Broke Down Already - Visiting Colaws RV Boneyard

Of course.... we just happened to break down. When traveling in an 18 year old motorhome, anything can happen.

Our recently replaced Pac Brake (to the tune of $750) hung up and we were smoking!!!!  A Pac Brake is an engine exhaust brake system.   Pulled over, Steve determined that it wasn't the Pac Brake itself, instead it was the solenoid in line before it.  Easy to adapt by releasing the air pressure and the pac brake released. Ahhh we weren't smokin' anymore!

Now, as our good luck would have it, we broke down ONE exit away from the largest RV Salvage yard in the whole USA....  Colaws RV at Carthage MO on I-44.

They were already closing for the night when our mishap happened, so we boondocked it overnight at the Sam's Club lot in Joplin.  We had stayed there before and knew it was safe and quiet.  We were the only RV in the lot.

(side note here---- our little Binney FINALLY released the dam backup of potty in her stubborn little body and went while on leash in the green grass of the parking lot! YAY!!!!  plus she woke me up at 5:30 a.m. to go out again!  Good girl--- we will make an RVing Dogger out of you yet!) 

Morning dawned and we looked on line for the part we needed, which is $125.00 plus shipping from a place out east. When you randomly travel on the road for 6 weeks, it's kinda hard to have a part shipped to you en route? So we drove over to Colaws, if not for the part, but just to look around.

Wowzers.. what a place!   There are hundreds of new and used RV's for sale, a huge parts showroom of new parts, many many rows of used parts, a whole section of used RV furniture to swap out, and then.....   I think if they don't have it, you didn't really need it in the first place!  LOL

We went outside to view many acres of hundreds and hundreds of broken, wrecked, burned, ruined old trailers, fifthwheels, gas motorhomes and big diesel rigs like ours.  We knew for sure there were two like ours, because someone on our Safari motorhome group had been there once and took pics of the wrecks.

Steve and I walked through the entire "bone yard" of these sad old broken rv's.  Just think, at one time someone loved them, bought them new, eager with anticipation of the roads to travel.  And now.... sad and broken, they are lined up to be stripped of usable parts, and later become scrap metal.  It's sobering to see the burned up units from tragic situations.

While we walked through, we happened to find two intact sceen frames for our front driver  and passenger side windows!  One had a ripped screen portion, but the frame is good.  The person who owned the motorhome before us removed them, and we wished he hadn't.  Yes, they are in the way and an extra step to slide them forward when opening for a toll booth or whatever.  But often when parked it's nice to open those two front windows for air circulation in the cab area and not have bugs come in!  Frames were only $5 each.  Sold! 

We checked diesel rigs, one after another... most of them already had the engines and pac brakes removed. Then we found one rig that still had the part on that we needed...  the solenoid for the Pac Brake assembly!!!!

Yup, that is Steveio's leg sticking out there ....  and he did find a strange white skunk!!!!  It was white with thin black stripes on it's back.  A worker there later commented that they are strange sick skunks that come out in the daytime and they have to shoot them from time to time!   We got outta there in a hurry!

We went back to the counter and the guy sent out a tech with Steveio to remove the part for purchase.  Steve gave him a $2 for the quick removal.  Hey.. enough to buy a soda and chips at the vending machine out front.  LOL  

The part we needed was only $25 and comes with a 6 mo guarantee.  We gladly checked out and went back to the parking lot.  Steve hoisted up the bed and went to work removing our old one.  I handed tools and took pics.

Soon it was in place, and we were ready to roll!

We took a trial run up the road up to speed, hit the pac brake... 

yes... it compressed. ... 

then the letting go part... YES! 

  TAAA DAAAHHHH  

My Steveio is my hero! 

The First Day of Our Journey - Heading out West 2015

Ahhhh   after packing and checking and doublechecking our lists.... we were ready to roll by 2 pm.

Steve had to work up until 1:30 pm, so it was up to me to run all of the errands, return the extra furnace parts, run the dog to the vet for her last round of booster shots plus finish loading all the items that could have frozen overnight if we did it last night.  I put on 82 miles running around before I made it back home to load up our final items.  Whew!

