On The Road with Jim and Pat

Hello from Rossville, GA

Wednesday Evening
October 12, 2011 (fourth travelogue of this trip).

When I started this blog,
we were parked at the Choo Choo Garage in Rossville, GA (map).
This afternoon we moved to a different state (trip was all of three
miles), but that will be the subject of our next post.

The Choo Choo Garage is a pretty famous
bus repair shop and the site of the Bus Conversion Magazine
Workshops. I helped with the first two workshops – mostly as a
gopher and video camera operator. However, being me, I just had to
jump in and “contribute” to the workshops {grin}. Indeed, the
two presenters and I made a pretty good team as each of us came from
different backgrounds.

Now let’s catch up on some of the
events since our last post. Last Friday we took an unbelievable tour
of the KitchenAid factory in Greenville. This is the only plant in
the world to manufactures the counter-top or “stand” mixer. When
I say only, that is significant. They export this type of mixer all
over the world including China – from this plant! The pride of the
workers is amazing. But, even more amazing were the huge number of
workstations hand assembling components for the mixer. This is work
that is typically sent overseas, but KitchenAid has staunchly refused
to ship jobs overseas (Tom are you reading this). Indeed they are
working towards bringing jobs back to the US on some of their other
product line.

They charge $5 for the tour but it is
well worth it. The lady that gave us our personal tour was a great
ambassador for the company. She took us all over the huge plant and
had knowledgeable answers for almost all of my technical questions.
Probably the most impressive part of the tour was seeing all of the
beautiful colors that are used for the mixers.

Saturday we left Greenville and drove
to Lexington, KY and stayed at a Wal Mart. Our main reason for
stopping there was to visit with a customer and his wife. Bill and I
have grown to be great friends over the years and he has offered
great support when I was struggling with some issues a few years ago.
I have told some of you about Bill – he was a government
psychologist who evaluated many major criminals including John Gotti
and the unabomber. I have talked to Bill on the phone many times on
many subjects but had never gotten to meet him.

He was as fun in person as he is on the
phone and his wife Genie is a great lady. We had a lot of fun
looking at the Prevost that he converted himself – a beautiful bus.
Bill and I also went to visit another busnut who is working on an
Eagle with 4 slide outs. It has an amazing amount of great work.
While Bill and I were looking at buses, Pat and Genie went to a horse
race. In the evening we toured around areas where there were
beautiful horse farms. Lexington is in the heart of the horse
country that Kentucky is so famous for.

Sunday we drove from Lexington to
Rossville and met with Mike Sullivan who is the president of the Bus
Conversion Magazine and who has almost single-handily arrange the Bus
Conversions Rally. Monday we helped Mike with some of the details.
Yesterday and today were two of the workshops. There will be one
more this week and several next week including the welding workshop
that I will co-present.

The color of the trees on the drive
down from Greenville were gorgeous. As we got closer to Chattanooga,
we noted that the colors were not as great. We are quite a bit south
of the areas with the best colors and we will probably see the trees
change here in the next week or so.

That is all for now.

Hello again from Greenville, OH

Friday Morning October
7, 2011 (third travelogue of this trip).

This week has sure gone by
quickly. We leave tomorrow.

Pat has been having a ball
using the various resources available here. In addition to the great
resources at the Garst Museum, she has spent some time at the county
records facility looking at old documents. But the really great
resource has been the Library. They have a genealogy department.
The woman who works there is so very helpful. She is apparently a
contract person (low pay, unfortunately), and just loves her job.
She has been working directly with Pat and the two of them have made
some pretty good progress.

We have again gone to a
couple of graveyards. Some folks think that is kind of weird, but it
is rewarding to find the markers of our ancestors. Besides that, the
graveyards are beautiful in their own way.

I have been spending quite
a bit of time on work related efforts. It seems that when we left
town, the world discovered that our business exists {big grin}. I
have had to process a couple of nice orders for our fire detection
and suppression system and have an order for a specialized version
for an industrial customer (indeed, all of my orders have been
non-RV). That is a great trend. Hope it keeps up.

