A tin cup or a gilded goblet, a hut or a castle, wobbly bicycles or a Bentley -- to wherever and by whatever means, my love, our journey is splendid, our cup is full.
Its only been about a month since we last updated our blog, but it seems like much longer than that. Since then we've finished our visit to the Tiffin factory at Red Bay, spent about a week with our sons and their families in Texas, celebrated Al and Claire's new rig, and made it back to Yuma for the winter. We'll try to do an update on each of these happenings with some pictures -- although we've not been as dedicated in snapping pictures as much as we should.
Red Bay to Texas -- we got all of our warranty work taken care of at the Tiffin factory, including the replacement of our rear jacks (which collapsed while we were there). We also got the annual chassis and engine maintenance done by the good folks at Red Bay Diesel. In addition, we got some custom work done by Brannon Hutchison at Custom RV -- a ceiling fan in the bedroom, a revised driver's shift panel, and relocation of some halogen lights. All in all it was a good visit, with everything done to our satisfaction -- and the prices were right too! Here are some pictures of the new items.
Our new shift panel -- the switches are angled toward the driver, and the shift indicator is moved forward. All in all much easier to use.
The ceiling fan in the bedroom is great!! Its a clean, professional installation, and is controlled by a wireless remote -- one of the best additions we've done!
We were anxious to get to Texas to see our family there, so we hit the road and drove from Red Bay to Liberty Hill in two days -- it was a trip we'd made several times, and we didn't have any stops or sights to see along the way. We got to our sons' place and parked the motorhome, and began to enjoy our sons and their families. We were able to snap a few pictures of our good times there --
Tristam got to run the tractor and help mow the parking for the soccer fields
Gillian with her dad
Grandpa and Kaila doing some homework
Garrett chowing down some pizza
Chloe having fun
We took off from Liberty Hill on Saturday, October 24 and headed out for west Texas -- we'd made arrangements to meet up with our good friends Al and Claire who were heading back to Austin from Albuquerque with their new motorhome. We spend a great 24 hours with them in Balmorhea, TX at a Passport campground (which was very nice -- we'll definitely be staying there again on our trips through Texas). Their new rig is a heavy duty class C toy hauler (Chevy Kodiak chassis with a Duramax diesel and an Allison transmission), equipped so they can take both their motorcycles and a tow car with them when they travel. We had a great time going over every inch of it, and making plans on how to spend their money on add-ons. We didn't take any interior pictures, but we did get a picture of their rig and ours alongside each other in the wilds of west Texas:
After our visit with Al and Claire (and "our" German Shepard Elsa, who they take care of for us . . . . ), we headed out early the next morning for points west along I-10 -- we made it through El Paso without incident (I hate driving through there, but there is really no bypass), and just kept going through New Mexico. We'd gained two hours as we headed west and crossed the Arizona border, so we just kept rolling along until we got to the Elks Club at Gila Bend -- and found out when we tallied it up that we'd put 625 miles on that day. We usually don't go to that extreme, but we wanted to get to Yuma, and didn't have any reason to stop on the way. We boondocked there for the night, and then arrived in Yuma by mid-morning the next day -- just ahead of a couple of days of high wind warnings (another good reason for a 600 mile day . . .).
We pulled into our rental lot and had plenty of time to start getting things cleaned up, and to see our friends again before we collapsed for the night. We spent the next two days getting the shed cleaned up and the yard cleared and had it all in order by cocktail hour that evening (celebrating Mandy's first Social Security payment!!) -- at which time our landlady came by and told us that she was raising the rent for the current season -- by 50%. No advance notice (we'd been leasing for 5 years), and no explanation -- just dropped the bomb and spoiled our day!
It didn't take us long to decide that her new price was totally out of the question -- so we promptly began to look for a new place the next morning. Fortunately we were able to rent a much larger lot a few blocks away in the same development from our good friends Mark and Faye, and moved there as soon as we could. All in all, it was a good thing, as we weren't all that pleased with the way our landlady had been treating us recently, and it gave us an opportunity to clean out our junk from the rental shed. In addition, we're on a much nicer lot for less $$ -- and there is no way she'll rent the lot for the price she is wants -- what goes around comes around.
So . . . . we're all settled in for the winter, and have been getting in plenty of biking and socializing with all of our Yuma friends. As full-timers, our wonderful winters in Yuma have been the one consistent item in our past 6 years of travel, and we really look forward to them. Mind you, we're ready to leave each April/May to do our summer thing -- but in late October, the Yuma foothills is where our compass points us to.
