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2019 Road Trip – The SPAM Museum

Both my wife and my son will tell you that I am completely incapable of reading or acknowledging the existence of information scrolled across the bottom of the TV screen when watching Sports or News channels. Similarly, I’m much like Clark Grisold and not big on paying much attention to signs along the road, whether they are advertising billboards or signs containing information that the Department of Transportation probably spent countless hours deciding that I need to know as the operator of a motor vehicle.

So I considered it a “sign” from above (pun intended) when I noticed a billboard advertising the SPAM Museum as we headed up I-35 (just North of I-90) on our way to our campground in Ellendale, MN. Fortunately, Beth was happy to oblige and today’s adventure was a trip to Austin, MN to visit Hormel’s SPAM museum. It was a hoot! They definitely have a great marketing department that knows how to market their pork product. They even had multiple employees wondering around offering samples of multiple flavors of SPAM (using a pretzel stick as the serving utensil instead of a toothpick).

During my senior year in college my high school buddy Tom and I elected to live off campus and we had regular SPAM based meals. Every week one of us had to come up with a new SPAM based meal (he called it a SPAM-O-Rama). Therefore, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about SPAM. Until today, I had no idea that there was so much information about SPAM that I had yet to acquire. I’m not saying that the SPAM Museum will be the highlight of this trip, but I will say that Yellowstone has a hard act to follow…

  • Beth in Front of the Museum
  • Brian Trying to Measure Up
  • SPAM Conveyor Belt
  • SPAM Options
  • From the Gift Shop

When we returned back to Ellendale, we stopped in at Steve’s Meat Market. What a wonderful meat emporium. We procured some bratwurst, pork burgers, summer sausage, and two steaks (a ribeye for Beth and a New York Strip for me). We were unable to source any firewood, so we cooked the steaks on the grill and ate them with baked potatoes and Minnesota sweet corn. The meal was delicious.

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2019 Road Trip – Ellendale, MN

Today we departed from Moline, IL in a fairly heavy rainstorm. Fortunately, with the help of modern radar applications, Beth was able to pick a lull in the storm to hook up the Tahoe and we hit the road. We experienced fairly heavy rain for the first hour or so as we headed West on I-80. We picked up I-380 just West of Iowa City and headed North through Cedar Rapids and Waterloo. When I-380 ended, we continued on with US-218 which tended to switch back and forth from limited access to general highway, but always remained 4 lane and very smooth. We experienced heavy North winds on a good portion of US-218 (probably a preview of our upcoming trip across I-90). In Northern Iowa we took US-18 West to I-35 North. The campground, Crystal Springs RV Resort, is adjacent to I-35 just 13 miles North of I-90.

The campground is excellent with large, level, gravel sites and grass and foliage separating you from your neighbors. There aren’t very many tall trees so picking up satellites isn’t an issue from any site. Verizon LTE coverage was excellent (30-40 Mb/s download speeds). Maybe it’s because our site was up front near the office, but this was one of the few campgrounds where I could honestly say that the WiFi coverage was excellent (20Mb/s down and 10Mb/s up). The bathhouse had extremely clean individual shower rooms containing a sink, shower, and toilet.

We will be spending three nights here resting up before we start the major touring portion of our summer trip. The local weatherman has provided a Chamber of Commerce weather forecast with clear skies, highs in the lower 70’s, and lows in the mid to low 50’s throughout our stay.

  • Crystal Springs RV Resort Site #47
  • Crystal Springs RV Resort Site #47
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2019 Road Trip – Moline, IL

Today we started our migration West for the touring portion of our trip. We left LaGrange, IN around 9:30 AM and arrived at the Fisherman’s Corner Recreation Area Campground along the Mississippi River in Moline, IL at around 3:29 PM (EDT). We have a great view of the river and locks from our campsite. The site is paved, very long, and perfectly level. There are no water (there are fresh water spigots throughout the campground) or sewer hookups, but the sites do have 50 amp electrical service. We have great Verizon voice and data coverage (over 15Mb/s download speed). The campground is fairly wooded, but we are able to pickup satellites 110 and 119 on the Dish Western arc which gives us the Rays baseball game and Davenport, IA local channels in Standard Definition (ESPN, etc in High Definition).

This is another great Army Corps of Engineers campground and we will stay here again when heading West via I-80.

  • Fisherman’s Corner – Site #17
  • Fisherman’s Corner – Site #17
  • View from Our Site of Barges Leaving Locks
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2019 Road Trip – Steam & Gas Show

Today marked the start of LaGrange County’s annual Steam & Gas show so we got Dad’s antique tractors out. These were my grandfather’s tractors and Dad spent much of his childhood on both of them.

