Time with Friends and The Big Reveal!!

Pumpkin Vine Trail, Goshen, Indiana

Hi all, Dianne here.  We've been without our rolling home and our internet connection for the past 2 1/2 weeks, but we're back on line now and in our home and ready to catch up. 

After six weeks of preparing for, traveling to, and then waiting-to-be-done, our motor home remodel was finally finished.  The "big reveal" is later in this post, but first we'll catch you up on the past few weeks.

Roger and Nancy 

After our relaxing week at Cordry Lake we traveled back to Pendleton to spend the second week of being "homeless" with our dear friends Jay and Nancy at their beautiful home.  

As you can see, we weren't exactly roughing it on our second week of being homeless, either!

Charlie meets Bruiser

Charlie the cat thought he was seeing double when Bruiser, Jay and Nancy's cat, stopped by.  (Bruiser is actually a neighborhood cat, but spends most of his time at Jay and Nancy's, where he gets the royal treatment).

Bruiser seems to be saying "What's this guy doing in my house??"  

Eventually we let Bruiser inside and the two cats sniffed noses and spent their time following each other around the house.   They are both male cats so we were afraid they might fight, but they actually got along pretty well.

I like it here...purr  purr  purr!

I cautioned Charlie not to get too used to his swanky digs last week.  Bandido and Tequila spent the week at Pendleton Pens, a new boarding and grooming facility nearby.  

Jay and Nancy are both still in the working world, so Roger and I had our days to fill while we were there.  I spent one day at the local library attempting to solve some genealogical mysteries on Roger's side of the family (no luck).  

The Old Apple House

Another day we drove past some Norris family landmarks.  We tramped around the old Ovid cemetery where several of Roger's ancestors are buried.  We drove past his grandparents' farm where he spent many happy days with his cousins as a kid.  The old apple orchard has been cut down, but his grandfather's apple house (where his grandfather processed his award-winning apples and where the grandkids liked to play) is still standing.

We also drove past the old homestead where Roger's grandfather (the one who later had the apple orchard) was raised.

It has been renovated and is still a lovely home for its current owners.  

 We also drove to the tiny town of Markleville, Indiana where both of Roger's parents grew up and became high school sweethearts (class of 1939).  Imagine our surprise as we drove past the old Markleville High School to discover that now the building is part of the Reflectix factory.  Our RV'ing friends are familiar with Reflectix -- it's that ubiquitous metallic bubble-wrap stuff lots of us use to block desert sun from our windows to keep our RVs cool.  We also have it in all of our coach house windows while we're gone in the  summer, to help keep the brutal Texas heat outside:  

Our coach house with Reflectix in the windows

Not sure why their factory is in Markleville Indiana -- after all, there are trees and actual shade in this part of the country!  We sure use it down south and out west, though.

Finally the big day arrived.  We

set the alarm and headed out early to pick up the dogs and drive back north to Elkhart to get the motor home.  We had to scrape our car windows with a credit card, since we'd  tossed all our ice scrapers in 2008 when we hit the road, vowing never to need them again.  

When we got to Elkhart I called Bradd and Hall just in case the motor home was ready earlier than the 2:00 time they'd given us the day before.  It was not going to be ready until around 3:00.  We decided to revisit the park in nearby Goshen and hike the Pumpkin Vine Trail with the dogs.  The beautiful opening photo was taken along the trail, as was the photo below:

When we arrived at Bradd and Hall, the guys who'd done the work took us on a tour of our newly-renovated coach.  Wow!  We were so excited!  Here's a photo taken while we were still in the bay at Bradd and Hall during our walk-through:

 

We paid our (big) bill, and as we were hooking up our Matrix to leave, we saw our old furniture being set out by the curb.  It looked pretty lonely, but the guys at Bradd and Hall said furniture is never out there for long before some enterprising individual comes by with a truck to get it. 

We enjoyed our comfy new captains chairs as we drove back south.  It was dark before we made it to the Glo-Wood campground near Lapel.  I snapped this sunset photo from the car window as we drove south of Kokomo, Indiana.

We made up the bed and fell into it, tired after the 3-hour-up and 3-hour-back drive to and from Elkhart.  It sure felt good, though, to be back in our own bed.  Once again, we needed to set the alarm for another busy day ahead.  We were to meet our old camping friends in southern Indiana for a long weekend (we'd already missed the first two days of the get-together).  We also still had to re-load all of our stuff that had been stored in Jay and Nancy's garage for the past month.  No time to sit in those new comfy chairs!

Nancy wanted to give us a good breakfast as a send-off.  You will never hear of me turning down one of her delicious meals, so we parked in front of their house first thing Saturday morning.

One final meal together....

Nancy and I have been swapping recipes and the four of us have been sharing meals for over 40 years.  Now instead of dating, then babies we might talk about hearing aids and Medicare, but we have just as much fun as the old days.

