Thursday April 29, 2010-Red Roof Inn, Elkhart IN

The famous gold done at Notre Dame.

A beautiful wall mural on campus.

The Notre Dame football stadium. How many famous athletes have played here?

A sculpture in the river in South Bend.

A huge old building in South Bend. I'm sure that someone that is familiar with this area will tell me what this building houses. It had no signs that I saw.

We woke again this morning in this tiny little motel room. I'm not claustrophobic but this place seems to be getting smaller by the day. At least we have our own coffee pot and don't have to go to the office for coffee any more.

We decided to go over to White Pigeon Michigan today to look at Quadra Mfg. where they make the Big Foot hydraulic leveling systems for trucks, motorhomes and trailers. Our friend Ted has this system on his trailer and we thought we'd look at it while we're up here with nothing to do. This system looks much heavier than the competition and much more robust. It is more expensive, but is probably worth it in reliability. We will talk about it since we're not doing anything else to this trailer until the repairs are made and we see how it will hold up.

We went over to South Bend and the Notre Dame campus. Is it called Noter Dame or Notre Dahm? I don't know. It's a beautiful campus but there was so much traffic and so many students walking around, it was hard to stop and take photos.

We came back here and walked over to the Menard's store that is right next door. It's an interesting place with everything from groceries to lawn supplies. Kind of like a Wal Mart on steroids.

CJ and JD Wigley invited us over for supper tonight. We had given them some frozen chicken and a turkey breast to hold onto for us while the trailer is in the shop, and they bought some potato salad and other goodies and we all ate well. We stayed over there until about 8:30 and came on back to this little motel room. It was nice to just be able to sit in a trailer again. We'll be glad when our's comes back!

So long.

Wednesday April 28, 2010-Red Roof Inn

As you can see, there is more damage to the trailer than first thought. The front cap has been removed and the bedroom slide can be seen on the floor beside the trailer.

Much more damage. The living room slide has been removed and is laying on the floor.

They are preparing the dining room slide for removal.

Even the rear cap will come off. The ladder has been removed in preparation for the removal.

I got a call pretty early this morning about the trailer repairs. It seems that once the back wall was opened water damage was found. The water was traced back to the roof, where a rubber boot that should have secured the antenna cables had slid upwards, allowing a 3/4 inch hole to be open and allow rain to enter the trailer. When this was discovered, Keith, the technician doing the work said he could not guarantee that any repair short of replacing the entire back wall would work out-long term. Heartland took the high road and elected to do the work the right way and re-skin the back side of the trailer. This will mean that the entire front cap, off door side skin and rear cap will have to be replaced. This is a huge job and will require our trailer, once the pieces are removed, to be brought back to the original assembly line for all the fiberglass to be replaced. They have scheduled an entire assembly-line crew to come in on Saturday to do the work. It also means that it will be late next week before the trailer is ready. I told Jim that we would be at the plant this afternoon to help in removing everything from the trailer.

We had lunch with Coley Brady, Vice President and Director of Fifth Wheel Sales for Heartland. He had told Jim Beletti that he wanted to meet with us this week while we are in town. We had a very nice meal with him with a lot of interesting conversation. He, like most of the Heartland executives that I have met, is very nice and easy to talk to. He listens to all suggestions and is glad to listen.

We went to our trailer and along with four Heartland employees, moved almost everything out of the trailer and stored it in a store room which was padlocked. I called Gwen at Rayford and explained that we will be delayed in getting back to run Timber Ridge. She told me to come back when my work here is done. I am so glad she is easy going. We are looking forward to working for her soon.

We came back to the motel and brought in some more stuff from the trailer. We didn't have nearly enough clothes, medicines and other things, so we picked up hopefully what will be enough to last us. When we got here, we met a very nice couple from Weatherford Texas. He is an RV transport driver, so we probably won't see them again. It brings back memories of my time as a driver. Someday I'll tell you about it.

So long.

Tuesday April 27, 2010-Moving day-Elkhart Campground to the Red Roof Inn

We woke this morning and began getting things ready to go. We hated having to pack up clothes, toiletries and everything that we needed, to move out but Stella decided to remove most of the things we have in the refrigerator and freezer because we don't want to take a chance on it thawing and ruining our fridge. Jim had first told us that we could run it on propane but I had asked about plugging it in. Not only that, but we had to put things away and get the trailer ready to move. This sucks!!

