We have been back from our 25th Anniversary trip of a lifetime for just about a month and we are definitely back to reality! Once we landed back in the US we hit the ground running. We picked up the truck from fellow RV'ing friends and went over to Grand Design's new factory service center to pick up our rig. They took good care of our home while we were gone and checked off the repair list from our black water flush mishap earlier in the spring. The new facility is huge and so clean! It felt like we walked into a showroom, with our home on display! We spent 2 nights at the old service centers campground to get the coach put back together and then we were off! From there we pointed the coach north towards WI. Our biggest to do's this summer was to get our boys moved into an apartment, Dr's appts and now, follow up on the wrist fracture. With all of this on our plate, we had to sadly decline a fourth year at Scout Camp in Rhinelander, WI. We broke the trip to WI up with a night at Cliffside Campground in Racine, WI. Sites were spacious and paved. You can make reservations online and go directly to your site. What a gem of a county park near the bluffs of Lake Michigan! We will definitely be back there someday. From there we headed to our old stomping grounds in Washington County, WI. We spent the first week at Pike Lake State Park. From here we had family over for some yummy smoked pulled pork and pork belly. We also weathered a big storm but we were prepared and had battened down the hatches. We then moved over to our long term site at Lake Lenwood Campground in West Bend, where we have spent the last couple weeks working on finding an apartment for the boys, spending time with family and friends and taking in a good ol small town 4th of July parade! We even squeezed in a quick stop at Strawberry Festival in Cedarburg, WI, with everything from strawberry wine to strawberry brats! But this last week has been all about taking care of things around the coach and truck. The saying, "When it rains, it pours" has certainly proved itself, several times over this last several days! It started with a smell in the RV and after ruling out sour food, dead rodents and smelly clothes in the rig, we moved to the storage compartments outside. Upon taking down the wall in the front bay we found some water dripping. If you've read our previous post about our black water flush mishap, you can understand that we are on high alert to anything water related! There was a leak somewhere but it was soo small that we couldn't readily see it and find the source. After a day of diagnosing, we discovered the water pump had a cracked seal. Amazon to the rescue! As if on queue, the plastic hot water heater check valve decided to give up the ghost too. Luckily we had a brass valve, just waiting for this very issue. But, that didn't seem to be where the smell was originating from. From there it was time to open up the underbelly and sure enough, we had water in the underbelly that, when pushing on the coroplast, came out in a gut-wrenching little waterfall! Long story short, Rick was able to finally diagnose that there was a crack in the gray tank, which related back to the black tank flush issue in spring. After frantic conversations with Progressive, Grand Design and a local mobile RV tech, we were able to have Progressive send out an adjuster, authorize the repair, order the tank from GD and get a mobile tech to install...mission complete in 5 days! A small miracle as RV parts are still in short supply...as we will soon find out. While the tech installed the new tank, Rick was able to work on our entry handle. After time and the elements, the foam grip was starting to shred a bit on the ends. We decided to go with a self-fusing, waterproof bike handelbar tape to wrap it. We really like the way it stays in place and looks. You would think that would have been the end of our issues, but we soon discovered that our awning was not functioning properly and, as before, we thought it was just readjusting the fabric a bit. Unfortunately, upon further inspection, we found one of the gas struts decided to also give up the ghost! This is where the rv parts woes really came into play. After exhaustive searches online and calling at least a dozen RV parts stores and dealerships, there was not another gas strut to be found! Our last hope was to go straight to the manufacturer and surprisingly found that you can order parts from them directly. We placed an order online and even paid for expedited shipping only to find out that due to the pandemic, they are still behind and it would be 4 to 6 weeks, and that may even be with expedited shipping. Well, at least we know we will get one some time. Unfortunately, we are starting to move again this week, so we are having it shipped to a family members home. This is one of the downfalls of this lifestyle, but hopefully we will have it within a month and be able to use our awning again. Last but not least, we had the lock actuator go out on the drivers door