Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts finally!

June 2 - Lakeville Mass Arrival! - We left Ohio amidst rain and drove to Lake Erie PA in the mist, stayed overnight there and drove in the rain to Palmer, Mass. where we stayed for the night before heading to Pat's house in Lakeville.  We did arrive here in late morning, unhooked, plugged in and the three of us headed for the Lobster Hut, the traditional first day stop in Massachusetts.  It was as good as it always has been!  For the last two days it has not been very warm, as a matter of fact this is the coldest it has been on this date since sometime in the late 1880's!  Of course....hehe...

May 29 - Ohio Visit - Off we went to visit with Ruth and Jerry in Grove City Ohio.  We stayed in Delaware Ohio and drove the Jeep down for a visit.  We had a terrific visit...it's always a good time when we see them. They are both so kind and caring, and it's infectious as we leave feeling like we are better people that we came as.  We ended up having fairly warm weather (something we had not had for quite some time!) before the rain came in.  Funny story....we needed some type of adapter for the RV and we decided to go to Colerain RV in Delaware OH (small community).  This was a satellite operation with their main showroom and service area in Cincinnati.  As we were chatting with the salesperson we told her that our friends that we camp with love Colerain in Cincinnati....turns out she used to work there and knew them!!! Apparently we can go almost no where in the USA without someone knowing C&J (you know how you are!!!)....small world...

May 17 - May 26 - Spartan School!

Oh my gosh did we have a great time!  We signed up for the Spartan Academy, Entegra Coach specific hoping that we would learn a few little nuggets from this class and also have an opportunity to meet other owners outside of the Factory.  What we left with was a huge amount of knowledge regarding our Coach as well as a terrific service experience!  What we will always keep with us is having the opportunity to meet so many great people of the same lifestyle as us!  I am posting a "class photo" including the mascots but not including the Cats!  They were very happy to stay inside the Coach during the day and skip the classroom time.  If you weren't there you really cannot get a sense of the camaraderie as well as the golden opportunity to discuss your specific coach chassis, its' inner workings and diagnostic skills.  We now know how much we did not know before!  We had catered breakfasts and lunches, which were absolutely fantastic, as well as dinner on the long night!  Les had the opportunity to have his own tech take him into the pit to view the underside of the coach, a chance that I passed on because I didn't have a clue what I was even looking at!

At the end of the week we all had a chance to attend a professional driving course with class time, range time and road time.  All of us took advantage of the class and range time but only our brave Deb ventured onto the roadway.  It was an excellent course and although Les is a very good driver, he even admitted to learning a few tricks to keep us safer.

Elsa & Anna learn about air brakes

We had an opportunity to purchase some parts (filters, belts, etc.) at a discounted price as well as have some warranty work done and other discounted work performed.  We also jumped on the bandwagon and had Koni shocks put on the front of the coach and I will tell you this has made a world of difference in the ride...it is so smooth! Thank you to Nick who was so excited about his new Shocks we were convinced we needed them! I think almost all of us now have the new ones. Of course we had an alignment as well as adjustments in the tire pressures too but all of these combined with the new shocks makes it handle like a dream.

As a graduate of the Academy we were given a special gift!  If you want to know what it was you will have to attend the class!  All in all we had a fantastic experience.

Nick, Les, Woody, Ken and Big Mike (Instructor) 

We were sad to say so long to our Entegra friends and we all promised to keep in touch or hoped that we would see one another on the road.  As everyone left one by one we stayed through the Memorial Day Weekend to have some service on our Micro/Convection oven and of course with the holiday could only wait for the first available tech on Tuesday.  What the heck the camping was still free, courtesy of Spartan!  It was our good fortune to have a new neighbor, Ron H. who had a Travel Supreme, the "father" of the Entegra family.  We struck up a conversation and before you knew it we had another travel friend (he is residing in Colorado)....we always warn folks we meet that you never know when we will pull up to your place!

Ken, Deb (holding Belle), Ranger, Roger, Cheryl, Nick(in blue), Brian, Julie, Zoey,  Big Mike, Nicole and Enoch (in back) from Spartan
Les, Pat, Duff (Sue was with the two "kids") PJ from Entegra, Woody, Ann and Bailey

After it was determined that we needed a replacement Micro/Convection we headed to the Entegra Factory to pick a new one up and have it installed.  Lo and behold when we took a stroll to the "owners" lot we happened upon Woody and Ann, one of new found Entegra friends from school!  More great laughs!! Our friends Brian & Julie had left their coach here for repairs so the four of us had a photo taken in front of their coach!   Here are a couple of photos from the class also.

Woody, Bailey, Ann, Pat, Les in front of Brian & Julie's Coach

Mecum Car Auction, Indianapolis, Indiana

Wow, this was a busy week.  We altered our original plans of visiting friends and family in Ohio (actually just changed our dates) and since we still had 9 days to kill before we had to report to our Spartan Chassis adventure, we decided to camp at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds.  Our motive was to attend the Mecum Car Auction and maybe tour a little of Indianapolis while there.  The rate was terrific, $30/day including taxes.  We ended up having a great site and was positioned right where the action was!  We arrived on a Friday just in time to see almost all of the cars for sale being off loaded.  It was a hubbub of activity right through opening day (May 12) and beyond.  There were so many awesome cars, new, old, reasonably priced, super expensive as well as other automobile memorabilia.  Les registered as a bidder and received a Guest pass for me as part of the package.  It was $20/day pp for admission so it was less expensive to register as a bidder.  I know he thought he could weasel a buy from me but I held strong!  After all where would we put it!  So I am posting some photos of some cool cars and a photo of us with Rutledge Wood (NBC-SN and TV car guy for those who don't know him).

