FL Bound

 OK everyone that knows me knows that I do NOT do cold, and we got a small taste of cold while at the Escapade in Sedalia MO, it got down to 41 degrees one morning. So the only solution was to head south!!!!

 As it turned out the cold only lasted a couple days, and then the warmth came right back so the trip south could wait a few more days. With the warmth back we left Sedalia after the Escapade was over and headed east. The "etch-a-sketch" showed us at the outer banks of NC, but the bumpy roads changed that really quick, or maybe it was the distance the outer banks took us out of path to Key West.

 Our first night after the Escapade was spent at a casino near St Louis. Marcia loves her casinos and she had some "birthday" money burning holes in her pockets. It didn't take long for the casino to take that $$ from her, but we had a good time, a place to park the rig for a night and an awesome buffet for $7.77.

 The next day we headed for Middlesboro KY. A couple things we wanted to take care of and another chance to see the kids and friends made Middlesboro a pretty good choice. Leaving St Louis we had rain, just enough to mess up the rig and the poor jeep caught all the spray and was covered with a fine filth you didn't want to see or touch.

 We took the southern route dropping down into KY as soon as we could just so we could see something we had never seen before. (that part of KY) Dropping down slowed the trip down but then we are in no hurry anyway. We stopped at the "Outback Steakhouse" in Bowling Green KY for supper with the intentions of trying to make Somerset before we stopped for the night, but someone bumped the etch-a-sketch while we were enjoying a nice 6 oz steak, or it could have been the steak and full bellies that changed the plans. We stayed around the corner of the steakhouse in a Sam's parking lot.

 The next day we made it to CGNHP campground. When we stopped for fuel in Middlesboro we were greeted by Corey, Miss Jaelynn, and Beth so Beth and Miss Jaelynn rode with us in the rv from Middlesboro to the park in VA. We had a nice time visiting for the few days we were there and hated to leave but I know the frosty mornings will be there anytime now and I really don't want to see frost unless it is on a mug of root beer.

 Saturday morning I had the rig almost ready to roll when Marcia, Beth and Corey finished their morning hike. Just a few things Marcia had to put away and good-byes said and we were off again. Raccoon Valley RV Park was our destination, Escapee parks are about the only parks that allow you to wash your rig there and ours was a mess after the rain in St Louis. We got set up before noon and Jenelle came by to see us for a few min. She had just returned from a trip to Vegas and we had her spare keys to get into her house. She had spent the night in an airport somewhere between Knoxville and Vegas.

 Marcia and I was feeling pretty good because we started washing the jeep somewhere around 2 pm and by 4:30 we had washed and dried the jeep and the entire motorhome. I didn't think it could be done in one day let alone 2 and 1/2 hours. But we now had a clean and shining jeep and motorhome, and with the new wheels it was looking really good.

 After we finished off some left-overs for supper I walked over to the clubhouse only to find it locked up. What is up with the clubhouse being locked at 6 pm on a Saturday???? I started walking around the park when I saw Fran and Sharon, what I surprise. Then Grace that we knew from FL was there too. It was good seeing them all and we talked about how bad the current manager at the park is doing.

 The locked clubhouse was part of the reason we chose to leave Sunday am, although the manager assured us he would leave it open later for a while since the park was almost full. But we really wanted beat the rain that was forecast. It was head to Ga to wait out the rain or wait there in Knoxville. Ga is further south so I wanted to go.

 We arrived in Lyerly GA just in time to crash Bea and Bennett, and Wanda and Wallace's family reunion. I have always wanted to just walk up to a group having a reunion and invite myself to eat, so that is pretty much what we did. Thanks to Wanda and Bea and their great family we just parked the rv and joined in as if we had known everyone all our life.

 Bea and Bennett have put three rv sites with FULL HOOK UPS on their property and had invited us to come and stay anytime so we are taking them up on their offer. They had to leave Sunday afternoon to return to RedBay AL to have repairs done on their motorhome, so that left us here with the Dub U's Wanda and Wallace. They are four people that we have met since we started living in a house on wheels that is such an honor to know and call friends.

 Today it rained almost all day but tomorrow should be just cloudy skies so we will say good-bye to Lyerly and head south. We want to visit a cousin in southern GA before we see our son Jonathan at Ft Stewart. He is due to deploy to the sandbox next month and we want to see him before he leaves, so we must roll the wheels and pass on fun times here in Lyerly with the Dub-U's....... Thanks B & B, and W & W............

What a Week

WOW, I am really happy this week is OVER.  Not that we didn't have a lot of fun, but we have been BUSY. Many of our Rving friends are here, and it is always good seeing them.

