Saturday, September 10th - Another Travel Day

 Today we travelled from Hickory Hills Campground in Secor, IL to Camp Nauvoo in Nauvoo, IL. More on that later. First some more photos from Hickory Hills.

There are dozens of golf carts at the campground. During a walk this morning I saw several campsites that had multiple golf carts. The campground is pretty good sized, but its not to big to walk between the furthest spaced campgrounds.

The two photos below are of Campsite #13, the one mentioned in the For Sale flyer, asking price $22,500. Everything looked to be in good shape. The camper appears to be about the same size as the one we had.

I bet the screened porch gets a lot of use.

Further along my morning walk I went down by a small lake and looked back up at several sites that looked out over the lake.

Up near the shore the water in the lake looked crystal clear,  The photo below is of the campsites along the other shore.

Todays trip was 140 miles. Our Garmin GPS wanted to route us up through Galesburg, IL, which was ridiculous. I also didn't like the route shown my Google Maps. It is easier to tweak the Google Maps route and I did so. Our Garmin unit is for RV's and supposedly gives you the best route for an RV. It seems to heavily favor keeping you on Interstates, even if the route is longer and takes more time.

We stayed on US24 to Peoria, took I74 & I474 around/through Peoria and then took IL116 out of Peoria. To get from IL116 to IL94 we (Kathy) drove down 12 miles of country road. The pavement surfaces along the entire route varied from 3 miles of the county road signed as being bumpy (but not horrible) to excellent. Traffic was minimal. We have driven MANY 12 mile stretches of Interstate that were FAR worse that the 12 miles of county road we drove on today. The route we took saved us over 20 miles and was almost 30 minutes quicker than Garmin's route.

Parked at Camp Nauvoo. Not a lot of room between campsites but there is no one on either side of us. I think this is the first campground during the trip were we had a nice level concrete pad. Full hook up, 50 amp, sites, $32/night.

Some of these "tiny houses" are supposed to sleep up to six. They rent for $110/night. 

There is supposed to be a washer, $1.50/load, in the ladies shower area (very sexist) and a dryer that is free. There is some playground equipment and area around the campground for nice walks.

To get here you drive through the Nauvoo State Park. It also has some campsites. The road through the park needs some tree trimming. Low hanging branches drug across our roof (nothing serious) several times.

Weather was okay, but to warm/humid for us. The high was 84 and it was somewhat humid. It just started to rain, 9:40 PM. The rain is to continue through most of the night and cool things down. From the looks of the grass they need rain.

We did see quite a few acres where the corn has already been picked/harvested. That was a first.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.
 

Thursday & Friday, September 8th & 9th - Travelling Day

 Thursday - Mom treated Kathy and I to lunch at one of the Mexican restaurants in Coldwater. The food was good, the lunch portions were huge and the prices were great. Kathy looks tired, she probably was.

The water bladder I ordered from Amazon came yesterday. I knew we were getting low on water so I "tested" it. I went down to my brothers, unfolded the bladder on top of the Flex, and filled it up. Back at Mom's I parked by the coach and used a hose to connect the bladder to the coach water tank. Actually I did this prior to our going to Coldwater for lunch. While in Coldwater I bought a small, drill driven pump at Home Depot. When we arrived back at the coach 15-20 gallons had gravity drained into the coach tank. I hooked up the pump and quickly transferred the remainder. Gravity works, if you have all day, but the pump is the way to go. I refolded the bladder and it is back in its 10x13 shipping envelope.

Later in the afternoon Mom and I went back to Coldwater to visit my Uncle Don and his wife Jan. Don was one of my Dad's brothers-in-law. He was married to my Aunt Norma. She died at a young age, late 30's, early 40's, after they had moved to Texas. After he retired he returned to the Coldwater area. He married Jan many years ago.

Friday - We left Mom's around 9:30 this morning. To get to Secor, IL both Google Maps and my Garmin GPS route you down the Indiana Toll Road, through the south side of Chicago. We didn't want to do that. We took I69 down to US24 in Fort Wayne and stayed on US24 all the way to the campground, 274 miles. I remain convinced that pavement surfaces on US highways are FAR, FAR better than the Interstates. It may take a little longer, but it adds interest to drive through some small towns along the way. There are bypasses around the larger towns. We even drove on a small section signed as part of the original Route 66.

We stopped at the parking lot for a "decommissioned" school in Reynolds, IN and ate lunch. The building is now owned, and used, by the town. There is a church in one end of it.

There are lots of windmills in the area. If you look closely you may be able to pick out a blade of one just left of the sign and another just left of the tree in the center of the photo.

Then it was on to Hickory Hill Campground. There are LOTS of park type units here. There was a sign on the outside of the office, "Site 13 For Sale, Asking $22,500". I didn't walk over to see it, it was quite a ways to it. Photos on the flyer indicated that you were buying a site and a camper of some type.

