Ok, no you are not seeing things. Brenda is driving our coach! Ok, she went all but 20 miles, but she did it! It was not the best experience for her, as we still have some issues with the ride control. The wheel moves more that it should we feel and thus makes for a much less comfortable driving experience. We REALY need to found someone to be able to find this issue and resolve it.

So we were on the road and with all the rain we have had the RV was quite a mess. But wait! What is that on the horizon? I see a TRUCK WASH! Yes, a truck wash! Now this will be a first for us of course. So we exited and went on over to check it out.
















As you can see, a BIG building with all these guys inside. You pull in and they go to work with big spray guns and brushes. It takes all but 17 minutes to get the rig clean and then you hit the road to air dry it. Cost…$47 with tax. Not bad seeing it takes us about just over an hour when we did it and made it hail.

So we get to JellyStone Park in North Java NY after about 8 hours of travel. However I did get that rest for 20 mins when Brenda drive, so thanks hun. :) Well when we arrived lets just say, hum, fitting was an issue. What can say, their are a lot of trees! Tree, tree, tree!!! Then when we got to our site next to Joe and Lynn, our friends from Rochester, the site would not fit our rig.

So we needed to back up and up and up to get back to a site that would fit us. Here, let me show you a video of our fit in this park that gives you an idea of the type of park and the other camper sizes, and then us.












Ok, now that you are done laughing, we will still need to get this coach out of the park without hitting any tress. ;)














So did we have a good time on this trip? Yes, for the most part it was a great first outing with more working being done on the coach than we really wanted. But we are making it our own after all. Both getting more and more use to it and sometimes we even feel like we do not want to return home. This is because of the memories we are making. No matter if it is spending the night inside of a repair bay or getting hit in the face with a cream pie because you are accused of having too big of an RV. Oh, what am I referring to? Here you go…












Thanks Joe and Lynn for the fun of camping with the use of your kids. You can have them back now.

Thats it for this trip as we head home to start planning for our next.

Brenda here. I’m typing to you from inside the rv. While I know that that in itself is not news I have to mention something. We are in another tire shop, in Indiana by the rally, having our tires looked at again. The dog and I are just hanging out in the rv while the front tires are off and getting re-balanced. We still have that shimmy happening above 45 mph. The Freightliner place, that we had an appointment with this morning, found our tires were not “round”. Again. Thankfully the tire shop was just around the corner. I hope this fixes the problem. If not, they may have to put on new front tires. That is under warranty, so no biggie there. Rv tires are not cheap, as is anything. Well, at least we are getting to see a little bit of downtown Elkhart, IN. Some parts remind me of Canandaigua, NY. Looking around, the people here must have a good sense of humor. There was this one sign that read, “Dyslexics have more nuf”. How funny is that! Not that being dyslexic is fun, but the way the sign is written, get it..ha ha.

Yesterday I took a women’s driving course, in a seminar setting, that the Gulfstreamers Club offered. Tomorrow is the day of reckoning. The instructor and myself are going out on the road learning how to actually drive this thing. I give David a lot of credit by just getting behind the wheel and driving. There’s so much you have to know and double check. Both David and the instructor have said that once you drive for a little while, you won’t know what you were afraid of. I look at it this way, if we let what we are afraid of stop us from achieving anything, then we will not learn anything new and not move forward in our lives. Or, to quote Nike, “Just Do It!”

I’ll let you all know how I did tomorrow after I stop shaking from nerves. Bye for now.

We arrived safely to the “Back to Home” Gulf Stream rally. One of the main reasons we came here was to meet some of the Gulf Stream people to get some issues resolved with the coach. To that end, we have…we think.

I made a contact yesterday with the National Sales Manager for Gulf Stream and we went over the issues and the issues with getting it serviced. He assured me that while we would here he would get these issues resolved. So, we will see. I mean, they are not hard issues really, but items that need to be done. Some seals, cargo door alignments, and decal kind of things.

The biggest issue we have is a shimmy we have in the coach at above 45 mph. So we are setup with a local Freightliner service center, the coach is built on a Freightliner frame, for Wednesday at 10AM. So we will be heading out to go their in the morning and coming back to our site after. WE HOPE THIS WILL BE RESOLVED!

All in all, we will see how things progress. We are also going to have some other items added to the coach like a replacement bathroom fan to match the others and a 42” ceiling fan in the bedroom. This is to be done either today or Thursday.

