Fixing the electrical problem

I mentioned a few days ago that we suddenly stopped having AC power when we were traveling through Indiana (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/09/leaving-illinois.html). After checking a couple of potential problems (had the inverter tripped its circuit breaker? were the circuit breakers inside the rig ok?), Carl checked the area around the batteries to see if they were sending electricity to the inverter. 

There is a fuse block that holds a replaceable fuse between the batteries and the inverter to cut the current if the inverter fails or shorts. We had replaced the fuse block last year (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/04/its-always-somethin.html) after it failed. With this week's problem, Carl found that the connecting nuts, on the new fuse block, had, once again, backed off enough to cause arcing. Even though the wires coming into the block are secured to the same wall as the fuse block with zip ties, there is enough give to allow the vibration of our rough roads to impact the security of the nuts.

After using my brother's air powered die grinder with abrasive attachment at the farm last year, Carl had purchased one that he could use with the onboard air compressor on Gracie. He used it to clean up the connectors.

Battery compartment -- the fuse block is attached to the right hand wall

Carl has one of the wires removed from the fuse block in this picture. 

 

It is tight quarters getting this put back together.

This time, he decided to put two nuts to secure the connections, in hopes that they won't be able to back off.

We checked it by unplugging from shore power and the inverter successfully provided power to our 110V appliances onboard. Hurrah! 

"It's always somethin'!" 

Mammoth Cave

When we visited Carlsbad Caverns last year, Carl had told me that his favorite cave was Mammoth Cave... but that was before he visited Carlsbad. Carlsbad took first place in Carl's estimation. I had never been to Mammoth Cave, and since there is a Thousand Trails campground nearby, we decided to book that for part of our stay in Kentucky. We had enjoyed our ranger tour within Carlsbad, so we booked a tour for Mammoth Cave as well...

After we got parked in the lot, we headed toward the Visitor Center to check in for our tour -- Carl was going to take a picture of the sign, but as we neared it, he recognized a family that was heading toward the sign to take their picture as well -- a couple who were in Riverside Church when Sue and he were there -- and Carl and Gary were co-Awana leaders for the 3rd-6th grade boys! (Sue and Dawn were also Awana leaders but Carl doesn't remember if they were in the same class or not.)

They took our picture at the Visitor Center sign.

Gary and Dawn were there with their grown children, so their daughter took a picture of Gary and Dawn with us at the sign.

We were signed up for a different tour than Gary and Dawn, so we didn't have much time to visit, but we got to share with each other for about 15 minutes before we had to go our separate ways. 

We had signed up for the Extended Historic Tour that was leaving at 8:45am. They have quite a number of tours available!

b

We met up with the others on our tour outside the Visitor Center where our guide gave us cautions about the tour.

We walked down to the historic entrance to the cave.

We had two rangers with our tour -- one in the front to guide and who talked with us at various spots in the cave, and the other followed behind to ensure no one got lost or left behind.

Heading down to the entrance of the cave

I learned from the pictures from Carlsbad Caverns that pictures inside caves don't give you much perspective of what it is like... but, nevertheless, here are a few pictures...

Coming down into one of the larger rooms in the cave

Different from Carlsbad, this cave was used commercially -- we saw a number of structures associated with the mining of saltpeter (used in the production of gun powder).

One of the owners of the cave, hearing people reporting that they felt better after visiting the cave, established a test to house tuberculosis patients in the cave in hopes that it might provide a curative effect.

One of the dwellings built to house tuberculosis patients

Ultimately, unfortunately, the environment was not helpful to the patients (more information here: https://www.nps.gov/articles/tuberculosis-mammoth-cave.htm).

We continued our tour -- heading deeper (lower) into the cave...

Looking down into one of the deep areas next to our path

Some areas were low requiring us to duck

Down additional stairways

Warning sign: "Fat Man's Misery"

Yep, it is getting kind of narrow! At least above waist high it was not too tight...

And then it became "Tall Man's Misery" (I'm not sure that's a very flattering picture of Carl's wife!)

Along the route, we saw many examples of "historical" graffiti. Early visitors (pre-national park days) were encouraged by their guides to leave marks of their visit.

We got to the lowest part on our visit and were able to sit and rest for a few minutes. Our guide told us that the river that performed much of the carving of this cave was not too far away, and within the past few months it had flooded into that area of the cave to the point that the room where we were sitting was completely underwater.

From there, we had 540 steps to make it back up to the surface... a large part of that was in "The Tower" where many steps had been constructed so we did not have to return through the tall man's and the fat man's miseries.

Just before we started up, we saw this which included the sound of a waterfall (though we honestly didn't see the water falling).

In this area of the cave was also the only place that we saw anything like stalactites and stalagmites -- we should have asked why they were here and nowhere else in the cave -- I am certain based on the composition of the rocks that the water was leaching through.

Since we had been chatting with Gary and Dawn before our tour, we had not visited the exhibits in the Visitor Center -- we think it may be a bit more interesting seeing the exhibits *after* our tour...

Mammoth is mammoth in its length (it doesn't have the biggest chambers -- I think they said that Carlsbad has that).

This was a model of many of the passages within Mammoth Cave -- it probably is not as neat to see in a picture as it was in 3-D as we could see how passages were in the same area under the ground but separated vertically from one another.

This one is hard to see, but in the red letters it displays how many miles are currently mapped -- 426 miles as of September, 2022. The ranger who guided our tour indicated that they are anticipating a new number to be released soon. There were a number of interesting videos and displays about the process of exploration and mapping and the various types of animals (fish, insects) that live in the cave (many have no eyes).