Jay and Nancy had recently returned from a trip to Italy, and Jay broke out some Italian champagne he'd had shipped home.  

Good Times with Good Friends

  I know that when we meet up again, we'll simply pick up where we left off, just like this time.  Thanks, Jay and Nancy!!  

We hurriedly tossed our mountain of things from their garage into the motor home and made a quick trip to the grocery to get a few basics for our totally-empty fridge.  Much to Roger's dismay, as we went through our departure checklist, his tire monitoring system showed a low tire.  Before we could pull out of our friends' neighborhood he had to hook up our air compressor and top off a couple of tires.  Then we were finally on our way. 

 Roger will post next time about our fun weekend with friends at Clifty Falls State Park.  But now, here's the BIG REVEAL, with captions:

View at entry, showing computer desk and new recliner

View from entry to rear, showing tile, carpet, dining chairs recovered and Bandido's ears.
You can see part of the second green recliner on the left.

Computer desk closed up

Computer desk doors open
Room for computers, printer, hanging folders,
charging center for electronics inside

When I get to Texas, I'll be sanding and painting the brass hardware on the computer desk to match the others that I've done.

Comfy new captains chairs

My passenger captain's chair has a slipcover (bought at Camping World) so that Bandido can retain his prime spot for guarding the motor home without damaging it.  

Our entertainment center cabinet was a real mess before (note the gerry-rigged metal shelf underneath for the Direct TV box)...  

And after Bradd and Hall did a little magic...

Now I can even shut the door...

View showing re-covered valences and  folding chairs

We needed to re-do our shoe storage since we got rid of our shoe cabinet to make room for the new furniture, so I ordered front-loading plastic shoe boxes and they are now in the cabinet which opens to the entry steps.

If Roger had big feet, this wouldn't work!

Doors shut, and view of new rubber tread and carpet in stair well

View looking back to bedroom showing tile

The tile is not real tile, although it looks like it is.  It's called Armstrong Alterna Reserve and the color is "verde slate."  It was installed with "smoke" color grout and should be very durable.  

Before we had our computer cabinet, our printer had to sit in our bedroom on top of the only flat surface in the room.  Now we can use that space for more decorative purposes, since the printer has moved out...

Pink coloring is from the lamp, not the true color!

The pet picture of the day shows Roger laying back in his recliner and Bandido bringing him his tennis ball, ready to play:

C'mon, Dad!  Let's Play!

Goodbye Newmar! Great Experience

Roger here.... (Big Chuck sends his regards.  He is napping right now)....  Now that our scheduled service is complete, we have moved to the Newmar overflow parking lot for the weekend (watching it rain) to open space for the new people coming in.  The opening photo of an Amish school with a grassy parking lot full of bicycles highlights the fact that we are still in Nappanee.  We are waiting for the weekend to end so that a local tire service (recommended by Newmar) can change a leaky valve stem on one of our tires.  Then we are outta here!  Dianne is going to talk about our visit to The Rentown Amish Country Store, but first I want to talk a bit about our recent Newmar Service experience:

In late July, while en route to Salt Lake City, I called the Newmar Service Department to set up an appointment.  We then submitted a laundry list of 13 items that we wanted to have completed.  One of those items included an extensive list of chassis maintenance tasks that we wanted to have done at the factory.  Our Mountain Aire has been remarkably problem-free, and we want to keep it that way.  An arrival date of September 30th was confirmed at that time.  After a few email exchanges, we received an estimate for the work and agreed to proceed so that parts could be ordered.  

On the first morning of our scheduled service, Byron, the representative who was overseeing and doing much of the work on our motor home, reviewed our requests.  During the discussion we actually added a couple more items.  Over the course of the week, Byron contacted us frequently regarding how we wanted him to proceed.  We got to know his boss, Leander, and the entire crew who worked on our rig on a first-name basis.  We quickly grew to trust them with our home.  It was apparent that this was going to be a first-rate experience.  

Big Chuck told you about the repairs to our automatic steps (much cheaper than the estimate), the awning, the lights in the bedroom, the off-track pocket door, etc.  I have a few photos of some of the outside improvements.

Before

More than a year ago I clipped the rear end on a concrete post at a gas station.  The damage was noticeable if you walked by, but not horrible.  It was in the back, so most people did not see it.  At Retama Village (our winter home) we surrounded it with shrubs  :-).  However, it caused my stomach to churn every time I saw it.  Big Chuck showed you the initial repairs in the last post.  At that point the new trim had been added and the fiberglass on the bumper repaired.  All that remained to be done was a new paint job.  Looks pretty good, doesn't it?  One less thing to occupy my mind.

