Joe & Wilma's Excellent Adventures

Part 1, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

This is my first blog of this 2024 "adventure" so I am not sure how it will go.  I haven't done a blog for about 3 years so I have forgotten a lot.  With my excellent IT crew of Cathy and Paul Croxton, I decided to give it one more try.  Our trip has been fraught with challenges since leaving Arizona on March 30, but we are now right on the Canadian border in Sault St. Marie, Michigan, and ready to explore the North Shore of Lake Superior.  I am not sure how many rocks I will collect since both my knees are giving me trouble, but I think the views alone will be worth the trip.  At least I hope so.

To back up a bit, as we left on Easter Sunday, we had a little rain, which was snow the next morning.  We only went about 60 miles, just to get out of town, to Payson.  However, on Monday, we encountered rain, snow, hail and wind.  We got as far as Albuquerque that day.

We encountered our first "challenge" the first day out, when our house batteries quit charging the refrigerator as we drove.  Fortunately, it was cold enough outside that the food did not warm up, but that was a problem and we ended up calling a mobile service person in Albuquerque, who determined, finally, that it was a fuse hidden behind other fuses.  We had fuses, but just couldn't find that one -- he actually had to call Winnebago to help him diagnose the problem because no one knew about that fuse panel.

Our next problem was the 2 days later, when I ripped the bathroom door off its hinges as I brought a slide in.  Joe was taking a shower (we have a bath and a half in this RV), and I was trying to move us along to get on the road.  The bathroom door was partly open, and when I brought the slide in (by pushing a button), it hit the bathroom door and pushed it off the hinges.  It landed in my arms.  Joe heard the loud noise and yelled "what in the hell was that."  I didn't respond -- I really didn't know how to answer that question.  So he came out of the shower, dripping wet, to make sure I hadn't hurt myself.  There I stood with the bathroom door in my arms.  He was quite mystified as to how I had accomplished that.  He said, for all the things he had worried about breaking on this trip, the bathroom door was pretty far down on the list, maybe hadn't even made the list.  The good news was that he was able to fix it, he pounded out the hinges straight, and the screws still worked.  So no harm, no foul.  This is our repaired door.  

Moving along, we did see a camel today, behind a fence.  Not much wildlife (alive) otherwise.  

We spent 2 nights at casinos and 2 nights on Walmart parking lots, and arrived in Vincennes on Friday.  Our deadline to get there was Monday for the eclipse.  We had our first (of 5) Bobe's pizza that night, with Dana and Michael.  Driving through town, I spotted this buffalo on the library grounds.  I guess it has been there for a few years.

After it finally quit raining, and warmed up, we ran into our next challenge.  When Joe turned on the front air conditioner, it did not work -- did not put out cool air.  After Joe did his normal investigation, he got the name of a local RV repair guy, in Monroe City, who came out and diagnosed the problem -- we needed a new air conditioner.  It turned out this one it had been replaced once and was still under warranty, so that was the good news.  The bad news was that it had to be ordered and it took over a week to get in. 

And on Saturday, Joe had his first tenderloin.  These tenderloins are so huge we got 4 sandwiches out of one. This is a "large" which is two pieces. The next time we ordered a small, which cut it down to just two large pieces, for 2 sandwiches.

On Sunday, we joined Dana and Michael at Sullivan Lake for a picnic.  On the way, we passed a lilac bush in bloom, so I asked Joe to stop and pick one for me.  This piddly little branch was what he handed me.  Unfortunately, the lilacs were about done there and I never really got a full one.

It was a nice day at Sullivan Lake and most of my family joined us -- Amber and James; Holly, Jake and Jayden and Harper; and Stacey.  We rode around part of the lake in their golf cart.  We spent many weekends there when we lived in Terre Haute, but it has certainly changed a lot.

Monday's event was the eclipse, which Barbara Holscher hosted.  She intended to have a little "eclipse party" at their place in the country, but because of all the hype in Vincennes about the number of expected visitors coming in for the eclipse, everyone was afraid to leave their homes because of traffic.  Well, the traffic, and the crowds did not happen.  Anyway, we ended up in their backyard in town, with 4 couples -- Barbara and Maurice, Ellen and Chuck Street, Sherry and John Hedge, and Joe and me. 

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Tuesday we began making our rounds with our family, and by the time we left, we pretty well saw everyone.  We also began going to family sporting events -- baseball games for Jayden Ray (Jaclyn's son) for Lincoln, and Jayden Hatfield (Dana's grandson) for North Knox.  We went to 5-6 games of Jayden Ray but only one of Jayden Hatfield.  We also got to go to our first tennis match -- Adelyn plays freshman tennis for Lincoln).  Before we left Indiana, we went to 5 of Xavier Croxton's baseball games for St. Francis University in Fort Wayne.  So we saw junior high, high school, and college baseball.

Jayden Ray

Jayden Hatfield

The first few days in Vincennes, it rained.  Luckily, we did get the eclipse in.  But the rivers are flooding so we drove around and checked that out.  We also drove up to the Amish area outside Washington.  We made this drive on Sunday and saw 30-40 horse and buggies coming home from church.  We also saw some families walking home from church. We enjoy seeing this.  We also enjoy seeing the draft horses, one of my favorite things, and they are plentiful in this area.

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On another day, on the way to Jayden Ray's game in Washington, we finally saw some working horses.

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 We had Joe's 60th class reunion at noon on Saturday, followed by the Decker Alumni Saturday night.  Jayden Ray received one of the two Decker scholarships, for which we were very excited.  Everyone forgot to take a picture of the reunion lunch, but we did get a photo of the class at the reunion.  Unfortunately, not everyone at the lunch was at the reunion, but at least we got one.

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We received the award for whoever traveled the farthest.  Right after that announcement, they awarded the scholarships.  The other boy was impressed that Jayden had relatives who traveled all the way from Arizona to see him receive the award, and told him that he would probably have to get his picture taken with them.  Jayden responded, "I expect."

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Well, this blog gets us through the first week.  

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