Life of a Slumlord. . .

Just a parting picture of Ronan blowing out his 4th birthday candles!

We left Charlottesville for Indiana as you know from Terry's post. The weather promised rain and some bad wind, but we managed to dodge most of that. Had a little rain, but not too much wind, for which I was thankful. Terry has decided he likes navigating better than driving and that's okay with me, because he is a great navigator. He runs Street Atlas from a netbook and that program is putty in his hands. If there is a detour, etc., he can re-route Phaeton Place quickly and we rarely get slowed down.

The first major mountain we have to climb when we leave Charlottesville is Afton Mountain. We slow down considerably because it is hard to get a fast start climbing it, but a couple days after we left, another RV caught fire climbing this mountain. The pictures show it burning in the rear end, which would signal an engine fire, but I really don't know. We have a fire suppression system in our engine compartment. I don't know if that would have helped, but the main purpose in any fire suppression system in an RV is to allow the occupants enough time to get out. We also have one in the generator compartment and the refrigerator compartment. Anyone who would like information about these can go here for more information.

Normally on the way back from Virginia we spend the night in Gallopolis, Ohio, at the fairgrounds. However, when we tried to stop there on the way down, the grounds were too wet for Phaeton Place; and we ended up driving all the way through West Virginia to get a flat spot to park our rig, there being no places like that in West Virginia. There had been so much more rain that southern Ohio looked pretty much flooded and we didn't even try to park there on the way back. Instead, we stopped at Rocky Creek Camp which is a small camp we have seen for years. It is actually in a little ravine right over the edge of the road and down in the hollow. Since some bad weather was possible, we thought it would be a good place for a night camp. We had full hookups (30 Amp) and a concrete pad to park on which was good. As it was, there was no inclement weather and we had a restful night.

We moved on the next day and stopped at Tab and Deanna's in St. Paris, Ohio. We enjoyed visiting with our friends and we ended up staying for two nights because of wind. They had had a lot of rain as well and more expected. The area where we normally park was much too soft, so we backed up to their former loading dock which has long since been filled in. This was a great place to park except for the fact that we were only about 15 feet from the train tracks. Haha. We normally park on the far side of the building and don't even hear the train. But we certainly did this time. Tab said the train comes around 4 a.m., but that night it was 1:30. Even though we knew it would come and it would be loud, it rattled our teeth and sounded like it was coming straight through the windshield. Not sure we will be selecting site 402 again.

When we did leave there, we had all kinds of storm warnings in the area we intended to travel. So Terry stayed on the netbook and had a window open for the weather channel. He watched the storm cells moving through the various routes and routed me below and beyond the worst storm cells. Having a great navigator is the best. We had a little rain in a couple places and the skies looked dark, but we dodged them all. When we got just east of Ft. Wayne, we had wind, so we decided to jump off of US 30 and run red roads northwest to block most of the wind. We arrived at Elkhart Campground about 1 p.m. and got settled into the camp without any problems.

Since we arrived, we have been working over at the apartments. We have one tenant who moved out the other day and we will have to get that rented. Hopefully that is the only one we will have. Our tenants did a great job of cleaning their place, however, so we can begin the process of re-renting immediately. Things are not going well in Elkhart County again as the fuel prices affect pleasure industries first and RV's are usually the first to get parked when fuel is expensive. There are some layoffs occurring. I just hope it isn't as bad as 2008.

We have been busy cleaning out the basement of the office and clearing out stuff that will never be used. We took one truckload over to Goodwill and are working on another load. We had a lot of trash as well. Hoping to get rid of more stuff.

We have a rally this coming week. I can't wait. It's been a long time since we did our rallies in the spring and I am anxious to do it again.

Till next time. . .

Dale