Speaking of summer travel, there is one other item to note -- we've already finalized our plans for Summer 2010. We'll be spending June and most of July volunteering at the D. C. Booth Fish Hatchery in Spearfish, SD -- the rest of July and August will be spent traveling and visiting friends and family in Montana and Wyoming. In September and October we'll head to Lago Vista, TX (just about 20 miles from our sons' place in Liberty Hill) to volunteer at another US Fish and Wildlife location -- Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. We visited both of these locations this summer, and are very excited to be able to participate in their volunteer programs next year. As usual, when we pull up the jacks (and hoping they work) in late October 2010 in Texas, we'll be heading west again to Yuma for another season here.
That's about all for now -- although I guess we should also note that we're planning on using a few of our airline miles to spend Christmas this year in Liberty Hill with our family there (our granddaughter Gabrielle will be spending Christmas in Texas this year and we didn't want to miss her). Greg will also be taking a mid-winter break in January or February to fly up to Seattle to visit his mother. All is well with the both of us as we complete another year of vagabonding, and, as you can see, we hope to continue taking advantage of this great lifestyle for the foreseeable future.
So long from Yuma -- we've got the best sunsets in the Southwest
We've had an interesting week here in Red Bay, Alabama, the home of Tiffin Motor Homes. We planned our annual visit here to get some warranty issues resolved, to get some custom work done, and to get the annual engine/chassis service. So far two out of the three have been successfully achieved -- the details . . . . .
We arrived here Sunday afternoon in the middle of a pretty significant rainstorm, and got a partial hook-up site. Upon arriving, we realized that the motorhome pulling in just ahead of us was Oscar and Penny's -- friends that we had met this summer in Custer, SD. They are long-time friends of my brother Tom in the Boulder, CO area, and they looked us up this summer in the Black Hills as they were starting out on a summer trip to the Canadian Maritime provinces. They are on their way back, and were stopping in to get a whole list of repair items taken care of. We spent Monday visiting with them and hearing about their eventful trip.
Although we had our custom work scheduled at the end of our stay here, we called Brannon at Custom RV, and he indicated that he could get us in early as he had some schedule changes. We went out his way on Tuesday afternoon, and in less than two hours, he had installed a ceiling fan in our bedroom, and put in a modified driver's shift panel in the cockpit. We made arrangement to see him in a week or so to get a couple of lights re-located, and headed back to the campground. We also made contact with our cabinet man, Chris, to have him do a few small changes when he had the chance -- wow, everything is falling into place. . . .
On Wednesday we went out to Bay Diesel to get our 24 month chassis/engine service, and all went well there too. We got all of our items taken care of, and were pleasantly surprised to have Freightliner (our chassis manufacturer) cover the cost for a new exhaust pipe tip -- the stock one had become corroded and rusted -- and, although it sounds like an incidental item, the replacement would have cost over $300! Life continues to be good . . . .
Thursday was our scheduled appointment day at the Tiffin Service Center. Almost all of our items were carry-over items from our warranty service last year, and after checking with the floor supervisor, it was reconfirmed that they would all be covered by TMH under warranty -- just what we wanted to hear. Given the work that would be necessary in several different service departments, it looked like we would be out of here in about a week. . . . . .
We drove back to our site at the end of the day pleased with the way that the week had gone, little realizing that Murphy was about to rear his head. We stopped at our site, took the coach out of gear and put on the parking brake, and pushed the buttons to activate the leveling jacks -- they began to extend and level the coach, but after a minute or so, both the rear jacks suddenly sheared and collapsed. The resulting drop of the coach on the rear suspension (after the air had been let out of the air bags) caused quite a jolt, spilling all of our hanging clothes off the rod in the closet across the rear of the motorhome, moving the nearby washing machine around an inch or two, and buckling the paneling on the bedroom wall. We got the Tiffin techs out to look at the situation, and they helped us get things back in order, both mechanically and personally. They assured us that they had spare jacks in stock to replace the damaged ones, and that all would be OK. We were a bit shaken up, but realized that this was absolutely the best place for a failure of this type to happen. We're right on the cusp of our warranty period for the jacks, so it appears -- at this point -- that we can get things fixed without breaking the bank. We may have to spend a day or two longer here than we anticipated, but that's no big deal -- we hope.
On Friday we spent all day burning off our propane tank in preparation for Monday's repair of the tank float system which measures the level of propane in the tank, and Monday we'll go to the welding shop to get the tank and the jack repair done. Still left to do is the cabinet work, and some work at the paint shop, as well as our remaining custom items with Chris and Brannon -- so we're thinking that we'll be here through most of next week.