Les, Rutledge, Pat

Wish Joshua was here as this was his "heaven"!

Baby Bird photo we took for Tony

Extra bonus the Indianapolis Speedway was having practice runs in preparation for the Indy 500.  We decided to go to practice one day to change it up.  The best things happen when you least expect it.  There were very few people there and most were sitting in the "bleachers in the sun" so while we were scoping out the opposite side of the track one of the track security workers started talking to us about the history of the track.  Before we knew it he was giving us a private tour of the old press box and suites no longer in use for the public.  The famous announcer Tom Carnegie's (now deceased, famous for his words "a new track record") press box and the original Western Union sticker preserved on the eye beam by Tom's broadcast booth.  It was really cool and we were happy we had an opportunity to do this.  He sent us up further in the stands to the Penthouse level and another guy continued to regale us with the history of the track.  While this was happening we look out and Helio Castroneves had an horrific crash during practice.  We missed seeing the actual crash live but saw the aftermath.

On our tour of Ton Carnegie's Broadcast Booth at Indy!  Note the Western Union Sticker.

Les at Indy Photo Op!  Oops we are on wrong side of "ndy"

The auction ended on Saturday and of course there was much hustle and bustle to get all the vehicles back on transporters and either to their new home or back to their original home if unsold. Again we had a front row seat.  I was napping and awoke to a fire engine siren, Les was nowhere to be found and I saw smoke pouring out of one of the haulers across from us.  Turns out that there was some type of mechanical issue with a 1957 Corvette that had just been loaded onto the hauler on the second level and you guessed it, it caught on fire and was destroyed. This had just sold for $140,000...oh my....here's the aftermath.

Anyway now we are in Charlotte, Michigan to learn about our chassis.  Today was beautiful, although a bit windy, but the forecast for the week includes some mighty low temperatures, brr, on with the heat again!

Indiana...Elkhart, Shipshewana, Auburn, Florence

Well it's been a little bit of time since we've reported on our whereabouts. We made our way fairly quickly out of the dangerous storms. We headed to Elkhart Indiana to prepare for our visit to the factory. We caught up on some errands, laundry and shopping. Then we went to the factory to have some warranty work done. They schedule you to stay for one week, on their property, and encourage you to get as much done as possible in that time. They have between 8 and 10 coaches that they regularly service. Your tech picks up your coach at 6:30 AM every day and returns it to your spot sometime between 2:30 and 3 PM. We met some very nice folks, after all you hang out in the customer lounge a good deal of the day!  Tina was in charge of the time, Ruth of the day, Pat of the date and Val's dog was the head of protection! The guys were in charge of Quality control of the work being done, and deciding what was for lunch!

We left the factory on Friday afternoon, leaving Don and Tina who were staying into next week, Ruth & Charles waiting until Saturday to roll, and Val probably staying much longer! We headed to Shipshewana to meet up with our friends Carl and Jane (RV friends from Kentucky). We explored the area, as it is a heavily populated Mennonite – Amish area, sampling foods and getting the lay of the land. Of course, there was the obligatory Studebaker car museum, the Hudson car museum as well as some unique shops to explore.  After a few days we headed over to our current location in Auburn Indiana. Yesterday we toured the Auburn Cord Duesenberg car museum, and today we will complete the museum circuit here with the military and transportation museums. In between we have learned how to play Mexican dominoes and LRC (left right center). I say we have learned but I did not say how well we did!  As an example I will tell you that I scored the highest that Carl had ever seen in the Mexican train game!  I thought it was a good thing to be at almost 1000, until I realized that Carl won the game with the score of less than 100. I'm going to need some more practice!

In any event I will be posting a couple of pictures that will give you a sense of where we are. Tomorrow we will be heading to Florence Indiana for a week before we head back through Indianapolis to attend the Mecum Auction. Stay tuned!

Studebaker Museum

Jane, Carl, Pat, Les in front of Amish Farm

In Studebaker Museum

The simple life in Shipshewana

A First for Everything!

Well here is the first. We were concerned about severe weather on our route from Texas to Oklahoma, Missouri and eventually to Indiana. We normally would never be in this area, tornado alley, at this time of the year.   Les watched the weather very carefully and we settled on going to St. Peters Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. We actually stayed at a very nice city Park, with full hookups on the lake and a 4.5 mile bike loop.  We had decided we would stay just a few days and then head up through Illinois.  The day that we had scheduled to leave was the day that severe storms were predicted, so we stayed an extra day. Later that afternoon the tornado sirens went off in the park, followed by the ranger alerting the few campers that were there to head to the storm shelter.   We shut our slides, lowered our satellite and antenna, grabbed the passports and the cash and rushed over to the comfort station, which served as the storm shelter. I don't mind saying that it was quite an anxious time, not knowing whether there was imminent danger or  if the storm would miss us. There was a couple there who had been through this two years prior at the same location and told us a couple of stories of motorhomes being picked up and moved 35 feet and a man struggling to get into the shelter flying off his feet!!  Well crisis averted, small hail and rain with a very windy evening but we were safe.  Of course now we know that Fairdale, Illinois suffered the brunt of the tornado.

