Tuesday, June 14

We have come to northern Indiana to get two things fixed on our RV: our jack and our dashboard a/c. Eighty percent of all RVs are made in this area, and ours was too, just north of here over the Michigan border. Michigan is on Central time, and Indiana is an hour later, and we'll be crossing back and forth a lot in the next few days, so hopefully we'll keep on the right time.

We are staying in Amish country again:

The farms are smaller than in Lancaster County, more like they were in Tennessee, but the countryside is just as pretty or even moreso: lots of gentle hills, lots of green and trees, and little plots of two-foot-high cornstalks everywhere. Also, just down the road from us is the "country's second largest flea market," (they don't mention who is first) in one of the Amish towns (Shipshewana) on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They say that if you walk every aisle, you'll walk seven miles. I was interested, but Mark vetoed going there.

Our spot at the KOA is not particularly level, but we managed to get the jacks to level up after a couple tries. Mark wishes that the owners of these campgrounds would take the time to level each spot when they are grading. One of the things we are having done here is to have our bad jack fixed. It failed on us in Washington DC (see the Fairfax diary for the story) and we've been just hoping it wouldn't fail again till we could get here. Tomorrow we drive up the street to Bigfoot so they can fix it; then on Thursday we drive up to Georgie Boy and get our a/c fixed (hopefully) and take a factory tour.

This KOA has a small petting area with a Shetland pony, a female goat and her young triplet kids. Katie and I ventured over and fed them grass. The pony is pretty mean, but the goats are sweet. The kids are only a month old. Katie didn't want to leave them, but I was sneezing after an hour, so we walked back along a nature trail, which wound behind the RVs. It was so much prettier back there than up front at the rest of the campground: like a secret garden, with a small lake with an island, no one around, a few old paddleboats, and green growing things everywhere--almost junglelike. I wish I'd had my camera.

Tuesday, June 15

We drove over to Bigfoot, and left our RV with them, while we drove up to Kalamazoo. Mark had heard that downtown Kalamazoo was kind of cute, and we parked near the Kalamazoo museum, which had free admission and was one of the best museum/science centers we've been to. It's been accused of trying to be all things to all people--a history museum, a teaching museum, and a science center, but it seems to do these things very well, especially for a free museum. One floor is devoted to Michigan history, there are classrooms on every floor where local teachers were learning how to teach history and archeology and stuff, and another floor was devoted to science play, like a giant heart that pumped along with your heart, when you put your finger in a little clip, or an eye test that we took and determined that Katie's vision (with both eyes open at the same time) is 20/20. For now at least!

Katie's favorite room was the "five and under" room, especially a barnyard dollhouse:

I wish I'd taken more pictures. Also we had lunch across the street at a wonderful deli. Bigfoot called us to say that the folks at our jacks had not been installed properly when the RV was built, and that they were waiting for authorization to go ahead and redo the job. They said our other rear jack was about to "go" as well. I winced at that, and was relieved that our RV was with folks who knew what to do.

When we got back to Bigfoot at the end of the day, we found out that Georgie Boy had not authorized payment: they wanted to fix it themselves. Ugh, but we'd be over there tomorrow anyway, to get the a/c looked at. Maybe they could do them both. And we were looking forward to the tour.

Wednesday, June 16

We drove through some pretty countryside and arrived at Georgie Boy just in time for the 10am tour (9am Indiana time). We had had a loose appointment to bring the RV in for our a/c, and we wanted to make sure they were looking at the jacks primarily. The tour was really a lot of fun. We took the tour with a really nice couple, Jack and Sandy Ferguson, who own a Georgie Boy that is much like ours. Here is a picture from our tour:

This is a motorhome with its skin off and the rooms unfinished. Doesn't it look weird from the front? I love how everything is so easy to get to. Our tourguide, Chris, talked to us about new features they are using in the latest models, like huge, undivided storage areas underneath (you could sleep a small family down there). Here is Katie in her required safety goggles, which fell off occasionally:

The workers we saw at the factory were all very friendly, many said hi to Katie and one even gave her a lollipop. Here are a few more cool pictures of stuff getting built:

We got to look inside lots of the RVs that were finished, like the top-of-the-line Bellagio. When it's named after a casino, you know it's gonna take some money. It had beautiful maple cabinets and lots of mirrors, even a French door leading to the bedroom. But Mark and I agreed that our favorite was the Cruise Air: not so many bells and whistles, but a really neat layout with two slides in the bedroom and a corner desk that I could see Mark working at. It was a fun tour and the people were very nice.