Sites are fairly closely spaced, but I don't think that is a problem for the more permanent campers. As I walked around the campground I ran across several on going "parties" where chairs were even out in the roadway.

A 60ish lady from North Carolina owns the coach on the left side of the above photo. She is on her way back from a month in Alaska. She and her husband signed up for the trip before COVID struck. He died unexpectedly and she decided to go anyway. She picked up a cousin in MN. They joined up with 25 other coaches in Coeur d' Alene, ID and headed north. Coeur d' Alene to Denali Park is 2,400 miles, several hundred miles further than we have driven our coach during this trip.. The 25 coaches didn't necessarily travel together in a caravan but they all stayed in the same campgrounds every night. 

While we were sitting outside tonight the guy across the street was working on a shelter for his 5th wheel unit.

Playground equipment, a pool (closed for the season), a putt putt golf course, shuffle board courts, horse shoe pits, etc available for entertainment.

I'm not sure what there might be to do/see around here. Right now I think the place is great for an overnight stay, $40 for a full hookup. I would stay here again if we needed to overnight in the area.

Kathy is taking full advantage of the full hookup. She has already done 4 loads of laundry and still has one to go.

Weather was a little toasty today, high mid 80's, its still 70 at 9PM. We turned the AC on when we arrived and probably will let it run all night. Sure not looking forward to the mid/high 80's forecast for our return to Centertown. We both have Doctor's appointments on the 20th or we might consider heading north instead of south when we hit the Mississippi.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

Wednesday, September 7th - Day 69 - More Work on Slide Drive

 Kathy met up with two of her sisters, who live in NW Ohio, today and they attended the funeral of one of their cousins, in Bryan, Ohio. She also picked up some stuff at Meijer's on her way back.

I spent the majority of the day trying to get the faulty slide fully "parked". It should have been easy but.....

The lever you see in the photo below was originally fully encased in a rubber boot. You are supposed to move it CCW to release the brake that locks the slide in place whenever the motor is not running. Today's work should have been simple. Release the brake, put a crescent wrench on the tube shaft that rotates and moves the slide in and out, rotate the shaft until the slide was parked correctly against the coach wall and move the lever back to lock the slide in place. I cut the rubber boot off the motor and no matter what I did the brake would not release.

I removed the unit from the coach. I thought that maybe when the gearbox broke loose from the frame the gears might have been damaged, and that they locked in place. 

The gears looked OK.

I removed the end of the motor to see what I could learn about the brake/locking system. I could not loosen the 4 screws in the black disc, so further disassembly wasn't possible. I think that the black disc with the slot in it is kind of like a brake rotor. There must be an electromagnet inside this assembly that disengages the brake when current is applied to the motor.

As I continued to fool around with the unit I knew I had to missing something. I kept wondering about the "dimples" in the lever, and the recessed spaces in the motor housing. Bottom line ended up being that when the lever is rotated the "dimpled" areas are supposed to move the lever away from the housing. That pulls the pin in the center up, which releases the rotor so that it can rotate. At some time in the past the lever on this assembly had been enough so that it didn't pull the center pin up when it was rotated. Wedging a screwdriver bit under the lever caused the brake to unlock. 

I reinstalled the drive unit, manually retracted the slide to its parked position and reset the brake. I'm not 100% comfortable that the longer bolts I threaded into the broken gear box lugs won't break off the rest the the lug when we are going down the road. I locked a pair of vise grips on the tube that functions as a drive axle to minimize the possible amount it can rotate should the gearbox break loose again.

I emailed Lippert, the manufacturer, (the same company that took many weeks to deliver our trailer axles) to find out if I can buy a new unit from them.

Weather here has been great. We did run the generator for a couple of hours each of the first two nights we were here, so that we could run the AC. The night before last I was much closer to running the furnace than the AC. Todays high was 76 and tonights low is forecast to be 52 degrees. Our kind of weather.

We are still learning about the capacities of our holding tanks. Tonight we both took our 6th showers (quickie showers - turn on the water, get wet, shut the water off, soap down, turn the water on, rinse off and shut the water off.) We have not filled up the gray water tank nor run out of fresh water. Kathy wanted to run the dishwasher tonight so I did drain the gray tank after our showers. 

Today I received the collapsible "water bladder" I ordered from Amazon. Tomorrow I will try it out by going down to my  brothers, putting the bladder on top of the Flex roof, filling it, returning to the coach and gravity draining the water into the fresh water tank. 

