Jodi here again:
We’ve arrived! Our RV, an Itasca Sun Star was born here in 2011. Itasca is a Winnebago brand. Allen was looking forward to seeing this place..I believe that Winnebago is the main employer in this rural community of 4400. On the flat concrete two lane highway that cuts through the corn fields we saw trucks each hauling several Ford truck beds with the Ford V10 motors, tires and steering wheels to the manufacturing plant next door to the service center. What we didn’t anticipate until the day before we left on this excursion was that we would actually require service. Our rear leveling jacks got stuck in the down position right in our storage facility. We made a last minute decision to upgrade our towing package, for safety purposes, so we had an appointment at a Massachusetts repair center anyway. Allen drove the RV about 7 miles with the piercing squeal of the jack alarm. The repair center mechanic tried silicone spray and new springs. The prognosis, bent jacks or hydraulic problems. The dealer pried them up into the up position. So here we are having driven over 1K miles and stayed in 4 Walmart parking lots on very level ground. Last night we stayed at Pammel camp ground on the Winnebago River. We were running down hill a bit. It’s windy pouring rain here today. I’ve got my running clothes on in the event that I get bored and tired of drinking free coffee.
I’ll step back a bit now. On 6/18 we pulled our 54.5′ of gas powered real estate off of the main road and stopped at this outdoor Root Beer stand, The White Turkey Drive-In in Conneaut, Ohio.. Since it was Sunday we parallel parked next door at a closed automobile repair shop blocking the entire front. We ordered Hot Dogs and Root Beer and Onion Rings and French Fries.. We allow ourselves this indulgence about one a year. The significance of this stop was that we fond memories of this place having been here while on our bike trip around Lake Erie several years ago.
We spent two hours at the RV museum in Indiana on 6/19. The museum exceeded my expectations. Inside they had some Model T’s going back to 1913. Several RV you could walk through. I got the biggest kick out of the models from the 1960s and 70s; some had shag carpeting and green appliances, 8 track players and furniture with the fabrics that are so familiar to me. It was interesting to see the many varieties of RV to the rolling palaces that are on the road today.