Our last chapter concluded on Tuesday, August 14th, when we arrived in Monticello, Indiana for the first of four consecutive motor coach rallies we will be attending this summer. We arrived at the White Oaks RV Resort late in the afternoon and got settled in. This is one of our membership resorts with Western Horizons Resorts, so it only cost us six dollars a day to stay here. Non members got a good rate, about $25 a night, but I like ours better. It is one of the nicer WHR parks we have been in, located right on a lake with nice wooded grounds.
We are here for a rally of the Full Timers Chapter of the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA), a chapter of which I am the Vice President. You don’t have to be an actual “Full Timer” to be a member, one can be a part timer, most timer, or even just thinking about full timing. However, like us, a lot of the members are actually full time with no house.
After we got set up we waited for our friends the Bullocks to come back from shopping. They were not expecting us until Wednesday or Thursday, so they were excited to see us. We last saw them in Arizona back in April, so we had a lot of catching up to do at happy hour. After happy hour we had dinner in our coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Wednesday, August 15th, we didn’t have much going on with the rally so we left the coach at about 10:00 with the Bullocks to do some geocaching. Regular readers will remember that we introduced the Bullocks to geocaching less than two years ago and they are already up to 1,400 finds. They got number 1,400 today while we were caching, so we had to take a photo for posterity. They had intentionally held off on reaching that milestone until we got into town. We also had to cache today to fill the date on our days of the year challenge. We ended up getting eleven new finds with only one new DNF.
We had lunch at a local restaurant called Oakdale Dam Inn. The place had been recommended by several people and it was only a couple miles from the campground. It is a funky kind of bar and grill right on the river. It was not real busy today for some reason. They have a special on Wednesday which three of us ordered. It was a prime rib sandwich served on grilled Texas toast with Provolone cheese and it was wonderful. The restaurant doesn’t even have prime rib on the menu, they only make one on Tuesday night and use it to make the sandwiches on Wednesday. Peggy had the catfish, which the place was supposed to be famous for, and said it was only so-so. She said it was overdone, so that might have just been a cooking mistake. They also have an extensive menu of beer, both tap and bottle. I would give the place high marks. It can be a little hard to find, so pay attention to the directions if someone tells you how to get to it. There are signs along the roads, but they are small and if you miss one you will end up on the other side of the river somewhere.
Unfortunately, while we were driving around in our Jeep exploring and caching, I noticed that the A/C was not blowing cold air anymore. RATS! Although overall our Jeep has been a very good car, this will make the fourth time the A/C has quit since we bought it in 2009. There is something in the design of the front of the car that is making the condenser for the A/C fail. It either moves around and breaks the lines or something is rubbing on the condenser and wearing a hole in it. Either way, the freon escapes, the A/C stops working and we have to find a Jeep dealer to get it fixed. On average it has been happening about every nine to ten months. Twice it was fixed under warranty and the third the extended warranty covered most of the cost, but the inconvenience is the biggest problem. This time I plan to contact the Jeep corporation and complain. I decided to wait until we got to Springfield, Ohio for the Monaco rally next week to get it fixed. I called the Jeep dealer in Springfield and made an appointment.
After lunch we headed back to the coaches and rested for the afternoon. About 4:30 we sat outside with the group of Full Timers, which now numbers about 14 coaches, had cocktails and chatted. We had dinner with the Bullocks in their coach and Peggy made one of my favorites, a tomato basil pasta dish that is to die for. It is one of the only entree meals I like that has no meat. After dinner we talked for a while before going back to our coach for the rest of the night.
Thursday, August 16th, we woke up to dark and cloudy skies. The weather forecast said a 40 percent chance of showers, but the sky was saying closer to 100 percent. This was supposed to be the first official day of the rally, although there were no major activities until late in the afternoon. By mid-morning the skies had opened up and we had heavy rain and strong winds for about five hours, well into the afternoon. The winds came up fast and strong. One coach lost it’s awning because the owners were away and had left the awning out. The wind tore it loose and tossed it over the top of the coach. The Bullock’s fiberglass flagpole broke off in the wind. I had taken my flags down and we rarely use our big awning, so we were safe from the winds.
About 2:00 we went down to the clubhouse at the campground to have our first official get together for the rally. We did our registration and got our “goody bags” from the wagonmasters. They had russeled up a lot of stuff from various vendors and the bags were stuffed full. We hung around the clubhouse for a couple hours talking to people and attending the first timers meeting. We have been to several rallies, but they asked us to “mentor” some people for whom this was their first Full Timers Chapter rally. We got the Bullocks. They have belonged to the Chapter for a couple years but had never been able to get to a rally.
After the afternoon get together we went back to the coach for an hour or so before returning to the clubhouse for happy hour with the group and dinner. Dinner was cooked by the staff of the campground and was included as part of the rally fee we paid. The dinner was ham and scalloped potatoes and it was very good. This is a very nice campground, one of the best of the Western Horizon parks we have seen. It is right on a large lake, although our campsites don’t have lake views or lake access. There is a beach down by the clubhouse and the water looks very inviting. I may have to go swimming one day during the rally. After dinner we helped clean up and then went back to our coach and watched TV the rest of the night.
Friday, August 17th, we went down to the clubhouse at 10:00 to participate in the Full Timers Chapter business meeting. I am the Vice-President of the Chapter, so I needed to be there. Jackie also went both because she was interested in the meeting, but also because she had been appointed the official photographer for the rally. One of the items I discussed with the membership at the meeting was the Ice Cream Social to be held at the FMCA Convention in Indianapolis in a couple weeks. The Full Timers Chapter has been the official “hosts” of the Ice Cream Social for many years and this year Jackie and I are the “Captains” of this event, meaning we have to recruit volunteers to help and then manage the event.
There really isn’t a whole lot to do for the event. The ice cream is delivered by a vendor who contracted with Miller Insurance, the company that sponsors the event. The only thing the Chapter has to do is show up with enough people to hand out ice cream to a couple thousand people, along with some people to help organize and direct the traffic through the event. Jackie and I have helped out at about four or five of these at past FMCA rallies, but this will be our first time acting as Captains. We have lined up several dozen people already and there are always more than enough that show up at the event to get everything done. The whole thing only lasts about 90 minutes and then that is the end of our volunteer commitment for the rally.
As Captain it is also my job to give out volunteer ribbons and pins to those who help at the social, and also to offer special volunteer parking spaces to anyone who wants one. Only three people did. Many of the people helping us with the social are also volunteers with some other group and are already committed to parking, some will be parking with the governing board, and some, like us, have assigned parking at the rally which we think will give us full hookups. We don’t want to give up assigned parking for a spot in a field somewhere with the volunteers.
After the business meeting Jackie and I went out to do some shopping at Walmart and then we stopped at a local restaurant called Harvest Time, which was close to Walmart. We found a very nice restaurant with great service, wonderful food, and it was very inexpensive. Every sandwich on the lunch menu comes with a cup of soup and you can get fries also. Jackie had a chicken sandwich and I had a Reuben and both were great. The bill for the both of us was under $20 and we were stuffed. A great place to eat if you find yourself in Monticello, Indiana.