After

When we were on the west coast, I climbed up on the roof to do something (who knows what).  I immediately noticed that the paint along the curved area between the roof and the vertical walls was deteriorating.  The salty air on the Oregon coast and the baking  Texas sun probably accelerated the decline of the paint job. The entire perimeter of the roof line was affected.  It was pretty bad.  I knew that if this was not corrected in a timely manner, that the deterioration would spread to the visible surfaces.  That trip to the roof was the impetus for moving up the Newmar service to this fall instead of waiting until next summer (our original intention).  We are very pleased with the shiny new paint.  It was good to have this done at the factory where we knew the paint would match.

At some point during the last leg of this year's travels, we lost a hubcap cover.  I am sure it has a happy home  along a road somewhere in Colorado.  I am actually glad that the loss of the cover happened before our service appointment.  Less hassle for me.  Pretty shiny, huh?

For the past few years our headlights have become foggier and foggier.  One turned yellow.  One turned frosty white (not sure why they were different).  These ugly lights were very noticeable to me and to others (I am sure).  As I looked into replacing the covers, I learned that the headlights came as a unit.  I would have to replace the entire unit.  Last year I bought a restoration kit (chemicals and sanding).  It helped, but really made the ugliness only slightly less noticeable.  I cannot express how happy I am with the new headlights.  Whew, that looks SO MUCH better.  I think the light can actually now illuminate the road.

When all the work was completed, Byron came to our coach to review each item and the ensuing charges.  I won't reveal the total bill.  It was not cheap.  However, I am happy to report that it was $2000 less than the estimate.  In the future, if we ever need major work done, and the motor home is drivable, we will definitely return to the Newmar facility.  There is a reason for their excellent reputation.

After we paid our bill, we took the path across the street through the fields of Amish Acres.  To celebrate a successful venture, we decided to repeat the chicken dinner that we enjoyed when we first arrived.  We do not often eat fried foods;  however, we won't be back for a while so, what the hay!

Before turning this over to Dianne, I did want to say a few words about the factory tour that I took. It did not turn out to be what I expected.  (No pictures allowed).  I expected a Henry Ford type assembly line.  That does not happen here.  Since each of the coaches are only built if there is an order, there is a great deal of customization.  Most of the materials are cut at the point of installation - not precut.  The coaches are moved to different stations, but that move is done on air-filled pads that four to six workers actually push by hand!  The tires are not released until it is time to send the unit to the paint shop.  A large percentage of the workers are Amish -- you know, the people with the reputation for excellent and meticulous work.  Seeing the coaches built helped me realize the reason for the quality.  

By the way.  At this time Newmar produces four new coaches a day.  That number is being increased to five with possibilities of adding more in the future.  Newmar is hiring.  I must report, however, that there is a general concern that this boon may go away if the mess in Washington is not resolved soon.

Time to turn things over to Dianne.

Hi all, Dianne here.  All week long we've watched slim, trim Amish women (and men) riding all around town on bicycles and on the country roads leading to town.  Between 5:00 and 5:30 every morning (in the pitch dark) you can see tiny bicycle headlights on the country roads heading toward the Newmar factory.  I can only imagine what time they had to arise and leave home to make the trip by bicycle.   If you worked as hard as they do and used bicycles and feet to get around like they do, you might get by eating like they do!  I won't even describe the deliciousness of the cinnamon rolls we devoured from the Rise and Roll Bakery one morning while killing time in the car waiting for daylight.  We also checked out the Rentown Country Store, recommended to us by our main service guy, Byron. 

What a wonderland!  Delicious Amish cheese of every description, bulk foods and spices, baked goods, fresh orchard apples, and much more.  Here's what I came away with on our first trip
 there: 

Almond butter, dried sour cherries, homemade cookies, honeycrisp apples, apple and vegetable crisps, dip mix, etc. etc., plus some very delicious cheese.  I have no willpower when it comes to sweets and pies, donuts, rolls, and homemade baked goods, so I need to get out of this town!!!

Tomorrow we're heading back to central Indiana to visit family and friends, then back north a week from today to drop off the motor home for the interior renovation.  Then we'll be "homeless" for another week and a half, this time with no access to the motor home at night.  Our friends Jay and Nancy have graciously offered to let us stay with them, so we are very lucky indeed!  Back to Roger....

The pet picture of the day was taken on the day that we packed for a night at the Amish Acres Inn. We were not able to sleep in the motor home during the painting process, so we threw clothes in a suitcase and crammed a lot of stuff into the car.  Big Chuck seemed to think that we bought him a cozy new bed.