Amarillo TX and Elk City OK

Spent a week in Amarillo, and as stated in the section below enjoyed touring Palo Duro Canyon, one of the places that was most enjoyed by Georgia O'Keefe.  We also had plenty of time to catch up on some shopping, post office duties and ramping up our exercise program.  There is definitely a theme in all of our adventures and even though we don't have a brick and stick we still are creatures of habit no matter where we are!!  One of our shopping excursions involved selecting the perfect Cowboy hat for Joshua.  We ended up settling on one made from Bull hide.  As of this writing he hasn't received it yet so I surely hope he loves it!  The nicest thing about these types of hats is that you can take it to another western type store (they actually have many in Florida) and have the hat steamed and custom fit to your head if it's not perfect when you put it one.  Okay maybe that's too much information so I'll move on

We decided we are officially seniors so we ate at the Big Texan for lunch!  It was really good.  We learned that the Today show will feature a segment on their 72 oz. steak eating challenge.  The record is currently held by a woman weighing in at 120 pounds and she holds the record for eating the steak, salad, roll, baked potato and shrimp cocktail in under 5 minutes!!!  Anyway she will attempt to eat 2 of these complete dinners in under 1 hour.  I think the waitress said that this would happen April 19th.

Off we went to Elk City Oklahoma which is where I write this from.  We decided that with impending severe storms we should wait until it passes before we continue on to Tulsa OK.  If time permits we would like to visit the Oklahoma Memorial (it you can believe it the 20th year anniversary is approaching this month of the bombing of the building).  If not we will add this to our bucket list for another time.

New Mexico

Over the last couple of weeks we have been in Gallup NM, Casa Blanca NM and most recently Conchas Lake NM. We spent some time housekeeping, Sam's Club, laundry, gambling and of course watching NASCAR racing on TV. Interestingly enough we found two places that were $10/14 night, quite a deal considering we probably use that much electricity pulling in the lot! The $10 night was also a casino and even after paying for the three nights and some groceries we still left with more money than it cost us! Gotta love the Native Americans. New Mexico is an interesting state, although if we were brutally honest we would say not particularly inviting or at least the parts we explored. Did have a chance to go through some of Albuquerque, similar to Phoenix, very artsy.

Weirdest sky and one of the prettiest at the same time, looking towards Arizona.

Les just HAD to fly a kite, well 2 kites!

Our final few nights before exiting New Mexico were at Conchas Dam State Park. Water and electric (50 amp) for $14 night, practically had the whole camp to ourselves, only others were two campers with men working in the area and the camp host we never saw.

Nice level spot with covered shelter overlooking Lake Conchas.

Now for the little ones, look on your map and see if you can find Conchas Dam in New Mexico - no help from your parents...find Tucumcari (2cum car e) and move your finger over and up and see if you can find Anna and Elsa overlooking the Lake.

Off we went to Amarillo, Texas, the home of the famous Texan 72 ounce Steak Challenge!  We will eat there, but we will not be participating in the challenge.  We did, however, take a ride through the 2nd largest Canyon in the US (or so we are told), Palo Duro Canyon in Texas.  Very lovely place to tour, sharing a photo of the signature of the Canyon, the Lighthouse.

The "Lighthouse" located in Palo Duro Canyon

Las Vegas Baby!

It is always a fun time when we pass through or stay in Vegas!  Our plan was to come for a few days to enjoy the two NASCAR races and maybe throw a couple of pennies in the machine just for the heck of it.  What we left Vegas with (ok don't get too excited, we did not win big) was a new appreciation for Sunblock and some new friends.  RV folks are so friendly and interesting.  As with our meeting of Tim and Glenda in Phoenix (also race fans), our time with Barb and Gerald from Canada was very enjoyable.  I am posting a photo of the #4 car (coincidentally the race winner) for Barb who happens to be a Kevin Harvick fan!

Thursday night was the Hauler Parade and for those who are unfamiliar, many of the NASCAR Haulers get all dressed up and fancy and parade down the Las Vegas Strip.  It's like the pre-party and we enjoyed the parade from the front of the Venetian.  Of course we had to get there early and of course we had extra time to spare so we threw a few bucks in the machines.

  

And introducing Les & Pat's two favorite drivers....Dale "Junior" Earnhardt and Kyle "Son" Larson.

Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

Even if you are not a race fan you have probably heard the name Richard Petty aka "The King".  Here he is (in his trademark hat) in the drivers/owners lot prior to the race start.

Drivers - Start Your Engines!  Jeff Gordon (24) did have the Pole but had to start at the rear of the field so leading the pack to the Green Flag is Joey Lagano (22)