At 2:15, we hooked up the Tracker and rolled out of the yard! 

Yup.. we are heading south and west for six weeks--- seeking desert sun and peace and quiet.  ahhhhh


63,198  starting mileage

We headed south through the snowy Wisconsin countryside.  The further south we went, the higher the snowbanks got because they had a storm last week that piled up more snow to the south.  The temps were mid 20's, the sun was shining and the roads were dry and clear.

We only had one tiny detour of a few miles during some construction areas, but the rest of the drive was clear and uneventful.  Just the way we like it!

By 4:49 pm we crossed into Illinois, and set our sights on zooming south until dusk set in.  We really don't care to drive at night.  But... Steveio decided to keep driving into the dark, and get south to where we don't see any snow!  Ha... they have more snow here than we did in Wisconsin.

We got around the exit for Wenona, Illinois, and we remembered a gas station with five RV sites along side of the building.  Figuring we drove enough for one day, we pulled in at 6:30 pm.

Finding any type of a campground open at this time of year is unheard of in our neck of the woods, so this gas station is pretty special.  It is located at Wenoma exit hwy 17,  $15 hookup for 50 amp, dump station but no water available at the site of course being winter.  They said in the morning at the building we can hook up a hose to the frost free faucet when the manager comes in with the key.

Normally we don't need any hookups, but we knew this was here, plus having the 50 amp hookup allows us to use our electric heaters and electric mattress pad tonight.  Saves our propane when the temps are going down to the mid teens tonight here.  Brrrrrr.

Soooo it was 241 miles traveled today.  Pretty good for being up at 6, running all those errands and Steveio having to put in more than half a day too.

I popped two chicken pot pies from Hilde's Deli and Bakery into the oven.  I buy 10 frozen ones before we leave on our vacations, and we can enjoy them for a quick no fuss dinner while we travel.  I whipped up a couple salads and we cracked open a bottle of wine.  Ahhhh that is roughing it on the road, eh?

Binney was exhausted and kept falling asleep on the loveseat

while Finney kept begging for some of our pot pies!

Little Binney rode very well, and was not scared in the least.  She and Finney cuddled up and enjoyed the ride.  Once we stopped, I took them both out on the long leashes into a small grassy area near our Rv slot.  Finney did his thing right away and spent the next 20 minutes sniffing.  Binney just stood there for 20 minutes, refusing to do a thing!  Stubborn little cuss!!   The vet told me a way to get her to go potty was to sing the song from Frozen.  You know the one.... "Let it gooo  Let it goooooo"

But she didn't.

Tried again at 9:30 pm .   Same result.

Oh well, we will get her out early in the morning.  As for now while I write this, both dogs are cuddled on our bed with a snoring Steveio.  When I hit "publish" I will be zonking out too.  Quiet countryside, far enough from the highway.  Time to sleep.

We will hit the road early and make some miles burn up under our tires tomorrow.

Looking for warmth and sunshine.

OH HAPPY OH JOY ANOTHER GRANDBABY COMING!

We have been grinning from ear to ear, and the reason can not be more wonderful than finding out that we have a new grandbaby on the way!

Our daughter Heather and soninlaw Jesse have blessed us six years ago with our first grandchild, Jameson. Our other children have added to the tally, so we have the joy of loving five grandchildren.  That in itself is wonderful and fulfilling.

Little Jameson has always asked for a sibling, because all his cousins had siblings and he wanted one too. Although they had tried to give him a little brother or sister for quite a few years, it was just not meant to be.  Or so they thought!  

Ta daaaaaa!!!!  The new bundle will be here in August.  Heather exclaimed that it's no wonder she's been emotional and hungry and even craving things like Los Banditos chili con queso....   she went to the doc and even got to hear the heartbeat! Ten weeks along...wheeeeee

This Granmuddah and Grandfaddah are so happy to soon have an even half dozen grandtots to love...

This is how they announced it to their friends and family on Facebook:

The first thing Jameson asked was if his new sibling will play video games with him?

We will remind him of that when the little tyke is pestering him while he plays. LOL

Friday I got to spend some time with grandtots Chelsea and Clayton. 

