Repair frustrations and more of the Natchez Trace

We are still sitting in the Tiffin Service Center parking lot. Sigh. We got into the paint shop on Friday, and today we had the paint finished up (buffing and such). They did a great job. I drove the coach back to our parking spot, hooked it all up, and 15 minutes later was asked to come to the cabinet shop. We only have one item left – a very poorly finished bathroom door. The very nice young man said the door had to be replaced, not repaired, and it would be two weeks! I nearly died. He saw my face, and said he’d go look to see if they had a spare one sitting around. Luckily, they did, and he said he’d get it put together and sprayed in “a day or two.” Yet another sigh, but not as big this time. We are hoping to get into Missouri on Thursday, but we will see what happens. Thank goodness I allocated lots of time for this trip.

On Saturday we took another trip along the Natchez Trace, this time heading towards Nashville. The pictures are from along the Trace.

This shows the old footpath and how it divides into different paths to go around what became mud puddles as the path as it wore down.

This is the Gordon house from 1818. It is t open for visitors, but it is pretty impressive anyway. The owner had a concession from the local Choctaws to operate a Ferry and trading post. He did just after the house was built, but his wife lived here until 1849.

This is the Inn (known as a “stand” in this part of the country when the Trace was active) where Meriweather Lewis committed suicide. Poor fellow was being stiffed by the US Government on a bunch of bills that he then had to cover from his own pocket. He was looking at bankruptcy, and was depressed. He is buried about 100’ away, his grave marked by a broken column indicating his early death. So sad.

Sunday we just hung around locally. I made some of the wonderful Instant Pot egg bites with sausage and cheddar cheese this time, and I also made an Instant Pot cheesecake. Both turned out wonderfully. I also got my sewing machine set up to get some work done on the quilt for the coach. Hopefully I will have all the blocks done before we go home for Thanksgiving.

 

Scenic south and Tiffin warranty service

We finally made it to the Tiffin Service Center campground on Monday afternoon. We got the call while we were on our way to Tupelo to visit Elvis Presley’s birthplace museum. Oops! Back to Red Bay to make the move.

We did get to drive just over 40 miles on the Natchez Trace on our way to Tupelo though. It is the oddest National Park I know. More than 400 miles long, but only as wide as the road in many places. Here is a view of the gorgeous heavy deciduous forest along most of the route. Obviously it is still late summer in this part of the country.

We did take time to walk part of the original Trace which was just a foot trail.

This section led to a small and lonely Confederate cemetery. There is a tiny Confederate flag someone left.

We also stopped to see the Pharr Indian Mounds, dating from 0-200 CE. Pretty impressive after 1800 years!

Once we got settled in the Tiffin campground, we just relaxed and watched TV. Kevin’s newly installed satellite is working great! This is not a campground for relaxing outside. Not only is it miserably hot here, but it is another parking lot, suitable for waiting for service but not camping.

Yesterday we decided to drive to Meridian, Mississippi to buy me a fold up sewing table. I have one at home, but forgot to bring it! We both figured it would be good to just keep this one in the coach. Kevin feels like death warmed over with his bronchitis though I am beginning to recover. It was 7 hours in the car because we took a “scenic” path. Not terribly scenic though since it was mostly just a road through lots and lots and lots of trees.

We did get with the service writer, and he said we had a couple of days wait to get into an Express Bay. That gives you two techs for two three hours to get most of our warranty items done. The final item will be in the cabinet shop, and that requires an additional wait. Sigh. Luckily the two days wait turned into a day and a half, and we moved into the Express Bay a little after noon today. All of our items were taken care of, but a ladder from the next bay fell against our coach and put a nice big scratch in the paint. Another sigh. They are hoping to get us into the paint shop tomorrow morning, but we will see. We still need the cabinet shop, but I am hoping they put us in the wait line immediately rather than waiting for the pain shop to finish. Oh well, the parking lot is free since we are under warranty, and it is full hookup.

i am also including a picture of cotton fields since they are everywhere around here!