We are heading to
Chattanooga next week to participate in the Bus Conversions Rally
(website).
I have been working with the Bus Conversions Magazine owner,
offering several seminars (including Pat’s rubber stamped greeting
card seminar) as well as any type of help he needs. I am also
scheduled to be a co-presenter of a one day welding workshop
(assuming there is sufficient registration). We will arrive a couple
of days before the workshops begin and help with the various
activities needed to facilitate a rally of this magnitude.

The welding workshop will be a first
for me. I am doing the “textbook” presentation and the other
person will work with the attendees to do actual hands-on welding. I
think it has the potential for being a good session. I have been
spending a lot of time pouring over welding books to get the slide
presentation developed. I have a lot of welding experience (since I
was 15 years old), but I have never tried to “teach” a class.

Our daughter asked about the fall
colors. The trees here are just starting to turn and the colors, so
far, are great. I think we will hit the best colors in Tennessee. I
had mentioned that the weather was rather cold when we got here. It
has now gotten pretty nice with daytime temperatures in the high
70s/low80s and nighttime in the mid 40s.

I had noted that we are staying in the
campground at the Darke County fairgrounds. I had linked to a
satellite view in the last blog and that view shows how extensive the
facilities are. Here is the link: (map).
There are a large number of barns and facility buildings. The
grounds are immaculate. Many years ago, I attended a car show in the
’56 Chevy in Hamilton, OH. My brother-in-law and I drove up here to
attend a very large steam tractor event. I fell in love with the
fairgrounds when we were here and it has been just as neat as I had
remembered. At least one source says that the fairgrounds is located
on 176 acres and has 1000 campsites. The Darke County Fair is said
to be among the largest county fair in the US.

Last night and this morning we are
trying to catch up on washing. It is sure nice to have the washer
and dryer in the bus. That lets Pat do the washing while we relax
and do other things. We have 30 amp service at the campground, but
that is not sufficient to run the dryer. We are running the
generator when we do the drying, but that is a very small price to
pay for the convenience.

That is all for now.

Hello from Greenville, OH

 

Tuesday Morning October 4, 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

 

We are camped in the Darke County Fairground campground (map). We planned this stop as a part of a large circle trip including being vendors/presenters at the Bus Conversions Rally in Chattanooga, TN.

 

If you have been a long-time reader of our blog, you might recall that we stopped here as a part of a trip to an FMCA rally in Bowling Green, OH in 2009. This is the town that Jim's father and grandmother were born in. The blog detailing the information is (here).

 

Our trip here took a day longer than we had planned. We left Prescott on Wednesday 9/28, planning on driving about 300 mile (half way to Greenville). However after a bit over 100 miles, Pat saw a sign for Fairfield, IA

 

{google_map}41.1002961, -91.9148945{/google_map}.

 

 Her genealogy work had indicated several of her grandmother's relatives were buried there. She had wanted to travel there for sometime, so we made the decision to spend the night there. We were able to find the rather remote graveyard and located the gravestones of her relatives. Two of the gravestones were impossible to read other than the name Miller. Pat called a relative in Iowa and confirmed that both of the grave markers were her ancestors. When asked how they knew, they said that they lucked into visiting the grave just after a hail storm and the markers had been “cleaned” by the hail!

 

Thursday night we stayed in a Wal Mart in Champaign, IL. We arrived in Greenville on Friday afternoon. Saturday and Sunday we spent some time at the Garst Museum (http://www.garstmuseum.org/home.php). They bill themselves as “Home of the Annie Oakley Center”. Anne was born in a log cabin close to Greenville and is buried in Brock Cemetery in Greenville. Frank Butler, her husband of over 40 years (also fellow showman), is buried beside her. He quit eating after she died and passed away 18 days after she did.

 

The Garst museum is a wonderful place. It has great exhibits. More importantly, it houses the Darke County Genealogical Society. They have extensive resources.

