excited about spending four days with friends, enjoying good food, learning new things about our motor home and seeing some of the modifications other Bounder owners have made to their homes.

Yesterday we decided not to drive yesterday because of strong winds and rain. We had a little wind damage at the park but nothing that affected us. Below you can see part of a tree was blown over onto one of the camping cabins.


Tonight we are at The Last RV Resort and Campground in Nashville, Indiana. Brown County and Nashville is a great area with lots of things to see and do so hopefully we will have a chance to come back. We can set in our motor home and look out at the dogwood trees. This is quiet place to relax with a great view.

I think this has become one of our favorite blooms.

Here you can see the trees surrounding our camping area. The road in front of our motor home leads into the trees for additional great camping experiences. The sites in the trees are smaller and I don’t think we would fit very well there. We are happy with our site, a pull-through that is an easy place to get in and out. The road through the trees is a nice walk so we can still enjoy the area.

May 10, 2008

The temperature was in the 70’s instead of the upper 80’s and it was a great day for driving. Tonight we are at Bluegrass RV Park in Franklin, Kentucky. After settling in, we took a leisurely walk around the campground.

We found an oversized chess set and thought about playing. Char was ready to start when we remembered we don’t know how to play. Oh well, it was nice to set and dream about winning the big game.

As we walked, we saw very large roses, dogwood, wild strawberries, dandelions and more. With exception of possible bad weather, May is a great time to be on the road.

The campground manager told us these are called dinner plate roses. The flowers are approximately 6” across and you can see Char’s small hand holding the rose for me.

Hopefully, everyone is taking a little time to enjoy the beauty around him or her.

May 9, 2008

Day 2, summer trip 2008. We started the day with coffee about 6:30 this morning. We watched the local news and discovered that 60 miles to the north in Montgomery, Alabama they had tornadoes during the night. We heard a little thunder but had no bad weather. We were a little nervous about the storms and decided to get a better update before continuing our trip north. Strong winds and severe storms are not very good for RV’s. We saw some of the wind and tornado damage as we went through Montgomery later in the morning.

As we were breaking camp, I found one of the front tires on the car was low and needed to get the air compressor out. It was around eight in the morning and I didn’t see many neighbors out yet so I decided to wait awhile before making a lot of noise. After completing the usual camp breaking tasks and airing the tire it was 9:00 and we decided to leave. It was a couple of hours later when Char checked the time and we learned we had changed time zones. It was actually 1 hour earlier than we had thought. Then we understood why our neighbors were not up and out like normal campers.

This afternoon we had a very friendly welcoming as we set up at the campground. A pair of ducks came calling and stayed until we gave them a small treat of bread. They stayed a while, then bowed their thanks and went searching for the next free snack.



After dinner we walked to the pond to see the rest of the ducks and geese. We saw two baby ducklings with their mom and a few geese.


We also saw some gourd birdhouses hanging high with lots of activity going on around them. We wondered if they had babies or were just setting up there new homes.


There are some new kittens here also. We weren’t fortunate enough to see them as we wandered around the campground. The campground owner told us about a path through the woods to a small creek. This sounded like our kind of walk. The path was a little rough and muddy from the recent rain, the mosquitoes were getting bad and the camera battery had just died and I didn’t have another with me, so we turned and went back to our camper. Hopefully, next time we will be better prepared for this kind of walk.

Today was a better day as we only drove a couple hundred miles and stopped early. This is the way we like to travel. We have time after stopping to enjoy the natural beauty and surroundings of the campground. It also feels good to go for a walk after driving for a few hours.

May 8, 2008

Finally, the day has arrived when we start our Summer Trip for 2008. We have been busy the last few days. We have double-checked everything. Sometimes we even double-checked everything twice. We are really excited about this trip. We plan to see people we haven’t seen for many years. We plan to spend time with our loved ones in Indiana and Colorado. We will enjoy our 2nd Fleetwood Bounder Rally where we will meet with new friends. Enough about what we will do. Let me tell you about today.

We left Ponderosa RV Park at 07:30 this morning. We headed North on the Florida Turnpike and I-75. Next we went west on I-10. We are traveling at the perfect time of year to see the wild flowers along the highway.

We saw miles of beautiful flowers. This beauty kept our new blog photographer busy for a good part of our drive. My talented partner, Char, took these great pictures.

This afternoon, we stopped at a rest area for a short break. We had been on the road for a few hours and needed to stretch our legs. While walking, we saw this magnificent motor home and matching towed Saturn. We stood and admired them for a few minutes. We thought how very lucky and blessed someone was to have this wonderful combination.

Then we realized this dream machine was ours. So we climbed in and headed to our final destination of the day, Ozark, Alabama.

Today we traveled 400 miles. We both agree this is a little much for us. We are going back to our 200 – 250 miles per day. Tomorrow our plan is to drive 220 miles. It will be nice to start our day driving between 9:00 and 10:00 instead of 07:30. For those of you wandering, yes, this is the good life we have been waiting for.