Made it to Red Bay, Alabama

We left Iowa about 1:00 pm on Friday after running a number of last minute errands. We spent the night in the Walmart parking lot in Hannibal, MO. Nice quiet place. We got around Saturday around 9:00 and headed to Jackson, TN. We spent the night again in a Walmart parking lot. Like most small towns on a Saturday night, there were some young idiots in very loud cars cruising the parking lot, but it got quiet well before midnight. Since we only had 100 miles to go, we took our ever loving time getting out. We finally got to the Tiffin Service Center campground by noon. However we found out the campground was already full. Tiffin recommended we go to the Red Bay campground a couple of miles away. It is just a big gravel parking lot, but it has 50 amp full hookups. Cheap at $25 a night, but it would have been free if we were at the Tiffin site. Hopefully we can move in the next day or so. The roads all the way from Iowa we’re divided four lanes with the exception of the last 20 miles or so.

We have all our forms filled out for our warranty work, and some time tomorrow a Tiffin SC rep will come out to evaluate the time needed to complete our list. That will decide how long we have to wait our turn.

I admit this is a short post without pictures, but I should have more to post when we can get out and about. It is, unsurprisingly, very, very green here. It was also ridiculously hot today, almost 90 degrees! Should be better tomorrow, but I still miss my cool, dry mountains and deserts. All those folks who retired and moved to Florida – good for them! I can’t even imagine it.

Camping close to home – Big Woods Lake campground

We got back from Estes Park safely. We had intended on camping at Fall Lake in northern Minnesota, but the forecast was for lots of rain and cold. We instead decided to camp near home with the motorhome, trying out the new doodads Kevin has been installing. It let us know what we didn’t have in the coach which is handy when you are heading out for 7 or 8 weeks. We were able to have most of the kids and all the grandkids out for dinner one night. Luckily there was a small playground since the coach is pretty small for 9 people! It was about the only night we didn’t have rain.

The weather has been terrible. It has rained, and rained, and rained. We actually had the wettest month on record, and we still have days left! Not just the wettest September, but the wettest ever. This is NOT the way the river is supposed to look in September. I bet the farmers will be using an awful lot of propane to dry the corn this fall.

We even got a backsplash installed in the house. I am quite pleased with the look even though the grout needs re-done some. That will be finished tomorrow. Kevin and Nick adjusted the electrical boxes to get that nice, even look.

Even though we are leaving tomorrow, there is still one more thing Kevin intended on finishing, a portable water softener. We are just going to take it with us, and he can work on it later. Everything else got done: solar, solar controller, electrical monitoring system, battery monitoring system, cell phone booster, dash cam, and a new satellite antenna. We definitely don’t “camp” with all this stuff! It is nice for “living” though.

Tomorrow we pack up and head to Red Bay, AL for some warranty work. We will probably spend the first night in the Walmart at Hannibal, MO.

Wildfires and more elk

We decided to go sightseeing today, but at a lower elevation since I had a bad headache the last two days. We took a lovely trip from Estes Park to Glen Haven then on into Ft. Collins via backroads. We wandered through a valley and crossed over a creek a number of times. It was classic Colorado backroads – mountains, ranches, hills, creeks, pines, willows, cottonwoods. Just as we got to the Cache le Poudre river (highway 14) we saw lots of smoke and then an active wildfire. Fire trucks from volunteer departments and the Forest Service passed us on the road, including a big van with Pike Hot Shots. When they bring out the Hot Shots, you know a fire is getting serious work. We pulled over and watched for quite a while. Here are some pictures and video. As usual, I apologize for not having the video in a easy format, but it is worth it.
Those itty bitty dots on the cliff top are firefighters.
The fire was only a few hundred feet from the road

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The Fire is known as the Seaman Lake Fire, and it is already partially contained according to this source: https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/09/12/seaman-fire-prompts-voluntary-evacuations-threatens-poudre-river/1280800002/

While in Loveland for lunch, we found we had a fire going flat! Walmart changed the tire, but I wasn’t willing to buy any of theirs. We ended up going to Big O Tires in Estes Park, and we get four new tires put on tomorrow. Painful price though.