 

Prior to our trip, Pat had sent letters to several people with the names Shepherd or Culbertson (Jim's grandmother's maiden name) in Darke county. As a result of one of those letters, we got to meet Rick and Nancy Shepherd. They are great people and we hope that we find that we are related – so far no link yet, but we are both searching. Yesterday they took us on a tour of the Ithaca and Abbottsville cemeteries. We were able to locate several grave sites of Jim's relatives. We will be going back and spending more time at both locations.

 

That is all for now.

Hello from Prescott, IA.

Monday Morning September
26, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

We have been in Iowa for
several days, but I am just now finding the time to write this blog.
We left Evergreen on Thursday (9/15) and spent the night at our old
standby: Wal Mart in North Platte, NE. We arrived here on Friday.
Pat’s brother, Jeff and his wife Julie arrived on Friday as well. We
are staying at Pat’s cousin Jeanne and her husband Bill’s house in
the bus.

We love to visit Iowa any
time, but especially this time of the year. The heat of the summer
and the cold of the winter are forgotten for a while and the great
seasons (spring and fall) are fantastic. The photo below is the view
we see out of the bus windshield. The photo does not begin to do
justice to the amazing landscape.

View out the front of our bus

It has been very hectic
since we arrived. Saturday and Sunday we did quite a bit of visiting
with relatives. Sunday we celebrated Pat’s aunt Jaris’ birthday at
the nursing home. We got to visit with a large number of friends and
relatives. Jaris had a ball.

On Monday we took a great
tour of the area including visiting some of the bridges of Madison
County (see photo). This is scenery was wonderful and it was a great
day.

One of the Bridges of Madison County

The weather here has been
very cool. Indeed, it is generally cooler than Evergreen. Most of
the nights have gotten into the lower 40s and it has been as low as
37 one evening. We even put an extra cover on the bed to stay warm.
That said, the days have been comfortable most of the time.

Pat has been working on
Genealogy with Jeanne. We have visited several cemeteries to find
grave stones of some of her ancestors. We again visited the house
where her dad was born. The people who live there are very welcoming
and they both have fabulous collections of all kinds of things. The
house has been extensively remodeled, but part of the original house
is still evident.

I have had to spend some
time getting parts shipped in to fill a nice order. I have made a
change to my system and had to have some brackets made here in IA.
Fortunately, there is a great manufacturing company in Corning (where
Pat was born and about 10 miles from here). I have had them do some
work for me in the past, but they outdid themselves this time. The
brackets are very nice looking and they did them the same day.

Bill and I have done some
project work here at the farm (I love to help in any way I can) and I
have been able to get a few things done on the bus and service truck
that did not get done before we left.

That is all for now.

Flying
in a Gooney Bird.

My
family arranged for me to take a flight is a C-47 military aircraft
as a birthday present. It was a very special event, as I have always
been very impressed by the design and product life of this aircraft.
My flight took place on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011.

The
C-47 (aka Gooney Bird) was developed based on the DC-3 civilian
airplane. Here is a bit of background on the two versions of the
plane:

The
Douglas DC-3 is an American fixed-wing propeller-driven aircraft
whose speed and range revolutionized air transport in the 1930s and
1940s. Its lasting impact on the airline industry and World War II
makes it one of the most significant transport aircraft ever made.
Many DC-3s are still used in all parts of the world. Translated,
that is over 75 years of flying and the clock continues to tick.

The
Douglas C-47 is a military transport aircraft that was developed from
the Douglas DC-3 airliner. The first flight was Dec. 1941. It was
used extensively by the Allies during World War II and remained in
front line operations through the 1950s with a few remaining in
operation to this day.

During
World War II, the armed forces of many countries used the C-47 and
modified DC-3s for the transport of troops, cargo and wounded. The US
Naval designation was R4D. Over 10,000 aircraft were produced in Long
Beach and Santa Monica, California and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The
Oklahoma City plant produced 5,354 C-47s from March 1943 until August
1945. The 10K units was in addition to the over 16,000 civilian
planes.

