Arriving in Elkhart Indiana…

Sunday morning we were up and on the road headed to our destination of Elkhart, IN. We are caravanning with Kevin & Arlene. The trip was pretty uneventful. The roads were really bad due to road construction and the traffic was a little heavy south of the Chicago area.

We pulled in to The Elkhart Campground around 1:30 and were welcomed with lots of hugs from friends were are meeting here for the Gypsy Journal Rally. Donna & Keith and Jim & Ellie and Mark & Dortha prepared dinner of Hamburgers, Brats, Hamburgers, salads, and dessert for us since we traveled today…Thank you so much! It was very nice not having to worry about dinner. We sat and visited until it started getting dark and the mosquitoes drove us all inside.

 

Monday some of us headed out to RV Distributors, which is an RV Surplus store. We looked around but didn’t find much that we needed…some extensions for our downspouts. Back at the campground we just hung out. Our other good friends, Donnie & Karen and Chuck & Kathy had arrived so the rest of us prepared dinner for them…we had grill your own choice of meat and salads, and some yummy desserts. We all got caught up. Talked until the bugs drove us all inside again…seems to be a pattern here..lol.

 

 

Tuesday, we were all going to Shipshewana to the Flea Market. We rode with Chuck & Kathy with Kevin & Arlene following. We had decided to stop at the Rise and Roll for a sandwich before going to the Market.

That place is very dangerous. They have fresh pastries, donuts, cake, cookies, fresh Wheat bread, and much, much more. We had our sandwiches and bought some Apple Fritters, and some Wheat bread and were off to the Market. We didn’t stay long because we had a Baked Potato Supper planned with Molly & Bob and Jim & Dee coming over from Goshen to join us. We passed by some Amish houses and farmers working their fields…

Then we were back at the campground…

 

We had a great meal and Mark & Dortha, Jim & Ellie, and Jim & Dee were adopted into the Escapees Class of 2007.

Lots of story telling and jokes being told….but eventually the darkness and mosquitoes got the best of us.

Wednesday we were up and were going to go out to Focal Wood to look at some Desk/Dining Table options that we wanted for the RV. We have heard about this place and the owner, Carlyle Lehman, from many of our friends and we wanted to check it out. We were going to ride with Chuck & Kathy because they had chairs that they needed to pick up.

So before we could head out there…Mac realized that our truck was leaking water from the radiator, at least that’s what he thought….so they followed us to the Ford Dealer so we could drop the truck off to be looked at.

Now we were headed toward Focal Wood but decided to stop and have a sandwich at “The Red Barn'” which is a huge building with booths set up inside. This place is beautiful and sadly it will be closing its doors on September 4th due to slow business…

Chuck having a donut…lol

we looked around for a few minutes…these are photos of the building and how it was being built…amazing

and then headed out to our main destination…Focal Wood. We talked to Carlyle, and then decided to order the desk/table unit and also a small coffee table. I have included a photo of one of his units. Ours will look similar to this only in the Cherry stain.

We decided that we better get started back toward Elkhart because we were having a Mexican food potluck for dinner, but first we wanted to see the Elkhart Fairgrounds where the Escapees Escapade will be starting on September 12th. We drove over to the fairgrounds and stopped to see Bob & Molly for a few minutes. Back at the campground we got our food prepared and had a wonderful dinner. Lots of visiting and laughing going on again…it wasn’t the bugs that ran us inside, but the chilly air…

and no one could find the Banana Pudding…uh oh..there it is…Donnie was finishing it off…lol

Today we are going to the RV and MH Hall of Fame Museum. This should be fun. Also, we need to pick up our truck sometime today…

 

Stay tuned for more adventures from Elkhart, Indiana…

(((HUGS)))

House, Auction and heading toward Elkhart…

It Has been a really long time since I last posted. We have been so busy that by the time we take time to stop we are so tired that I just haven’t felt like sitting down to write the blog. Well, this will be a quick re-cap…

We got home from our TN trip and started working on the house at full speed…we only had 2 weeks to get everything done and ready for the auction. We worked long, long hours hauling stuff of and packing. We finally had to hire a moving service to move things from storage to the house so we could get them ready…we just were running our of time.

Auction day finally rolled around…and we were exhausted…Our daughter, Jenni and family had been helping us on their off hours, and our daughter, Teri & son-in-law, Lynnie came up on Friday night before the auction and helped all evening  they all helped all day of the auction. We would have never been ready without all of their help…Thanks so much kids!! We love you! The temps were well over 100* auction day and things were not selling well…things going for practically nothing…but I told Mac, theses are things we don’t want anymore, so whatever we get it more than we had. But is was kind of sad to see all those years of “Stuff” just go away.

After the auction we had some cleanup work to get done..got that taken care of and all the paperwork on the house signed at the Realtor’s office.

Now we are finally ready to start making plans to head north & east toward Elkhart, IN to a couple of Rallies and to have some work done on the RV.

We bought a small trailer to be able to haul our Golf Cart with us. It is pretty neat. We need to buy a backup camera system so that we can keep an eye on it since we can’t see it out of our side mirrors…we will look into that when we get to Elkhart.

Wednesday, we were up and ready to take off towards our first stop…Montgomery City, MO. Went by Jenni’s to tell them all goodbye…and we were off…The trip was supposed to take about 4 hours and ended up taking about 7, I think. We had a small issue with the little trailer. We got checked in to the Lazy Day RV Park and settled in to rest thinking that we would be back on the road again Thursday morning…

well Thursday morning rolled around and we decided to stay another day. Mac needed to have some work done on the little trailer and we wanted to look around this area. We got the trailer worked on and had lunch at “Liquid” Bar & Grill…Ribeye Steak Sandwich..yummy.

We headed back to the RV park and worked on getting things ready to travel on Friday. Later in the afternoon we went over to Hermann, MO to look around. This is a nice small German town with 6 different Wineries…we were too late for any tours but we did stop in to the Stone Hill Winery Restaurant and had some Schnitzel…OMG…the best we have ever had!

Friday we were up and on the road to the Casino Queen RV Park in East St Louis,IL. The trip was pretty uneventful and we made pretty good time. We didn’t really care for the way the GPS guided us to the RV Park…right downtown St Louis! But we made it just fine.

Kevin & Arlene came over after we got all set up and we headed over to the Casino for some lunch and a little gambling…I think we all came out ahead…some more than others. We went back to the RV Park and Donnie & Karen were all set up so we all set around and caught up a little. Kevin & Arlene had to take off as they had plans with their son and grandsons for dinner. Donnie & Karen and Mac  I went back to the Casino in the evening and I lost what money I had won earlier but Mac came out a little ahead for the whole day…so I made him buy dinner…

Saturday morning rolled around and Mac & I and Kevin & Arlene were heading north toward Champaign, IL for an overnight stay before going in to Elkhart on Sunday.

A little fun on the way…

and this really neat cross at Effingham, IL

 

We got all set up in the D & W Camping RV Park in Champaign, IL. Nice little park with lakeside sites….

We will head on in to Elkhart, IN tomorrow morning to join the rest of the gang that are there and await the ones still coming….Stay tuned…

“Note”…This little trailer that we bought has sure caused a stir…everywhere we stop, people keep coming up to ask Mac where we got it and all kinds of questions. The owner of the company has offered to pay Mac a commission on every on he sells that Mac refers to him…nice!

(((Hugs)))