Whirlwind trip to Indiana

Before starting our new jobs at Crazy Horse we took a couple of weeks to return to Indiana. We wanted to visit family and friends because it may be awhile before we can take some vacation time. We were able to have one last breakfast with Steve and Joan (FOSJ blog). We had such a great summer with these two great friends and we'll be lonely without them. They even brought me a present

that should tide me over until I get my first paycheck. Thanks guys, have safe travels and hope to see you again real soon. :-)

Monday morning (9/29) we locked up the RV, loaded our suit cases into the Dakota and headed East stopping in Iowa for the night. We arrived in Indiana Tuesday afternoon and got settled into Rudee's Mom's spare bedroom. We were able to spend some time with old friends, meet some new friends and got to spoil our Grand Kids a bunch! I was able to cook them up a big "low country boil" for dinner one day ...... YUMMY!

We went camping our last weekend with some of our old motorcycle buddies and were able to take our grand kids trick or treating around the campground.

Thank you Rob and Jany for letting us bunk with you guys in your camper. :-)

All too soon it was time to head back. We left Sunday afternoon (10/12) and pointed the truck to the West to start our new adventure.
Since we got a late start we ended up spending two nights in motels on the way back and even made a stop

We are both fans of the American Pickers show and enjoyed the stop. Their shop sure looks bigger on TV and unfortunately none of the "stars" were there just these two guys

We arrived back at the RV on Tuesday afternoon. My first order of business was to check out our combo washer/dryer unit. Before leaving for the trip Rudee did one last load of laundry and it came out sopping wet. I did some quick Detective work and determined it was not agitating or spinning. I figured the belt had popped off or had broken and would just fix it when we got back. Well I pulled the machine out of the cabinet and popped off the back of the case. Oh Oh, the belt is still in position which means it is most likely the motor or the circuit board :-(. I called an RV technician who summers here in the Black Hills but he had already left the area. He confirmed my suspicions but had more bad news, the machine is so old they do not make the motors any longer and the circuit boards are all but impossible to find. He said we may find someone to rebuild the motor but suggested we consider just replacing the whole unit. We gave it some thought and since we are likely to spend at least the next year in the RV we decided to bite the bullet and order a new one. Since the replacement will not arrive until next week we loaded up all our dirty clothes and headed for the parks laundry. $12.00 later we had clean clothes again, Wowzer, that's a lot of quarters!
Rudee had Wednesday off but I started my first of six days straight. My duties have not changed significantly but my areas of responsibility have increased a lot. My first day consisted of morning meetings, HR paperwork and then working in the guest services area. I have a couple of projects to work on and once I have a work area and computer I can get started on them. Hopefully that will all be finalized next week. I do have a mail box though!

Maybe I'm somebody after all :-)

Our next days off will be Tuesday and Wednesday, I'm not sure if this will continue to be our normal schedule but we are looking forward to maybe taking a short motorcycle ride between replacing the washer/dryer and doing the laundry which is piling up again :-) I'll keep you posted.