While
I am not a strong student of aircraft, the DC-3 has always fascinated
me. Many years ago, I arranged a business trip so that I could fly
on a commercial airline that was still flying the DC-3. I was so
thrilled to fly on an aircraft with so much history.

Can
you imagine how thrilled I was to be able to fly on the military
version? The flight was out of the Colorado Springs Airport. The
pilots flew us north so that we could fly over The Garden of the
Gods. All in all, a very impressive and fun adventure.

Here
are some photos (not the best quality as they were taken with my cell
phone).

The C-47 is a classic “tail dragger”

Looking out the window with an opening

Taking pictures out the window.  

They let us get out of our seats for most of the flight.
Note that you can see the structure of the fuselage
and the seats are very primitive.

Looking into the cockpit during the flight.

The right side seems to be original, while the pilot

has a modern display.

Hello from Chugwater, WY.

Wednesday morning August 31, 2011 (third travelogue of this trip).

Well, we are a day behind our schedule. More about that later.

Sunday, we toured Yellowstone and The Tetons. We drove the truck. In total, we drove a bit over 320 miles!!! It had been years since we viewed the gorgeous and amazing Tetons. We had lunch at a great little restaurant in Teton National Park. We then drove north towards Old Faithful. We saw it erupt just as we entered the area, so we knew that we would not be able to wait for the next eruption. We did walk around the area and had a quick snack in the lodge.

We then drove around the north loop (Madison, Norris Canyon Village,and Fishing Bridge). From there we headed back to Cody (about 50 miles from the east entrance). We saw some elk and lots of buffalo. We had hoped, like everybody else, to see moose and bear, but it was not to be.

We had planned to leave the campground early Monday and be home Tuesday. We had the engine started, but noticed one our the chapter members was having a problem with his bus. He was not able to release his parking brakes (cause by a failed brake diaphragm). He had the parts to convert to a more modern system (from DD3 to Spring brakes for the bus crowd). It took 4 of us the whole day to do the conversion. Mounting the parts was the easy part. Getting the air brake control system was the challenge.

We all left yesterday morning and we met up with them a few times – the last time a bit north of Chugwater. The system was functioning well.

If you follow our blog, you know that we have stopped here a couple of times (once on the way up to Cody). It is a quite little town that makes a good logistic stop. Last night I unloaded the bicycle and rode around the town. Once you get off the main street, the town does not look like it is “dead”.

Responding to Judy’s comment on PETA and the pig race. PETA would have no problems with the race. The pigs love it, as they all get a nice treat at the end of the race. The track is very small and they don’t have to run a lot. You can tell that they have done the race a bunch of times. As soon as the gates are raised, they run very fast. The owners of the saloon had to work with the Montana legislature to get approval so that the patrons could wager bets. I think they said that the proceeds go to worthy charities and a state fund for recreation. The whole event was a lot of fun.

We got an off-line comment from some friends asking us to post some pictures. We have gotten very lazy about taking pictures (took a few) but even more so about taking the time to process them so that they can be posted.

That’s all for this trip.

Hello from Cody, WY.

Saturday Evening August 27, 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

We are parked at the Absaroka Bay RV Park map. This was the site of the Eagles International Rally. It has been a blur since we got here. I will try to catch up as quickly as possible.

We arrived here Sunday about mid-day. While the rally was scheduled from Wednesday (8/24) to Friday (8/26), there was a lot of pre-rally events. Sunday we rode with some folks up to Red Lodge, Montana so that we could have a great dinner at the Bear Creek Saloon and Steakhouse. The town is in the middle of nowhere and is about 60 miles from the campground. The food was great, but the real fun was the pig races. They are famous for this event.

On the way up to Red Lodge, we went through a big thunderstorm. On the way back we could see a pretty large fire going up the side of the mountain – apparently started by the lightening. We heard later that it is a fairly large fire. It has rained a bit this week, so we hope that helped the fire fighters.