After lunch we went back to the campground and relaxed for most of the afternoon. Jackie did spend some time putting together her taquito casserole for the get together with the group in the afternoon. We left the coach and went back down to the clubhouse for happy hour about 5:00. The schedule said that we were to have “heavy hors d’oeuvres, but most everyone fixed something that would have worked for a pot luck. It ended up being more than enough food to make a real meal, not just a snack. I am sure that no one went away hungry, or had dinner after they left. We visited with everyone at the party for a couple hours before returning to the coach and watching TV the rest of the night.
Saturday, August 18th, we once again went down to the clubhouse at 10:00 for another meeting, this time with the Chapter’s National Director, Jack Friedlander. By way of explanation, every Chapter in FMCA, and there are over 500 chapters, elects a National Director who represents the chapter in the governance structure of FMCA. FMCA has a large Executive Board comprised of a variety of elected officers who handle the day to day governance of the organization. However, any major changes to the bylaws or constitution, approval of the budget, and other important tasks are considered by the Governing Board, which is made up of all the National Directors. The Governing Board only meets once a year at an FMCA Convention.
Jackie has been a Governing Board member twice in the past and this year I am an appointed National Director for one of the many chapters we belong to. This really means I have to spend an entire day at the convention in a massive meeting. Jack wanted to have the meeting today with the membership of the Full Timers to get feel for how they would like him to vote on some of the issues which will be coming up. There were also about six individuals in the meeting of the Full Timers who are also on the Governing Board representing other chapters. We had about an hour and a half of discussion on many of the issues facing FMCA which may come up at the Convention in a couple of weeks. FMCA, like many organizations, is facing real financial issues. Membership is falling, revenue is declining, everything is getting more expensive and the organization is facing problems, even failure, in the future. Should make for an interesting meeting.
After the meeting we and the Bullocks went out for more geocaching in the area. According to Groundspeak, the company that runs geocaching.com, and basically the whole sport of caching, declared today “International Geocaching Day” and they were trying to get as many people as possible to go out and cache today. We decided to join in and go get some caches. We went out and got a couple of caches and then decided to go to lunch. We tried another local place called Esmeralda’s located on the east edge of town. Peggy and Vernon had gone there for breakfast a few days before and said it was a good place to eat. We were again surprised at how much food they can give you for a reasonable price. Like the Harvest Time Café, all the sandwiches came with soup and a side if you wanted it. I had a cheese steak sandwich that was one of the best I have ever eaten. The portions were big and the food was delicious. Esmeralda’s is yet another Monticello eatery I can highly recommend. After lunch we did a couple more caches before returning to the campground. We found six new caches for the afternoon.
We returned to our coach for a brief rest before leaving about 5:00 to drive to a local restaurant where the group was having dinner. We and the Bullocks went a little early so we could have a cocktail in the bar before the rest of the group arrived for dinner. We were at a place called the Sportsman Inn and it is located on the shore of Lake Freeman, one of the two man-made lakes on the Tippacanoe River that are in the vicinity of Monticello.
The Sportsman is a little more upscale than the other restaurants we have been to in Monticello, but still fairly casual. This is a recreational area, so the businesses tend to be oriented more to casual. We had cocktails in the bar and chatted with some locals while we waited for the rest of the group to arrive. About 6:00 all of the group arrived and we were seated in the dining room. There was no set menu so everyone ordered what they wanted off of the menu. The rally provided a $15 per person “allowance” to help pay for the meal. It was really just a refund of the rally fee we paid some months ago, but cash is cash.
The food at the Sportsman was good, but not spectacular. I had fish and chips, which were a very good Haddock that was lightly breaded and very tasty. I ended up taking some of the meal home with me because the portions were very large. Jackie had the Haddock grilled and she said it was excellent. Most everyone was happy with their meals and the prices were very reasonable.
After dinner we were scheduled to go on a two hour cruise on Lake Freeman aboard the Madam Carroll excursion boat. The boat was docked right across the street from the restaurant, so we all just drove over there and parked after dinner. Boarding didn’t start until 7:30, so we ended up having to wait in line for 45 minutes for boarding, but we had a good time talking amongst the group. Once we got on board we had another hour before the boat actually took off, but at least there was a bar on the boat, so we could have a cocktail while we waited.
The Madam Carroll made her first cruise on Lake Freeman in August 1976. The boat is 135 feet long and 36 feet wide with three decks. She is the largest inland vessel in Indiana. The first deck is a large enclosed lounge with a bar and dance floor. There was a band set up in there and basically the boat is cruising night club. The second deck is mostly open, although there is a small snack bar near the bow. There is also a very small, open third deck on top of the snack bar.
At 7:30 the boat started the cruise down Lake Freeman. The dock is near the north end of the lake and we were told that it is ten miles from there to the dam on the south end which creates the lake. We were all surprised at the number of very nice homes along the entire lake shore on both sides. The lake is long and narrow, in most places only a mile or two across. We also had a mini-flotilla of small boats tagging alongside for most of the trip. I suspect that they were listening to the band on lower deck. Most of the windows on the lower deck were open, so it was a floating jukebox for the people in the small boats.
About halfway down to the lower end of the lake the sun had set and it got pretty dark. It was too bad that the trip started so late because about two thirds of the cruise were in the dark and there wasn’t much to see once it got dark. It also got surprisingly cool. Towards the end of the cruise, about 10:30 or so, I had to hunker down in the snack bar to get out of the cool wind. I had not thought to bring a sweater or jacket and it was cold. We finally got back to the dock at 10:30, got into our car and drove back to the campground. It has been a long time since I have been out driving this late at night.
Sunday, August 19th, we went down to the clubhouse about 10:00 for distribution of prizes. The rally masters, Sandy and Jean, had contacted a whole bunch of the FMCA vendors that come to various rallies and asked them for donations for our rally. They got a lot of prizes, enough for everyone to get two or three items. Most were smaller things, like packets of waste tank deodorant, cleaning supplies, that sort of thing. There were also some nice things like map books and camping directories. We won one of the directories but gave it away because we do everything on the computer so we don’t have to have the big, heavy books.
After the prize giveaway we and the Bullocks took a drive to the nearby cities of Lafayette and West Lafayette, Indiana. We did a few caches while down that way, finding three and earning one DNF. We spent some time driving around the campus of Purdue University, which is located in West Lafayette. Purdue is actually part of the Indiana State University system and was founded in 1869. It now has over 40,000 students in any given academic year. It was interesting today driving around because school starts in just a few days and the streets were filled with students wandering around. Many looked very young and were probably members of the new freshman class trying to find their way around. After our tour we drove back to the campground for a brief rest. I also took an hour or so to take down the outside decorations and screens because tomorrow is another travel day.
About 5:00 we again went down to the clubhouse for dinner, again provided by the staff of the campground for our group. This meal was chicken with rice and broccoli. The chicken and broccoli were very tasty, but the rice was badly undercooked and most people didn’t eat much of it. After dinner we chatted for a little while before cleaning up and going back to our coaches for the rest of the night.
Monday, August 20th, we packed up the coach for travel and were on the road about 9:00 a.m. We got an early start because we were headed for Springfield, Ohio, about 220 miles to the southeast of Monticello. We are going to Springfield for the Monaco International Chapter rally. This is another FMCA Chapter we belong to which always has pre-rallies before the big FMCA conventions. The Bullocks, who also own a Monaco coach, followed us on the trip as they are going to the Monaco rally also.