Newmar - Big Chuck's Big Adventure

Sunrise on a foggy morning in Nappanee, Indiana

Well, hello there... Charlie the cat here....  But then you really don't know me, do you?  Mom and Dad always let the smelly dogs post these blogs.  Now it is my turn.  I am mom and dad's 12-year-old cat who used to roam free in Pendleton, Indiana before they sold their house.  I am named after Mom's cousin Charlie.  I was born in his barn on their farm near Mulberry, Indiana.  When Mom's granddaughter (would that make her my niece?), Kaia, picked me up at a family gathering when she was a little girl and I did not scratch her, they took me home and I became a part of their family.  Mom and Dad call me Big Chuck now, probably because I weigh as much as an elephant.  But, I am not as heavy as my smelly sister, Tequila.  

My life has been in turmoil lately.  Allow me to show you my new home.  The opening picture  was taken on a foggy morning near Nappanee, Indiana.  But, did I get to see it?  Noooo!  I was in a crate in the back seat of this car between my two smelly dog siblings. 

This is how it has been.  Last Friday we arrived at this place called Newmar, and all normalcy ended.  At 6:00 a.m. (Yes, six in the morning - still dark, foggy and cold) Mom and Dad put me in my crate and take me to the miniscule car.  They do bring my litter box and food, but my world shrinks from my spacious home on wheels to a tiny car!  Then Dad talks to a guy in a golf cart for a while, and Mom brings the dogs to sit on both sides of me.  Trapped! 

The golf-cart guy drives the motor home away and  we stay away for nine hours before coming back and resuming our normal lives, until the next morning when the alarm goes off at 4:30 and it all starts again.

Mom and Dad seem happy about all this.  They keep talking about how they like the golf-cart guy and the people who work with him.  

The stinky dogs (my siblings) brag about walking twice a day in the pasture across the street.   I could go, too, but I refuse to walk on a leash.  With me it is more like dragging, and I simply refuse.

I am really weary of hearing Dad wax ecstatic about how much progress the golf-cart guy is making with the motor home.  It does not affect me.

- dent in the back where Dad swung into a gas station barrier (clumsy Dad) ... ready for paint. I never see it.

-  new gutter on the side of the roof ...  ready for paint.  Like they would ever let me climb on the roof.

-  new headlights that aren't foggy and yellow...  I am not allowed outside at night so I could care less.

-  automatic steps that work every time... That is actually a good thing because sometimes they do take me outside.

-  a new motor for the awning so we can have shade...  OK, I can deal with that.

- bedroom lights that work all the time... I would rather be alone in the dark.

-  new screen for the door....  The smelly dogs did that, not me.

- a working pocket door next to the bedroom... They think they can keep me out of the bedroom now, but I will just pound on the door until they open it :-).

Dad says that the Newmar Golf Cart guy still has a few things to do, so I guess I will be a captive in the car for a few more days.  Just one more thing before I talk about the very few good times.  I would not mind this nearly as much if Dad would buy a jeep and have it and our motor home painted like the one in the picture below.  After all, I am a cat.  I do have some vanity.

I have to admit that I have had one great day, and another that wasn't too bad, while I was banned from the motor home.  The great day was at Potato Creek State Park.

It was a sunny, warm day.  Some of the trees were turning red.  I remember that from my past life roaming free and rolling in the leaves in our backyard.  We drove by a quiet lake.  Dad stopped the car so mom could take pictures. 

I got to see a two big birds sitting on a log in the water.  It looked like there were two more upside down in the water.  I would have liked to stalk them, but I don't do water.

When we finally parked the car, we were surrounded by these strange people.  Bandido was afraid of them.  Mom and Dad thought they were great.  I just pretended they were not there.

Mom, Dad and my stinky siblings went hiking in the woods for a couple of hours.   It was still cold out but they parked the car in the shade and cracked the windows for me anyway.  They let me out of my crate so I could use the litter box, eat, hide under the seats, and climb on the dashboard to hiss at birds.

When they returned from their walk, we all enjoyed three hours lounging around on the lawn.  By then the sun was out and it was nice and warm.   Even I enjoyed it.  

I had lots of room to play on my expandable leash.

I even had my own tree for sharpening my (nonexistent) claws.



Dad fell asleep while reading his book.  I guess these early mornings are too much for him.

Then he got up and fell asleep again laying on the ground next to Bandido.

Then Tequila licked Dad on the face and woke him up.  PRETTY FUNNY!  Don't let anyone know I have a sense of humor.

The next day was the not-so-bad day.  After a shorter trip in my crate, we arrived at a city park in Goshen, Indiana.  It was a foggy day and a little chilly.  Mom did not want to get out of the car.  Mom does not cope well with imperfect weather.  So Dad and my smelly siblings hiked about four miles along the Pumpkinvine Trail.  It was good to get rid of the stinky dogs, AND I got to spend the time sleeping and purring on Mom's lap while she did Sudoku.  It does not get much better than that.  

Since I am the author of this post, the pet pictures of the day are of ME!

I am the alpha male in this family.

Time for my close-up.

Mom thinks I have pretty green eyes.