Monday we drove up South Fork road to the end of the road (about 30 miles). It was a pretty drive. The end of the road is not far from the boundary of Yellowstone and there were several signs warning of grizzly bears in the area. About the only wildlife we saw was a large herd of elk. Monday night the hosts had a great spaghetti dinner at their house for the early arrivals.

Tuesday we kind of cooled our jets, and I worked on an article for Bus Conversions Magazine.

Wednesday, the buses started rolling in. We had something like 32 Eagle buses and 4 or 5 other types of buses. That is a great turnout in this economy and with fuel being so high. That evening we had a big pig roast.

Thursday, we all took a trolley ride around Cody and then went to the Cody Rodeo. This rodeo is held every night during the summer and is a well known event.

Friday we had a board meeting at 9:00 and a General Membership Meeting at 10:00. The major item was a discussion/review of the chapter bylaws which are undergoing revision. A couple of us were very concerned about some folks who were very vocal prior to the meeting. However, it went well and the bylaw committee got some very good input. Friday night we had a great pot luck dinner.

Today we watched many of the Eagles depart. There are still about 6 coaches here now. We went to the famous Buffalo Bill Cody Museum. It is a great museum and is famous for its extensive firearm collection.

Tomorrow we will make a tour into Yellowstone. I suspect it will take most of the day. We will travel in the truck. We had thought about driving the bus though the park and down towards the Tetons, but that just did not seem to provide us to much opportunity to see the park and driving the bus on a sightseeing tour did not seem like a lot of fun.

We did have one exciting event this week. A couple of us were sitting in chairs close to our bus. One fellow noticed that one of our tires has some very severe wear. I thought I had been careful to check the tires, but apparently the part of the tire that was not worn was where I did my inspection. I was pretty sure that the bearing setting was too loose but I never got a chance to adjust it. In truth, I simply blew it and forgot the put it in the priority list. I was able to locate a good used tire, and they came out and installed it yesterday – all for the bargain price of $182. That is a very good price – especially when you hear the horror stories of traveling folks being gouged.

That is all for now.

Hello from Thermopolis, WY.

Saturday Evening August 20, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Fountain of Youth RV park in Thermopolis map. This is a small little campground, but it has a wonderful hot springs pool. The hot springs flows over 1 million gallons of water in 24 hours. I think the temperature is 130 degrees and it has a very heavy mineral content. We spent about a half hour in the medium temperature pool (they won’t let you in the hot temperature pool). It felt really good, but I don’t think we feel all that much younger {grin}.

We are on our way to an Eagle Bus Rally in Cody, WY. We are only about 30 miles from Cody, and could have easily made it there today, but we thought it would be fun to spend some time in a hot springs. Little did we know that we would have our own pools in the campground.

We left Denver on Friday and stopped in Chugwater, WY. We stopped in Chugwater last year and documented our “relationship” with the town in this blog. As we noted in that blog, we have fond memories of taking an Eagle bus to a membership ranch we belonged to and stopping in Chugwater to get great meat for the meals at the Ranch. It is sad to see the town main street almost deserted. The only place that is open is a great store/restaurant that is said to have the oldest continuously operating soda fountain in Wyoming.

The Eagle Rally does not start until Wednesday, but we hope to do quite a bit of sightseeing prior to the rally.

That is all for now.

Hello from Grand Junction, CO.

Wednesday morning July 20, 2011 (third travelogue of this trip).

Monday, we went to my favorite breakfast restaurant (Lambs Grill) and had breakfast. We then went to the Mormon Family Library and worked with the wonderful folks who really seem to want to help you with learning more about your family genealogy. At noon, I went over to the Mormon Tabernacle building to hear a wonderful organ recital.

