We are in Elkhart, IN

Monday p.m.
We are now in Elkhart at the campground. Don’t know if I’ll be able to post this or not. WiFi is pretty iffy here. We have had a very interesting and long long day.
Both of us woke up around 4a.m. and finally gave up and got up around 6.
Took our time finishing loading Alfie so we could leave about 8:30 that way we’d miss the traffic on the freeway.
First we noticed that a part of the windshield wiper was hanging loose – no problem. The Driver got out his handy tools and fixed it. Then when we brought the big slide in the awning over it did not roll up right. So had to put it back out and The Driver had to roll it by hand while standing on a stool and reaching up with a metal rod to move the gears to roll it in okay. Decided to stop by the RV Doc to see if they could give it a quick fix. They said they would check it right out. Guess they put it out and back in – Yep there is a problem. While they were checking it out we drove over to a nearby Cracker Barrel for breakfast. It wasn’t crowded and loud and the food was good. Back to RV Doc – needs new part they will have to order it – will be in next week. EGAD! Okay we’ll just go and when we come home we’ll get it fixed. By now it was 11:30.
Up the road a piece to gas up at a Flying J – went to RV pumps and diesel was 20 cents a gallon more then at the truck pumps. So out around we went to truck pumps. 40 gallons later we were on the road again.
Trip around Indy was uneventful. Trip north on Highway 31 was uneventful. But The Driver isn’t too fond of all the little towns and signals we had to go through. The road is otherwise good. 4-lane divided and most of it newly paved. In fact I mentioned it would be a good road for me to learn to drive Alfie on. Nice and wide and very little traffic. He asked me if I wanted to – “NO” popped out of my mouth real quick. Maybe going home when it is earlier in the day.
Posting this in bits and pieces because of Internet connection. More in a minute

Turned off of the 31 onto the 20 towards Elkhart. So far so good. Gertrude the GPS (Gypsy quit working last year in MX) was showing the way. Usually before we go anywhere I plot our trip on the computer using Streets and Trips. This time I didn’t – can you guess where this is going? We passed one exit for Elkhart and emphatically told The Driver not to take it – Gertrude says it is the next one! Off we get – hum – seems like last time we were here there was a big red building by the off ramp. Oh well, maybe they tore it down or something. Up the road we go. Oh Oh detour – no problem there are signs. YES PROBLEM. The signs ended in a dead end – in a very not nice section of town. Whoops – we are on a narrow street with no where to go. Only one thing to do – unhook Willie and try to turn Alfie around in the narrow street. So while The Driver was unhooking I was looking on the computer trying to figure where in the heck we were. I HATE those tiny screens on the GPS -  Finally kind of figured it out. We’d just back track a couple of blocks then head over to the road we should have taken in the first place. I’ll drive the Jeep and he’ll follow in Alfie. I reprogrammed the GPS with the street I wanted to end up on and turned the sound up so I wouldn’t have to keep checking the screen. Sounds okay right!? Nope. More closed roads with detours. By then I was sweating bullets – what if we ended up on an even narrower dead end street. He’ll kill me. Gertrude kept telling me to turn, then recalculating and recalculating. I was screaming at her to shut the **** up. The Driver trusts me to get him where we wanted to go. Of course we finally made it to campground. Wanted to kiss the lady at the desk. 

As we pulled into our space the guy who is going to wash and wax Alfie came over and we made the final arrangements for him to do it in a day or two…….So we began to set everything up inside and out. I pushed the button to put the big slide out – THUMP! – BANG! And it popped and seemed to drop! OMG! Now what? Neither of us could see anything wrong – nothing looked broken. So brought it back in and put it out again. No problems. Thank goodness. Then the power went off. Driver forgot this thing takes a full 50amps when the a/c is running and he’d plugged it into the 30amps. So much to remember that is different from Jennie.

Everything is up and running and appears to be fine. We’ve left a message for the satellite guy. So until he can get here we have no TV or Internet. So I’m missing the season final of The Closer.  Hope I can find it in reruns.(more in a minute)

So where was I? Oh yah. 6:00 by now. Off we went to get something to eat. There is a nice Perkins not far from campground. Good service, food and prices. I had a delicious spinach, chicken, egg and bacon salad. YUM. TD [the driver] had a club. Neither of us could finish our whole meal.

So here we are none the worse for wear. TD did really well today. I was a little leery about making the trip here – and then all that extra aggravation….but he is fine. As he says “He’s back.” Been three long months.

Have no plans yet as waiting to hear from satellite guy. But there is a lot to do and see around here. Last time we were here was in the middle of October and lots of things were already closed so we missed them. Not this time!

One other “little” thing – last time we used Alfie in ’09 I forgot to empty the coffee grounds out of the pot. Talk about UGH!!!!!  Strange little things growing in there. Took some scouring but it is ready for fresh coffee now.

Enough for today -