We'll do a post next week with pictures of the repairs (the replacement of the jacks should be a good one) and the new items. All in all, we can't complain -- life is still good (but the weather could be better here -- lots of rain and clouds) and everyone in the shop will be happy Monday, as Alabama beat Ole Miss this weekend, and the boss's grandson (Leigh Tiffin) kicked a near-record 5 field goals in getting the job done.
After leaving our friends and the beautiful fall colors in Wausau, WI, we headed south through Wisconsin and Illinois in the general direction of St. Louis. We're taking our time and trying to limit our daily mileage to less than 250 miles, and alternating our stays between Wal Marts and campgrounds. We've not traveled through this part of the country, so we're trying to go a bit slower and smell a few of the roses.
We'd skirted the St. Louis area before on the west side, but had never stopped to see any sights. This time we took the time to go into the city and tour the Gateway Arch and the associated museum. We stayed at a park on the Illinois side of the river which was about 40 miles out of town, and took a day to drive in and wander around a little. Here are some pictures of our visit on a beautiful fall day --
A couple of shots of the arch as we approached it
These are the little pods that you ride in -- with a supposed capacity of 5 people (but they all better be pretty small or very friendly people). You crowd into these things for 4 1/2 minutes while the train of them crawl up the inside framework of the arch. An interesting way (and probably the only one) to get to the top.
Some of the views of the St. Louis area from the viewing area at the top of the arch -- 630 feet up:
The mighty Mississippi
Looking straight down from the window
Busch Stadium - home of the St. Louis Cardinals
Downtown St. Louis looking West
They also had a great museum at the site and two theaters which showed several outstanding documentary films -- one about Louis and Clark and the other about the building of the arch. We'd recommend the whole park -- its called the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and is run by the NPS.
We'd wanted to take a bit more time, but there were a couple of weather fronts chasing us, and we'd decided to take another more easterly route, which would allow us to stop for a few days and visit Mammoth Cave in Kentucky before heading to Alabama. We got ahead of the front, spent a leisurely night at a Wal Mart in Owensboro, KY and then rolled into Cave City on Wednesday. We'd located a park (map) with very attractive rates -- and highly rated -- that was just outside Mammoth Cave, and would allow us to stay several days and explore the area. We had a great 4 1/2 hour tour of the cave yesterday, and although it rained a bit last night, the sun is back out this morning and we're getting ready to get out and explore the Bowling Green, KY area today -- the Corvette Museum looks like it might be interesting.
We're only a couple of hundred miles from Red Bay, so we'll head out of here on Sunday and get to the Tiffin factory a day or two ahead of time and see if we can get things started early there. We're having a couple of custom items done to the coach (new shift panel and a bedroom ceiling fan), along with some holdover warranty items and the 2 year engine/chassis service -- all at three different places -- so we'll probably be there for at least 10 days.
I know its been a long time since we've settled down and updated this site, and we apologize. It took a week or so to recover from the crush of the Sturgis Rally, then beautiful fall weather settled in and the park was very busy over Labor Day weekend (and it impacted us even more since a number of the seasonal staff had left) and we were running everywhere. We were decompressing from that and realized that we had only a little time left in the Black Hills, so our days off were spent hitting the sights that we had not managed to see. At the same time, we got wrapped up with getting things ready to hit the road (which can be a bit of a task if you've been sitting for 3-4 months).
In any event, we've left the Black Hills and are on the road again, on our way to Red Bay, Alabama (where our Tiffin motorhome was built) to get some service done, and some warranty items taken care of. But, before we get into that, here are a couple of the highlights of the last month at Custer State Park ------
My brother Tom and his girlfriend Trish came up from Boulder, CO in late August to spend a few days in the Black Hills. We had a great time with them showing them the area and visiting some of the attractions that we had not seen yet.
Tom and Trish visiting us at one of the entry gates
Clowning 
around at the fish hatchery in Spearfish
Mandy snapped this one while we were looking at a classic fish boat from Yellowstone which is on display at the Spearfish hatchery
We also took the opportunity to go to the Wild Horse Sanctuary south of the Black Hills with Al and Claire on one of our last days off, and had a great time taking the tour and seeing the wild horses that are being taken care of on this 14,000 acre ranch.
Looking down from a ridge above the Wild Horse ranch along the Cheyenne River
Some of the wild horses that are being cared for here . . . 
About the same time, Mandy had her 62nd birthday, and of course you know that means her eligibility for the NPS Senior Pass. Here she is proudly getting her "old folks card" at the local Forest Service Office in Rapid City.