For lunch, we were advised to go to Lunker's:

It was a huge fishing and camping store / restaurant with all sorts of sports paraphrenalia on the walls, dozens of fishtanks lining the restaurant, a fun sense of humor and a very good barbeque sandwich. It was too dark in the jungle-themed restaurant to take a picture, but you could tell the owners had designed the place themselves, this was no chain, and they must love what they do. Our booth had a signed 1950s picture of Yogi Bera and another of Ali sparring with a skinny 1973 Elvis Presley. And, to make a nice lunch even nicer, our new acquaintences, Jack and Sandy, showed up and Katie went over and chatted with them. We had a really nice day while Georgie Boy fixed our jacks. They told us to return by 3pm. We got back to the waiting room at 2:15.

Well, at 3:30, they said that they wanted the RV till 5pm, so Mark decided to get my computer for me, and go sightsee in South Bend for a couple hours. I was figuring out that the a/c wasn't gonna get looked at. Mark drove out to the weld shop to get the computer, and returned with even worse news: they couldn't fix the jacks at all. They wanted us to go back to Bigfoot to have it done! Ugh. We are supposed to leave for Chicago tomorrow.

Doc, our rep at Georgie Boy, sat and chatted with us, looked under the hood at our a/c system and said he thought it would take ten or twenty minutes to fix it, but he really needed to go home, so could we return tomorrow, after we go to Bigfoot, and he'd do what he could with the a/c then. Well, we had no choice. Mark is still optimistic that there is time to get the jacks fixed before we have to leave for Chicago. We call over to Bigfoot--they say to get to them by 7am Michigan time (that would be 6am Indiana time). Ugh.

We pull back into the KOA, now I'm worried a little about our jacks, knowing that both the back ones are bad, and can't get level in our old spot. We had tried another spot, it was even worse, so Mark keeps trying pulling forward or back or to the side more, until he finds a place on our spot where he can level. Hopefully this is our last fearful time with these jacks!

Thursday, June 17

We woke up at 5:30, Indiana time, and took off almost immediately. We get to Bigfoot before they open, and hope that we understood the arrival time correctly. Folks start to show up, and we drop off the RV and head out to find someplace to eat breakfast. We find a little cafe in Constantine, Michigan and had a really wonderful breakfast. Mark's pancakes were literally as big as his plate. He wondered where the syrup was gonna go. I had some great french toast, and we chatted with early riser locals who were there. Parked just outside was this contraption: it looks like a homemade car fashioned from a motorcycle:

Then we found a nearby playground with neat old equipment. Before my camera battery died, I took these:

When we got back to Bigfoot, they weren't done but had no more bad news for us. When they finished, we were relieved and they sent us on our way, over to Georgie Boy to fix the a/c.

Georgie Boy couldn't fix the a/c--it is either the condenser or a freon leak: both of those are considered chassis-related, so we have to find a Ford large truck place. Doc said he did find a problem he could fix, and for a second, I fantasized that he'd yanked our lousy fridge and replaced it. No, he'd found a spot under the hood with poor insulation, and he'd put in foam to keep the sound level quiet for us. Well, it was nice of him to try to find something he could do for us. Thankfully, the weather is in a cool phase, so we headed out for Chicago with Doc's highway suggestions, and with our jacks fully functioning.

While in Chicago, we'll be visiting with Mark and Karen Olson, who are flying to Dublin and will have a day to spend with us on the way, and then with my mom, who will fly in from Washington DC, before she flies out to Nashville, I think. We can't wait to see everyone, and we'll spend ten days seeing the windy city.