Well we are now at the Bayshore KOA in Ohio. Again, we hit rain on the way here if you can believe that. Yes, MAJOR, MAJOR RAIN! Here, let me show you a photo that Brenda took and note the tree…

















…this was NOT FUN to drive in. Reminder, we are 42’ long and also now have an SUV in tow. The wind moved us like you would not believe. But we made it and when we arrived it was sunny and clear.

Now you may be asking yourself how Tasha did? Well, we traveled today for 5 and half hours and she was great! She even found some time to sleep. (well she is 12 so like 77 in human years or so.) But she was one tired girl after we got done setting up. Here, let me show you just how tired she was…


















Yup, totally passed out. ;) That’s our girl.

Well, because of the rain, the SUV and the motor coach was, well, dirty. So, Brenda and I washed both today. Took us about 2.5 hours or so. Well, you know how when you wash your car it rains. Well, when you wash a 42’ RV, it hails. Yes, you read that right, the adventure was not over for us. Not 2 hours after we were done, BIG BLACK CLOUDS rolled in and the down pour came and then the hail and high winds. We quickly checked the TV for twister warning. Nope, no alerts. All would be well. (except we now need to clean the RV again.)

Oh, I added a toad charge to the Saturn Outlook later after the rain stopped. What this does is allows us to tow the SUV without the need to pull the battery fuse. You see, you need to keep the SUV with the key in the ASSY position and thus the car battery would be in use. So you need to pull the fuse to stop the battery from draining. But the toad charger takes power from the RV wire harness and keeps the battery charged when we are towing. Thus no need to pull the fuse and loose the radio settings and what have you.

So, that is all good, until I made it smoke. :) Yes, the ground cable got so hot it started to smoke. It seems that the wiring was reversed on the unit or the RV harness. It was not something I did, but something was not right. I changed the positive and negative wires and all is well.

Ok, tomorrow we head out to the rally point. Be sure to check in for our 3 hour drive and see if we get more rain. LOL

Well, just a quick note to say we are getting ready for our next week long trip. This time to the Gulf Stream “Back to Home” rally in Indiana. We will be leafing Saturday the 21, which is also Brenda birthday. We will stop over at some KOA about 5 and a half hours form here for two nights and then head out to another 3 hours to the rally.

We have been very busy getting the coach ready. The BIG TASK, getting read to tow a vehicle behind it for the first time. I am not really looking forward to it, but feel I will be fine.

We purchased a new 2008 Saturn Outlook in black to match the RV. (Hey, way not?) It will be setup tomorrow for towing as I have all the parts and a 8 AM appointment for the install. I will be trying the Brake Buddy system for controlled braking of the Outlook.


















Well, that is it for now. I promise to get photos on-line of the setup and our travels. Kind of boring without photos. Heck, I may even do video!

BTW…SCARRY DAY for us today. You see, I choose to have some real nice shocks put on the coach. The ones that come with it are, well, bad. Well when all was said and done, when we went to lower the coach, the front driver side jack would not drop!!!! The jack was not going in! It took more than an hour to get it to drop and we could only do so by raising the passenger side with floor jacks to get the pressure off. You see, the area we were in was not too level and thus the jacks really had to do some work. The pressure was just too heavy we were guessing. All in all, we are good now. But that was scary!

David here again. Well we are soon to leave this lovely little camp site after being here a short two days. As you may have read, this was more or less a test run for Tasha, our 12 year old German Shepherd. You can see the bowl in the above photo, but no Tasha. Well that is because she does like cameras. As soon as she had seen it, POOF, she ran into the back bathroom.

So how was it? Well, it did not go was well as we hoped. All is well traveling with her and living in the RV with her, but we can not leave the coach without her getting nervous. (As noted on the other page.) Maybe it is way to soon for her to understand that we are not leaving her and that we will be back. But a week from tomorrow, Sunday the 22nd, we leave for the Gulf Stream “Back to Home” rally in Indiana. We will be gone a week and she will need to be left alone at times. So, we are nervous to be that far from home (8 hours) to say the least as she may prove to be, well, a pain. :) DON’T get us wrong, we love this time we have with her. It is because of this that we do not want her to be nervous or scared in any way. So, we will do what we need do.

Ok, different subject. People. It is amazing how nice other RV people are. We were invited to a campfire, waved at as we walked Tasha, and someone even helped me with the batteries where I had to adjust some cables. One other person even picked up distilled water for the batteries. Wow, RV people are great people.

Well it is time to pack up and move on out. Until next time we travel! (on 6/22)