We didn’t want to miss any opportunities while in the Elkhart area (RV capital of the world) so we signed up for several factory tours and got to get an up close insiders tour of the Thor Motorhome factory, The Entegra Coach factory and the Newmar Motorhome assembly plant. These were awesome tours giving a truly in depth view into the making of these huge homes on wheels. We also spent a day at the RV Hall of Fame and Museum featuring a hundred years of RV artifacts and history.
We arrive at the Elkhart County 4H Fairgrounds in Goshen, IN on April 30th for the Holiday Rambler Chapter 419 Diesel Pushers Maintenance Session. This rally is held annually and is exclusively for Holiday Rambler diesel motorhomes. The event is a highly concentrated week of seminars related to the care and maintenance of every feature and function in the motorhome, it is awesome. We have also taken this opportunity to arrange for service on the Motorhome. The service companies were all excellent, professional, and fairly priced and ASV (parent company for Holiday Rambler) even sent several techs over to work on stuff for FREE! We will definitely be back next year (unless we buy the “Tour”). Ellen volunteered at the show office and was asked back and I helped the Coach Weighing crew on closing day and was quickly recruited for next year. It's always great to meet new friends. We didn’t want to miss any opportunities while in the Elkhart area (RV capital of the world) so we signed up for several factory tours and got to get an up close insiders tour of the Thor Motorhome factory, The Entegra Coach factory and the Newmar Motorhome assembly plant. These were awesome tours giving a truly in depth view into the making of these huge homes on wheels. We also spent a day at the RV Hall of Fame and Museum featuring a hundred years of RV artifacts and history. ![]() We are heading toward Indiana for a Holiday Rambler event that we have been looking forward to for over a year. Jody and Rosie are hitchhiking along with us for a while. We stop in Atlanta to drop Jody off at the airport. She wants us to drive right up to the terminal but at 13 feet tall and 60 feet long we may not fit, instead we drop her near a bus stop on the perimeter road and continue on our way north. We stay overnight at a KOA in northern Georgia where they raise peacocks and head out early the next morning. We call and make arrangements to meet Pete and Kathy (Rosie’s brother and sister in law) for lunch in Knoxville Tennessee as we drive through, they do not know Rosie is with us and are very surprised when we meet up at the Cracker Barrel. Ellen and I leave Rosie with Pete and Kathy and continue northward toward Indiana. There is a line of storms near us as we travel north but we only have light rain all day and arrive at a campground in lower Indiana for the night. We quickly find out that the line of storms included several devastating tornadoes that wreaked havoc all along our path. We were apparently lucky enough to be about 1 hour ahead of them all along the way. We picked up the motorhome at PBF and take the short drive to the KOA in Kissimmee. This is our first stay here and we are very impressed with the pull through sites and the rest of the campground. It is located directly behind a strip mall along busy route 192 but it is a quiet oasis.
Rosie and Jody both join us here for some fun. The Sign Show is in town so I take a day to cover the show. Roland Digital is displaying a new product and I sign up for the giveaway. A week later they notify me that I won the Grand Prize, a complete Roland Digital Studio Display system worth about two thousand dollars. WAY COOL! We spent some time at Disney and take Rosie to the Epcot Flower Show, she is in heaven. We have been having some intermittent Generator problems the last few months and made an appointment to have the genny serviced by the professionals when we get to Indiana. I had some free time at the KOA so I began troubleshooting the generator problem and eventually determined that the issue was fuel flow related then I began to wonder if the fuel tank was less full than we thought. We left the KOA on April 27th and headed straight to the gas station. We put over 75 gallons of fuel into a tank that only holds about 80 to 85 gallons. We had been running on empty and didn’t even know it! Once the tank was full we had no more generator problems and cancelled our service appointment. Now we need to get the fuel gauge replaced. |
2014 Our Journey
Ellen retires, that means more trips, more time and Categories
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