Shipshewana, Indiana

July 06, 2011

Started off a cool day with a hint of rain. By 10:00 A.M. it was full sun and getting hot. Mary and I headed to the Shipshewana Flea market on SR 5. If you have been, then you know what we were in for. If by chance you have yet to see Shipshewana’s Flea market, well maybe you aren’t missing too much.

Yesterday we had dinner at the Auction Restaurant located in front of the flea market / auction house. After talking with some other folks, they all had arrived at the same consensus as we had--It’s a great place for breakfast, but they do not do a good dinner. Mary had the haystack, which was described as an Amish type taco salad without the shell but nacho chips crunched over the top--resembling a haystack. I went with the grilled chicken salad.

The haystack was lukewarm and lacking the haystack look. It was smothered in too much Velveeta cheese and turned out to be just a bed of wet white rice, covered in hamburger, topped off with a ¼ pound of cheese. Just a runny mess.

My salad was salad. But it too was lukewarm, not really chilled. Which lead me to believe it was fresh and not stored in the fridge for 4 hours. But even the bleu cheese dressing was room temperature.
Not a dinner place, we might be willing to try breakfast should we return to this part of America.

Back to today’s adventures. We arrived at the flea market around 8:30 A.M. which is way early. This is also the cooler part of the day. The flea market covers almost 10 acres and it is a lot of walking to get around to all the sellers.

Before we left, we walked through the auction building. Here at 9:00 A.M. 5 or 6 different auctioneers start selling various antique and Amish goods--ALL AT THE SAME TIME. You can get in early about 7:00 A.M. to peruse the items and stake out the areas you are interested in bidding on. It helps if there are more than one in your party and you can call on cell phones to confirm any purchases or current bids for items.

We stopped at a roadside bakery on the way out of Shipshewana. Two young girls were selling cookies, pies, breads, and cakes. We purchased an apricot and raspberry single serving pies. They were “day old” and were 50% off the original price of $3.00. Needless to say the raspberry barely survived once we were in the Dodge. Our next stop is Elkhart to see a few surplus RV sales outlets.

Elkhart is about 24 miles from Shipshewana out SR 120. We were going to see Surplus RV Factory Sales on Bristol Street. We are looking for a sofa / recliner to replace the current sofa sleeper. We also would like very much to dump the blue sofa for a neutral or tan colored sofa.

There is a lot of stuff at the two outlets. But the majority of prices are higher than Camping World. No deals here. They had some nice sofas, but starting at $800 isn’t our idea of surplus outlet pricing.

We were told the best outlets were in Branson and Sturgis, just across the state line in Michigan. Maybe next time we visit we will make it a point to see the outlets in Michigan.

We leave tomorrow for a 7 hour drive to the Wisconsin Dells. We will also be looking for two 4-inch U-bolts that are approximately 10 inches in length to mount the PVC pipe, that is being used to house our sewer line, on the 4-inch square rear bumper.


Tim and Mary

On the road to Wisconsin.

Countdown T minus 20 days

Finally, we are able to focus on the maiden voyage. After more than two weeks of hair-pulling-head-slapping frustration solving the electrical short in the Dodge--and $300 in parts all for a silly short caused by a loose front shock--we are beginning to relax. The Dodge is actually driving better that it ever has. The transmission feels strong and shifts like it is designed to. All we need to do is get tires for the Coachmen Catalina and get current tags for the Dodge--after a state inspection.
After work I stopped by a local garage here in Lillington for an inspection. North Carolina does not smog test diesels so it is just a routine equipment check. Everthing is good to go, but the three things I "forgot" to fix. In North Carolina you must have a rearview mirror dispite having two GIGANTIC door / trailer mirrors. Mine fell off three days after they installed the new windshield last July. I was meaning to get around to that. The license plate lights weren't working. I don't remember the last car I owned that had license plate lights that worked?? BUT I had picked up some replacement light sockets as I had heard I may need functional lights on the plate. I was meaning to get around to that too. Then there were the door windows. The truck is originally from Florida and the cab windows are DARK. The first month I owned the Dodge I had to turn the running lights on to see the dash gauges with the windows rolled up--during the day!. At night I had to roll the windows down to see if there was a car coming. So I knew they were dark. But they kept the interior cool. Seems they were a 7 on a scale of 100. The lower the number the darker the tint. By law North Carolina allows nothing lower than 34 on driver and passenger door windows. Fortunately the cab windows on the jump doors and slide glass -- which have to be every bit a 1 if not a ZERO--are permissible.
SO before dinner, I replaced the license plate lights, glued the rearview mirror tab to the windshield and peeled tha tint from the door glass. It was painful to do because the tint job had to cost $200-$300 as it looked like they pulled the glass from the door to apply the tint.
Mary is busy plotting our return route from Michigan in mid July. We are leaving North Carolina June 13 in the afternoon and plan to boondock up to Michigan to save time and money. Her youngest daughter in getting married June 18 and there are too many things a mother and daughter have to do before the wedding.
We are discussing the idea of doing the Upper Pennisula and coming around the Wisconsin side -- or --- we may just head to Indiana to a few RV parts outlets before heading west to Gettysburg Pennsylvania (The 150th anniversary year of the start of the Civil War) then to see Hershey and on to Philadelphia. Our last stop would be Washington DC.
Before any of that can happen, I have to take the truck up to complete the state inspection and get plates and then tires for the 5er. And while all this is going on, we have to load up some of our STUFF we have convinced family members to take...

Time to see the trans doctor

It has been almost a year since we brought the Cummins home from Waynesville North Carolina.  The transmission has done remarkably well pulling way more than it had a right to.  Our plans are to head up north to Michigan via I-77 into West Virginia.  Having traveled that way more ties than we can count on two hands, we are all too familiar with its steep grades.  Without an overhaul, we just do not think the Cummins will make it with 12K pounds strapped to its back..