The trip was freeway most of the way, but we had to go through the Indianapolis area again and then, once in Ohio, through the Dayton, Ohio area. As we have discovered, the roads in Indianapolis are atrocious. At one point today I am driving down I-65 at 60 mph when one side of the sun shade on my side of the windshield falls down onto the dash. Now, these are fairly large, motorized shades and fortunately, it fell in such a way that I could see around it with no major difficulty. There was no safe place to pull over at that time and by the time I thought I might be able to get over to stop and secure the shade, the other end fell down. Well, problem solved, sort of. At least it’s not in my way anymore. Damn, another repair on the to-do list.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful and we arrived at the Springfield, Ohio Clark County Fairgrounds about 2:00 or so and got in line to get parked. We had a slight delay because we had to pull over to disconnect our cars before parking and Vernon’s Jeep had a dead battery. We got it jumped and then went to get parked. It took a half hour or so but we finally got to our parking spot, which was mostly on pavement and a 30 amp electric hookup. There was no water nearby, but I had filled my water tank so I didn’t need any. The Bullocks are parked right next to us and our friends, the Kings, the Babcocks and the Wilsons, are only a few coaches down the row.
After we got coach set up and all the outside elements in place we and the Bullocks headed out in our car for some dinner and a quick Walmart run for supplies. We stopped at a restaurant called Bob Evans for early dinner. We were familiar with Bob Evans from our travels in the southeast back in 2006. The are a family restaurant chain that we recalled had very good food. I guess the best way to describe them would be an upscale Denny’s type place, or an Applebees without the bar. Peggy and Vernon had never been to one, but after we ate they agreed it was a very nice place for a quick, but good, meal. After eating we went to the Walmart, which was in the same parking lot, for some supplies and then back to the fairgrounds. We had cocktails with the group and then relaxed the rest of the night watching TV.
Tuesday, August 21st, the first day of the Monaco International Rally. Today was a fairly light day, the vendors didn’t open until 12:00 and there were no evening activities scheduled except for a beer and wine party around the new coach display at 5:00. I left the coach with the Jeep at 7:30 a.m. and drove to the Springfield, Ohio Jeep dealer, Jeff Wyler Chrysler-Jeep, to try to get the air conditioning fixed. I sat around the dealership for about two and a half hours before the service writer came to tell me that the problem was indeed a leak in the condenser. However, unlike the previous several condenser failures, this one appears to have been damage to the front of the compressor rather than a failure of the lines going into the side. Something forced the bottom of the front decorative fascia up and a part of it hit the bottom of the compressor and created a very small hole from which the freon gradually escaped.
Unfortunately, this meant that the extended warranty wouldn’t cover the expense of repair since a warranty only covers part failure, not part damage. Rats. He told me he could get a compressor in by morning and get the car finished in one day. He suggested that I leave the car there so the technician could get started and not have to wait until tomorrow to take the old compressor out. I agreed and they gave me a ride back to the fairgrounds. I was back home by about 1:00 or so, but without a car for the day.
After I got back Jackie and I walked down to the vendor area so I could see what was there. Jackie had already gone through the vendors and told me, not much. She was right. I would guess there were maybe a dozen vendors, none with anything I wanted to buy except for two people selling satellite dishes. You may recall from a previous episode of this blog that our satellite dome got smashed by a low hanging tree limb when we were leaving an RV park in Abita Springs, Louisiana back in July. Since that time we have been using our “spare” dish on a tripod which I have to set up every time we park somewhere.
We talked to both dealers and got prices on various types of replacement satellite dishes. Basically we had to choose between a roof mounted dome, similar to the one we had but by a different manufacturer, or a larger open-faced dish mounted on the roof. The dome was the less expensive option, but with the dome you can not receive signals for high definition television, or HD. Last year we replaced the old TV in the front of the coach with a new flat screen that is a very good HD television. However, at that time we had a dome satellite dish and couldn’t get HD, so we just kept our regular satellite receiver and just watched standard TV on our HD set.
The larger, open faced dish is fully HD capable, but to actually see HD television we would have to upgrade our satellite receiver to HD and subscribe to HD channels on our Direct TV account. The larger dish was almost twice the price of the new dome. We decided that we needed to think about this one for a while, so we gathered all the facts and told the dealers we would get back to them. While we were down at the vendor area I went over to the parts truck that Navistar, the new owners of Monaco Coach, sent down and bought a new hub cap to replace the one I lost a few weeks ago due to the lousy roads of Louisiana. It was probably one of the least expensive parts I have ever gotten from Monaco, the total was less than $15. It took too trips to the parts truck to get it mounted though, they had forgotten to give some of the required retaining clips on my first trip.
After a brief rest in the coach we went done to the Preview Party and joined our friends for the sponsored beer and wine happy hour. There were four RV dealers that brought new and used coaches to the rally for sale and this Preview Party was the first time the coaches were open for viewing. They had more than enough beer and wine and also provided nice pulled pork sandwiches and other goodies that basically served as dinner for the day. We spent an hour or so socializing, eating and drinking, before going back to our coach. We sat outside with the Bullocks, Babcocks, and Wilsons for another couple hours before retiring to our own coach for the rest of the evening.
Wednesday, August 22nd, we were able to sleep in because there was not much going on with rally in the morning and we didn’t have a car to go caching or anything else offsite. We had lunch at the coach and did a few chores until about 2:00 when we went down to the seminar rooms to attend a meeting with some of the executives from Navistar, the parent company of what used to be Monaco Coach but, within the last week, renamed Navistar Coach. By way of background Monaco Coach Corporation, which made Monaco, Holiday Rambler, Safari, Beaver and several towable RVs, went bankrupt in 2008 when the economy took a dump. In 2009 the assets of the company were purchased by Navistar, a very large company that is a sort of descendent of the old International Harvester company. Navistar’s big business is large, over-the-road trucks. They build International Trucks, large commercial busses, and a wide variety of military vehicles. They also build their own large diesel engines, MaxForce, and Spartan Chassis, which, ironically, are used by several other motor home manufacturers. Monaco Coach became a subsidiary of Navistar and continued making Monaco and Holiday Rambler branded motor homes. Although they still own the names, they are not making Beaver or Safari at the current time.
The meeting was with Mike Snell, who is the President of Navistar RV LLC, and was an old Monaco Coach Corporation employee. There were a lot of “leftover” executives from the old Monaco after the Navistar purchase. The purpose of the meeting we were going to was for them to let us know what the future holds for Monaco and HR coaches. Snell said that the name change was only at the corporate level, the actual motor homes would still have the Monaco and HR names. He then went into the engine issue, which is a sore point for Navistar. Without going into too much detail, Navistar gambled on a certain technology to make their big diesel engines compliant with current and upcoming Federal emissions standards. They chose to try a different technology than used by any other engine maker. It didn’t work out for them and has created real problems for the company because they are now lagging behind other truck makers who are using engines that already meet standards. The original plan was to have all the Navistar coaches using MaxForce engines by now, but because they don’t yet have any available, they are having to go back to using Cummins engines, which is what we have in our coach.