of the truck. This means that the keyfob cannot lock and unlock the vehicle unless you manually lock or unlock that door. Gasp, oh the horror...we need to actually use the key to lock the door! Its just like having to get up and turn the channel on the TV in the old days!!! It is a minor inconvenience, but we were able to get an appointment at the local Ford dealer in early August to get it fixed. The good thing is, it is covered under warranty and bonus, they can get the part by then! Rick's final task to cross of the "To Do" list while we were here was to clean and inspect the roof and AC units. It was pretty dirty and the AC units had their fair share of cottonwood tree puffy seed pods. Some days when the wind is blowing just right, those little guys make it look like its snowing! Outside of that, we have completed most all of the Dr's appts and tests and xrays look really good on the wrist! No surgery and no physical therapy needed! The brace has come off and the only restriction is to ease into lifting things. And believe it or not, I am looking forward to getting back on the bike! Just as long as there is no sand anywhere nearby!! We are excited for the boys, as we help them move into their next chapter and their first apartment this weekend! Then we are off to our next adventure for a couple weeks before we come back for some more family time at the beginning of August and wrap up things in WI. Even though we weren't able to volunteer for the summer up at scout camp, we were able to find an opportunity to volunteer for a week at one of our favorite venues. More on that next time... SHOP AMAZON HERE
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That title has soo many meanings right now for us. First, it's a wrap on our hiatus from this blog. Our last post was 1/16/22 and that was about our travels last fall up to the end of September. The title also means that we are wrapping up our 6+month stay in FL. I guess we really are residents now. It also means that we have wrapped up our workamper stints for awhile as we start to travel again and it also means that my tax season gig is wrapping up as well. There is also a wrap on Julie's arm. So what have we been doing the past 7+ months?? We will try to catch you up to speed in this blog with some highlights. First of all, we embarked on a new workamping gig in TN; helping a fellow RV'ing family realize their dream of an event center and destination overlooking a beautiful lake in Central TN, a half hour east of Nashville. This was again a unique workamping opportunity where we helped with the remodeling of a huge estate home overlooking the lake, a little bit of help with the beginning development of a campground for guests and workampers, some visioning of an old chapel for future events, a bit of food service planning with Rick's background as a chef and then providing companionship and fun for parents of our hosts while they were busy getting the business up and running. October was a fun month of new experiences for us. Here is some pictures of our time on Center Lake. Check out Paul and Tina's amazing transformation of this property at Due West Properties. Our time was not all work, and were able to see lots of sites in the area. We were also able to meet up with friends in TN and GA. Sorry, Sally, we never got a picture together but we got BBQ at Ridgewood! Our trip thereafter to FL was an uneventful one with a quick Harvest Host stopover in southern GA and then it was off to a new workamping gig for our longest time ever in one spot. We were unsure how we would like being in one spot for so long, but the camp location was wonderful, out on a peninsula, outside of Leesburg. We stumbled upon Warren Willis Camp and Conference Center last winter when we stayed at Recreation Plantation, outside of The Villages. We went for a visit and were immediately welcomed in and given a tour. We were soo impressed by the place that we thought our good friends and workamper buddies, the Golden's, would also enjoy this opportunity and we all signed up for the 2021-2022 winter season. We arrived at the end of October and quickly set up in our little oasis. Rick built a picnic table for our site and we purchased a fire pit which got some use with gathering with friends, new and old. We were some of the first workampers to arrive for the season and through the months of November and December, many more workampers arrived, old and new, to make a robust group of over 50!! We had certainly outnumbered the staff as they were hit hard by Covid cutbacks, so the work we were able to assist with was much appreciated and helped make this comeback year a success. Since the property is situated on nearly 300 acres with numerous buildings on both the camp and conference sides, there was alot of work to be done to not only operate day to day but get the property back in shape after a long pandemic hiatus. Job duties ran the gamut. There was grounds work, building maintenance, housekeeping, laundry, food service and a host