After the pain there, we decided to head one more night out to RMNP for the elk. This time we decided to go to Horseshoe Park, and what a good choice it was! We first saw the young buck with his small harem of 3 we had seen in Morraine Park. Then came a much bigger buck with a large harem of 13 cows, yearlings, and calves. We watched while the big buck ran off the younger and stole his little harem. Of course there was much bugling involved. It was wonderful.

Tomorrow will be new tires, a leisurely breakfast in town, just goofing off, and a Chuckwagon dinner. Then home on Friday.

Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park

We finally got out of town! We are taking a trip to Estes Park and RMNP as an anniversary present to ourselves (40 years). We are not camping this time but instead staying at the Inn On Fall River, a first for us. It was a very, very long drive! We did eat dinner at an incredible Thai restaurant called Bai Tong in Loveland. We will definitely have to do that again. We got a two room suite that has a huge patio next to Fall River. The place is standard tourist rustic but clean and tidy. Chairs and lounges are on our private patio, plus a number of other “common” spots around the property. When we are here we have mostly just stayed on the patio. I love the sound of moving water. The pictures are from when we arrived and the next morning.

 

On Monday we took the standard RMNP drive: up the Fall River Road to the top of Trail Ridge Road, continued down the west side of the mountain, then back to town on Trail Ridge Road. It was an incredible first three miles. We saw 2 moose (an unusual sight), a herd of elk, and a herd of mule deer. I didn’t get pictures of any of those, but we made up for it later. We took a break for a bit, then we went to find the bugling elk, the primary purpose of this trip. I have seen thousands and thousands of elk, but we have never been here for the rut when they bugle. We ended up at Moraine Park, and we found this guy and his harem.

 

It wasn’t a big harem, but he took it very seriously, bugling like crazy when another buck came into range.

We also saw a number of mule deer including this guy.

I didn’t get a good picture of the harem, but he had six does with him.

Besides animals we obviously saw some gorgeous scenery. The aspen are changing colors on the hillsides, and it is glorious. I took this from the west side of Trail Ridge Road, and even with the haze it is lovely.

 

Since Monday was so successful we went to Denver today to visit their REI. It is huge, but a royal pain to get to and park since it is right downtown. We did get some new Helinox folding chairs. I found them obscenely expensive, but comfortable and very compact. They will fit in a backpack or on the bike carrier with ease. We also bought a Big Agnes air pump for our tent camping air mats. They are downfilled so you can’t just blow them up with your mouth, and we haven’t found our old pump since we moved! We still have some hope of going tent camping in Ely, MN next week though the weather is not looking good.

We came back from Denver though Boulder to Nederland to Estes Park. Much nicer scenery than I-25!

We haven’t decided what to do tomorrow, but we will probably go to Horseshoe Park to look for elk there.  We have a Chuckwagon Dinner scheduled for Thursday evening, then we head home on Friday. My poor kitty is staying with my son, and he says she isn’t terribly happy. She did come up to get petted for a few minutes, so it should improve. She just isn’t an animal that likes change or new people.

WordPress work plus the cat

I really, really need to update my WordPress templates so they look more like a “normal” blog with search keys and date markers so I can navigate through old posts easier. I ended up buying a book on WordPress that I picked up at Barnes and Noble. Yes, I know I can find anything I want online, but I really like books. I can skip around easier, underline, and use an index among other tasks. So I am now going through the book beginning to end. I am still working through it from beginning to end, but it is slow going. The first chapters include material I already know, but I don’t dare skip something because I undoubtably will miss something important.

I did take a break from reading for a couple of reasons. First, it was our 40th anniversary on Sunday. We spent the night at Nicolet Mansion B&B in Jordan, MN, southwest of Minneapolis. It was a lovely evening, night, and breakfast. We had dinner at an odd restaurant – Suzette’s in Jordan. The exterior and much of the interior screams “Diner!” due to the block exterior and booths with blue vinyl upholstery. The appearance is quite deceiving, though the European reproduction paintings give a hint. The chef is Cambodia by birth but European-trained, and the food was fantastic. For dessert we had ordered a chocolate fondue at the B&B which was quite fun. Of course it rain a lot the day of the anniversary and today so we didn’t get to the Renaissance Festival or the zoo like we had planned. It was still quite nice.