We left the park this morning about 9:20 and drove the two miles to Heartland. We drove to Fenner's office and. Heartland owns a huge complex now, of I don't know how many buildings and plants. Anyway, I went inside and got Jim and we followed him to the customer service building. We got to meet the technician that was going to do the work on our trailer. He seems to know what he's doing, and didn't see anything unusual. He promised to take care of our home and said it should be ready to go by Friday.

We stopped off at Perkins for Stella to eat breakfast. I had eaten a leftover sandwich so I wasn't hungry. When we got through, we tried to get into our motel room but the person that was already in the room wasn't out yet. We waited until after noon and finally got into our room. We actually got a room with a small refrigerator and microwave, so we had a place to put our cold stuff. I had left a couple of the larger items from the freezer with JD and told them to eat them if they wanted.

The Wigleys were coming over to this motel to set up their stay here, so when they got here, we decided to go over to Valparaiso Ind. to see some trucks at Classy Chassis. It took us about an hour and a half to get there on the backroads route that the GPS took us on, but we made it. The dealer was somewhat of a disappointment to us because they had no inventory of new trucks, only used ones. I'm sure they would have built one for me if I had asked, but I wanted to look at something now.

We drove back to Elkhart on the toll road, and it was a much shorter route. I forgot that I had set my program on the GPS to avoid toll roads, so I will have to keep this in mind when we do any more traveling. It would have been very expensive if we had the trailer with us, so to save money I will continue to avoid the toll roads.

When we checked into the motel, they gave us some discount coupons for some local restaurants. We all decided to go to the Texas Roadhouse for supper and had a very good meal.

We returned to our motel room to watch NCIS on television. Let me tell you, we can't wait to get back into our trailer. When you just use a motel room to sleep, as we had done in the past when we would visit family, it seemed to be a nice size room, but now that we're using it to watch television and actually "live" in it, we realize how small it really is. I hope they get our trailer fixed soon.

Monday April 26, 2010-Elkhart Camground

We woke this morning with lots to do today. We are supposed to take the trailer in on Wednesday for the work to be done, and there are a lot of things we need to do first.

We ate breakfast in the trailer of some muffins that we had bought at Perkins Restaurant and left to run errands. I had received a message from Ed Weidig, one of our Heartland Owners club friends from Texas. He is in Elkhart for a meeting for work. He is delivering RV's, which I did about 10 years ago. He wanted to meet us for coffee, and we met at the Goshen fairgrounds, mainly because that was a location that we both knew. We had a nice visit with him over coffee, and exchanged stories of delivering RV's. Ed attended one of our Houston rallies and said he would try to come in October.

Stella and I went to Lambright's Furniture to look at some recliners. This place is way out in the boonies near Shipshewana. The store is run by Amish people and we got their name from Rick and Brenda who had bought some chairs here last year. They make nice chairs, but we were not impressed with some of the features on them, so I think we'll keep looking. They're nice chairs and certainly worth a look, but they didn't quite fit what we need.

We were going to eat at a small restaurant near the flea market in Shipshewana but it was closed today. We ended up at The Blue Gate, a famous Amish restaurant, and had a great meal there. While there, we ran into the Wigleys again. Small world! Here we are, 1300 miles from home, and have already met with one fellow that we know from Texas and are parked next to another friend who are from Arkansas that we met in Texas. I guess that's to be expected when you live our lifestyle of traveling all the time.

I have been playing phone tag with Jim Fenner, the service manager at Heartland, about a time for getting our trailer in on Wednesday. We drove through some beautiful country on our way back to Elkhart, and just stopped in at Jim's office. We met with him and he said to bring the trailer in tomorrow instead of Wednesday, so we went home and started getting things ready to go.

We first thought of staying in one of the cabins here at the park, but when we looked at them, they are very basic little cabins with nothing in them. We would have had to bring in our own lines, towels etc. and then walked over a block to go to the showers and bathroom. We decided to go to the Red Roof Inn, nearby, where we would at least have our own bathroom.

So long.

Sunday, April 25, 2010-Elkhart Campground

Man, we slept last night! I didn't go to bed until after 11, even though I was tired from five days of driving and of course, the hassle of the break-down yesterday. I didn't wake this morning until 8:30 and Stella didn't get up until after 9! We were both tired out and just stayed inside most of the day. I worked on catching up on my blog and she worked and played on her computer inside. I did go get us checked into the park and went over to visit with the Wigleys about 1:30.

