Facing more Challenges

Well, last Wednesday we started to back up to move on. Everything went well to begin with, the slides went in, the rear stabilizers came up and then Doug wanted to raise the front stabilizers so we can hook up to the truck. Nothing happened. We checked the hydraulic fluid pump and all electrical wiring and everything was working fine. He called the service guy from the place where we bought the rig and his ideas did not fix the problem either. By now two other RVers had come by and three men were discussing and debating what to do next. We could not lower the truck bed enough to hook up, so another solution had to be found. After about 1 1/2 hours Doug decided to lift the king pin by putting our bottle neck jack in the truck bed and lifting up the king pin. As soon as the weight was of the jacks, they moved again. We got hooked up without any further problems and were on our way. Luckily we had only a short way to go to the next campground and got there without anymore problems. Doug thinks that there might be air in the lines, but we don't have a way yet of working it out. Maybe a solution will present itself at the rally in Hutchinson.

We are in a nice campground just 20 minutes north of Topeka, so we did go back to the Sushi place and the food was still so delicious. Doug's birthday was on Sunday and we went to a nice steak house in the Casino. We had a blast and a very nice waitress. When she presented me with the bill she also brought out a huge piece of "death by chocolate" cake to go for us free of charge. We have met some really nice people throughout our travels this year.

So we are sitting in the rig yesterday watching TV and the satellite stops working. I am about to scream, but we realized that it is again looking for the wrong channel (119 instead of 101). So Doug went to Radio Shack today and cot a connector cable to the serial cable, since neither of our laptops has a serial port anymore. I am so glad that my husband is computer savvy. With this cable he was able to access the satellite controls and told it to look for channel 101 again and TV is fixed. I admit that I do get nervous when things fail, but so far we have been able to fix it ourselves. Hopefully we will be able to get the air bubbles out of the hydraulic lines and no more major problems will happen in the near future.

We are leaving here tomorrow to go to Hutchinson. I am so looking forward to seeing a lot of our friends there before we head on south.

Clinton, KS

Well, last Friday was our one year anniversary of leaving NJ and starting this amazing adventure. Sometimes I do miss the house, but not the maintenance and yard work that comes with it. We have seen and experienced a lot of different things during the last year, some very interesting and a lot of good ones. At this time I am thinking of writing a blog later this year as a "year in review" blog, since there are so many smaller things that we have done and seen that were never mentioned in the blog yet.

Right now we are in a Corp of Engineer park in Clinton, KS. We went to an outdoor mall in Kansas City on Thursday, which was a very interesting trip. The architecture on the buildings was just amazing, from an Italian section to an area that had these beautiful mosaic tiles on the buildings, which I would expect to see in Greece or Turkey. We also checked out Union Station, which actually had trains traveling through it, not like the one in Salt Lake City. Being the daughter of a man who worked his whole life for the railroad, trains are very dear to me. Other then that we have been pretty much just been hanging around, doing small daytime trips and found this really awesome Sushi place in Topeka.

We will have one more work to kill before we go to Hutchinson for the two rallies. As the weather is getting colder, the leaves are starting to change, I am ready to head south like the birds and the butterflies and start my hibernation in Texas for the winter. I never thought that traveling would be so exhausting, so sitting still for a couple of months will be nice.

Maysville, MO

I can't believe we have been here for almost a week already. We arrived last Wednesday and it started raining Thursday morning. Since there was no rain in the forecast for St. Joseph yet, we decided to check it out. We went to the Pony Express Museum, which was actually pretty interesting. Do you guys know that the Pony Express only lasted 19 months before the telegraph took over? I did not (never to old to learn something new :-) . The Patee House Museum was pretty cool to with so much interesting junk. Some of it reminded me of my grandmothers house, seeing the old pots and pans, etc. We chose not to see the house Jesse James got shot in since it has been moved. If it is not in its original place, I don't want to see it. The rest of the town seemed somewhat run down and a lot of businesses closed. We have seen this unfortunately a lot in smaller towns. So we decided to go back to the rig.

It started to rain again Thursday night and did not stop until Saturday morning. I am so glad that I have a comfortable couch now that I occupied for pretty much the whole day Friday. There is nothing wrong with just kicking back for a little bit. We took advantage of the sunshine on Saturday and went to a street art festival in Maryville and checked out the local casino in St. Joseph. The weather report had us back in the remnants of hurricane Ike by Saturday night and Sunday. Well, we got lucky and the storm passed us to the south. It just turned out to be a really gray day on Sunday.

Our campground has two ponds and on Monday we decided to do some fishing. I had a blast!!! I don't touch worms so I used first Doug to get them on a hook and then a pair of needle pliers. It actually worked pretty good. I am so glad that Doug touches fish, since we actually caught five small ones, which we released back in to the pond right away.

It has been a good week and tomorrow we will started heading a little further south until we will end up in Hutchinson, KS by the end of the month. Stay safe everybody!

Where are we?

Well, it has been a while since I have posted, but it is not all my fault. We left Bowler, WI Tuesday a week ago and started headed south, since it is starting to be cold in the mornings and evenings. It is unnatural for me anymore to have to wear a sweater, so we will be like the birds and move south.

It took us two days to get to the Amana Colonies in Iowa, which turned out to be a really nice settlement of some German heritage building. We found very good food and also an interesting woolen mill. We have been working on setting up the inside of the rig, like mounting the coffee maker, the shower caddy and so one, since the weather has not been the greatest. We felt the remnants of hurricane Gustav all day Thursday with heavy rain. The campground was built to be a fairground, so we are not on cement slabs, but the rain got soaked up by the ground fairly fast. We are starting to make this Teton Homes our home and I am happy as pie. I just love doing laundry whenever I feel like it and there is so many small things in this rig that make living so much easier then it was in the Excel. Don't get me wrong, we loved our Excel and it is a good rig, but our needs have changed during the last year and this rig just fits us better. The only drawback is having to be more careful in finding a spot to park.

On Sunday I had all my work done and sat down to write our blog, as I do most of the time on Sunday afternoon. Well, my computer decided that this what not to be done and just shut down on his own to never turn on again. You can imaging my mood for the rest of the afternoon. We figured out that it was not the hard drive, so Monday, in pouring rain again we went to Coralville to get a new computer for me. I looked at all the laptops, showed Doug the ones that looked good to me and he decided which one was sufficient for my needs. We found a really nice laptop and Geek Squad was nice enough to tell us how to be able to take the stuff from my old hard drive to the new one. I have been working on this for the last three days.

We received a very sweet note from Mike McFall and I started feeling guilty about not having posted in so long. Sorry guys, it just could not happen, since I had to setup the computer first. Last night Doug found out through the Escapees forum that Teton Homes has closed their doors. We were stun!!!!!. We have had to do some minor fixes ourselves already and I am just praying that nothing major will happen. We have been in the rig for two weeks now and I would think that if there was something major wrong, we would have found it by now. I just love this rig. Setting up has been so much easier and we don't have problems anymore getting level at setup.

We are right now in Maysville, MO and will stay here for a week. Again we managed to end up in extended network and Internet is limited. We will attend the MTD and HTD in Hutchinson, KS beginning of next month and I am so looking forward to seeing all our friends again at the rally. After that we will start heading south towards Mission. Maybe we will stay a week in San Antonio, TX, since we never checked it out, before we head all the way south. It looks like hurricane Ike is going to miss us, which is a good thing.