Our other distraction has been my poor cat. She had one surgery to remove a growth that turned out to be a skin cancer. She then had a second surgery to make sure they had got it all, and she is still recovering from that.

Doesn’t that look terrible? It is basically almost half her neck covered in a bunch of huge stitches. It is in the wrong spot to protect by an Elizabethan collar, and she pulls off any bandages we put on top of it. It must be dreadfully itchy, and she tries to scratch it. Luckily we head back to the vet tomorrow, and hopefully the stitches can come out.

On successful note, Kevin got all the solar installed. Our sons didn’t come up, so he had to do it himself. I was fairly irritated about it, but he took it better than I did. Oh, and I got a new electric bicycle, but I will talk about that next time since I haven’t got much of a chance to ride it.

Fun times with family in Minnesota

My oldest son, Alan, and his wife co-own a great lake house in southern Minnesota. We took a family weekend there along with another son and my daughter and her family. Kevin and I obviously have more time so we took off early to do some sightseeing along the way. We spent some time in Northfield, MN, a lovely little college town. We wandered around the downtown area which was full of historic brick buildings and lots of artisan-type shops. We also visited their historic museum. One of Northfield’s claims to fame is that the bank was (rather unsuccessfully) robbed by the Jessie James and Younger gang. The “guided tour” was with a high school student who obviously was very excited to be able to tell about the robbery. The old bank teller area was still original, and the little museum is well worth the $4 or $5 fee (depending on age).

Northfield also has a great olive oil and vinegar shop. Alan had told me it was a great place that he bought things from regularly. We ended up with one cooking oil and one flavored oil for dipping bread in. I admit I don’t use enough vinegars to appreciate the options of those. I intend on using both for dinner tomorrow night! We also found a great Mexican restaurant, Gran Plaza. I had Pollo Loco with the best Mexican rice I have ever had! It is a bit silly to rave about rice, but it was really outstanding. It had been cooked with grilled onions, and that was certainly a help.

The days at the lake house were fun. Alan’s BIL is a contractor, and he just finished a bathroom remodel for them hours before we showed up. Very nice! Handy too since I wasn’t looking forward to having 7 adults and 3 children sharing a single shower stall. We chose the bedroom closest to the new bathroom – surprise! This is the way I spent most of my time. (This was at the end of the day; it was sunnier most of the time.)

On Saturday Kevin, daughter Cheyenne, and grandson Clay went to the Apple Valley view in souther Minneapolis area. They had a good time, but they all said Clay’s favorite were the goats.

Everyone except Kevin and me spent lots of time in the water.

Neither Kevin or I are overly fond of lake water, but we did enjoy some fishing and boat riding. We also had some great pizza at an artisanal place in Montgomery, MN. Yummmmm.

Most of the folks left Sunday afternoon, but Alan’s family, Kevin, and I stayed until today. We got lucky, and the rain that had been forecast to start last night waited until after we left around 10:30. We ended up having a classic Midwest pork tenderloin lunch at a place called the Elbow in Albert Lea. Good, fried tenderloin sandwiches are one of the things I missed most about the Midwest when we lived in Utah.

Other than the trip, Kevin continues to be busy on the motorhome. He completed the final cosmetic work on the EMS installation, the solar controller, and the Trimetric battery monitor. Now he just needs to get one of the kids here to help install the panels. It should be one of the next two weekends.

Just hanging around home

We have just been hanging around home for the last couple of weeks. Kevin is really busy working on the motorhome’s electrical system. He has added a Electrical Monitoring System (EMS) that protects against low voltage as well as high voltage situations. The coach had built in surge protection, but low voltage can be really hard on electronics so it is good to manage that too. The EMS detects bad incoming voltage and then shuts down external power so nothing gets damaged. Once everything works again, power is restored..it has already been helpful. The storage unit we have has only 15 amp power, much less than the motorhome really needs. Turns out we were running at 104 volts instead of 110, so some adjustments to the charging system had to be made. Kevin never would have known about the problem without the EMS, at least until electronics started randomly failing.

