Friday May 7, 2010-Red Roof Inn, Elkhart IN

Here we are, ready to pick up our trailer after it was worked on at the factory. We are straight ahead in the service bay.
Here is the nice shiny new-looking trailer with just a few boxes left to load into it.
Here are just some of the many boxes that we used to store almost everything in our trailer. All the service guys that helped us unload remarked about how much stuff we have in the trailer. We told them that it's our house and everything we own is in there.
This was all that was left to load up when we took a break for lunch. We are almost done!

We woke to cool weather again up here in Elkhart. It rained briefly while we were going over to the factory, and once inside, it really rained! That's all right, we're loading up our home again and we will be back in the campground this afternoon...

We worked hard all morning, unloading boxes back into the trailer and took a short lunch break at the Steak and Shake nearby. We came back and finished up the loading and watched Keith, our technician that had worked on the trailer, when he put the last decal on the door-side rear. He made it look so easy, I think that even I could do it, but I'm sure that reality would set in if I tried to do it and I'd screw something up. When it looks too easy, it's probably not.

We got through about 3 o'clock and pulled out of the shop to go back to the campground. Almost as soon as we turned into the park, it started to rain and by the time I got through, it was pouring. We ran next door to JD and CJ's house to get out of the rain and to make plans for supper. We went to the Texas Roadhouse, since we still had some discount coupons and had a final farewell meal with them. They are leaving in the morning and we will be leaving on Monday.

When we got back to the motel, we hadn't been inside very long before we got a call from the office, asking if we were all right. We had heard a fire alarm going off but didn't know where it was coming from. We went outside and saw the flashing lights and buzzer and were told that someone had set the fire alarm off but nothing was wrong. To be on the safe side, we took the computers and Cassie with us when we went to eat. Along the way, we learned that we are under a tornado alert until 11 o'clock tonight. What do we do now? We can go to the motel if its not on fire or go to the campground and risk being blown away by a tornado.

After eating, we came back to the motel and all was well. We sent the last night here, since we had paid for the room. Tomorrow we're back at home in the trailer.

So long.

Thursday May 6, 2010-Red Roof Inn, Elkhart IN

We woke this morning, hoping to get the call that our trailer was ready, so we could start moving back in. CJ and JD called and asked us to go eat breakfast with them at Cock-A-Doodle, a local restaurant and favorite of truckers and Police Officers. The food was good and there was plenty of it!

We left the restaurant and decided to go by the factory to check on the trailer's progress but I wanted to stop at an AT & T store to have my phone set to send and receive email. We met a very nice man named Tom Jenks at the store on Cassopolous. He spent almost two hours trying to help me get set up, but he finally called technical support and learned that there is something wrong with my phone. I haven't had this phone that long and have never had it set up for email, but its bad. I made arrangements to have a new phone sent to me at Rayford and while there, I looked at some new phones. To make a long story short, I ended up buying a new IPhone with all the bells and whistles. Poor Tom spent about five hours selling me a phone and all the accessories. Of course, a lot of that time was spend showing me some of the features of the new phone.

About 2 o'clock, during Tom's ordeal of selling me a phone, I got a call from Jim F. at Heartland. He said that the trailer was done and that we could come over and start putting our things away. We finally got to the factory about 4 o'clock and began working on the trailer. I got everything in the underbelly storage put away and helped Stella with some of the inside stuff. We emptied three boxes back into the trailer but there are still a lot of boxes to be done tomorrow. We walked around the outside of the trailer and inspected it but weren't able to open the slides to check the interior. We'll check it tomorrow. At least we've started to move back into our home.

We were tired and went to eat at Cracker Barrel tonight. It was a nice way to end the day and we went for a ride around Elkhart before returning to the motel for another night. I think we have decided to stay one more night in the motel because we won't have any place to keep Cassie tomorrow during the day while we reload the trailer, so we'll leave her here in the motel and come back during the day to let her out.

Whoopee, we're almost back home!!

So long.

Wednesday May 5, 2010-Red Roof Inn, Elkhart IN

Today was a very easy day. Stella and I went to the Golden Egg restaurant again for breakfast and came back to our motel room. I called Jim F. at Heartland to find out about the trailer but learned that it was not ready yet but may be finished this afternoon. I told him that we were thinking about the Mor Ryde suspension and asked his opinion of it. He said that everyone he knows that has it loves it but he has no first hand experience with it. I told him that I would call back in the afternoon to check on the progress.