 We arrived here at the Sedalia Fair grounds on the 12th, and the first person we saw was Bennett. He was on the parking crew and directed us to the gate where we had to enter the fair grounds. Then we see Fran, Sharon, and several others waiting to direct us to our site for the next several days.

 When we parked the rig we were next to Keith and Donna, Wanda and Wallace, Bob and Molly, and Bea and Bennett were parked in the row in front of us. Ron and Linda pulled in an hour or so later and parked right next to us. After a short visit we headed over to a meeting with the Escapade directors, ( Bob and Molly), and they wasted no time in putting us to work. Marcia made a run to Wal-Mart, Staples, and Lowe's while I got things set up.

 Later it was a happy hour with so many there I won't even start to try to name names. Everyone started eating the foods that many brought to share, milk shakes were made and served along with some margartias and wines, and some home brew even made it to Sedalia. The ONLY negative was the flies!!! There are tons of flies here at the fairgrounds.

The next couple of days we spent getting things ready for the 52nd Escapade. I was doing very little myself, but just watching everyone else running around made me so tired. Marcia was going shopping several times a day, and it was good spending someone Else's money, but she wasn't buying the things she really wanted.

Then the cold front hit us and I was feeling it, but I was still able to watch everyone else running around doing their thing. The Escapade started and everyone was having fun even though we were all ready for some rest. 576 rv's gathered to make this a great Escapade. Tuesday evening we had BINGO and I was the caller. I think it is more fun calling bingo than it is playing, and I thing everyone playing was having a good time. Several ask me later why I wasn't calling their numbers, but I can only call the ones that come out of the basket.

 Wednesday was a pretty easy day, the weather had warmed up some and we didn't have much to do so we did get a little rest before the rush Thursday. Thursday started of with us getting things ready for the chili cook off. Marcia was making chili with a Hawaiian theme. She had a lot of people helping her and Keith and Donna were truly life savers with their help. Marcia won third place, and the winner told everyone she cheated and the runner up cheated too, but it was all in fun and all the $$ raised went to C A R E.

 We had just enough time to eat before we had tonight's bingo. We got to the bingo room just in time to fin out they had already packed up the sound system. After a few phone calls I did get the use of the fairgrounds system, but the battery in the mike died on the third number I called on the first game. The crowd was very good and kept the noise down so I could call without a sound system. Not something I would ever want to do again, but it worked out for tonight.

 Today was also Marcia's birthday, so she worked hard on her birthday and didn't get a cake. I did take her out for ice cream after bingo was over, and she knows I'll make it up to her somewhere down the road. and I did buy her a dozen roses last week because I knew we would be very busy this week.

Happy Birthday Marcia, you are my bestest friend.

We will hang out here until Monday with lots of the gang, and then we will head SOUTH. We have about a month to get to Key West so we will be smelling the roses along the way...............

Gypsy Journal Rally is over

 We had a good time at the Gypsy Journal Rally in Celina Ohio last week. As always Nick and Terry put on a good rally. We are disappointed that this was their last rally, but we understand that they are too stressed out by all that is involved to continue having them.

 On Monday Marcia signed us up for a massage, Jean Damon has magical fingers when it comes to the massages that she gives. For one hour she worked those magical hands on me, and then she did the same for Marcia after she finished with me. Marcia enjoyed it so much she bought a bottle of Jean's massage oil. Now maybe Marcia will use the oil on me????

 We got to spend time with friends we have met over the past 5+ year, and met new friends that I'm sure we will cross paths with in the future. We learned a few things too, Marcia and I attended a class on cell phones and I not ashamed to say our smat phones are smartter than we are. But because of the class we both know a little more about using the,

 Friday was the last day so I endulged in the free donuts that were offered daily. (thanks Nick and Terry) and then is was saying "see you down the road" to many friends that were headed in different directions. Friday night it was dinner with 12 other couples honoring Nick and Terry, just one way we were able to thank them for putting on the rallies.

 Saturday we left Celina and headed west, the Kountry Star was riding really well with the new wheels and tires, and having all the fluids changed. We "wally-docked" Saturday night somewhere in IL It turned out to be a bad choice because there was a lot of truckers using the same wal-mart, and the trucks had frozen foods so the reefers ran off and on all night.

 Sunday we tried to find a city/county park we found on a new app we have for the smart phones. The directions we followed from the app took us to the wrong side of the lake, and was 1.5 miles from the CG. We had to unhook the jeep to drive around and find the CG, and we decided we didn't want to take the MH over the rough roads, and the narrow bridge to get to the CG.