The Tabernacle building architecture (something like a fancy huge quonset hut with rounded ends) looks very much out of place in Temple Square, but the organist demonstrated why – the acoustics are absolutely fantastic. He dropped a pin on a wood block and you could hear it all over the building. The organ is unbelievable. It was originally built in the 1860s by Joseph H. Ridges. It has been updated several times, the largest of which was done in 1948 under the direction of G. Donald Harrison. It has 206 ranks, 11,623 pipes and is organized into 8 divisions played from a five-manual console. Needless to say, the recital was amazing.

After lunch, Pat went back to the library and I did some work in the room. Pat did not make huge headway in her quest to explore our family genealogy, but she did learn about more resources. I suspect she will return to the library in the future.

Yesterday we drove to Grand Junction. Our original plan was to make our typical stop in Green River, UT. However, that stop is quite a bit short of the half way mark and we wanted to get closer to home. We booked a room at the Hampton Inn, but they upgraded us to the Marriott Springhill Suites (same owner). The room is very unique but well done. The hotel is brand new and the folks seem quite friendly. The hotel is on Main street which has undergone a huge reconstruction. There are many sidewalk cafes and great local restaurants. We went to the Rockslide Restaurant and Brewery and had a great meal (ribs) which was neat since we were celebrating my birthday.

We had a lot of fun strolling by the sidewalk cafes. They had a lot of people enjoying their leisurely dinner. However, just as we got to the room, a huge rainstorm (more like a monsoon) hit with almost no warning. We had to wonder what all of the happy diners did

That is all for this trip.

Hello Again from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sunday evening July 17, 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

The Stampin’ Up! Convention concluded Saturday, late afternoon. Pat tells me that there were 3,300 attendees. That is up a bit from last year but down from several years ago where they had to divide the convention into two sessions and around 7,000 demonstrators attended. They, like everyone else, are suffering from a “soft” economy. There is no doubt in our minds that they will thrive when the economy improves.

I have been able to find a wonderful local restaurant for breakfast – Lamb’s Cafe. The food is great and reasonable and the coffee is the best I have tasted in a restaurant. In the evenings I have been going to a pub with a sidewalk seating area. The draft beer is local (several varieties) and the sandwiches are great (take half back to room for lunch the next day).

I have been amazed at the number of local beers available. Somehow I pictured Utah as being mostly Mormon and anti drinking. Sure not the case. The beers run the gamut from very light to dark stouts. The ones I sampled were great.

I have been doing quite a bit of catching up on computer work during the day. Still way behind on some reading projects, but I will probably never catch up on those. The Marriott charges $12.95 per day for Internet access, so our air card is really paying for itself.

On Friday I drove about 40 miles north to the town of Hooper to visit a good friend of mine. Kent is another bus nut and a really great guy. He is really struggling with cancer and I worry about him all the time. He seemed to be doing reasonably well and continues to plan for the future – including several big bus projects. We had a ton of fun talking about all kinds of things and then went to two car shows in Ogden. We then went to a local hamburger stand that is famous in the area. Great burgers.

We are staying over a couple of days so that Pat can spend a day at the Mormon Family History Library. She has said several times that she wanted to spend a day there to see what resources are available. As was noted in a comment to our last post, the reputation of this resource is extremely good. Pat has been working on our family genealogy for the past few years and hopes that she can get some new information to expand her work.

We did not have anything scheduled today, so we just relaxed. Pat is absolutely worn out from all the activity and it was fun for me to cool my jets as well. Still got some work done, but at a more relaxed pace. My new fire detection system project is really consuming a lot of time right now. I sure hope it is worth all the work. The system performs very well and the total system is far superior to anything on the market, but it will be more costly. The person we are developing the system for seems to have good contacts.

I tried to attend the practice of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Thursday night. The information in Temple Square says they practice most Thursday evenings, but not this past Thursday. I then went to hear the organ recital on Saturday. I could not tell if it was a normal recital or not, but I was a few minutes late and they had locked the doors. I should be able to attend one tomorrow and I will be on time {grin}.

That is all for now.