Stella said she needed to wash some clothes, so we went to Wal Mart for her to buy a few things and soap to wash the clothes, and after we got that, we went to a local laundromat. I did my usual and sat in the truck reading while she washed the clothes. We rode over to Mor Ryde and spoke to Howard and Linda again who were waiting for their unit to be completed. We told them that it didn't look too good to get ours done this time, but we would get it done another time. We talked to Ben, the salesman at Mor Ryde and gave him the news. He said he could get us in as late as noon tomorrow but that they would have to work late on Friday, possibly as late as 4 o'clock but we decided not to do that. I don't want anyone to have to work late on a Friday afternoon to work on my suspension. We will just get the work done when we come back to Elkhart for the Heartland rally.

We came back to our room and relaxed for awhile. I called Jim again and learned that the trailer work was done but they needed to run it through their rain check tank to check it for leaks and that it needed some decals that had not come in yet. He said he hoped they would come in tomorrow or Friday.

Now bummed about the news about the trailer, we stayed here for awhile and later went to eat at Applebys. The motel had given us discount cards for several restaurants around town and we used one tonight. The food was good and we went for a ride after eating into Michigan. We drove about 25 miles into Michigan, just enjoying the evening and the weather.

So long.

Tuesday May 4, 2010-Red Roof Inn, Elkhart IN

At least Cassie isn't stressed out by everything that is going on with the trailer and having to stay in this motel room.



Today we had made plans to meet with our friends JD & CJ for breakfast at a place called The Golden Egg Pancake House. We had a great meal and while there, they got a call from Heartland telling them that their trailer was ready to be picked up. When we finished our meal, they went to get their trailer and I called Howard and made arrangements to meet with him and Linda at Mor Ride where their trailer was in for their installation.

We, along with Howard and Linda, met one of the salesmen named Ben, who showed us the advantages of using their independent suspension system on our trailer. We decided to go ahead and have this installed later in the week. Ben needs to check his schedule to make sure he can get us in and will call back with a time and date for our installation. We had a very nice visit with Howard and Linda and when their lunch arrived (furnished to customers by Mor Ride) we left.

We went over to the Shipshewana flea market which opened today for the first time this season. We shopped for a couple of hours and came back to the motel. I spoke with Jim from Heartland and learned that our trailer will be ready for pick up tomorrow. We later spoke with Ben and he has us set up for an appointment at his shop on Thursday morning, so although we'll have busy days for the next couple of days, juggling the trailer between Heartland and Mor Ride, we'll have everything installed and ready to go by Friday evening. We'll see how this works out...

We came back to the motel room and hung out the rest of the night. This is important because I got to see my television shows tonight. I do have my priorities!

So long.

Monday May 3, 2010-Red Roof Inn, Elkhart IN

We woke this morning and ate some of our leftover muffins for breakfast. Soon after we ate, and while preparing to go out for the day, we got a call from CJ, who asked us about eating breakfast with them. Since we had already eaten, we had to decline but said we would get together with them for supper this afternoon.

We went to Martin Marketing, the supplier of the Heartland branded clothing and accessories, to check on an order that we had placed some time ago. We learned that one of the shirts had been back ordered and was no longer offered, so since it was Stella's choice of shirts, she sat down with the catalog and ordered a new shirt. We picked up a few other items and made plans for the fall rally in October. I met the owner of the company, Brad Martin, who told me that he was willing to work with me on supplying items for the rally. I am looking forward to dealing with him in the future.

We drove over to Napannee by way of Wakarusa. As I told you yesterday, I did some research on these town names in Indiana and learned that in 1836, rural Olive Township was established and as the population grew, a post office called Mt. Olive opened. As the population grew, it was renamed Salem, but there was already a town in Indiana named Salem, so the name was changed to Wakarusa. The name Wakarusa comes from a word in the Potawatomi language meaning "knee deep in mud". The only information I could find on Nappannee is that this is the only city in the United States that uses each letter in it's name twice. The word Nappannee probably means "flour".

We had driven through Nappannee yesterday and had seen a couple of dually trucks at the Chevrolet dealer in town. I had left them a message about my interest in these trucks, but didn't hear from anyone, so we decided to drive over to check them out. Both trucks were very nice but we have decided not to buy a truck right now until we get the trailer squared away and right again.

We came back over to Elkhart. Incidentally, Elkhart's name source is disputed. One source argues that the city's Island Park is shaped like an elk's heart and the other source states that the name comes from the Shawnee Indian Chief Elkhart, cousin of the famous Chief Tecumseh, and father of Princess Mishawaka, the namesake of the neighboring Mishawaka IN.

We had supper with our friends JD & CJ at the Oriental restaurant in front of the motel. When I got back to our room, I found that I had an email from our friends Howard and Linda, who were in town to have some Mor Ride equipment installed on their fifth wheel trailer. Howard and Linda are well known for their website RV-Dreams.com. We met them a few years ago at a Texas Boomer rally and ran into them again in Branson MO where they had a rally and we were attending a Heartland National rally. It was good to hear from them and we will meet them tomorrow.

So long.

