Visiting Mom

We appreciate the opportunity to visit family while in Elgin, and Thursday, we drove to visit Carl's Mom where she lives in Carol Stream.

Carl found a couple of pictures of his Mom on the bulletin where it showed her enjoying events at the facility...

Probably Mardi Gras

Halloween or Fall or Harvest time

We had arranged to meet up with Carl's sister-in-law, Karen, at the facility, and we all went out into the courtyard and enjoyed watching baby ducks in the courtyard as well as seeing what flowers were blooming.

We went back inside for Mom to be able to participate in balloon tennis...

They use badminton rackets to hit the balloon around to different ones in the circle. They all seemed to have a good time!

Activities on Thursday (the day we were there)

Karen got Verna up to do some walking with the walker -- she was able to walk about the whole length of the hallway. We brought the wheelchair along so she could have a seat when she needed a break...

Carl and his Mom after her walk

Carl and Karen and his Mom

Then Karen suggested that we take Mom over to a social room on a neighboring hall where there is a jigsaw puzzle set up. Mom immediately got started working on the puzzle!

It is good to be in the area so we can visit with Carl's Mom!

Back to Paul Wolff

We returned to Paul Wolff Campground, part of the Burnidge Forest Preserve, on Sunday. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we had reservations so knew which site we were going to park in -- this is nice because a first-come, first-served system means you have to choose based on what's available. However, when you have a reservation, you have that specific site to stay in --

... even if the rig in the site next door is the one that reduces the property values in the neighborhood! I guess "Cousin Eddie" might be staying next door!

The additional interesting thing -- when we got to our reserved site, we unhooked the Jeep, and Carl proceeded to the dump station since we had done a few loads of laundry while we were at Big Rock. I noticed that there was some liquid on the asphalt of our site, and I tested it with my finger and found that, no, it was not water, it was motor oil, and quite a puddle of it. We had kitty litter available and poured that onto the spots, but we also contacted the ranger / camphost to let them know so they would be aware that it was here when we got here. They said that they had had to ask the nextdoor neighbors to move their extra vehicles the day before -- that they had been using the site we reserved as overflow parking (they had 3 additional vehicles besides the motorhome parked next door). They had moved the additional vehicles to parking available for extra vehicles, and we noticed that the pickup had a basin under the engine compartment.

It turned out that the camper next door and all of their other vehicles left by Wednesday morning -- and according to the camp host, the tarp was still strapped on top as they drove out. 

This is why many campgrounds have 10 year rules, indicating that rigs over 10 years old either cannot stay there, or must provide a photo before their reservation is accepted (the Forest Preserve campgrounds do not have this rule).

Another temporary resident at Big Rock Campground

When we took a walk around the campground last Sunday morning, we noticed some other temporary residents:

A nest of baby birds in the wooden surround around the trash dumpsters!

I guess that there was no parent close by because (1) they didn't have all their mouths open for food and (2) we weren't dive-bombed for getting close to the nest (we stayed several feet away anyway).

A visit with family

Since we were staying at Big Rock Campground, Carl contacted his brother and sister-in-law to see if they might be able to meet us for dinner. They were available, and suggested that we meet at Riverside Diner in Montgomery.

We enjoyed visiting with Karen and Steve and their two sons, Justin and Graham ...

It is good for family to get together!

We enjoyed the dinner and the fellowship with family!

Big Rock Campground

We stayed at Custom RV Repair on Friday night to avoid driving in Friday afternoon traffic around Chicago. We had a reservation to check in to Paul Wolff Campground in Elgin, near where Carl's sons live, on Sunday -- for a two week stay. These campgrounds in the Kane County Forest Preserve system limit stays to 14 days out of any 21 day period, so we did not want to check in earlier to Paul Wolff. I checked and found that we would be able to get a site at Big Rock for Saturday night, so I booked it and we drove to Big Rock on Saturday.

Big Rock Campground is near Sugar Grove, Illinois and is in the midst of farm land and forests.

They now have new signage reflecting the fact that the campground now requires reservations. We had been alerted by friends in the area that the reservation system was going into effect on April 1, so we knew that we had to make reservations. For this year, it hasn't been too bad as we were pretty certain exactly which dates we would want to be in the area -- unfortunately, that won't usually be the case.

The rates for non-residents went up $6/night, and firewood doubled in price - bummer!

I was able to book a pullthru -- we don't have a problem with back-ins, but it is nice to be able to pull in and pull right out again.

It is also a super-long site, so we didn't have any problem with parking the Jeep.

The reservation system has some negatives for us, but it was nice to know that we had a site at Big Rock even with an arrival on a Saturday.

Another day, another service center

On Wednesday, we drove from Fyda Freightliner in Zanesville, Ohio, to Custom RV Repair in Elkhart, Indiana.