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

Monday & Tuesday, September 5th & 6th

 Monday - Labor Day - I helped my brother and his grandson, work on Mom's rental house. Ashton and his girlfriend Gabby will be moving from their apartment to Mom's rental when it is finished.  Moms place, where she grew up and where my grandmother lived until her death, is on the right side of the photo below. We are parked at her pond, behind her house & barn. In the center of the photo, also on the south side of the road, is where David & Kathy (my brother and his wife) live. It was my great-grandmothers home. A little further to the left, on the other side of the road, is the rental house. Bottom left is Coldwater Lake.

Enlargement of above photo.

Yesterday my brother tore out a section of the bathroom floor after the rest of us had left. Someone had removed the post under the near end of the "floor beam". He had installed a shoring post under it and was slowly raising the beam when he realized that the beam supporting the other end was bad. The subfloor was also bad in this area. We jacked up  the far end of the "floor beam", put a post under it and added some new framing to stiffen up the floor. 

Kathy made vegetable soup and sloppy joes and we all met down at the pond for a late lunch early supper. Her two sisters and one sisters husband came and stayed until dark.

I took some photos of the broken slide drive mechanism on our main living room slide. The three bolts you see were still attached to the "ears" that had broken off the drive unit. 

Tuesday - While we were eating breakfast a couple of sand hill cranes landed and also had some breakfast down at the end of the pond.

Even though the "ears" were broken off the gear housing of the slide gear housing there were still a few intact threads behind the fracture line. I went to Coldwater and picked up some longer bolts and a bunch of washers at Tractor Supply. I also stopped at Bish's RV and Camping World to check on ordering a drive unit. Neither place could be bothered to look up parts for a 14 year old coach. Bish'es told me to check with RV salvage yards and Camping World told me to go to a Tiffin dealer.

I now have the drive unit back up in place but the threaded sections of the gear housing are no where near strong enough to allow running the slide in and out. After supper I spent a couple of hours surfing the Net and found a YouTube video of a guy changing a drive motor just like ours. Also watched one of his videos showing how to "time"  your slides so that both sides go in and out equally.

Now for some humor. Kath took some photos of me working on the drive.

From the basement door on the other side of the coach, as I was starting to get back out.

Inching out.

Somebody help the old guy find the ground with his feet.

And finally out.

The slide is out a couple of inches. I though it would be easy to put a crescent wrench on the tube in the photos above and crank it back in. Doesn't work. Spent some time in the manual and that, combined with more YouTube videos, showed me how to release the brake in the motor. That will be tomorrow's  adventure.

We are just going to leave the slide in until after we get home. Even if I found a drive unit I don't want to tear back into it between the time we leave Mom's and arrive back in MO.

Now I need to find some YouTube videos on our power awning. I borrowed an 8' step ladder from my brother and, from the outside, everything looks okay.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

Saturday & Sunday, September 3rd & 4th

 Saturday - Kathy took Mom to Edon, OH where two of Kathy's sisters were participating in some type of food fund raiser. I spent some time in the morning on Mom's WiFi updating apps on my devices. In the afternoon I went down and helped family members work on Mom's rental house. The previous renters had been there for around 5 years and always paid their rent on time. They had to move in with the ladies parents to help care for her ailing father. The house was a MESS! My brother and his grandson hauled 5 truck loads of trash away. Part of the trash was all the upstairs carpet. The carpet was so impregnated with cat urine that David said it made your eyes water when you started up the steps. David's oldest grandson and his girlfriend have been renting an apartment in Coldwater. There lease is up and they are going to rent this place from Mom. The entire interior has now been scrubbed and painted. The bathroom has been demo'd down to the original subfloor and original plaster/lath walls. The old style standing seam metal roof has been recoated. Some work needs to be done in the basement to help level the first floor.

I took some time to try and figure out the problem with the dining room slide. It was actually fairly easy to diagnose once I got my head far enough into the basement to look at the slide support mechanism. There is a single shaft, driven by a motor near the center of the shaft, that has a gear at each end. those gears mesh with teeth on steel runners beneath the slide. The motor had 4 ears that attach it to plate mounted on the coach frame. 3 of the ears have broken off. It doesn't look like it will be a huge job, once we get back to MO, to replace the motor.

David left his side by side so that Kathy and I could ride around and look over the farm. The farm is 140 acres. David has 10-12' wide deer feeding plantings around the perimeter of almost all of the fields, they serve as drives. In addition he had lots of drives/path through the wooded areas. 

It was warm and humid enough that we had to run the generator/AC for another couple of hours in the evening to cool and reduce the humidity in the coach.

Sunday - Kathy go up early and went to Meijer's for groceries. It rained a little today and the humidity was very high all day. Last nights low was 64 and today's high was 70. It was cloudy and windy all day. We spent a lot of time at the pavilion, but it was cold. Quite a few family members came for lunch.

I think I missed getting 6 people, Kathy and I were two of the six, in the above photos. We all went our separate ways around 3:30. Later Mom walked down and had supper with us in the coach.