of other job duties. We were able to draw upon our past experiences in food service, housekeeping, organization and business skills to help get the camp back to pre-pandemic operating levels. It was alot of hard work at times but the appreciation expressed by staff and guests made it all worthwhile. We will be back this next winter season!! A bonus to being in the area was to spend time with family and friends. Several of Julie's family now live in The Villages, including her Dad and Stepmom, who moved down from WI in June. We were able to help them get settled in to their new digs and spend some time enjoying the beautiful FL winter and visiting with other relatives who came to visit. We took advantage of the week we get off of work at the camp in late December to spend Christmas with family in WI with a Christmas Day Milwaukee Bucks game with our boys. Another highlight was spending time with RV'ing friends visiting the area and those workamping with us. We met up with our RV'ing friends, the Wirt's, along with the Golden's and spent a great couple days at Disney in a lovely condo, compliments of the Wirt's Disney Vacation membership. The six of us also met up in mid-December to go see the Christmas lights at Weeki Watchee State Park. We also met up with fellow Grand Design RV'ing friends who were in the area and dang if we didn't miss pictures with some, we were having too much fun! The Daytona 500 was certainly a highlight of our spring in FL! It was a great day for a race and we really enjoyed, not only the race, but all the people watching and pre-race festivities. Another bucket list item was attending the largest RV show in Tampa. With over 1,500 RV's and over 450 vendor booths, there was no way to see it all in one day so we spent a night in Tampa to take it all in. We certainly saw many interesting RV's, were in disbelief at the unreal prices that people were paying but were able to develop a short list of RV's that may be "The One", if we ever sell the coach we have, which is still the best RV for us! But all this fun was punctuated with the daily living activities and some lowlights, shitty lowlights, really shitty, but more about that in a minute. Shortly after we arrived, we noticed that we had a flat tire. Upon further inspection, it was a bent rim that caused it. After a call to the manufacturer, they stood behind their product in not only sending us a new rim, but also a check to have it installed...within the week WOW! Now that is customer service! The regular maintenance and upkeep, like replacing a light cover we lost on the way down, cleaning the hot water heater, washing the rig, awning and roof were necessary tasks that we tackled. But none of these prepared us for a lazy Sunday afternoon when we dumped the tanks as usual with a thorough rinse of the black tank, when we lost track of time, and were quickly brought back to reality when we heard the gut wrenching sound of water gurgling and trickling off the roof! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit...the black tank overflowed, backed up the vent stack to the roof and overflowed into the RV!!!! While Rick ran to shut off the water and open the tank valve, I ran inside, only to be met by semi-shitty water backing up in to the bathroom, hall and bedroom of the upper level. You have never seen two people move soo fast with anything available to get that cleaned up, Unfortunately some leaked down into the bay below the bedroom and the front cap. We did file an insurance claim and will have the repair work done at the Grand Design factory in May. Fortunately, our quick work to clean it all up led to minimal damage and a compliment by the insurance adjuster telling us we should really teach other RV'ers what to do in this scenario. So there's that... Tax time this year was kinda rough with trying to balance workamping and the challenges of Covid time taxes, which brought it's own complexities. But, we made it through and look forward to a more normal year next spring. We wrapped up our time at Warren Willis in early April, after 5 plus months, and headed for some R&R at Strawberry Fields for RV'ers in Chiefland, FL. It was a great, newer park, with paved sites and all the amenities, including a wonderful, cheap laundry room, which we always appreciate. While I wrapped up taxes, Rick was able to wash the rig since our rig was no longer under the live oaks with a continuous shower of moss. Boy was our baby dirty! We also went for a long bike ride on another rails to trails paved path which took us to Old Town, FL and a train trestle bridge over the Suwanee River. This was a ride where we, inadvertently, tested our ebike batteries where Rick's died as we rolled back into the parking lot. Another day we took time to explore Cedar Key and have some wonderful, fresh seafood overlooking the bay. Our final stop in FL was in St. Augustine. We have wanted to stop and explore the oldest town in the US every time we came to or from FL but never had the time. This time was different. We