When we got to Conroe, Texas back in April, when we tried to put the passenger slide out, the slide unlocked, but wouldn't move. At the Cajun Rally in New Iberia, Louisiana, Carl did some debugging, determining that the motor could move the slide (he hooked it to the controller for the bedroom slide), but it still would not put the locking pads back into place. 

We had contacted Newmar Service back in the fall asking to be scheduled for service in May -- but they were booked out beyond May at that point. We were on a waiting list in case of a cancellation, but had not been called. I called them again (we were originally planning to go in just for slide "maintenance", not due to slide failure). I let them know that we now had a slide failure and asking if there was any chance that we could get in for an appointment in May -- no chance. They recommended a couple of repair places near Nappanee -- one was Custom RV Repair. We had gone there with a slide issue in 2020 and the technician who worked on it was very knowledgeable and able to diagnose the problem quickly; he identified the part we needed, we drove to the factory service center in Nappanee to pick up the part, and he fixed it the next morning. Based on having great service when we went in 2020, we were hopeful that they would be able to quickly determine the issue and get us going.

We had originally had an appointment for service there on Monday -- but once we realized that we would need to stop at Freightliner, we moved the appointment -- and we had to move it a couple of times as the service at Freightliner took longer than we anticipated. Then Freightliner got us finished finally more quickly than we anticipated. We had let Custom RV know on Wednesday morning that we could get there after they closed on Wednesday for service on Thursday morning, and they were very accommodating. 

They have a parking space next to the building where we could plug in for 30A electrical service. When we were there in 2020, the technician was able to just work on the problem there where we were parked.

They are on County Road 6 in Elkhart -- a pretty busy roadway most of the day.

Our visit this time was not as great as our first visit. The technician that was assigned did not give us a lot of confidence that he had worked on a problem like this before. It seemed that he may not have worked on motorhome or, at least, not on Newmar slides before. He took Gracie into the shop and did a good deal of debugging on the problem, determining that a couple of lock boxes were the issue. Even though we had offered (multiple times, to different individuals) that we would be glad to drive to get the parts to save someone else needing to do that... they didn't ask us to get the parts - one of their personnel drove to Nappanee to get the parts. The technician installed the parts on Friday, but they never totally resolved the problem. 

The good news is: the slide goes out and back in. The bad news is that the front locking mechanism does not lock and it seems that something else might be broken.

They were upfront with us about their inability to totally fix the problem. We decided it was "good enough" and that eventually we will need to take it somewhere else (maybe back to Nappanee) to get it completely fixed.

Fyda Freightliner - days 2 & 3

Tuesday -- we knew that the parts were not expected until afternoon (and our technician's day ends at 1:30pm), but there were some tasks he was going to get completed so he would be able to install the new parts on Wednesday. The service advisor told us we didn't have to come in at 5am -- 7am would be okay, so we got to sleep late!

While in the waiting room, we would walk through the parts department to access the restrooms. This is outside the restrooms. We were wondering whether one of these could get installed on the front of Gracie to help with potential moose encounters in Alaska!

Jane and John had told us about a sportswear surplus store near the airport, just a couple miles away from where we are. We decided to visit there on Tuesday.

Carl wondered if this meant that we could purchase the store itself for 25% off?!?!?

They had a lot of screenprinted teeshirts, fleeces (sweatshirts and sweat pants), some caps and bags. Everything was 25% off the marked price -- even the items that had been marked down to $6.99-$8.99. We each found shirts in the marked down racks and I found one in the "regular" price area at $16.99.

Back at Fyda -- Gracie in the shop. We had decided to leave Miss Kitty locked in the bedroom for the day.

Gracie in the shop

Patti working on our blog in the waiting room

Our technician left at 1:30pm, but he was able to make significant progress. He had gotten the air conditioning system opened up and flushed. As suspected, the dryer had disintegrated sending waste materials through the system. During the flushing, a lot of debris was cleaned out. He was also able to get the frozen fan clutch removed.

The old fan clutch (on the left) and the new one (on the right)

The new fan clutch arrived just before end of day for our technician. The service advisor let us know that the air conditioning parts had also arrived -- so everything was there that we think would be needed to complete the service -- hopefully it would be completed on Wednesday. 

Since the fan clutch had been removed, Gracie could not be driven, so we could not move her to the gravel parking area for the night. Instead, she stayed inside the shop, and we spent the night at the Best Western down the street.

On Wednesday, we took our time getting over to Freightliner, enjoying the free breakfast at the hotel, knowing that they would be able to start the work on Gracie whether we were there or not. When we arrived, the technician had Gracie's engine running to test the air conditioning (to ensure it would not freeze up). He had already completed the installation of the fan clutch and it was working fine. 

The work was completed and we settled up (paid the bill). We were able to leave Fyda by about 9:45am to head toward Custom RV Repair in Elkhart, Indiana, for service on the front passenger side slide that had stopped working in Conroe, a few weeks ago.