About halfway through the seminar my phone rang and it was the Jeep dealership letting me know my car was finished and the courtesy van was on the way to pick me up. I left Jackie in the meeting and walked out to the gate of the fairgrounds so the guy could find me without having to wander around the confusing mass of coaches inside the park. He took me back to the dealership and I paid for the work and took the car, now with working air conditioning again. Yea! They managed to do the job for about $120 less than the estimate, which was surprising and pleasing, but it was still $700 for the repair. Ouch. I drove back to the fairgrounds but missed the rest of the seminars for the afternoon.
At 5:00 we went down to the main assembly room of the rally for happy hour and dinner. The evening get together are one the biggest reason we still go to Monaco International rallies. On the four main nights of the rally they always have an hour long, open bar happy hour, and then a catered dinner. Over the years the food has been up and down in quality, but it is still an included meal and it gives you an opportunity to meet other members of the chapter and have a good time. On three of the four nights they also have professional entertainment. Like the food, the quality varies from night to night and year to year. In our experience there is always at least one night with outstanding entertainment.
Everyone at the rally has a place-card that can be put out early in the afternoon to reserve spots at tables. We always have one of our group go early and reserve seats. The tables in the dining area were set up for eight people, so our group of five couples set up at two tables which were side by side. This left room at each of the two tables for other people, whom we may not know yet, to sit for drinks and dinner. This way we can meet new people. The open bar usually means you drink a little more than you normally would, human nature I guess, but for the most part people don’t get raging drunk, just happy. For an hour. Thus, the term “Happy Hour.”
Peggy and Vernon didn’t get to experience happy hour to the fullest since they were volunteer bartenders and didn’t get to drink until they were closed, but we saved them a seat and I went up and got their drinks for them before the bar closed so they wouldn’t miss out completely. After cocktail hour they served dinner. The dinner tonight was beef or chicken, along with veggies and roasted potatoes. Both the chicken and beef were very dry, but the other stuff was pretty tasty. They did have a very good salad bar that was available during the happy hour.
After dinner they had entertainment, a piano player named Tommy Johnson, who has been entertaining professionally for forty years. He was OK, but we had already
heard him play at the coach preview the night before and his repertoire was pretty old fashioned and repetitive. The bottom line was he was not a big hit with the audience. Not too long after he started playing people started leaving. Several tables, including some of our group, the Wilsons and the Babcocks, got to playing around building plastic cup pyramids on the tables. They actually got pretty high and for a while more people were watching the pyramids than Tommy. Kind of rude, I guess, but he wasn’t holding the audience. We left after about twenty minutes, went back to the coach and sat outside with the group until about 9:00 or so.
Thursday, August 23rd, there were seminars all day, but nothing that Jackie or I wanted to go to. We did go down to the vendor area before lunch and finally made up our mind on the satellite dish. We went ahead and got the HD antenna and decided on which vendor to use. The one we picked gave us the same dish for $100 less than the other guy, plus he would provide a new Direct TV HD DVR receiver for half price and install it as part of the original package. Plus they gave a little discount for paying with cash. We set it up for them to come Friday morning and install the new dish.
At noon we went down to the dining hall for a luncheon put on by another of the FMCA Chapters we belong to, the Monacos In Motion. Monacos In Motion are a chapter that do caravans which are led by members of the chapter. They offer much the same kind of service that the commercial caravan companies do at a third of the price. We have never been on one of the caravans, but joined the chapter on the chance that one would come up that would be convenient for us. They always have a business meeting and luncheon at the Monaco International rallies. We had lunch, chatted with some friends, and then went back to the coach to get our stuff for some geocaching.
We went out with Peggy and Vernon and found six new caches, along with one new DNF. We got back to the fairgrounds in time for the ice cream social at 3:00. We went down for ice cream and looked at a couple of the new coaches they have on display. The new Monaco coaches are very much upgraded from where the same models were when we bought ours. Of course, they are much more expensive also. When we bought our Knight it was the entry level diesel pusher, now it is about two coaches up from entry level. After looking at coaches we went back to our coach and rested for a while before dinner.
At 5:00 we were back at the dining hall for happy hour and dinner. Tonight’s dinner was pork loin or chicken and it was a little better than the night before. Again, the salad bar was very good, as were, of course, the free drinks. The after dinner entertainment tonight was outstanding. It was a local Indiana group called Phil Dirt and the Dozers, six upper middle age guys who have been playing together for 25 years doing some really great 50's and 60's music. Unlike the guy last night, almost no one left early and everyone was watching the show. There were people dancing all around the room and everyone had a great time. If they had entertainment like this every night it would be wonderful. We stayed until they shut the music off at 8:30 and then went back to the coach and sat outside again for a little while with some of our group. The nights have been very pleasant and it is nice to be able to sit outside again.
Friday, August 24th, the dish installers arrived at a little after 10:00 and started working on the new dish. Jackie, Peggy, Suzie and Ramona all went out to go shopping while the guys stayed back at the fairgrounds. It took the dish people a little under three hours to remove the old dome, install the new dish and receiver and get everything wired up and working. We now have HD television in the front of our coach. The little TV in the bedroom is not an HD, but it will still work off the antenna. We don’t watch much TV in the back anyway. While the girls were out they did some caching and got four new finds along with another new DNF.
After everyone got back we just hung around the coach until dinner time. At 5:00 it was time for drinks and salad and then dinner at 6:00. Tonight was ham and turkey, along with the usual fixings. Tonight’s was the best food so far at the rally. The after dinner entertainment was a folk country group called Hickory Wind and we left after the second song. Not our style of music. I’m not sure how many other people stayed, but we went back tot he coach and relaxed the rest of the night and watched our nice HD television.
Saturday, August 25th, the last day of the Monaco International rally. We got up early and went down to the dining hall at 8:30 for breakfast, which is also included every day with the rally. We don’t normally eat breakfast, but the Chapter’s business meeting was scheduled for this morning at 9:00, so we figured we might as well have breakfast. Jackie had to be at the meeting because she was nominated to serve as one of the regional directors for Monaco International. There are six regional directors and they asked her to run for Region 2, which is California, Arizona, Hawaii and Nevada. Seemed like a perfect fit for her. She was elected to the position, so she is now one of the Regional Directors for Monaco International. Yea Jackie!
After the meeting Jackie and I had lunch and then loaded our laundry in the car and went out to do laundry. We wanted to get it done so we wouldn’t have to worry about it at the FMCA Convention next week. We found a laundry, put in the clothes and then shopped for a little bit at the Goodwill store next door. We actually found a couple things there to buy. After we got our laundry done we headed back to the coach. At 5:00 it was happy hour, salads, and then dinner, this time beef or chicken cordon bleu. The beef was tasty, but a little dry and overdone. I didn’t try the chicken, but people said it was tasty. There was no entertainment tonight, they only introduced the people who bought new coaches at the rally. There were five new Monacos sold at the rally and we also heard that there were four or five used coaches sold too. We all went back and sat outside for a couple hours enjoying the nice night.