Kevin has also had a great time planning out the solar system. The panels and controller plus all the miscellaneous mounting hardware have arrived. He has already installed the controller in the storage bay near the batteries, and the panels are in the garage waiting for one of my son’s and my son in law to help in a couple of weeks. They will have a much easier time climbing around the roof than Kevin would! He is still going to supervise, but they should get the entire system installed and operating in a day.

I have been remarkably lazy. I did take the three local grandkids to Vacation Bible School last week which was pretty tiring. I keep forgetting just how much energy children (4 and 8) have! They had a blast though. We are pretty happy with one of the local Presbyterian churches, and we will be joining it soon. They have a much more socially active ministry than my church in Salt Lake City, and I am very comfortable with it. I also visited the ophthalmologist in Cedar Rapids I went to before we moved. As I suspected, I have had another vitreous detachment, this time in my right eye. I knew what had happened as soon as the numerous new “floaters” showed up. As with the left eye a year ago, no retinal involvement so it is just a bother, nothing more.

Poor Lily had surgery Friday to remove a spot that just wouldn’t heal. It continued to weep fluid and scab even after multiple treatments with antibiotics,  so we finally had it excised. She has a huge incisision and lots of stitches. She is also in a lot of pain. She is getting an opioid narcotic painkiller every 8 hours, but you can tell from her behavior when it starts wearing off.

The stitches don’t come out for over another week. The vet did send the sample for a path report, but we aren’t expecting any bad news. We all think it was just a spot that was inflamed and never healed. Cats have weird skin issues.

Leaving South Dakota

We haven’t made it completely out of South Dakota, but we are almost out. Tonight we are staying in the Cabela’s parking lot in Mitchell. It wasn’t our first choice, but the Badlands National Park campgrounds was full. Instead of paying a lot of money for a “regular campground”, we decided to just drive a ways farther and spend the night in the Cabela’s lot. Cabela’s encourages RVers to spend the night in a corner of the lot. No services provided, but it is generally safe and quiet. Being free doesn’t hurt a bit either. After all, our unit is fully self contained, so why spend $35-40 for a spot in a private campground?

The Badlands camping alternative was just a wild hope. It was a Friday in the prime tourist season, and I didn’t have high expectations of finding a spot. We did get to drive through the park though, and it was even more beautiful the usual. The grasslands were amazingly green due to the very wet summer South Dakota has been having, and the contrasts between the multi colored rocks and the vegetation was striking. Since we were in the motorhome towing a Grand Cherokee we couldn’t really stop anywhere – too big. We have been there a number of times before though, so we just enjoyed the ride.

I have more pictures of our Black Hills sojourn though. The first is a picture of a spring/waterfall in the town of Hot Springs.

The next is the sound of the Fall River just outside of Hot Springs. I love the sound of water. You will have to click this one to hear it. I really should figure out how to embed videos.

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We also had a fabulous encounter yesterday with a huge herd of mountain goats right at the entrance to Jewel Cave National Monument. We were driving by after doing some back roads from Hill City, rounded a corner, and there they were blocking the highway.

I didn’t get all of them in any one picture, but there probably thirty or more ewes and lambs. They were definitely not too worried about the cars, all of which came to a dead stop.

Also during yesterday’s running around we ate lunch at a good German restaurant in Hill City – the Alpine Inn. We both had jager schnitzel, and it was lovely. We went to this restaurant last year when we were on vacation with the kids near Spearfish, and it was just as good as we remembered. Across from the restaurant was a shop with hundreds of metal yard sculptures. I ended up with a peacock whirly gig and some roses. I will take a picture when I get them in the front bed.

We are actually going to spend tomorrow night at a campground in Waterloo so we can get the motorhome all cleaned up. It won’t be out again until late September or early October. We do have other trips planned, but they will be with the tiny tent camper or the car.