 I put them to work baking cookies:

putting together some stacking wire bins for yarn:

and made them cook their own lunch.... Octopus Hotdogs! 

 Stick raw spaghetti noodles into 4" long hunks of hot dogs,

simmer until the noodle portions are soft within the hotdog,

cut dogs in half again to make "octopus" lunch! 

We made a little snuggle area at the back of the closet wayyyy down behind the stairs, and it's a perfect hide-away with books and grandtots and doggers... Both Binney and Finney enjoy the cuddles and snuggles. Binney sure loves the grandkids and we are glad she has acclimated well to having small kids around.  When adopting a rescue dog, you are never sure of what their reaction will be to new circumstances or people.  I think we got a winner! 

The highlight of the afternoon is when our mail lady comes to the house.

She slides the mail through a slot in the door, 

and the dogs are as excited as the kids

 to see the mail come plopping inside! 

Even though it was cold outside, they wanted to hang out on the front porch until the mail came.  It is not heated out there, but they didn't care.  Even the dogs came out and hopped up on the loveseat.  I have a collection of blown glass paper weights lining the windowsills.  Although they are glass, the grandtots are allowed to play with them and are delighted they are handling real glass. 

The windows all frosted up, 

but they scraped out designs in the frost for me.

Yesterday my brother Butch brought my dad down for a visit, and they took home our extra washing machine for dad to take the place of his broken one.  Also the quilt that I repaired (see my last blog) was picked up by Paula and Pat, the people who sold us this house. So we had a houseful of friendly company to see us off on our upcoming vacation.


The weather is looking good for travelling on Tuesday, but dropping temps and snow by Wednesday.  Seeing as we will be doing about 500 miles on Tuesday, we might not get far enough south to avoid bad weather by the time we pull off the road for the night.  Steve suggested we leave on Monday as soon as he is done with work and get a couple hundred miles under our tires while the weather is good. Probably find a spot to overnight somewhere in central Illinois, but be up early and hit the road Tuesday morning refreshed and ready to roll.  We don't care to drive at night.

The rig is still winterized and we won't fill with water until we get further south.  We saw temps in the 50's and 60's around southern Missouri into Oklahoma which look mighty good to us. We take along a few big jugs of water to get through until we can fill the 100 gallon fresh water tank up.  The dogs drink bottled water for the entire trip.  (long furry haired butts on dogs and strange water types do not mix well when travelling)

Today is packing up day of clothing, dry goods, dog supplies and such stuff that won't freeze. Steve has all his tools packed, and his portable fire pit, bags of pellets, and the lawn chairs. We are looking forward to some lawnchair setting out in the desert for a few weeks.

I am packing up some fabric, yarn, sewing machine, sockknitting machine and other fun fiber toys. Gotta keep the hands busy ya know.

Then tomorrow morning I will turn on the heater, finish tossing in the last of the freezable stuff, load up the dogs, and our computer things.....  as soon as Steve gets done with work we will hit the road!  



P.S.  Would Be Thieves--- we have a house-sitter coming, two widow ladies on each side of us who don't miss a thing, three dogs alerting the neighbors in the back, and we live 2 blocks from the police dept and 4 blocks from the sheriff dept. They are always driving by. This year we even added a wifi thermostat that we can monitor the heat from our tablets or cell phone, and get a warning if the furnace develops a problem back home.  The alarms will be set and there isn't anything left of value in the house.  LOL.

Reinventing the Wheel.... Spinning Wheel that is!

I find myself sooo fortunate to have moved to an area so rich in fiber groups (or guilds as they are called) of people who share my same interests.

• I have a monthly weaving guild in Menasha.
• I have a weekly knitting group in Chilton.
• I have a fun crafting group that meets occasionally at Terre Verde Coffee House in Chilton

plus----

• I have a monthly spinning guild that meets at Hidden Valley Farm Woolen Mill near Valders. We are called the Black Sheep Spinners and folks from the various small towns around Chilton attend. It's so nice that Carol from Hidden Valley lets us meet in her place of business.

