Shipshewana!

After visiting Mom for a few days, we left on Sunday morning and drove to Shipshewana and camped in the flea market campground. It is a no frills campground but has full hookups with good power. We park in the row next to the flea market and the market is just about 25 feet away. So it is an easy walk to the venue. There was a guy flying an ultralight over the area every day. He may have been taking pictures.

We normally come in on Sunday because the flea market doesn't start till Tuesday. So we move in and relax on Sunday afternoon. On Monday, we normally walk around the town and visit the shops we like and spend as much time looking as we like. We also made a trip out of town a few miles to visit Leon at National RV Refrigeration and set up an appointment to have an ARC installed in our Norcold Refrigerator. It is an Absorption Refrigerator Controller and works by monitoring the temperature of the fluid in the boiler. When it reaches a certain degree, it shuts off the boiler, restarting it when it cools down. This may happen in the course of driving it over hilly terrain or sitting in an unlevel condition. At any rate, it is the best device for maintaining the integrity of the system and one which will prevent fires. We made our appointment for Thursday morning.

The week was really hot, reaching the 90's every day, so we really monitored our time outdoors. Monday was okay as we were shopping in town and the shops are all air-conditioned. The motorhome stayed cool and we took breaks and returned to the rig for lunch and naps. LOL

Tuesday and Wednesday were flea market days and it was awfully hot. We got started early and the day did take awhile to heat up. We went back home at noon and had lunch. When we got back out it had turned really hot, so we only lasted an hour and came back in, leaving about three rows to do on Wednesday. That was a good thing, because Wednesday started out very hot and when we quit at 11:30; it was close to unbearable for us anyway. Attendance was really down as you can see from the pictures. Made it easy to get through the aisles, but it was miserable. We just hung out, walked the dogs, and visited with some of the neighbors. One of the people we met had a new fifth wheel. They pulled it with a Kenworth tractor and put a Smart Car up behind the cab in front of the trailer. I stopped and talked with him and commented that a friend of ours had had a similar setup when they were fulltiming, but had since left that life and sold their rig. Turns out, the tractor and Smart car were our friends and this guy had bought them from them. Wow. What a small world. Very nice couple.

Thursday we got around and left about 9:30 and headed up to Leon's to get the ARC installed. Took less than 30 minutes, but then he explained to us how it worked and what to watch for. Very nice young man who really knows gas absorption refrigerators. He replaced the coils in ours four years ago when our boiler ruptured. At four years now, it has lasted longer than any of the Norcold fixes we ever had done. So glad we went with his system. You gotta' remember that the Amish have been working with gas absorption refrigeration and freezing longer than Norcold or Dometic. Our fridge continues to work as it should.

After having that done, we headed over to the house and are here today relaxing from the heat of the past week. Normally we would be up north in cooler climes at this point, but with the family situation, we are trying to stay closer to Mom. We are leaving here tomorrow and heading back down to Warsaw to spend a few more days with her, then we head to Indianapolis for the appointment with my neurosurgeon to see what's going on with my back. This appointment was rescheduled by the doctor last month, so hopefully we can get it done this time.

Till next time. . .

Dale

Elvis has left the building!

At Milton, Florida, we stayed at a park called Avalon. It was very nice and the staff was very accommodating. We took the last site available and it was a back-in, but no problem for us. It had rained a great deal on our trip across Mississippi and Alabama and north Florida, but the rain was done by the time we got into Avalon. It did, however, start to storm later and we ended up with two dogs sleeping on the bed with us! They usually jump down sometime during the night after all the stormy weather has passed.

We drove from there to St. Augustine for the night and stayed at a park called Stagecoach. We have been there before and it's decent for an overnight.

We continued our push on toward Melbourne, but it was becoming difficult to find any campsites available. At one point, I tried to add a few days to our reservations at Wickham Park, but they showed they were full every day, so there was no point in trying to arrive a couple days early. Eventually we called the International RV Park down the road from Daytona International Speedway and the Daytona Flea Market. It has been years since we have been to that flea market and we love to browse. Gets us out and moving and it's fun to look at all the "junk" that's for sale.

We checked in on Saturday around noon and the owner invited us to a "Fabulous Fifties" party that evening. It was put on by the park and was completely free. That's right, FREE, including booze if you want it. He gave us free tickets so that evening after we fed the girls, we walked over to the hall. They started with appetizers which were very good and a salad bar. While everybody was chowing down on that, they started calling tables. We were called fairly early so we got our food quickly. They served beef tri tips over rice, green beans and a roll. . . along with the salad and appetizers we had eaten earlier. It was very good. I had a couple cups of beer and thoroughly enjoyed it. Kudos to the owners who treated everyone to such a great evening. Dancing followed and even Elvis put in an appearance. The park residents say the owners do a free dinner for everyone once a month. Wow!

When we arrived at this camp, we had some difficulty with our leveling jacks. We have replaced three of the four, plus a control panel. One of the four already replaced is ratcheting and grinding. We are smart enough now to know the "signs" of failure and know that if it breaks in the down position we are pretty much screwed. It would take awhile to get going because when the jacks go down it dumps the air. When a jack is broken in the down position it continues to dump the air anytime you try to go because that is a built in safety feature that you cannot move with a jack down. In that case we have to pull fuses, try to disconnect or remove the jack and then manually pump the airbags up. It is quite the process which we have done before, but Terry didn't really want to mess with it. Fortunately, I was able to raise it and it locked back in, so that is where the jacks are staying until it is fixed. It means we cannot use the jacks to level, so we have to do some jockeying to get as level as we can before we deploy the slides. But at least we are able to run now, so all is good.

We left there Sunday around 11 a.m. and drove on in to Wickham Park at Melbourne, just about five minutes from the kids. Brandon came out to see us after we got setup and then we joined them all for dinner a little later. He had made pulled pork in the crockpot and potatoes, etc. Wonderful meal and wonderful company. Brynlee is just as cute as ever and is learning to say "Grandma" better. She says "thank you" anytime you do something for her and it's adorable. We got to babysit for her today while Megan had a business meeting. Brandon essentially works from home now, but he is in his office most of the day, so we were glad to help out with Brynlee.

We finally made it. We are glad and we will have a great week! There is a launch tonight at 11:05 p.m. of an Atlas 5 rocket. Skies are clear right now and expected to stay that way. We are hoping nothing happens to postpone it. Brandon says we will be able to see it clearly from the park. I mean, it will pretty much look like a fireball, but we should get a good view of the flash from here. Terry's making popcorn.

Till next time. . .

Dale