Sunday, August 26th, another travel day. Today we are traveling from Springfield, Ohio, back to Indianapolis, Indiana for the FMCA National Convention. We are headed for the Indiana State Fairgrounds, about 140 miles back west on I-70 from Springfield, Ohio. We got packed up and out of the Springfield Fairgrounds early, about 9:30 or so and had a relatively uneventful trip. We arrived at the fairgrounds in Indianapolis about noon and were met by a friend of ours, Jack Friedlander, who was working at the gate as part of the parking crew. They got us quickly parked and we began the process of setting up camp. Unlike most FMCA Conventions, where we are parked in a parking lot or grass field, this fairgrounds had actual large campgrounds with hookups. We had a site that was a combination gravel and grass with water, electric and sewer. The electric was only 30 amp, but we are not expecting really hot weather, so that should be good enough. They were also arranged oddly in that my utilities, including the sewer, were on the passenger side of the coach, the opposite of where they normally are. I had to use some extensions and run the sewer under the coach to get to the sewer connection. No big problem though, and it means we don’t have to take stingy showers like we normally do when we stay a week without sewer connections. Yea!
While I was setting up the coach I saw some trucks from a company called Shade Pro drive by, so I flagged them down. We needed to have a couple of small awnings replaced, a window awning and the one over the front door. We had used Shade Pro earlier this year to replace all our topper awnings over our slides, and I liked their work. I was surprised to see that the truck I flagged down was driven by the same guy who did our topper awnings in Arizona back in January! He remembered me too. He measured the awnings and said he would be back tomorrow to put them on. Great service.
After we got the coach set up and settled in we headed back into the activities area of the fairgrounds so we could go to the chapter fair, which was the only rally activity scheduled for today. Although our campground is on the fairgrounds property, it is at the far north end and quite a hike from where the rally activities are being held. We weren’t sure about parking down around the activities area, so we flagged down one of the handicap trams that were running and got a ride to the Chapter Fair.
Most FMCA rallies, both the big National Conventions and the smaller area rallies, hold a Chapter Fair at the beginning of the rally. It is really just a big room with tables where the different chapters of FMCA that are interested can set up booths with information about their chapters. There are nearly 500 different chapters in FMCA, covering all kinds of interests and commonalities. We belong to ten different chapters right now. It was eleven before the 100%ers Chapter folded a couple years ago. We didn’t have any commitments to help out at any of the booths set up by folks from chapters we belonged to, so we just wandered around and said hi to people we know. Some of the people we chatted with are one’s who we only see at FMCA events and some we haven’t seen in a couple of years since we didn’t do the FMCA Convention in Wisconsin last year.
While we were in the area I took a walk over to the FMCA office and picked up the volunteer ribbons and pins for the Ice Cream Social. There is an ice cream social at every FMCA Convention and historically to Full Timers Chapter is responsible for providing the volunteers for handing out the ice cream. This year Jackie and I were the Captains for the event, which meant we were in charge. Even though our work on this activity is only for an hour or so we still get volunteer ribbons and pins, as does anyone who helps us.
After the Chapter Fair we went back to the campground and took the car to go shopping. We needed to make a Costco run for some more liquor and we needed a few things from Walmart. We found the Costco about ten miles from the fairgrounds and picked up several things, including a six pack of Absolute Vodka, enough to get us by for another six weeks of travel or so, along with a bottle of a new Costco brand vodka we wanted to try. We picked up a few other little things too, including a couple of rotisserie chickens for dinner. We went merrily to the checkout counter only to be told by the clerk that it was against the law in Indiana to sell liquor on Sunday! Holy Blue Laws, Batman! I remember when I was a kid you couldn’t buy alcohol before noon on Sunday in Arizona, but they changed that back in the 70's. We sadly watched them take away all our booze, we took our few other items, checked out and left to go to Walmart and then back to the campground.
Later in the afternoon the Bullocks came over for happy hour and dinner. They are parked in the north campground area also, about a quarter mile away. The Babcocks and the Wilsons also came here from Springfield, but they are parked in the handicap area much closer to the activities area of the rally. We had drinks with Peggy and Vernon and chatted and then had the chickens from Costco for dinner. The four of us chatted until about 8:00 when Peggy and Vernon left. We just watched TV the rest of the night.
Monday, August 27th, I got up early because I had to be at a meeting at 8:30. When I woke up at 7:00 the skies were very cloudy, but the time we left at a little after 8:00 it was pouring down rain. Very close to what I would call torrential rain. I was going to be in a meeting of the Governing Board of FMCA all morning, so Jackie drove me to the meeting hall so she could have the car in case she wanted to go somewhere. She had to make two trips, bless her heart, because I forgot my rally credentials at the coach when we left the first time and I couldn’t get into the meeting without them.
A little background on the Governing Board. FMCA is a non-profit association for owners of self contained, self propelled RVs. To belong to FMCA you can have anything from a camper van to a 45 foot bus, so long as it has a permanent toilet and can move on it’s own. No fifth wheels or trailers. FMCA has an Executive Board that is elected every two years, the usual President, Senior Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and ten Area Vice Presidents, each of them responsible for one of the ten geographical areas into which FMCA is divided. This Executive Board meets several times a year and works day to day with the paid staff of FMCA to run the organization. However, any changes to by-laws, operating rules or structure of the organization, as well as approval of the annual budget, must be made by the Governing Board. Each chapter of FMCA, there are nearly 500, is required to elect a representative to the Governing Board. This representative is called the National Director for the Chapter. They also elect an Alternate National Director for cases where the National Director cannot attend a Convention. However, each chapter can have only one person at the Governing Board meeting. One chapter, one vote.
I was going to the meeting as a temporary delegate for one of the Chapters to which we belong. If neither of the elected delegates can attend, the Chapter can appoint a member of the chapter to represent them at one meeting. That was me for the Frustrated Maestros Into Chapter. The President had called me early in the year and asked if I would attend on behalf of the chapter. I checked in with the staff running the meeting and found a seat in the hall. The Executive Board sits on the dais and all the delegates that make up the Governing Board sit in chairs down on the floor. We are given a little piece of colored paper that is our voting placard. All very regimental. Of the nearly 500 chapters there were well over 300 in attendance, sufficient for a quorum for taking action. Essentially, this is the annual business meeting for FMCA.
I won’t go into any details about what happened at the meeting because most of the readers don’t have any reason to care about the internal workings of FMCA. Suffice to say the meeting went from 9:00 to 4:45, with an hour for a box lunch sandwich, and my butt fell asleep about 2:30 from sitting on a little, hard folding chair. There was a lot of arguing, a lot of griping, and a lot of voting, but all the business did get done in one day, including a new $6.8 million budget for the Association. Jackie has been through these meetings twice before, but this was my first time. Someone has to do it, the organization needs governance, but it sure makes for a long day.
While I was out Jackie had watched the Shade Pro guy replace the awnings and taken care of the bill, so now we have all new awnings. We got together with the other members of our group, the Bullocks, the Wilsons, and the Babcocks, for cocktails and discussed going out to dinner. Jackie did some internet research and found a Mexican restaurant that had very good reviews just a few miles from the fairground. We loaded up into two cars and went to La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant. The reviews were right. It was very good Sonoran cooking with an extensive menu and excellent service. All of the employees appeared to be Hispanic and our server was very attentive and knowledgeable. All in all, I can highly recommend La Hacienda if you find yourself in Indianapolis and want decent Mexican food. It is just off Binford Road and Graham road in northeast Indianapolis. They have another location in northwest Indianapolis too. After dinner we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.