That is where I had to go last night.  The snow was blowing and swirling around by 6pm when I left for the meeting.  I drove our little Tracker and put it into four wheel drive as the roads were getting worse. As I traveled closer to the Lake Michigan location the "Lake Effect" snow was falling harder.  This phenomenon creates more snowfall closer to the water, and this area suffers from that condition. I followed a little old lady who was crawling along at 25 miles per hour, almost going in the ditch three times.  I wanted to go around her and get to my destination, but I felt I should follow her in case she DID need help.  Finally she turned into a driveway near St. Nazienz, so I was able to arrive at my meeting only 10 minutes late.  Seven of us fiber folks braved the weather to get to the meeting.

I arranged for the group to listen to a guest speaker named Chuck Spann, who is a talented woodworker.

He loves to create and make things of exotic woods. He has a workshop in his home to restore vintage spinning and weaving tools. I met him a while back, and he did some restoration work for me on a wheel.

Here is the blog post about that:

  Restoring a Daneker Spinning Wheel

Here is where we meet, in the upper loft of the retail shop at

 Hidden Valley Wool Farm and Fiber Mill

Chuck had brought a nice array of his prototypes of some new wheel designs. This one pictured below is an oak wheel with sturdy base and a nice large bobbin.  Large bobbins are great to spin a lot of yarn in one long continuous piece instead of using smaller separate bobbins. The wheel is small enough to store easily, and great for traveling.  It is only in prototype stage and he not yet making them for the masses.  He needs more time as he still works as a craftsman for a large yacht building company.  We said he needs to retire and make these fun tools full time!

Chuck makes these lovely drop spindles of a Turkish design.  What is great is that the two cross pieces of wood can be slid out once the spindle is fully loaded with handspun yarn.  Then you only have to slide out the pieces and the result is a finished ball of yarn.

Another spinner, Stephanie, is demonstrating to the group how well they work.  These Turkish spindles offer very easy portable spinning, which can be taken along in a car, using it while waiting for doc appts, long lines, visiting boring relatives, or just for having fun!

Chuck also brought along a weaving device known as an "inkle loom". These looms are used to make woven straps with intricate designs or patterns if wished. It's a small portable device, plus children can catch on to this process easily and learn to weave on it.

Guitar straps, belts, trims and decorative textiles can be made on these small inkle looms in long woven portions, or in shorter pieces they can be bookmarks, or as trims in cardmaking or scrapbooking.

Here is the Daneker spinning wheel that Chuck restored for me.  He also made three larger custom bobbins for it that are so much better than the original small bobbin.  It spins like a dream, and gobbles through my fiber at a hungry pace, and creates lovely soft skinny yarn for my sockknitting machine!

Last, here is shot of some of the spinning wheels in the loft at Hidden Valley Wool Farm and Fiber Mill. Carol grows the sheep with great fleeces to shear and process. We buy the fluffy clean fiber to spin up into yarn. Then we can knit, crochet or weave the yarns into textiles. It's so easy to be creative when surrounded by such wonderful inspirational tools!

While I was gone to my meeting, my darling Steveio was at home doing some preventative furnace work!   There is a little device on our furnace called an "Inducer Motor" that blows the exhaust air out of the energy efficiency plastic pipes out the side of the house.  If that little motor quits, the furnace will shut down before allowing noxious gasses to get into the house.  Our little motor has been making funny noises lately, like a loud whirring buzz of a bearing going to heck.

We decided to bite the bullet and replace that part now, before we leave for a 6 week vacation.  We do have a wi-fi controlled thermostat that shoots us a warning if the temperature in the house ever drops too low or if the furnace malfunctions.  But if this part goes to heck, we would have to get the house sitter to arrange repairmen access, pay a service call, and probably at emergency rates because things like that seem to go to heck during the nights or weekends!

Being handy, my dear Steveio decided to just order the part and change it himself.  Of course, the danged part was $550.  Ouch! The first part I picked up last week was missing the wire harness from the box.  I called back and they figured some technician robbed the box while on the shelf for the harness.  Oh vey!   So they ordered another one and it came in yesterday.

Now that Steve had all the correct parts....

 it was time....

 to....

 read....

 the .... 

DIRECTIONS!!!!