We won't be running the AC tonight. The outside temp is 64 and the inside temp is 74.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

Friday, Septemeber 2 - From Traverse City to Mom's

 Last night the campers who had just moved in across the road set up a screen and showed a movie. Didn't pay enough attention to see the actual move but it looked like an impressive setup.

At night

The next morning

We were packed up and on the road at 9:45. It was 260 miles from Traverse City to Mom's, south of Coldwater, MI. We weren't in a hurry. We stopped for lunch at a rest area. There were at least 3 varieties of apple trees planted at the rest area, sadly they had not received much care.

The apple tree and the tree with the red berries were planted so that they twisted around one another. There were apples lying on the ground, going to waste. We picked one off a couple of trees and tasted them. They were to sweet for me, I like Granny Smiths.

Michigan may have nice rest areas but their Interstates are bad. We drove 10-15 miles of I96 where an 8-10" wide section of the concrete pavement had been sawn out every 8-10'. It seemed like they must have done a poor job filling the cutouts with asphalt because the surface of every one of them was depressed enough to cause a bump.

We arrived at Mom's around 4PM. 

Parked at Mom's. My 93 year old (94 Oct 3rd) Mom is on the right.

We had supper outside and sat out and visited until around 7:30.

When at Mom's we are about as close to "boondocking" as I care to get, actually we are closer than I care to get. We have to get water from my brothers, a quarter mile down the road, because Mom's well water is HORRIBLE. (She says it fine, she has been drinking it for 93 years and is in better health than her kids.) There is an electrical line that runs from the corner of the barn (you can see the corner of the barn above the hood of our car) down to the shelter house. It powers lights and a refrigerator at the shelter house during the summer months. Power is very limited. Not having a sewer connection isn't a problem. Our black tank is big enough for a week, for the two of us. We just water the grass with the gray water.

It was hot, high mid 80's, and humid yesterday. When we got back in the coach I shut the windows and fired up the generator and AC units. It took a couple of hours to drop the temperature/humidity from 85/75 to 72/41. I shut if off and it stayed comfortable all night long.

In case you are thinking, what an idyllic lifestyle, let me burst your bubble. Coaches, especially 14 year old ones, have problems the same as sticks and bricks houses. They are just different problems. 

1, I'm still working adjusting the latches for the bay doors. Hopefully I will get them figured out. 

2. I need to borrow a ladder from my brother to see if I can see why the main awning won't deploy. 

3. Our living room slide doesn't want to go out (better than not going in). First time that happened was here at Mom's.

Even with the issues noted I think I'm pretty close to the idyllic lifestyle.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

Thursday, September 1 - Day 63 of our trip

 Early this morning I walked  around some of the campground again. Kathy and I have been intrigued by the "tiny houses" that are campground rentals. In addition to the ones sprinkled around the campground there is a subdivision of them at the far back of the campground, maybe 40-50.

I wonder if the one in the first two photos below, similar to one I posted a photo of earlier, were the prototypes.

The ones in the photos below may have evolved from the one in the photos above. I say that because I was surprised that these are considered park model trailers. They are titled and licensed like a travel trailer, no property tax. People may rent the ones located in the  park proper but I think people own the ones, but probably not the lots, that are in the subdivision in the back. 

The Timber Ridge website contains information about size limitations. They can't be more than 400 sf. They are typically 12'x30'. They can have a loft with a floor area equal to a maximum of half the area of the main floor. The loft can't have more than 60" of headroom. They can have attached screened porches.

Until I found the information on the website I thought the units were stick built on a slab. 

https://americantinyhouseassociation.org/park-model-rv-regulations-state-by-state/ 

Probably not a great idea for Missouri. You may not have to pay property tax on them but you would probably get stuck for personal property tax.

One of the nice things about this park is watching the kids have a great time. I took this out our windshield. The road has a significant uphill grade on the right side of the photo. The 4 boys went up the hill and then came blasting back down it, pedaling for all they were worth.

We went to The Cottage for a late lunch, I didn't get up until 9. I had the equivalent of a beef manhattan (a roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes all smothered with gravy), it was almost as good as if Kathy had made it. She had The Benny (2 poached eggs, served on an english muffin topped with savory ham & hollandaise sauce, served with crispy hash browns), she said it was good.

We also drove a couple of miles along the Grand Traverse Bay shoreline. One beautiful home after another. We say a sign for Lake Michigan lots, $495k.

People are rolling in to the campground for the Labor Day weekend. I will be glad to leave in the morning. Dogs galore and sitting here in the coach typing this I can hear someone's raucous music. The music isn't loud enough to understand the lyrics, its just loud enough to be annoying. The campground has been quiet, not a lot of people here, while we have been here. I can't imagine what a zoo it will be starting tomorrow night.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.