Tuesday, August 28th, the weather has cleared up and it looks like the last of the rain for a while. We slept in for a change and left the coach about 10:00 and drove down to the activity area to do some shopping in the vendor area. Yesterday we had found that there was parking available around the various buildings on the fairgrounds so we could take our car instead of relying on trams to get around. We spent a couple of hours in the vendor area looking around and buying some stuff. I bought a replacement head for our over the air television antenna to help us get better reception for local channels when we are parked near a good sized city. We only get New York and Los Angeles news on the satellite so we have to rely on over the air for local stuff. I bought a few other little things, but the antenna was the only big purchase.
After our shopping we went back to the coach and put together two small geocaches to hide on the fairgrounds for the geocaching seminar later in the afternoon. We are members of the Geocaching Chapter and the guy who puts on the seminar, Steve Czarsty asked us to hide a couple of sample caches and provide the information to the seminar on a handout as if it were a real cache. The caches are only for training and were not entered into the geocaching website. We did one hanging in a tree and another inside pipe on a concrete stanchion.
At 3:00 we went to the geocaching seminar. The seminar is a basic introduction to caching and we didn’t need to be there to learn anything, we were only there to help with the seminar and talk to people interested in beginning to cache. Jackie had to leave the seminar early to get to the Elks International Chapter’s meeting room to help them get set up. Elks International is another of our Chapters and Jackie was going to help them check in members for the business meeting and social scheduled for 4:15.
After the geocaching seminar I hurried over to the Elks International Chapter meeting and got there just as the meeting was starting. They had the business meeting for the chapter first and then there was social with snacks and an open bar. A lot of our friends are members of this chapter so we had a couple of cocktails and sat around and chatted for a while with everyone. After the social closed up we headed back to the coach. We had cocktails with the Bullocks and then had dinner on our own in the coach. We spent the rest of the evening on the couch watching TV. The rally had evening entertainment scheduled for 7:00 and the show included Earl Thomas Connely, a country singer. We were pretty tired after running all day, so we skipped the show.
Wednesday, August 29th was going to be another busy day. The first couple of FMCA Conventions we went to in 2005 and 2006 we went to a lot of seminars and classes. Now, however, we have been to most everything and don’t really need the seminars. We are now busy chasing around to meetings and activities from all the various chapters we belong to. We started early today to get to a 9:45 meeting of the International Area. This is one of the ten Areas in which FMCA divides itself. Nine are geographically based, Western Area, Southeast Area, etc. The tenth is for those Chapters that are national in scope and membership and don’t have a geographic component. All but one of the Chapters we belong to are in the International Area, or INTO as it is known. The business meeting only lasted about forty minutes and after it was over we went back to the vendor area for some more browsing.
About 11:30 I went over to the area where the Ice Cream Social was going to be held so I could work with the rally employees to get the tables set up for serving the ice cream. We have helped out at these ice cream events at several other conventions and they are quite the event. It seems no one wants to miss free ice cream, even a cheap ice cream sandwich. There are about 2,000 coaches at this rally and most of those probably 4,000 people will show up to get their free ice cream. And they will start lining up 20 minutes early so they can be first. It can be an amazing sight.
I helped the fairgrounds employee set up the tables so we could have four lines going through. About 12:30 the other members of the Full Timers Chapter that had agreed to help started coming in. I handed out the blue aprons that our corporate sponsor, Miller Insurance Agency, had provided and assigned various stations to people. We had some by the tables to hand out ice cream, which this year was an ice cream sandwich, we had some doing crowd control and getting people into the lines and then out of the area once they had picked up their ice cream, and we had some running ice cream supplies from the coolers to the tables. Quite a military operation.
As predicted, people were lined up a couple hundred deep by 12:45. Once I had everyone in place, we ended up with about 25 volunteers helping, we opened the lines at 12:57 by my clock. Most of the 3,500 or so people had been through the line by 1:06. It took nine minutes or so to hand out 3,500 ice cream sandwiches. We stayed open for stragglers for another half hour, but by 1:45 we were cleaned up, everyone handed in their aprons and we were done for another year. I took the aprons back to the sponsor in the vendor tent and we were done. For our work as Captains for this event FMCA gave Jackie and I a very nice insulated cooler bag with our names embroidered on the outside. Nice little gift.
After the Ice Cream Social we did a little more shopping and then went to another meeting of another of our Chapters. This one is called MIME, which was supposed to stand for Mouse In Motorhome Experience. The only reason we joined it a few years ago was that a number of our friends were in the chapter. The only activity of the chapter, which charges dues of $4 per year, is a business meeting followed by a luncheon or pot luck at the FMCA Conventions. At this business meeting it was brought up that the chapter had shrunk to less than 10 members, which was below the 15 member threshold that FMCA sets for a chapter to be active. After some discussion it was proposed that the chapter be merged with another of the small chapters we belong to, the 3-T’s Chapter. About half of the members of MIME, including us, already belong to 3-T’s, which always has a two day “post rally” after the FMCA conventions. The merge was approved and the chapter would cease to exist once the 3-T’s members voted to approve the merge. I was also elected Vice President of MIME, since the office had been vacated, however, my term of office would end in two days if 3-T’s approves the merge. Pretty short time in office. After the business meeting we had a light dinner of sandwiches and snacks. After chatting for a while we went back to our coach and just relaxed the rest of the night. We once again decided to forgo the evening entertainment, which was singing couple known as the Rivoli Review. We had seen them a couple years ago at another rally and they put on a cute show, but we didn’t feel like fighting the crowds, so we stayed home.
Thursday, August 30th, the last day of the FMCA Convention. Hurricane Isaac has come ashore near New Orleans and is creating havoc in areas where we were only a month or so ago. Some of the pictures they are showing on TV are places we were only weeks ago. The remnants of the storm are continuing to head north and east and we fully expect to see some heavy rains in a few days. Today, however, is sunny and nice. We kind of relaxed in the morning, making one last pass through the vendor area to see if we needed to buy anything more. We got a few little trinkets, nothing special.
We had lunch at the coach and then went down to the activities area at 1:00 for the Full Timers Chapter seminar. At every convention the Full Timers Chapter puts on a seminar with a panel of speakers talking about the full time lifestyle. It is usually a well attended seminar because a lot of people are interested in getting tips on how to live on the road, whether as full timers of part timers. Both Jackie and I were on the panel this year, me speaking about communications, such as phones, computers and mail services, and she about entertainment and education on the road. We had a pretty large audience and they seemed to enjoy our panel discussions. After the seminar we talked to some people and answered more questions about the lifestyle. We had about eight couples sign up to join the Full Timers Chapter.
After the Full Timers seminar we went upstairs in the same building for our last meeting of the Convention, the business meeting and social hour for the Military Veteran’s Chapter. We also belong to this Chapter and we had agreed to help set up the social. We helped our friends Bev and Jerry King to carry in all the supplies for the social hour and get the snacks and drinks set up. We had a brief business meeting, a requirement for all FMCA chapters is to hold at least one official meeting per year. After the meeting we had beer and wine and chatted amongst the group. All of our little core group except the Bullocks are members of this chapter. Vernon was not in the service, so he was not eligible to join. This chapter is only open to veterans of either the U.S. or Canadian military forces.