carved out several days to play tourist and enjoy our time exploring. We visited the Castillo de San Marcos fort, explored St. Georges street, took a walk to the beach and enjoyed a guided golf cart tour of the old city. We even had time to meet up with new friends we workamped with at Warren Willis for a delicious dinner at the Conch House overlooking Matanzas Bay in a elevated tiki hut. What a fun experience! The end of April had us moving through GA, stopping to visit RV'ing friends who have since settled down in St. Mary's, GA. We enjoyed catching up with both Dave & Dawn, who we workamped with at Valley River RV Resort in 2020 and Rick and Vonceil, fellow Grand Design owners, who we met while staying near Galveston, TX for a month in early 2020. Unfortunately, your seeing a trend, we didn't get pictures...ughhh. While in the area, we took a day trip to the Okefenokee Swamp for a great hike and saw some gators and other wildlife. Steffens was also on the agenda for some awesome country fried steak! Seriously addicting and a must have when we're in the area. We then headed up the coast to Brunswick, where we went on a wonderful bike ride of Jekyll Island, which was picture perfect until... Julie unexpectedly met some soft sand that really wanted her to stop and lay in it! That tumble resulted in a trip to the urgent care and a fractured right wrist! Injuries while traveling full time are never easy or fun, but amazingly, we were able to find a orthopedic office in Savannah, our next stop who was able to fit us in, and because of our mobile lifestyle, put a heavy duty splint on rather than a cast so that we could continue or planned travels but still ensure the wrist was immobile. A follow up visit there showed the wrist was healing nicely and barring any unforeseen complications, no additional follow-up would needed. Savannah had been a planned stop for some time as the Gramoll sisters were bringing Rick's mom for a girls trip. After 2 months of creative fibbing to his Mom as to our whereabouts, we were able to surprise her one night on an evening dinner cruise, and boy was she happy! We spent more time with everyone the next day and had a BBQ back at our site at Skidaway Island State Park. After that quick visit we made our way to visit our dear friends, Ryan and Vicki in Jamestown, NC. We stayed at our favorite Oak Hollow Campground, a city park in High Point and spent the long weekend catching up and enjoying alot of fantastic food! We are now making our way north to drop of our rig at Grand Design, in Elkhart, IN, for some work while we take a once in a lifetime, pandemic delayed, 25th Anniversary trip to Germany, Rome, a western Mediterranean cruise and finally a couple days in London. To say we are excited is a monumental understatement! There is alot of work still to be done when we get to IN to prepare the rig and get ready for our almost month long excursion overseas. If you are on Facebook, you can like our Wandering by Design page to see updates as we travel through Europe. We hope to post as we have WIFI and look forward to sharing this exciting trip with you! SHOP AMAZON HERE
Would you like to help support our blog and keep these updates coming? It is easy to help, just do your Amazon shopping through the link above. You still get all your Amazon Prime benefits and the prices are the same. Since we are in the Amazon affiliate program, any shopping you do through our link, provides a little kickback to support this blog. Thank you for stopping by!!! We have been in tourist mode for the last couple months and have been busy with various things so time has once again gotten away from us. How can it be mid October already? After leaving the scout camp in WI, mid August, it was a quick stop to get new shoes on the RV and a quick stop north of Eagle River at a cool, little county campground that is a true gem! Torch Lake Campground is nestled in the tall pines that is relatively new and already adding a new section. We were then off to the Upper Peninsula of MI to explore some areas in the UP we have never been before. First up was Keweenaw Peninsula where we stayed at Mclain State Park, situated right on Lake Superior. Our site was overlooking the lake, which provided for beautiful sunsets but windy days. We toured a copper mine, and learned about the history of the peninsula, drove to the beginning of Hwy 41 that stretches from the UP all the way to Key West. (we visited the southernmost point of Hwy 41 back in April when we were in Key West.) We also went exploring for waterfalls, one took us down a very narrow fire trail cut out of the bluff and it was quite a feat for the dually to get through the heavily wooded, VERY narrow dirt path! Our next stop was Tahquamenon Falls State Park-Rivermouth. This campground is not located near the falls, but over on the Lake Superior coast where the Tahquamenon River empties into the lake. The sites are more spacious and we scored a 50amp pull thru that was large enough for 2 RV's! Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture of the site! During our time here we explored the park and the falls, hiked many trails and visited the Great Lakes Shipwreck museum. Rick even made a new friend and had him eating out of his hand! Our time in the UP went by quick and we were now headed down to the mainland of MI, also known as "The Mitten" to spend some quality family time! This was our first time over the Mighty Mac with the RV. We all stayed at Wilderness State Park near Mackinaw City and had a blast catching up, playing on the beach of Lake Michigan and attending a logging show. Prior to family arriving, Rick and I took a day to explore Mackinac Island. It was great to see family but the weekend went by way to quick and it was suddenly time to point her south and make our way down to the Grand Design Rally. We had a quick overnight at a nice Sun RV Resort, Hidden Ridge RV Resort, south of Grand Rapids. Very nice park with FHU, a nice laundry room and pool, which we took advantage of, and best thing was they were a Passport America park, which meant 50% off! Gotta love these gems! We would definitely stay there again! Our month ended (and Sept began) with the much anticipated Grand Design National RV Rally! We volunteered to be section hosts with our friends, the Wirts. We had over 200 people and almost 100 RV's in our section, which was the interior of the horse track. Every day we were delighted to see the trainers out exercising the horses. Prior to the official start of the rally, we hosted 2 campfires and a potluck dinner for our section. The week prior to the rally was busy with rally preparations and setup but all of the volunteers did take time to get together for meals and take a trip to a Buffalo Ranch were we got to feed the buffalo and then it was off to a relaxing boat cruise. We had a fantastic time at the rally and it all went by soo fast! We signed up for the Amish Brown Bag tour again and still loved it. Rick also went on a factory tour and got to see the picture and inspirational saying for the factory staff we sent in hanging in the Solitude factory. It was great to meet new folks, finally meet folks we have been online friends with for years and see old friends! We look forward to meeting up with fellow Grand Design friends at future rallies around the US. Our infield host area as our guests arrived , campfires, stories, trivia and food! It was alot of work, but also alot of fun. Someone had ALOT of fun... Volunteer pre-rally work and play... Rally fun, Amish Brown Bag and Factory Tour Whew!!!! What a great time! Lots of work put into that great national rally but well worth the effort. Everyone had a great time! Now we are off to explore new areas out East... SHOP AMAZON HERE
Would you like to help support our blog and keep these updates coming? It is easy to help, just do your Amazon shopping through the link above. You still get all your Amazon Prime benefits and the prices are the same. Since we are in the Amazon affiliate program, any shopping you do through our link, provides a little kickback to support this blog. Thank you for stopping by!!!! Once we left scout camp, we headed to SE WI to spend quality time with family, take care of Dr appts, including a colonoscopy and then relax. Little did we know that we would be fortunate to be in town when Rick's dad had a medical emergency and was rushed to the hospital, only to have surgery on a brain bleed the following day. He is doing much better and is in rehab, getting stronger every day, to return home soon. It was great to see everyone again, albeit the circumstances were not what we wanted and the whole Covd thing made it much more stressful since we were unable to see him or be there speaking to the Dr's. Rick's mom was a trooper though, being the only one who could be with him and we were able to speak to the Dr and his dad via phone, from the hospital grounds below. We also were able to spend time with my family as well with a family get together. We had a wonderful time with great food and drink, laughs and as always, a very contentious washer box tournament $$$. A complete surprise to me since it has been years since I played but the winners were...yup, my brother and I! Wohoo! Winner, winner, chicken dinner!!! We also had several contestants instantly win a game by getting a washer on the rim of the box and we had to take the traditional pictures. Our oldest son works at a boat/sales and service business and was able to reserve the company "test drive" pontoon boat for a day and we went out on the lake near our old home for a relaxing cruise. What a beautiful day for it! After saying our goodbye's, we headed south to get some work done on our RV at the Grand Design Service Center. Again we cannot say enough wonderful things about our manufacturer! They go above and beyond to earn customers for life. We arrived at their campsites on a Monday and were up early Tuesday to have the RV ready to go in to the shop at 6am. We had a couple things for them to look at and