They are both 1940 models. One is a John Deere A and the other is a Ford 9N. They are both in excellent running shape and the John Deere is in great shape visually as well. Unfortunately, the shop that literally took years (I’m not being sarcastic) to overhaul the engine on the Ford left it sitting outside a lot, so it probably needs a paint job.

  • 1940 John Deere A and Ford 9N

Starting the John Deere A is a bit more complicated than pressing the remote start button on your key FOB. It is started manually by hand turning the flywheel. In order to make it easier to turn the flywheel, there is a petcock on both cylinders that you open to reduce compression. Then you turn the flywheel (which turns significantly harder than the Wheel of Fortune game wheel) and once the engine starts firing, you close both petcocks (there’s also some carburetor choke action if you’re cold starting).

After a little cleanup on the John Deere A we took both tractors out to the 4-H Fairgrounds at the John Deer A’s top speed of 6MPH. Sadly, the time has come to find good new homes for these tractors and Dad placed “For Sale” signs on both of them.

There was a lot of activity at the Steam & Gas show and many incredible looking old tractors. Some of them would have been fairly young back in the late 70’s when I was working at LaGrange County Ford Tractor (in High School), so I’m not sure how they could be considered “antiques” (it’s barely been 40 years), but it was still fun to see them.

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2019 Road Trip – New House Batteries

Earlier this year when we were planning for the Refrigerator Conversion, I anticipated that there was a good chance we would need to replace the 3 1/2 year old house batteries in the RV. When there is no external power source (120V AC shore power or the generator), the refrigerator runs off of the house batteries via the inverter. Yesterday we decided that it was time to dump our black tank, so we packed up the RV and headed off to the county 4-H Fairgrounds where they have an RV dump station and suggest a voluntary donation of $15. This provided a perfect opportunity to test running the refrigerator off of the house batteries, because the weather was way too perfect for the generator and air conditioning.

When I disconnected the external AC power I checked the house battery voltage on both the power panel display and the inverter display and both read 12.2V which is too low for batteries that should be completely charged. I started researching my battery options last night. The NAPA deep cycle lead acid batteries I paid $105 for in 2016 are now $150. While I was researching I received an E-Mail from Sam’s Club reminding me that their 24 hour Member’s Only sale started at midnight and I decided to see if they had any deep cycle batteries on sale. I soon discovered that they had Duracell AGM batteries on sale for $159 and I considered this a sign from above.

  • House Batteries

When I got up this morning I called the Fort Wayne Sam’s club, reserved three batteries, and promptly yanked the current batteries out of the RV and placed them in the Tahoe. When Mom and Dad returned home from having breakfast with Dad’s 1955 high school class the three of us hopped in the Tahoe and headed for Fort Wayne (Beth stayed home to prep her lasagna for tomorrow’s family gathering). We grabbed the batteries, did a splash and dash topping off the Tahoe with $1.42 Sam’s gasoline, and stopped in at Taco Bell for a $1 menu lunch.

The new batteries installed with no issues. I will perform a boon-docking test (i.e., disconnect shore power) some time next week and see how long we last on the batteries.

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2019 Road Trip – Dutch Aire Amish Refrigerator Conversion

Just 4 1/2 miles down the road from the farm my Dad grew up on is JC Refrigeration. JR the owner has perfected the replacement of the cooling units on both the Norcold and Dometic gas absorption refrigerators found in most RV’s. He can either replace your existing gas absorption cooling unit with his upgraded version, or replace it with the same type of compressor that comes in residential refrigerators (with either 120V AC or 12V DC versions).

I chose the 120V AC residential compressor replacement. Although it eliminates the capability of running the refrigerator off of propane, the residential compressor (a Samsung) only draws 0.8 Amps and should be able to run for quite a while off of our three house batteries. Since we have yet to boon-dock (although we hope to on this year’s trip out west), we felt we could live with this limitation.

JR has an impressive facility and manufactures the cooling units right there in his shop. I arrived just before 8 AM and they were just finishing up the RV in front of me (they open at 6 AM). They were just finishing up the conversion when Dad arrived to checkout the process at 10AM. At that point JR began rerouting the RV wiring so that the refrigerator outlet is connected to our inverter so that it can run off of battery when we don’t have AC power or the generator running.

Once everything was completed we went back up front and paid and then JR gave Dad and I a little tour of his assembly and test area. He has a real nice operation and now our refrigerator can go from off (and hot) to 35 degrees in a matter of just a few hours. We no longer have to keep the temperature setting on 9 (Max) and hope. At 90 degrees the refrigerator had no issue keeping the inside temperature in the mid 30’s on the 5 setting and the freezer is always near zero degrees.