I came back home and worked more on the computer and took a short nap in my chair. Hey, I'm still tired...We agreed to go out for supper with JD and CJ. They took us to a place called Perkins restaurant in Elkhart. We all had a good meal and bought some muffins for breakfast in the morning. We returned home to more rain, and went back inside.

A relaxed day of rest was certainly called for. I think we earned it!

Saturday April 24, 2010-Travel day, Terre Haute IN to Elkhart IN

Here we sit, broke down on the side of the road. The right rear wheel brake caliper malfunctioned, causing brake fluid to spray on the brake rotor and pads and causing a lot of smoke.

Here is a closer look at the broken caliper. The caliper is the large on the right side of the hub and had to be replaced.

We stood around so long waiting for the mobile repair guy, I took out our lawn chairs and we sat there on the side of the road. If I had some lemonade, I could have opened a stand and made a little money as we waited. :>)

Today is the final day of our journey. We are both getting into this short driving days and slept a little later this morning. We did get up in time to go have breakfast at the park, the first hot breakfast we have had all week. Again, we made good time and stopped at a rest area just before we got to Indianapolis for our break.

We got through Indianapolis and at some point, my brakes on the right rear began to smoke. I stopped as soon as I could and found fluid coming out on the inside of the wheel hub. We called Good Sam road service and they sent a mobile repair guy out to work on the truck. The guy came out, but told me that I had to pay him $90 per hour from the time he left his house until he got through with the work. Since I was broke down on the side of the road, what choice did I have? I told him to get to work. He looked at the damaged wheel and determined that the brake caliper was bad and that he would have to go to a parts store about 20 miles away. Again,no choice, so away he went. It took him an hour and fifteen minutes to go to the store to buy the parts he needed. Then he starts to work and finds that he doesn't have a tool that he needs to take the caliper apart to replace it. He has to go back to the parts store to get this tool, but says he may be able to find someone closer to help him. I questioned him about why I had to pay for him not having the tools to get the job done, but his reply is that if I hadn't broken down, he wouldn't have needed the part. Nothing I can do but let him go and then be prepared to pay him when he gets back. I forgot to tell you that he only takes cash, no checks, no credit cards. Luckily, Stella was able to walk across the highway to the ATM machine and draw out enough cash to pay him. Who carries a large amount of cash with them on the road? We ended up paying him $570 for about 30 minutes of actual work, not including his travel times He charged me $169 for the caliper but I looked on the Auto Zone website and found the exact same caliper for $39. Wow, what a ripoff! You can rest assured that I will be in contact with Good Sam (what's good about this?) to discuss this issue.

We made it into Elkhart and found the Elkhart Campgrounds We pulled in beside our friends JD and CJ Wigley, who are also in Elkhart for work on their trailer. It had started raining on us in South Bend and rained all the way into Elkhart. The weather has been miserable, with rain and cool weather. I hope it clears up later in the week.

So long.

Friday, April 23, 2010, travel day-Sikeston MO to Terre Haute IN

I woke this morning, still full from Lambert's cafe. I did eat a little cereal before we took off, but we're getting later and later We didn't leave until after 10 this morning! We made good time and made it into Indiana before we stopped for a break. I saw another of the FEMA trailers in the rest area. The only signs I saw on this one was the warnings about hooking up water and sewer. Other than a lot of black streaks and some hoses and wires hanging down under the trailer, it seemed to be in pretty good shape.

I forgot to tell you about an older man in the service station where we stopped for fuel. We were pulling out, coming from the diesel truck fueling area behind the station. This guy pulled out from the front of the station and never looked right nor left, pulling out right in front of me. Thank goodness my brakes are good and I was able to stop. Then he gets to the highway and without slowing down at all, he just pulls out into the road, right in front of a van, who laid on the horn for him. He's just driving, not paying attention.

We pulled into the Terre Haute KOA about 3 o'clock. This is a pretty little park where we stayed for two days last year on our trip to Goshen for the rally there. The little donkeys are still there and they added a stray puppy that someone dropped there. They are keeping it for animal control to come out and take it away. I feel sorry for animals that are abandoned like that, but we don't need another dog right now.

It rained some on us today, which just keeps the bugs off the front of the trailer. It made it cooler than it was in Texas, but not too cold to make it uncomfortable. I am liking these travel days more and more.

So long.