they also do a once over as well to check the rig out. They did find an issue that they wanted to address so we spent a little over a week in the Elkhart area while our coach was being worked on. Being smack dab in the middle of Amish Country we had to check it all out, even if we have been here before. That included a visit to the Menno-Hof museum in Shipshewana, an Amish dinner at the Essenhaus, a buggy ride through the countryside and perusing several stores to purchase Amish made goodies. We even found several "quilt" flower gardens on our drive around the area. Soo pretty!!! We had another day to burn while our rig was at Grand Design so we started off with a very interesting visit to Bontragers RV Surplus. They have several buildings that have just about every piece you would need for your RV! After an hour and 93 degree temps with 85% humidity, we threw in the towel and got back into a nice cool truck. From there we headed on over to one of our most favorite food haunts in the area, Flippin Cow. This place has such great burgers and a really cool vibe that we make a point to stop every time we are in the area! We even went back again before we left town, with our dear friends, the Golden's, who were also having work done at MORryde. From there we headed to Costco to pick up a couple items and then went to a place we have not been for what seems like years...A Movie Theater!!! EEEKKK!!!! Well to say that we felt safe is an understatement! Cinemark definitely has gone the distance to ensure everything is thought of to keep the customers and staff safe. Our show was at 4pm and we were the only ones there! We had the movie theater all to ourselves. We saw Unhinged and let me just say that I will never look at Russell Crowe the same way ever again!!! It took awhile for our heart rates to come back down after that one! When we came out into the parking lot, there were several more folks there and the staff seemed sincerely happy to be back at work. It just so happened that our extra time in Elkhart caused us to have to cancel our reservation at Maumee Bay State Park on Lake Erie. It looked like a really nice park on the lake and had great reviews but alas...RV'ing plans are usually made in jello. This wasn't the only change we needed to make. Due to the whole Covid fiasco and NE states having strict quarantine guidelines, we had to cancel our plans to go to PA and NY, including Niagra Falls. Oh well, the Canada border was closed as well, so we will make that trek once it is all open again. It was quite interesting when canceling reservations as to the different policies in place. Some were just a nominal cancellation charge, another had a $25 cxl fee but would be used as a credit on a future stay within a year and then there was yet another that would not refund any deposit and laughed when I asked if the 1 night deposit could be a credit a later date. Yup that one was in NY! Grrrr. Oh well, it is what it is. Lots of wiggly jello plans that change. We quickly examined our options and decided to explore West Virginia next. I must say though that we have been quite lucky, as I have seen other folks have their travel plans completely upended. Our next stop was a couple nights just outside of Cincinnati at Winton Woods County Park. What a gem! Fantastic county park with camping, a petting zoo, boat rentals and soo much more to offer! We were also blessed to have our friends, The Golden's, stay for a night on their way to TN. From here we said our "See You Again's" and hope to meet back up with them next summer. We also were able to snag some Skyline Chili. Oh yumm!! For those that have not experienced it's yumminess, Cincinnati chili has a very distinct taste. It is a meaty chili with cinnamon and allspice. You can then add beans if you'd like and their most popular is the three way which is on top of spaghetti with a mound of cheddar cheese on top. The social calendar continued to hum along as we met up with more friends. Good friends, good food!!! Right up our alley! We met up with Ginger who we met way back in 2018 when we did a workamping stint at their private grass airstrip in Hanover, IN. Unfortunately Rich wasn't able to join us since he was on call for work, but hopefully next time! We met Ginger at the Incline Public House on historic Price Hill in south Cincinnati. The food was good, the company was even better and the views of downtown Cincinnati were amazing! The next day we met up with Terri and Mike, friends we met at the 2018 National Grand Design Rally. We had a great lunch at LaRosa's Pizzeria. Since there was no rally this year in Elkhart we brought them some yummy Amish goodies and they brought us some delicious bounty from their garden and Mike made us a beautiful 5th Wheel RV charcuterie/cutting board. Thank you both!!! Our busy, social time in Cincinnati quickly came to an end and we needed to pack up and head down the road to our Labor Day weekend destination. Until next time...
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