After the social was over we helped clean up and then went back to our coach. We and the Bullocks decided to skip tonight’s final evening entertainment, an act called The Duttons, and go out to dinner. We had seen the Duttons on TV on the America’s Got Talent show and they were OK, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see them again. We and the Bullocks went out to a Thai restaurant we found online called Sawasdee. It was a very nice place with a very extensive menu. It was not inexpensive, most of the entree’s were in the $10 to $12 range, but the food was very good and you got a lot of it. We all enjoyed the meal very much. It is on 86th Avenue, west of Keystone. If you want good Thai, this is the place to go. After dinner we went back, dropped the Bullocks off and relaxed the rest of the night.
Friday, August 31st, moving day again. Coaches started pulling out of the campground around 6:30 and by the time we were ready to go about 9:30 it looked like half the coaches were already gone. Jackie and I have commented in the past how quickly two or three thousand coaches can disperse from a rally site. We left the campground at 9:30 for the 43 mile drive to Anderson, Indiana, just northeast of Indianapolis. The Timberline RV Resort in Anderson is the site of the last rally of this series, the 3-T’s post convention rally. The motto of the 3-T’s chapter is “To rest, To dump, and To wash.” It is an easy two day rally after any FMCA Convention designed to allow you to slow down and get back to normal after several weeks of rallying.
We arrived at the campground at about 10:30 and got checked into our site, a nice grassy and shaded spot with 50 amp and full hookups. Yea! I was afraid the shade trees would block our satellite, but we got good signal so we are all set. There were no activities scheduled for the first day until 4:00 happy hour, so after we got all organized we went out to Walmart to do our shopping. We were going to drive back into Indianapolis to go to Costco to get the liquor we couldn’t get on Sunday, but decided it was too far for just liquor. Peggy and Vernon told us they had to go to Costco anyway because they needed other stuff too, so they would pick up a couple of bottles of Absolute for us. Yea, thanks. We stopped at Walmart, picked up one geocache in the parking lot, and then headed back to the campground.
At 4:00 our group gathered in the clubhouse for cocktails. There are about a dozen coaches here for the rally, so it’s a good size group. At 5:00 everyone car pooled to a BBQ restaurant in town called Birds Smoked BBQ. They had a nice menu and the food was excellent. They didn’t have table service, you had to go to a window and order, but they did bring the food to you. I had ribs, pulled pork and beef brisket. It was all great and I had enough to take home for a lunch later. After dinner we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Saturday, September 1st, the 14th anniversary of the day I left Phoenix and moved to Indio to be with Jackie. A happy day indeed. Both Jackie and I actually made it down to the clubhouse for breakfast with the Chapter. We went mostly because the Chapter was holding it’s business meeting right after breakfast and we wanted to be there for that. We had a nice breakfast with most of the group. The business meeting was standard and the vote to accept the members of MIME into the 3-T’s was passed unanimously. This was good for the 3-T’s because it added at least a half dozen new members plus the $1,300 or so that MIME had in it’s treasury now goes into the 3-T’s treasury. They doubled their assets with one vote. Also my 48 hour term as Vice President of MIME came to an end.
The remnants of Isaac are passing through the area and causing light on and off rain, but we still decided we needed to go caching. We had to get some caches for our days of the year challenge and it was not raining much. The four couples of our group went out in two cars and did some caching fairly close to the campground. We were out for a little over an hour and managed to get seven new finds. Several of the caches were in or near local cemeteries, so we spent a little time looking at tombstones. One of the cemeteries dates back to the very early 1800's and actually has several people buried there who fought with Washington in the Revolutionary War and were with him at Valley Forge. Amazing history lesson, thanks to geocaching. We would have never known that history without caching.
After caching we went back to the coach and Jackie put together her Chinese chicken salad for the pot luck tonight. I also spent some time doing some repairs around the coach. I installed my new antenna on the roof, despite the light rain. It didn’t take long and it works great. I also fixed the sun shade on the drivers side of the windshield, the one that fell down while I was driving a few weeks ago. This was the first time I had the time to fool with it and get it fixed. I thought I would need to get a new motor, but I fixed the old one and it seems to work fine.
At 4:00 we gathered for cocktails and snacks, in the clubhouse because it was still raining on and off. At 5:00 we had a pot luck with the main course being KFC chicken courtesy of the Chapter. Since the merge with MIME they could afford to pay for the main course. We had a wonderful dinner, these pot lucks are always great because people make some of the best dishes to share. After dinner we went back to our coach and just relaxed the rest of the night.
Sunday, September 2nd, we woke up to gray and dingy skies. The final parts of Isaac were coming through and it looked like it was going to be a wet day. The 3-T’s rally had a light breakfast this morning as the last activity of the rally. Several of the members are leaving today to continue their travels. Others, including all of our group of four couples, are staying at this park for two additional days just so we don’t have to travel over the labor day weekend. Since this episode was devoted to our rally activities this would be a good time to close out this chapter and get it published. Until the next time, enjoy every single day to the fullest. See ya soon.
Monday, September 3rd, Happy Labor Day. It appears that the rain has finally let up, although things are still a little grey outside. Our gang of eight decided to go out and do some geocaching, so we left the coach about 10:30, four couples in two cars, and started caching. We ended up finding a total of eight new caches, with no DNFs. The Wilson's also got their 300th cache milestone! We also saw a lot of the City of Anderson that we had not seen. A couple of the caches were on the campus of Anderson College, which is a part of the Church of God Christian denomination. We learned that Anderson is the National Headquarters for the Church of God.
We have been traveling with the Babcocks since early June and have been with the Bullocks and Wilsons for a month. The Babcocks are headed for Elkhart, Indiana for some repairs, but they may catch up with us again in a week or so. The Wilsons and the Bullocks are heading for the Northeast and will both be going on a caravan from Maine to Florida later in the fall. The Bullocks are planning on staying in Florida for the winter, so we may not see them until March. After it got dark we went back in our coach and watched TV the rest of the night.
Wednesday, September 5th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching in the area. We are kind of out in the country, surrounded by a number of small farming towns. The caches were scattered among the towns, so there were a few miles between a lot of the caches. Nonetheless, we had a great afternoon, finding a dozen new caches. We also managed to get two new DNFs, but that is part of the game too. One of our dozen finds was number 4,200 for us, another milestone. Yea! Several of the caches were in local cemeteries, some of which had graves dating back to the very early 1800's when this area was first being settled. We visited four small towns, Remington, Goodland, Kentland and Wolcott. None was over 2,00 population and all were very quaint and cute in their own little, small town way. They were all dominated by the grain cooperative silos, which is pretty typical of Midwest towns. 
Thursday, September 6th, time to leave Indiana and head into Illinois. We packed up the coach and left the RV park about 10:00. After a quick stop for fuel at the Pilot station right across the freeway from the park, we started northwest on I-55, headed to Joliet, Illinois, about 110 miles away. Joliet is located about 45 miles southwest of Chicago and we will be there for three nights. The skies were clear, making for great travel weather. The trip was uneventful except for the heavy traffic as we moved along the I-80 corridor south of Chicago. Lots of traffic, especially trucks, making for sweaty hands driving.