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2019 Road Trip – Elkhart County Fair Tractor Pull

Today Dad and I attended the Tractor Pull with our close family friend Paul. Dad and Paul have been attending for many years and have it down to a science. We arrived before 8 AM when there was no entrance fee. Then we headed straight to the Elkhart County Exchange concession stand for all-you-can-eat pancakes. By the time we finished our $7 worth of pancakes and sausage it was time to head to the grandstands and see the first class of pullers (21,000 lb Farm Stock).

At Noon we headed back to the midway to eat lunch at the Pork concession stand. My pork burger was delicious. After lunch we headed back to the grandstands and watched several classes pull until we decided to leave at around 4 PM. We grabbed some ice cream from the Dairy Barn concession stand to eat on our way to the parking lot. The weather was perfect and we had a great day.

  • Tractor Pull
  • Tractor Pull
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2019 Road Trip – Sad Day Today

Two Siamese cats (Naomi and Pandora) have been with us since the start of our RV travels (and actually pre-date our relationship/marriage). They were adopted in 1998 and were somewhat feral as they were 6 months old before they were adopted. Pandora succumbed to kidney and respiratory complications a few years back. However, an end to an era happened on July 24, 2019 as Naomi displayed full blown dementia and paced around the RV like she had no idea where she was. Given that and the fact the poor thing couldn’t “hit” the litter box consistently, we decided it was time she went to be with her sister. She was 21.5 years old (birth date 12/25/1997). Her siblings (Mercury, Kirby and Phoebe) are adjusting to life without her but we still miss her as Naomi was certainly a very special little lady. In her prime, as indicated by the photo below, she was her Daddy’s co-pilot as she would lay on the dash as we traveled down the road.

  • Naomi (Daddy’s co-pilot)
  • Naomi & Pandora
  • Naomi
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2019 Road Trip – LaGrange, IN

Today we completed our migration to my hometown. We dropped off of I-90 just west of Cleveland (where the tolls start) and picked up Ohio SR-2 (which is limited access until after Sandusky, OH). In Toledo we took I-280 to I-75 South to I-475 to US-20. US-20 was good road other than the fact that it was closed for construction in two spots requiring detours (one in Ohio and the other in Indiana just west of Angola). The trip took about six hours.

We pulled into the paved parking lot next door to Mom and Dad’s house (wider driveway) and Dad met us there. We were shocked to see Mom appear a few minutes later with her wheeled walker sporting her new replacement hip. While we disconnected the Tahoe from the RV, Mom did laps in the parking lot around us to get her therapy exercise in (which totally cracked me up). Once we unhooked, we drove the RV across the yard and hooked up to Dad’s 50 Amp RV outlet (Glamping in the backyard rocks!). Shortly after we got parked my sister and brother-in-law arrived and we ordered pizza for dinner.

Since we are going to be here for nearly a month, we decided to follow Beth’s sister Kathy’s example and build a small cat habitat so the kitties can get out of the camper once in a while. On Monday we headed back to Angola for our first ever visit to a Menards. This is a wonderful store that I should never be allowed to enter alone with a credit card in hand. Even though our plastic fence and 6 plastic stakes cost roughly $15 our bill at checkout had somehow climbed to over $90. When we got home we were able to quickly assemble the habitat against the back of Dad’s garage and throw some cats in (I like to keep Beth in it too in order to prevent her from wondering off). While inside the habitat, Mercury discovered that he likes to roll around on Dad’s cinder blocks.

  • Beth, Phoebe, & Merc in the Cat Habitat
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2019 Road Trip – Conneaut, OH

Today we left the state of New York and migrated further west. We left The Ridge Campground, headed south and picked up I-86 West until we hit I-90 near Erie, PA. The only campground we could find with Saturday night availability was just across the state line in Ohio. We are staying at Evergreen Lake Park campground. There are a lot of permanent campers here, but all the sites are clean and well kept although I do feel like a bit of an outsider not having my golf car here (lots of carts going by). Once again, in order to have full hookups (so we can dump our tanks), we had to take a 30 Amp site. Today was the hottest day of the summer so far for a good share of the country, but fortunately this site is well shaded and the camper cooled down quickly once we parked and closed up all of the curtains. On another positive note, I was able to program R2D2 (our portable satellite antenna) to access the Dish Western Arc and find a spot on our site to place it and access two of the three satellites. Fortunately one of them is the satellite with Fox Sports Sun so that we could watch the Rays vs White Sox game. Tomorrow we will head on into my hometown (LaGrange, IN).

  • Site B11