Saturday & Sunday, May 1 & 2, 2010-Red Roof Inn, Elkhart IN

They certainly believe in large barns up here in Amish country.

A very pretty farmhouse and barn. There are many of these throughout this area. I don't know how they keep them so neat and clean. The grass is always cut and manicured, the paint is well kept. Gorgeous!

This guy must stay very busy. He does it all with buggies.

I don't know if this is a buggy builder's lot or a sale lot for buggies. Incidentally, it's not near E.J.'s place, pictured above.

You can see several buggies parked between the building and children playing in the yard. The odd thing about this group of kids is that they were not shy when we drove by, waving and not trying to hide their faces when we took photos. Some of them waved for us to stop, but we didn't because of the traffic on the road.

This is The Dime Store in Wakarusa IN, home of the largest jelly beans and "the mother of all jaw breakers" that sold for $8.50 each! Even if I could eat that much candy, I wouldn't have bought one of these things!

A pretty farm. This appeared to be a large corn field. They grow an immense amount of corn in this area.

One of the large "Christmas trees" outside one of the Heartland offices in Elkhart.

I'm not certain what kind of tree this is, but there are a lot of them in the area up here.

More pretty trees in front of the office building.

Saturday morning we slept until after 8:30 but got up and went to eat at a large chain of restaurants that serves a breakfast buffet on the weekend. I apparently got something that didn't agree with me because I was sick the rest of the day. Nothing that I ate tasted bad but it certainly did a number on me. We just stayed around the motel room all day. This room is about twice as big as our trailer's living room, but we certainly feel cooped up in here.

Sunday morning, we slept until almost 9! Of course, I've been staying up until almost 11 at night, mainly because I have started to drink coffee with my meal. It doesn't bother Stella to drink coffee at night but it certainly does for me!

We decided to drive out to a large Farmer's Market between Elkhart and Wakarusa but it was closed today. Too bad for us...

We went to Wakarusa (what a neat name) to see The Dime Store, which claims the largest jelly beans anywhere. I can testify that they have probably the largest selection of candies that I've seen in a long time. They have a lot of the old-fashioned candy that we had as kids. When is the last time you saw Black Jack gum or candy cigarettes? We got a good selection for the boys and then took a scenic drive through the country. We drove through Wakarusa, Napannee, Shipshewana, Bristol and then back to Elkhart. Tell you what, I'll do some research on the names of these times and write about them in the future.

We ate supper at a Chinese buffet restaurant in front of the motel and it was very good. Much better than what we have gotten in Houston the last few times we have been out there. So far, we've been eating out about once a day and since we haven't bought groceries, we're not doing too bad.

So long.

Friday April 30, 2010-Red Roof Inn, Elkhart IN

We've gotten into a bad habit of sleeping in until 8:30 or even later! You'd think we don't have anything to do. We ate a muffin in the motel room and finally struggled out and got on the road to Auburn Indiana to visit the three museums there. There is a Cord-Deusenberg museum, an Auto-Truck museum and a Military museum there and we plan to visit all three. We left for Auburn about 11 o'clock, forgetting about calling Jim Fenner at Heartland about seeing our trailer. I called him while we were on the road and he told me that we might want to go see it today and not bother the guys that are coming in tomorrow on overtime. That made sense to me, so we made our way through the beautiful countryside back to Elkhart.

We decided to eat a quick bite at the Colonial Pancake house in Elkhart. This is the same lace that I had eaten at when I was here, 10 years ago when I tried delivering trailers. I had not been diagnosed as diabetic for very long at that time, and I came in hungry. I had a stack of pancakes for my breakfast, never thinking about my blood-sugar levels, so when I got hired in at Pinnacle Transportation, they sent me for a drivers physical. My sugar level was about 330 at the time and the doctor told me he could have failed me for having a level that high, but I explained what had happened to him and promised that I would be more careful if he would just let me go this time. He did, and I went to work and the rest is history.

We went over to Fenner's office and waited a short time for him to return. He took us over to the trailer in the production line. They had put the front landing jacks and all four wheels on caster wheels so it could be moved around on the floor in the line. The fridge had been removed so it could remain plugged in and cold but otherwise is looked pretty much like it had when we saw it the other day. I was reassured to learn that they will inspect the roof where the water had gotten in and floor by Stella's chair where it had been wet for damage and would repair if necessary. I am convinced that everything will be fixed when we pick it back up.

We also learned that a representative from Flair Industries had come over to look at our chairs. He had decided that it would be better if he just replaced the chairs, so next week we will be getting brand new chairs. Wow, what service!

We got a few more things out and came back to our motel room. I later went down to the office and got us some coffee (good husband that I am!) and we watched television for the evening. I still don't care for motel living and wish we were back in our trailer, but at least its quiet here.

So long.