Springfield Illinios

Well, we finely made it to Springfield, Illinois on the 29th and will be here for 3 days. We have plans to visit all of the Abraham Lincoln locations and that should be very interesting.

We left Hillsdale IL and headed south, but we only got about 20 miles until the "Check Engine" light came on and we had to pull over and call Freightliner to find out what the two icons that lit up were for. We ended up having to turn around and go to the Freightliner facility in Davenport Iowa. We ended up staying there two nights while they ran some tests and finely replaced the relay that was bad. They had to ship it in from Chicago, so as soon as they had that done, we took off and arrived here in Springfield a few hours later.

In fact, we arrived just in time for our next thunderstorm. This one was not nearly as bad as the one at the last campground so we just sat it out, and I took this picture just before the rain started. You don't think we are getting used to these storms, do you?

Well, tomorrow morning we will get up early and go out and learn all we can about our former president Abraham Lincoln (if the weather cooperates with us, that is).

FCOC Rally in Hillsdale IL

We left St Paul, MN (FMCA Rally) on the 18th of July and was headed for Hillsdale IL for the FCOC Rally at Sunset Lakes Resort. We had a slight delay when the valve on our Air Dryer for the air bag system went bad and we had to wait several hours for the part to arrive at the Freightliner location in Rogers,MN. We arrived in Hillsdale by about 10AM the next morning after driving for over an hour, in the rain, with no windshield wipers.

The Rally was great, lots of great people and the folks at the resort did a great job of keeping all of us well fed, laughing, and we all had a great time. The Freightliner people were on hand to help everyone with any issues or problems. There were lots of seminars to attend and things to learn from everyone there. But mostly there were a lot to eat and drink and lots of good people to share it all with.

There was a severe thunderstorm the first day that we were at the campground, there were trees broken and falling on homes and cars in the towns nearby and they had no electricity for about 4 days. There were broken electric poles and lines over the highway for a couple of days. The campground had electricity though and only had a few trees broken, but a lot of branches were laying around on the ground and even on the coaches.

We received our wipers by UPS the next day after the storm, so we felt more comfortable now. We decided to stay for 4 more days after the rally ended, so we could relax and get our laundry caught up and all. We will be leaving on the 27th of July and heading south toward Springfield Illinois for a few days.

FMCA Rally in Minnesota

We are at the FMCA Rally in St Paul, Minnesota now and I attended a blog seminar today. I thought this was a great idea, and I came back to our coach and created my blog. Today was the first day of the rally, but we have been here since Saturday.
We met a group of other people in the Freightliner Chassis Owners Club at the Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake, MN on Friday and we did a caravan here to the fair grounds with them on Saturday. Sunday we went to the Mall of America, the largest mall in the nation. We were there for hours and only covered about one forth of the mall. There is a theme park in the center of the mall, just a great place !! I will include pictures later.