Our seasonal tour of duty was over at Custer State Park as of the 16th, and so the rest of our time during the early part of September was spent taking care of all of the things we needed to do to get checked out and to get the motorhome (and us) ready for some time on the road. We left Custer and headed east on I-90 on Saturday the 19th with no real schedule other than our appointment in Red Bay starting on October 7.
We spent our first night in Mitchell, SD at the Cabela's store, and then went downtown and toured the famous Corn Palace before we left. They were having a weekend Polka Festival, and, since it was Sunday, we happened upon an interesting midwest phenomenon -- a Polka Mass. Not one of our bucket list items, but it was unique . . . . .
After looking at the maps as we approached Sioux Falls, we decided to head further east than we'd anticipated, and visit Wisconsin -- we wanted to spend some time with a number of our friends from Yuma who are from the area, and are there for the summer. We arrived in Wausau, WI on late Monday and have had a great time being tourists, and cycling and visiting with our good friends Mark and Faye, Carl and Judy, and Tom and Carol -- as well as enjoying the outstanding Fall colors which are showing themselves all over the place. We hiked up Rib Mountain, just west of Wausau, and Thursday dug out our bikes and did a great 40 mile "colorama ride" (as Mark puts it), seeing a lot of the area around Wausau and enjoying the wonderful fall weather and colors.
Visiting the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota along the way
The "North Yuma Group" of the Yuma Foothills Bicycling Club enjoying a ride and the beautiful fall colors -- Tom, Judy, Pat, Carl, Mandy, Mark, and Greg -- (Faye took the picture)
Greg and Mark comparing their Merrills before the hike -- identical except for size (8 vs. 15) . . .
The North Yuma group upheld the tradition -- no bike ride is complete without a stop at a garage sale, a bit(?) of lunch, and an ice cream treat -- we had all three, in addition to our beautiful fall day in Wausau!!
As it looks right now, depending on the weather, we'll probably stay here until Saturday or Sunday (we're parked at the Marathon County park right in Wausau), and then began wandering south toward Alabama. They have had a great fall up here, but it won't be long before the rains come and the temperatures begin to fall -- and we want to be out of here before that. Fortunately, we'll get to take our time heading south as we still have a week and a half before our service appointment, and only about 800 miles to cover. As of now we're thinking of spending a couple of days in the St. Louis area, and then following a non-freeway route through Tennessee to Red Bay -- we'll update our progress in a week or so.
Update: We left Wausau on today (Saturday), as the weather was beginning to close in. We're now parked at a Wal Mart in La Salle, IL (with excellent broadband internet reception) and looking at a forecast for good weather through the rest of the week. We'll get down toward St. Louis tomorrow and then play tourist for a couple of days there.
Well, we've both managed to survive the 2009 Sturgis Rally, but it will probably take a few more days for our hearing to completely return to normal. We haven't heard any published attendance figures yet, but the thumbnail estimates are in the area of 400 to 500,000 bikers in the Sturgis area, with somewhere in the area of 50 to 60,000 of them coming south 50 miles to visit us at Custer State Park.
Or you can figure it from this perspective: Mandy and I, from 7/30 to 8/9, sold (and attached) just short of 4400 bike bands to motorcycles coming into the park. There are about 25 entrance gate attendants -- so if each of them averaged the same sales as us, the attendance would be about 55,000 -- that's a bunch of bikes.
We got to work 12 days with only one day off, and most of those days were 9 hour shifts, so we'll have a bit of overtime pay coming our way -- but overall it really wasn't worth it. Yes, the rally is an experience not to be missed, but Harley after Harley after Harley, all with loud and louder exhaust pipes, gets pretty old after a couple of days. Fortunately, the bikers were, for the most part, more fun and polite than a lot of our customers, but the workload and noise from working the entrance gates for that length of time was just overload -- at least that's our take on the event from our corner of the world.
As you might imagine, there were a number of pretty nasty wrecks on the twisty roads in the park, but no fatalities. In fact, we've heard that over the whole Black Hills area there was only one motorcycle fatality during the rally -- which is pretty amazing, given that probably 90 percent of the riders that we saw were not wearing helmets.
We were also surprised to see so many wearing virtually no protective clothing -- basically screaming along the highway in doo-rags, t-shirts, tank tops, and flip-flops (and leather vests). I guess we've got a lot to learn about the Harley "live to ride" mystique, but we're pretty certain that its not what we're after.
The rally was a very positive event for us in one big respect -- during our one day off during the rally we did get a chance to have a great visit with Greg's cousins Mark and Rick, along with Mark's wife Brenda and Rick's companion Ann. They were all down for the rally from Bozeman, and were having a great time. We'd not seen them for at least 3 years, so it was good to catch up with them and get re-acquainted.