 We are now at a Corp of Eng park on Mark Twain Lake outside of Hannibal MO. $12 a night for full hook ups sitting on a blacktop pad. The only draw back is the cell service is crappy, I don't think Verizon has any service here and we are using another service's towers, but this will only be a day or two until we head to Sedalia for the escapade.

so until then...................

Gypsy Journal Rally

We are currently at the Gypsy Journal Rally in Celina Ohio.

We spent 7 days at Phoenix Commercial Paint Inc getting their screw ups repaired. Last year they repaired the boo-boo I caused on the front end of the MH, and after 200 mile their repair needed repaired. Some of it needed re-done before we left but we wanted out of there so we had decided to live with it, until the part they repaired on the front cap came apart, then we knew we would have to return.

A lot has changed at Phoenix Paints, the owners split up, I guess he took off and went to FL leaving her the business and kids. With the economy the way it is she can't keep good help, she has one Mexican that comes in to work for her, but he has a regular day job so it is hit or miss if he shows up. She has several others that come in to work but as she says they just want a paycheck and have no pride in their work.

 She also has NO PRIDE in her work, our hood on the MH had a few spots in it that didn't get sanded well enough last year and at certain angles you could see the old graphics. I didn't like that, but wish I had never said anything about it. She sanded that part down and re-painted the hood, the problem is, we picked up a few rock chips over the past year and she didn't want to fix them, so she "tried" to tape over the graphics that are on the hood now and re-paint only the one color.

 Now you don't see any of the old graphics from any angle, but you do see how bad they did when the tried to cover the graphics to re-paint the hood. Now it isn't at certain angles you see the mistakes, it is any time you look in the direction of the hood that you see the screw ups. Pato, ( the Mexican ) did a good job of repairing the busted fiberglass, and he was upset that the owner told him to leave the hood looking as bad as it does, so she is the one that has no pride in her work.

I confronted her about it, and all she would say was it would have cost extra to have the rock chips repaired. I told her we would be taking it to the Gypsy Journal Rally, and then to Escapade, and it would be her name on it. She just said her name was already mud...... She also said she would be going out of business and closing the doors, and I told her she needed to!

Enough of the ranting, we will be looking to get the front end repainted somewhere down the road.

We arrived here at the Mercer County Fairgrounds Saturday morning, avoiding most of the rain. We did get just enough rain to get the rig covered with that fine misty dirt from the spray of water from the road and tires.

 Nick Russell met us as we pulled into the fairgrounds and showed us where to park the rig. It had been almost two years since we had seen Nick and Miss Terry. Later we were able to go to the local Pizza Hut for Pizza with Nick, Terry, Greg and Jan. We know they all are super busy before and during the rally so we felt really grateful that we were able to spend an evening with them.

 There is 100 + or - rigs here for what will be their last rally for a while. They have decided to quit having rallies because they are too much work and too little pay, and too many headaches dealing with the fairgrounds. They decided to just take some time off and left it open to start having rallies again in the future.

So since this will be their last rally we feel blessed that we are here, and we will try to make it as fun as we can........................

Meeting up with Old Friends and meeting new friends

With our new wheels and tires on the Kountry Star we headed to Charollet Mi to have the rig serviced. It is an 06 and hasn't had the 5 year services done to it so I figured the makers was the best chioce to do the work.

 

 

While the guys at Spartan were servicing the rig we did some sight seeing. One of the interesting things we saw was this tree that had been carved into a motorcycle.

 

Spartan was able to complete the service in one day so that freed us up for a few days before we needed to be at Phoenix Commercial Paints to get some touch up work done on the rig. We knew John and Bridget were close by so we called the CG where they were to see if we could get in, and the owner of PJ's CG said yes and he would hold us a 50 amp site.

 

Wednesday am we left Spartan and headed the 35 miles to PJ's Campground. John was walking Fred, (their beagle) when we pulled in. The 50 amp site that the owner had reserved for us turned out to be too close to a tree for me so we selected a 30 amp site to park on for a few days. After we plugged the rig to the park electric we visited with John and Bridget a couple hours before we finished  setting up.

 

Later we met Mike and Leslie, and Bridget and Leslie served us some BBQ with all the fixins. After everyone had their fill of food it was time for some golf. Not the kind of golf you need clubs for, this is a card game named 9 hole golf. We had learned to play this down in Fl a couple years ago, and is a fun game with 6 or more people. We didn't get finished before it got dark and cold outside so we called it a night. After all I had driven that long hard 35 miles.