I was glad to get to see this cave that Carl had enjoyed so much when he was a boy (in the 1960s) and with his family in the 1990s. And it was a special blessing to get to meet Gary and Dawn there!

Meeting up with friends

We had been in communication with our friends, Keith and Ruth Ann, who are living in Franklin, Tennessee. They called us soon after we arrived in Park City, Kentucky, suggesting that they come up to visit us on either Sunday or Monday. Since we already had tickets to tour Mammoth Cave on Monday, we decided to get together with them on Sunday... 

We arranged to meet them for breakfast at Miss Betty's Diner in "downtown" Park City. Wonderful diner with delicious food and good prices!

We came back to the campground and visited for a few hours...

They were in their pickup pulling away when we realized that we hadn't gotten a picture, so we got them to stop and we got a quick picture before they left!

Such fun to get together with friends -- Keith and Ruth Ann were two of the folks from our SKP Christian Fellowship group who had been praying for us as our spouses were ill and continued to pray after we lost Sue and Dwayne, and who also prayed that God would bring us together as a couple as they thought that we were perfect for each other!

On to Kentucky!

When we left Mesa this spring, we had two more states that we had not yet visited (we re-started our state counter when we got married) -- Colorado and Kentucky. We visited Colorado back in June, so only Kentucky was left. 

A few miles further south from our Harvest Host stop in Indiana, and we were coming to the bridge over the Ohio River into Louisville...

There it is! We've collected Kentucky!

If you view the blog on the web, you'll be able to see that we now have all the states colored in on the "States Visited" map. Yay!!!

Harvest Host in Indiana

We had booked a stay at a winery in Indiana, just south of Indianapolis -- it was rather a long drive for us, but we thought we'd be fine when we booked it. Unfortunately, we were a little late leaving the campground in Illinois (we weren't moving as quickly as we had planned, and then there was a 5th wheel at the dump station ahead of us that had 5(!!!) tanks to dump so we had a while to wait on them), and the Harvest Host was in eastern time zone, so we lost an hour too. I called the host as we realized that we were barely going to make it there before closing time, and asked if they would prefer that we go somewhere else, and they were so kind and said, "Come on in - even if we're closed, we're happy to have you come!" We arrived just before their closing time, found out where we could plug in the rig, and were able to express our appreciation for their welcome to us in person.

The information indicated that we should park near the big tent -- they have an event venue where folks can book their services for weddings or parties or whatever...

The check in area was down at a barn-like building. The fellow said that he had planned to "close up slowly" to give us time to arrive, but since we arrived before the closing time, he was able to close up and get home without us delaying him.

When we were leaving the campground in Illinois, the connector for the lights on the Jeep was acting strangely (the right blinker would not work if it was plugged in tightly, but it would if the plug was barely in the socket). Carl decided to try some StrikeHold to see if that would clean contacts, but it didn't. We will need to do some more work on the connector when we get to the farm and can do work on it and have the Jeep in a place that we can plug it in while we are parked (our next campgrounds have back-in spaces and that makes it impossible to work on the rig-to-Jeep connector while we're parked). It's always something!

Looking down toward the gate heading out from the winery

The wedding venue

The wedding venue

"Ta-da!"

Looking back toward where Gracie was parked in the lot

Another view of Gracie in the lot

Looking out across the neighboring fields

We appreciated having a safe and comfortable spot to spend the night!

Leaving Illinois...

After 6 weeks in Illinois, on Thursday it was time to leave... we had had a nice visit, but it always brings a little melancholy feeling when we leave as we probably won't see the family here again for several months.

Some views of crop fields as we were driving south on the far western side of Chicago... 

beans

corn

corn

We saw these interestingly painted school buses displayed along the highway at the Grundy County Speedway...

I looked up information, and they had a "Figure 8 School Bus Race" scheduled for Saturday night.

We headed south through Illinois and turned east to Indiana. We stopped for fuel -- while Carl was out fueling, I went to fill my cup with iced tea. At the refrigerator, I changed the dispenser from water to ice, and then the display went blank. Uh oh... I opened the door, and the light was out inside too... uh oh... has our refrigerator gone out? As we continued on, we noticed other 110v items weren't working either -- ok, so maybe it isn't the refrigerator, but something else that is affecting all the AC powered things on the coach -- and it just happened at the moment that I was using the refrigerator control panel at the fuel station. We did determine that running the generator gave us power to the AC appliances -- so we thought that probably plugging in to power would give us power to the AC appliances too. We stopped to check to see if the inverter's circuit breaker had tripped -- it had not. Carl figured that the problem probably related to a fuse between the batteries and the inverter, and, if that was the problem, we could probably fix it at our next campground.

So, we decided to continue on to the Harvest Host where we were planning to spend the night -- they would allow us to plug in to electricity, so we'd be okay for the night, and we could deal with it later.

It's always something! 

A last visit with Steve and Shay

Kim and her daughters were going to stay with Steve and Shay and Addi, so we went there to drop them off and have one last visit and dinner together...

Steve had spent the day in Indianapolis visiting a customer and got home soon after we got to their place.

Addi wasn't completely sure about her new cousins yet.

"I may chat with you while I have my snack, but I'm not offering you any!"

McKenna, Addi, Lianna

Addi feeding her baby

It was great to have a few hours with Kim and her girls, and to visit with Steve and family again!