Overall, we really didn't have a lot of time to take pictures -- and the ones that we did manage to get really do not relay the feel of the crush of noise and people that we experienced -- but, for what its worth, here is our 09 Rally collection:
(We actually took this one when we went to Sturgis in June -- things were pretty quiet then . . . . . . )
this was the scene at Sylvan Gate on one of our busy days
the crowd at Sylvan Lake for the Buffalo Burger cook-out
Scenes from the Park's West Entrance Gate on a normal rally day
Doing the accounting of the bike bands and the money with our revenue supervisor, Lou
And, finally, our favorite -- this guy has been bringing his mother-in-law to the Sturgis Rally for years, and he wanted to introduce her to us.
All sorts of miscellaneous items to catch up on . . . .
First off, we've now gotten our web access resolved -- it turned out that both our Cradlepoint router AND our Verizon USB 727 cellular modem had failed, so we had to replace both of them. Fortunately, they were both under warranty, and we've now got replacements and all is working again. I suspect that they are a bit more sensitive to heat than we'd realized, even though the router is rated for 50 degrees Celsius -- the cabinet that they're installed in does get a bit warm. I've been unable to find any operating temperature specifications for the modem, but I'll be trying to figure out some ventilation for the cabinet that they're installed in to see if that makes any difference.
But, on to other happenings . . . . we decided a couple of weeks ago to take a "three day weekend" and go over to Wyoming to visit the area where I'd grown up, but hadn't been through for 15 years. Our family had moved from Montana to Worland, Wyoming in the early 50's, and I'd attended grade school and junior high school there. In 1961 we moved 30 miles away to Basin, Wyoming, where I completed high school.
With the exception of a class reunion in 1994 (see evidence below),
we'd not been to the Big Horn Basin area in north central Wyoming since my parents moved from there in the mid-80s -- and, since we were only about 275 miles away here in the Black Hills, we thought it would be fun to take a quick run back there and see the area, and some of my classmates who still lived there.
The drive over was great, with a good portion of it through the Big Horn mountains, and down Ten Sleep canyon on US 16, and into Worland.
We made a couple of phone calls to friends in the area who I'd seen 15 years ago, and made plans to get together. During our short stay, we managed to make contact with quite a number of old friends (meaning that in the best way!) : Bill and Kathy S., Virginia B., Kathie N., and Mike H. in Worland -- and with Don and Cheri R., and Doug C. in Basin (we didn't want to publish their last names to respect their privacy). Overall, we had a great time seeing people and places which we hadn't been in touch with for a long time -- and a great thanks to all of you and your hospitality!!
We're now back working at Custer State Park, and making plans for the crush of park visitors we'll be getting during the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. We'll be working some overtime to accommodate the over 60,000 riders who are expected to visit the park -- the estimates for Sturgis are for over 500,000.
We're expecting that things will slow down after mid-August (and they better since we'll be losing about 13 gate attendants by the end of August). Hopefully we'll get to take in some of the attractions that we didn't get to earlier in the season, as well as get in some bike rides and hikes that we've planned.
Our good friends Al and Claire arrived here last week to work with us in the Park for the last several months of the season. They've parked their rig next to ours at our RV park (which is handy for the both of us, given the cramped quarters at our location), and we're having a great time with them and their dog Elsa. We're sure glad that they decided to come up here from Texas to spend the end of the summer here -- more in upcoming posts about our late summer adventures in the Black Hills.
We've also taken the time for a few bike rides in the area here. We went on the Mikelson Trail from Custer to the Crazy Horse monument (uphill!!) with John and Geneva, two friends who we met here at work. Fortunately its on an abandoned railroad grade, so the maximum grade is 4% -- but its still a good ride. We hope to do more sections of this trail, which runs over 100 miles through the Black Hills.
Just for fun category: We noted the news the other day reminding us that it was the 40th anniversary of the first men walking on the moon -- we thought we'd share a picture of the two of us on that day. We'd put the camera on self timer for the first time (we'd just bought it) and took this snap of us, just after we'd taken pictures of our black and white TV screen showing the men on the moon. Boy, it was a while ago . . . .
On a final (and equally frivolous) note, we've both finally given in to our kid's requests and have joined the social networking site Facebook -- we've actually been pretty amazed at the number of people we've made contact with through FB over the last week, and will try to keep our profiles and information updated. We've also cross-linked our Facebook pages to our blog, as you can see from the new additions to the left hand margin of our postings. I guess we'll try it for a while and see how it goes -- we've certainly been pleasantly surprised by the friends we've re-established contact with, and the other linkages we've established so far.
