April 2012

April 11th well as time flies and keeps us in the past we will try to update our journal. March was total “Madness” for us as we had so many functions going on, and a lot of times on the same day. We had going away parties for several couples on the same day Jon had a men’s accountably luncheon at the church, also we had another going away after bowling after Jon golfed in the morning. We had a party to celebrate the golf year, as our group did not attend the party that the resort had. For several reasons it was decided last year not to attend that banquet, as our group was never accepted into the graces of their leadership, sort of like "third graders with gray" hair. Another day Jon golfed early so that he could get home to shower and then go the bowling alley to bowl with the group from the resort. It was the annual “No-Tap tournament style” day to finish the bowling year. Jon had bowled one time this past season, back in Oct., but any way for the 4th year in a row he bowled a “300” game and had the high series of the day with a 787, after that the resort had the bowling banquet at “Homers restaurant”. After that we continued to meet up with friends at different functions. In a period of 9 days we were at the legion 7 days and we have to mention two of them, one was a State Fair type of day were they had all kinds of games and prizes for the members, we had planned on going for an hour or so and wound up staying for about six hours. We had Easter dinner there as well and what was supposed to be two hours was about 5 hours, Jon sort of got a booby prize as the last number drawn and a lot of prizes of much less value were given away and probably as an after thought he won a 17 lb. ham. Yesterday Jon went to play his last round of golf and the plan was as soon as he got home to get the motor home and bring it up to our home, nope didn’t work out that way as the neighbor across the street was having their lawn dug up and resodded and all of the equipment was in the way, so we did a lot of other things and after they were finished for the day we brought up the MH and cleaned and started to set up our summer home. On Tuesday we finished loading the MH and left at about 12 noon and went up to Camp Fountain and spent several hours visiting with Jon’s sister and brother in law. We then left and after getting on to Rt. 95 North we got as far as Jacksonville were we pulled into a rest area that has nighttime security, even better then Wally world as we weren’t tempted to spend any money. We now pray that the rest of the journey is a safe one.

April 12th we got started on the road at 8:00 am and proceeded through Jacksonville with very little problems as it was the morning rush hour and some road construction, we were out of Florida by 9:00 am. Along the way we spotted a car carrier with two men unloading a car from the trailer and we were wondering why, well in about a minute or two we realized that a little further up the road was a “weigh station” and they were making themselves legal. As we continued north, we started to get an “engine warning” and “stop engine” light on our dashboard and the further we went the more it blinked also the engine seemed to run a little sluggish. We were paying close attention to our “oil pressure” and “water temp.” gauges and they were alright, we even pulled into a rest area and did a diagnostic check and no codes showed up. We continued on our merry way and it continued to become worse, so after some thinking we thought that we might need to change the fuel filters. Three years ago we had bought some and had put them inside one of the bay doors, we even knew just where they were. We than pulled into a truck and filled up with fuel at $4.069 per gallon also at the same time added some conditioner and than proceeded to the rear of the parking area and changed the filters. After about a 30 min. job we fired up the motor and let it idle and after about 10 seconds we went to rev up the motor and it stopped and on the next two tries it wouldn’t start, so we sat about 30 seconds and it fired up and we revved it up several times and all was normal, so we let it idle for a few minutes and when we went to pull out Jon said “oh no” Kathleen said “what’s the matter” and Jon replied look at the fuel sign, and it read $3.999 per gal. Glad to see it come down but it could have happened about 1 hour sooner. We continued north with no sign of any blinking lights on the dash and all is well again. We went to Smithfield, NC for the night to Wally World and as we were parking Kathleen got out making sure we were alright which we were. She also reported that the time is now to get out of the shorts and polo shirts, so we put on jeans and tee shirt and socks and shoes, reality has hit us we are going north and it is cooler. God was with us another day and we are truly riding in his hands and we thank him every day. Another good day in the MH/camper, should be at our summer camp spot by tomorrow.

April 13th we left Smithfield, NC around 8:00 am and had an uneventful day of travel if you can
call three wrong turns okay. One of the turns we wound up at the local landfill/recycle center, the second one we had made this wrong turn two years ago, so we knew were to get back on track and the third we were sort of in the wrong lane of traffic in the afternoon rush hour traffic in York, Pa. The office closed a 5:00 pm and we made it to the resort with about 1 min. to spare. We got unloaded and set into our site for the night and tomorrow we will do some more setting up. We think it will take a while to warm up as we still have our Florida blood and we are now dressing in layers, and to think we got rid of our Carhart’s years ago! It will get better and the weekend forecast is looking good.

April 16th it has been a very busy four days, as we are meeting with family and we even had Kathleen’s granddaughter stay over on Friday night, she just couldn’t wait for us to arrive so she could camp out. Jon spent time with his granddaughters and is working on having them staying with us this summer, we will have a great time. On Saturday we had to replace the sewer valves on the MH as we had a constant leak on the trip north, it was the gray water valve but since we had to replace one we did both as it takes about 1 ½ hours just to get to the valves. They are behind the water valve control panel and until you remove that you can’t see the valves. Another day we had a nice visit with Kathleen’s oldest son. And on Monday since we still had off, we repaired a leak that we had in our hot water/heater system, after that we washed the MH, the car and the golf cart that we have for the summer. So tomorrow we are off to work. It is a great
day in the campground. God Bless.