The location of our RV park just off I-55 gave us a straight shot into downtown Chicago and it took just under an hour to drive up there. We drove up the lakefront and around the downtown area for a while, taking in the sights and taking some pictures. We then headed for the Willis Tower, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. This skyscraper used be called the Sears Tower and when it was completed in 1973 it was the tallest building in the world. Since then several taller buildings have been built in Asia. We parked the car in the tower’s parking garage and headed for what is called the Skydeck, an observation floor on the 103rd floor of the tower.
I remember being up on the Skydeck back in the 1980's during a trip to Chicago and I remember the views being spectacular. This is one of the best known tourist attractions in Chicago and is certainly not inexpensive. It was $35 for the two of us, and that didn’t include the parking. We got our tickets and got into the elevator which takes only 60 seconds to rise the nearly 1,400 feet to the 103rd floor. My ears popped three times on the trip up. The entire exterior circumference of the 103rd floor is dedicated to the observation deck, and of course the gift shop, with very large windows looking out in all four cardinal directions. Since we were lucky to have a nice clear day, the views were indeed spectacular. Jackie even got to see the Harpo Studios building, only a few blocks from the tower. Harpo is where Oprah has her headquarters. 
One new thing added since I last visited the tower is what they call “The Ledge.” On the south facing side of the observation floor they added five enclosed glass balconies that extend four feet out from the wall of the tower. They are entirely made of glass, floor and all, so when you stand on it you feel like you are suspended in space 1,400 feet above the street below. The glass is very thick, ballistic glass and they say each balcony can support about 10,000 pounds, way more than the number of people that would be able to fit in it. I didn’t have any problem stepping out and taking a picture of my feet suspended over the street. Jackie didn’t have any issue either, but it was kind of fun watching the people with a fear of heights sneak up on the opening, peer over and then jump back.
We spent about an hour up on the observation floor, looking out, taking pictures and looking through the gift shop. We also managed to get a geocache while we were up in the tower. While we were up there Jackie checked on her phone geocaching app and found that there was a virtual cache located at the top of the tower. The only requirement to log the cache was to post a photo of one of the team with a view from the tower in the background. I took a photo of Jackie standing by one of the windows and we had a new find. Yea!
Saturday, September 8th, the rain stopped overnight and we had the promise of a nice day. We left the coach before lunch to go out and do some geocaching in the Joliet area. We were able to get six caches, and one DNF, in a little over an hour. We then drove around downtown Joliet, the old part of town. Very turn of the century look, but not much going on. There is very little retail, mostly offices and government buildings. After looking around for a while we stopped at a Bob Evans restaurant for lunch.
Monday, September 10th, we packed up and left the RV park near Springfield, Illinois about 10:00 and headed west on I-72. Our destination today is Bowling Green, Missouri, a little over 100 miles to the southwest of Springfield. The first 60 miles or so were on the Interstate, but then we veered off to the south on U.S. 54. This was a somewhat narrow road that wound through several small towns in Illinois, including one called Pittsfield. We had to take pictures of the signs in Pittsfield because Jackie’s good friend Helen lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We have been to that Pittsfield several times, but this was our first shot at Pittsfield, Illinois. About twenty miles or so after starting down Hwy 54 we came to the Mississippi River and the Illinois-Missouri State Line. The bridge crossing the Mississippi here is called the Champ Clark Bridge and is a steel truss bridge built in 1928. I mention this because vehicles were much smaller in 1928 than they are today and this bridge was very narrow. 
I was fortunate not to meet any big tricks coming across from the other side, but I still slowed down to about 10 mph because even just regular cars and trucks were very close, and I couldn’t move to the right because the mirror on the right side was just missing the bridge structure. Very white knuckle moments for a little while. We were also a little white knuckled when two deer jumped out of the woods and crossed the road in front of us. Fortunately, they were a few hundred feet in front of us and I was only going about 50, so I was able to slow and not be in any danger of hitting them so long as they kept moving. They did keep moving, quite rapidly I might add, but it was a little startling to see deer on the road in broad daylight. That is usually more an evening thing.
We had lunch in the coach and about 1:00 we and the Babcocks went out to do some geocaching. Neither of us had cached in the State of Missouri before, so we would be going after our first cache in this state. It took us about three hours to get eight new finds, mostly because the caches were widely scattered. We are in the farm country of northeast Missouri and caching does not seem to have caught on here quite yet. There are caches, but they are five or six miles apart. We still had a good time and didn’t have to log any DNFs, so a good caching day. We also explored the nearby town of Bowling Green, Missouri, not to be confused with the much larger town of the same name in Kentucky. This Bowling Green has a population of about 5,300 and is a farming town, supporting the farms and ranches in the surrounding area. 
After our caching we went back to the campground for a brief rest so that the Babcock’s could walk their dog. We then loaded up the old Jeep again and headed back east to the town of Louisiana, Missouri. Yep, there is a town named after the state. Not only that, about 30 miles or so to the west of where we are is a town named Mexico. There is a junction of two U.S. Highways in Bowling Green where there is a road sign showing Mexico to the left and Louisiana to the right. We had to have a picture of that.
We explored a little bit around old Louisiana, including going back to the old 1928 highway bridge across the Mississippi. We went back and forth across it again with the Jeep for photos and it was much less stressful in the car. We also took the time to find another geocache, located in a park on the bluff overlooking the bridge and the river. It was a great photo opportunity too. Louisiana was founded in 1817 and has a population of about 3,300. It was founded as a river shipping point. It took some research to finally find something about how the town got it’s name. It is believed to have been named for Louisiana Bayse, reportedly the first child born in St. Louis after the Louisiana Purchase. Her father, J. W. Bayse moved his family to the new town in 1818 when his daughter was 14 years old. The other claim to fame for the town is the 20 or so large murals painted on the sides of buildings in the historic downtown area. The one on the Elks Lodge is one of those murals.
We went to the cache and were surprised at how steep the roads were in the cemetery. But he was right, the actual amount of walking was minimal and the views were great. In total we found five caches in an hour or so, including two that were back across the river in Illinois. After caching we took one of the small country roads back southwest to Bowling Green just for a change of scenery. This is very pretty country. We made a quick stop at the Walmart and then went on back to the campground.
Friday, September 14th, another travel day. We needed to get an early start, so I was up about 6:15 or so. Our next destination is Sedalia, Missouri and the Escapees RV Club rally, called an Escapade. Sedalia is 154 miles from where we are and the material we got when we registered for the rally was very clear that the parking crew will only park rigs until 2:00. Most FMCA rallies go to 4:00 or 5:00. They also said there are no facilities at the fairgrounds to overnight if you don’t make it in time.
Once we got setup we had a quick lunch and about 1:30 we headed out to do some local geocaching with Ray and Suzie. We had to cache today to get one for our days of the year challenge. We took advantage of early parking for the rally and the actual rally activities don’t start until Sunday, so we decided to go out and explore and cache. We ended up getting ten new finds, along with one that eluded us and gave us a new DNF. After caching we drove around town for a while, looking at the great old historic center of Sedalia. While we were doing that we ran across the Sedalia Elks Lodge. Since it was 4:30 we decided to stop and have a cocktail. 
Ray and Suzie, talking to people walking by. Many folks here have dogs, so there are always a lot of people walking around. We just relaxed and enjoyed the camaraderie of the rally. After drinks we went back to our coach and had dinner on our own and then relaxed with the TV the rest of the night.
