Home Again, Home Again

I did take a few pictures Sunday at Infinity Mennonite Church in Harlem.
 

This is one I took early in the worship service. Later they brought in so many folding chairs to accommodate the people that kept arriving that there was hardly a path to the front. The women in front are their Worship Team.

Infinity is on a corner storefront. This mural is painted on the one side. All of their materials talk about being a peace church.

This is looking down the street from the church. You can see the watermelon stand on the left corner.

I was fascinated by the blocks and blocks of double-parked cars. The white van was our transportation into the city and again to the airport today --

 

Evidently a card with the church name on it in the windshield is sufficient to save you from being ticketed. The van was parked there from about 9:30 in the morning until after seven at night. I don't know what the inside cars do if they want to get out...

Today was another long day. We met all morning, then took the van for the two hour drive to the Newark airport. It was a four and a half hour flight from Newark to Salt Lake City, then another hour and a half from Salt Lake City to Spokane. At least I gained three hours in the process and we were actually back to Ponderosa Falls by a little after ten tonight. It's good to be home.

On the Road Once More

 

Happy Mother's Day!

It turned out to be a good day for us when the living room slides came in without a hitch! We had even gotten an early morning call from the folks at C Mobile Services checking in to make sure they worked. That's good customer service!

We kept heading north on I-15 and soon were seeing the snowy Wasatch Range climbing out of the valley.

The first part of the drive was through very pastoral country with lots of cows and calves and ewes and lambs. Then we drove into the metropolis that makes up Salt Lake City and its environs. Four plus lanes of heavy traffic - not the kind of stuff we enjoy driving in.

North of Ogden, we turned northwest on Interstate 84 and headed for Snowville, almost at the Utah border with Idaho. There's a funky little RV Park here called Lottie-Dell RV Campground just a little ways out of town. It's basically a level grassed area with about thirty-four sites and a golf driving range. There is no one in the office. There really is no office. Just a narrow room with some envelopes and registration sheets and a slit in the wall to stuff the envelope with your money. We've stayed here a couple of times before and there's hardly anyone here. Today there was one other rig.

A Lost Day...

We had everything picked up and packed up this morning and went to pull in the two living room slides. And NOTHING happened!

We had hoped that only the back bedroom slide was affected by the hydraulic oil leak, but alas, it was not to be. After a certain amount of discussion (including some non-repeatable language), we decided to call CoachNet. Now we got a membership in CoachNet when we bought Auntie Violet as part of the purchase, but fortunately have never had to use it.

A very nice lady answered their 888 number and the first question she asked (before she even asked our name or membership number!) was whether we were in a safe place. Once I assured her we were safely ensconced in an RV park, she proceeded to ask all of the other pertinent questions about the rig and what our problem was. When she had everything she needed, she said she'd have a technician call us back as soon as one was free. Sure enough, in less then five minutes a technician called and brainstormed the problem with Forry. They decided the best thing to do would be to contact a mobile unit to see if they could come out and fix it.

Fifteen or so minutes later, the CoachNet tech called back and said he had located a mobile service unit from the Salt Lake City area that could be here in about an hour. And a few minutes later Liam from Big C Mobile Service called, asked a few more questions and said he was on his way. A little after noon this rig drove into the park and off came the radiator shield again --

 

Liam looked the situation over, then drove into town to see if he could find a coupler that would work. He came back empty-handed and they went to Plan B.

Liam inserted a screw into the leaking hose and then put two clamps on the outside to hold it. They tested the slides to make sure there was enough hydraulic fluid in the system to close the living room slides. Liam said he was so sure that his jerry-rig would hold, that he'd come out again for free in the morning if the slides didn't come in. I sure hope he's right!

Somewhere in there while this was all going on, the tech from CoachNet called back to make sure the mobile unit had gotten here. All in all, it was an interesting experience. CoachNet paid for the service call, driving time and the mileage for the mobile unit. We were responsible for the parts and labor used while he was here. (2 clamps @ $2 each; $75 for one hour's labor; and $27.62 for taxes and credit card fee). We ended up paying $105.62 of the $308.12 bill.

Iowa!

We had stayed at the small KOA near LaSalle, Indiana last night. It is a lovely little park that we would have stayed at for another night, but they did not have any space. It was kind of interesting to see that this morning almost everyone had left, but to know they will be completely full again by tonight!

As we left Indiana, we kept looking at the fields of corn, trying to see if we could detect the damage from the drought. Some of the fields look stunted with short stalks.

We drove all except the last few miles on Interstate 80 (fortunately no longer a toll road). After we crossed the Iowa state border (the Mississippi River), we stopped at their Welcome Center to pick up an Iowa map. I do like the signs at their rest area!

I was surprised to see this historical plaque at the rest area. I knew about the Mormon handcarts, but hadn't realized they had started this far east. The mid-eighteenth century migration of Mormon converts was the direct result of Mormon missionaries in Europe. To think they walked all the way from here to Salt Lake City pulling hand carts with all their belongings. The sign went on to tell of the success of the first three groups, but how the 4th and 5th groups started too late in the summer and lost many of their number to snow and cold in the mountains.

We drove as far as North Liberty, Iowa to Colony Country Campground. Isn't that a neat hex sign on their office building?

This is another very neat, very nice small campground with just 45 RV sites. We will only stay here the one night as we are looking forward to meeting up with our friends at Adventureland near Altoona tomorrow.