 

 

The following evening it was determined we would have Mexican night. All the gals prepared all the fixins for tacos and we feasted. Soft shelled tacos and hard shelled tacos, I coppied something from Taco Bell and made mine a hard shelled taco with a soft shell with a layer of re-fried beans covering the outside. John tried one and re-named it " A Joe Taco".

 

 

Everyone knows you can't have a real Mexican night without margaritas, so we broke out the MARGARATOR.

It was a fun filled night where we drank margaritas and played golf.

 

The next morning we had to leave our friends and meander across Michigan. We made it to Phoenix Commercial Paints, and Michael said they would start working on the rig Saturday morning. She said it was OK for us to spend the night in her parking lot so we would be ready for them to start at 7 am.

 

 Saturday when Michael showed up we were waiting. Soon I pulled the rig into her shop and Marcia and I went to find some breakfast. About 9 am I got a call from Michael saying we could pick up the rig because they weren't going to do much to it today. As it turned out she had tried to buff out one of the bad spots and found that it would need to be sanded and re-painted.

 

So we took the rig and went to Elkhart Campground where we got to visit with Nick and Terry a few minuets before they left. They are headed to Celina Ohio to prepare things for the Eastern Gypsy Journal Rally. We always have fun when we attend one of Nick and Terry's rallys so if Phoenix Paints can finish our rig we will be headed that way. Monday we will be camped at Phoenix Paints until they finish our rig, or I blow a gasket......

Spartan

 We left the TT park in Wilmont OH a few days before our two weeks was up so we could visit family in and around Lima. We parked the rig at the Ottawa Metro Park on Hwy 81. It is a real clean and neat park, 30 amp electric, water between sites, and a dump station. At $25 a night I think they want the campers to pay for the day use people and the disc golf players.

 We had a great visit with family, and we introduced Andrea to the L.E.O. club.  The first night we had to get our tenderloin sandwich from Happy Daz. Mark and Allison joined Ed, Andrea, Danny, Marcia, and myself. Their tenderloin sandwiches are so huge, Marcia and I split one. (partly because we are on a "reduction" diet.

 While in Lima we were checking on new wheels and tires for the motor home. We were given two names by the people at FMCA, Best One Tire, and Shrader Tire and Oil. Best One was right down the road from where we were parked so we checked there first. We are still waiting on them to call us back with the estimates.  Shrader tire called us right back with the quote, and they had no trouble finding and including the center caps. So we set it up for Friday to get new shoes all the way around the Kountry Star.

 Thursday Andrea hosted a BBQ, Andrea and Danny supplied the place and the burgers, and everyone else brought a side. We had about 20 show up, and it was good catching up, and the food was.....well like most of the get togethers,,, awesome.

 Friday we left the park and went to Shrader and got the new shoes put on. (they are pretty) We spent the weekend relaxing and today we parked the rig at Camp Spartan. Tomorrow the techs at Spartan will give the rig a service and a good going over........

In Ohio

We left CGGNHP Wednesday the 1st, and made it all the way to Lexington. The Kentucky Horse Park where we spent an evening with Randy, Doris, Missy, Wince, Tyler and Braydon. We had met this family 5 years ago at the horse park just after we went full time, and try to visit them every time we are near Lexington.

 They wanted us to stay a few days and watch Tyler drive a truck in a truck pull, and watch Braydon race his quad and motorcycle, but we had been sitting for two months and I wanted the wheels rolling, so we left Thursday am and drove to Cincinnati, where we stopped at the FMCA campground. When we joined the FMCA back in Jan we were invited to tour their headquarters, and since they give us two free days at their CG we thought we would check it out.

 Everyone at the office was busy trying to keep up with the daily routine and getting things ready for their rally in a few weeks so the tour wasn't what we had expected. With us not wanting to hang around a big city we elected to head on to the Thousand Trials Park in Wilmington Ohio so after the tour we packed things up and headed east.

 We arrived at the TT park and was quickly disappointed that all the full hook up sites were taken except one that wasn't real level, and in the middle of the woods. The only full hook up site would mean no satellite, so we elected to take a water and electric site where we could get satellite. We knew we could move to a full hook up site when one can open.

 Monday we drove the jeep to Lancaster Ohio to visit Phil and Linda, another couple we met 5 years ago in our first year of full timing. Phil and Linda own a home in Lancaster and use their rv for recreation like most working poeple do. But that is OK everyone has their own goals and desires in life.

 Today we waited for the rain and storms to pass so we could head to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. We plan on spending a few days here visiting our nephew (he works here) and seeing the sights around town. Marcia has a National Something she wants to see and get the stamp for her national parks Pass Port Book.

 Monday we will drift north to the Lima area to visit more family before we have to have the rig at Spartan's shop in MI.........