The Battleship South Dakota Monument -- Sioux Falls

We checked in with Orinda's physician and learned that she will need some surgery which is scheduled for Monday. This means that we will spend a week or so in Sioux Falls and decided to stay in the Fairgrounds location.

This gives us a great opportunity to explore the Sioux Falls area and we started with the Battleship South Dakota monument. This is an interesting monument with the ship outlined on the ground in full scale -- it is like the ship is buried in the dirt so that only the top of the hull is exposed. This gives you a great feeling of the great size of the ship.

The South Dakota was the most decorated battleship of WWII and was engaged in many battles all over the Pacific. In fact, after the Japanese declared they had sunk it (several times), the South Dakota was referred to as Battleship X to confuse the issue!

The 16" guns fired a shell that weighed 2,700 pounds - like shooting a Honda Civic! The gun barrel that is on display is very impressive -- and the South Dakota carried 12 of these! By the way, this photo is actually a panorama shot consisting of 3 regular photos. Very cool technology.

Finishing Service at Forest City

We wrapped up a great service experience at Winnebago in Forest City, IA today and are pleased to report that everything on our list was well taken care of. The Winnebago service crew is very impressive, professional and can handle anything you might need. We also had a nice time talking to the other folks waiting for their coach to be finished.

Of course, we toured around Forest City and found that the town square is a beautiful and interesting spot. They had a Sherman Tank exhibited there that interested Cody.

Before leaving Forest City, we stopped at the Forest City RV Dump station to fill up with water and dump our tanks. This has to be the best RV dump station we have ever seen -- as you can see, there are some 12 dump locations here and all are well designed and easy to use.

After this, we toured back to Sioux Falls for Orinda to touch base with her physician. We ended up staying the the Sioux Falls Fair ground which has a nice RV parking area complete with full hookups. This area is very close to downtown and is quite convenient. You can see that Cody approves (Cody is on his back grinning for the camera!)

Having Service at Winnebago -- Forest City, IA

We have had our motorhome for about 6 months now and wanted to have a few minor warranty issues repaired before heading to the west coast this winter. So, we headed off to Forest City, IA to the Winnebago Motorcoach factory. This is a great facility and they have a wonderful service operation that can handle literally anything your Winnebago might need. We spent the tonight at the Winnebago Visitor Center where you can park overnight (with electric!) for free. Here you can see Cody, The Wonder Dog, showing where our Tour is parked in the visitor lot.

Service starts promptly at 7:00am, so we had to get up and out to deliver the coach to the service area (located across the street from the Visitor Center). We joined a number of other coaches in the waiting area and sure enough, a few minutes after 7:00 our technician came by to review our service order. He was super and went out of his way to make sure he knew what we needed.

We now had several hours to wait, so decided to drive about 25 miles to the town of Clear Lake, IA which is a wonderful small town on a beautiful lake (Clear Lake!). The Hobie Cat sailing races were underway which was fun to watch.

Finally, Clear Lake is also known for the Surf Ballroom, which is the location that Buddy Holly, the fifties singing legend, appeared for the last time before being killed in a tragic airplane crash right outside Clear Lake. Orinda wanted to get her picture by Buddy Holly Place!

Recalling our auction to sell all our "Stuff" -- One Year Later

Well, it has been a full year since we had our big auction and sold the accumulation of belongings that were acquired over 30+ years of married life. We took the opprtunity to think back a year ago as we prepared for the auction then watched all our stuff "hit the road" with new owners. Quite an experience!

We spent about 6 weeks getting everything ready for the auction and think that this was a big key to our success. Having everything clean and organized made the bidding process easy.

On the day of the auction, we distributed everything in lines around the house and really filled up the yard! There was alot of stuff!


Here are some of our reactions:

• Did you really sell everything? -- Pretty much. We kept a few furniture pieces that Rick built, as well as a few special pictures, but other wise we sold virtually everything.
• What kinds of stuff did you sell? -- You name it and we sold it. Furniture, pots, artwork, shotguns, tools, lawnmower, TVs, LP albums (yup -- the vinyl ones), half cans of paint, and many misc. items.
  
• How long did this take? -- The auction setup started at 7:00am with the actual sale starting at 10:00am. We were done at about 3:00pm after auctioning about 500 unique "lots" or items. The cheapest thing went for $1.00, the most expensive for $2,150.
  
• How many folks attended? -- About 500 came with 275 active bidders.
  
• Do we regret selling everything? -- NO! In fact, we are amazed at how little we have missed our stuff.
• How about Rick's wonderful woodworking equipment--certainly he misses that! -- Actually, not really says Rick. I was initially worried about the price my tools would get, but once they started to sell, I realized that prices were good and if I wanted, I could buy new tools later on with the proceeds.

Bottom line, we are happy with our decision to sell everything and enjoying our fulltime life!

Where we spent our summer!

We have spent most of the summer in Madison, SD at Lakeshore RV park located on Round Lake. We were very fortunate to have a site at the end of a short road on a peninsula which was surrounded by Round Lake which was a beautiful location. We really enjoyed watching the white pelicans that roosted on a sandbar in front of us.

This was a great location for our summer and we are looking forward to returning to the lake again next year.

Prairie Village Tractor Show

Today, we went to visit the Prairie Village site and Tractor show in Madison, SD. This is a great site with many original structures from our frontier past. Each year, there is a wonderful antique tractor show featuring all kinds of historic tractors, threshing systems, saw mills, autos and much more.

This picture shows a steam powered CASE tractor that dates from the early 1900's. This thing is HUGE and very impressive to see under steam.

There are also a variety of antique cars such as this Ford Model A which was beautiful. We also saw some early Case autos -- they ended production by the mid 20's. 

It is impressive to see the hundreds of tractors and old equipment, most of which is in great, restored condition. Perhaps the most interesting thing to me was to see the old sawmill operation. Powered by an antique tractor, this 4' sawblade cut right though the tree log being fed into it. Talk about a lake of safety equipment!

A New Dishwasher for the Tour

I have just about finished the install of a Fisher Paykel Dish Drawer dishwasher in my 2008 Tour 40TD. Rick, the current dishwasher (ME!) got tired of this job, so automation to the rescue. Since we are fulltimers, this seems like a nice addition.

Anyway, here is what I did.

• First, I removed the two bottom drawers under the stove. I also unscrewed the rail between the drawers. I then double checked the measurements for the dish drawer and saw that it was a perfect fit.
  
• Next, I built a "cavity" for the dishwasher out of 1/4 (for the walls) and 3/8"(floor) plywood and screwed it into the existing cabinet drawer frames. I also painted these panels with Kilz as suggested by Fisher to reduce humidity buildup.
  
• Now, I put the dishwasher into the cavity, being careful to route the hoses and plug through the back opening (which is plywood and original Winnebago). This was a bit of a pain, but I was able to route the power cord through the existing floor cutout to the outside bay with the entertainment system and plugged it in. Cool! The hoses route toward the sink.
  
• I installed a new continuous waste (sink drain) with a dishwasher drain outlet. Be sure to use the Fisher Drain Hose routing to lift the drain up well above the trap to avoid filling the washer from sink waste water.
  
• Finally, I removed the dish drawer from the "box" (it just lifts off) and screwed the washer box to the plywood cavity walls.
  
• My final job is to tap into the hot water line under the sink. I used the Watts fittings and they are great! Just cut the line, insert it into the fitting and you are done! No leaks, no grief.
  

The end result looks like a factory job and I am very well pleased.