(note: this is a rare photo of a MAN reading DIRECTIONS!)

While I was gone to my meeting, he zoom zoom zoomed to get this project done.  He turned the furnace off, replaced the part, and got it up and running in no time flat.  He said it was an easy repair job, and he did the adaptation of some older part removal with a newer format, so more had to be removed than what was installed back in. Hey.. that means parts leftover???  But he did it all, with no service calls.  Saves us a lot of money that he is so handy. What a guy!   

Ahhhh so that is more thing that we should not have to worry about 

while we are gone on vacation.  

Stay tuned for launch sequence early next week. 

Repairing an Antique Quilt with Some History and a Snowy Sunday

We woke up this morning to see this scene out our bedroom window.... it almost made us want to go right back to bed! We are due for five or six inches, but it's blowing around a lot so who knows what the actual snowfall total will be?  It's cold and windy.. that is all we know!

I decided it would be a good day to finish up a project I started a few weeks ago.  I am repairing an antique quilt for someone.  Well, not just "someone" --- but someone pretty special! 

See, a lady named Joan Kopf grew up in my house, born in 1932 and lived her entire life in this house. She married Jack Baldock, and raised her family in this house, and then she died here in 2010.  Her daughters sold us the house in 2012. They let me scan in some old photos of her and the house.... Here she is by the piano in which is now my loom room, and she and her brother George by the fireplace in the livingroom. 

 See the hardwood floors? 

 Someday we are going to remove the wall-to-wall carpeting 

and go back to the hardwood floors in this 100+ year old home. 

After selling us the house, the daughters have come back to visit us a few times.... and Paula brought over an antique quilt to see if I could repair it.  Her mom, Joan, has sewn this quilt while living in this very house.  It seemed fitting that perhaps I could possibly repair it for the family.

Sadly, it was shredding... the fabrics were pulling apart at the seams with each use and every strain on the quilt surface.  The stitching was holding, but the looser woven fabrics were pulling apart. The segments of tightly woven fabrics were holding well. Paula could name almost every fabric patch, who's clothing it was or where it came from. How wonderful!

Bit by bit, square by square, I was pinning them together, and with a needle and thread I was blind-stitching them as best I could. I had to rob a bit more fabric to make it work, but I was making progress.  It took quite a few hours until I got most of the shredded areas repaired.

There were nine black patches where the fabric was totally disintegrated and not salvageable. I cut new squares of black fabric, folded under the edges and bonded them onto the shredded areas with stitch-witchery bonding mesh and an iron.  I was then able to hand stitch around, joining them to the surrounding borders of the good fabric.   I was able to carefully sew around each tuft of green wool yarn used to tie the quilt. Whew... it worked!

I could see where someone (perhaps Joan herself?) had attempted to repair five of the black blocks by sewing over them with some red patches.  I was almost thinking of removing those to make them black again too.  But I left them as they were, and if Paula wants those done later, I could.

At last on this snowy Sunday morning, the quilt was done!   I spread it out on the bed in the guest room to get a full picture of it for my files...  How cool to have it back on a bed in the home in which it was created.

Honestly, I think it's time to retire this quilt from every day use. 

I will suggest to Paula that she keep it folded on a quilt stand or hang on a wall. 

I would no longer sit on it or cuddle in it,

which would continue to strain the fabrics and tear it further.

I took it out onto the front porch to take a pic of it in a certain special chair.  Why is it so special?  Because a few months after we moved here, Paula called me and asked if I wanted this chair.  It had been her mother's chair and sat in this very spot on the front porch.  Of course, I said YES!   How fitting that I draped the repaired quilt over that chair and snapped these pics.

 I feel a sense of contentment and comfort when I sit there. 

Thank you, Paula for letting me into your family's history. 

While we were on the front porch taking the pics, 

I filmed this silly little segment of the snow:

It's now early afternoon.  I popped a pork roast in the oven to cook, long and slow, for dinner later.  I notice my Mr. Steveio is now snoozing in his chair.  Maybe it's time for me to take a nap.

Perhaps I will dream about 

what it would be like 

growing up in my house

 so long ago...

.... and sewing a quilt?