Day 110: Odell, IL and Necedah, WI

It has been a tough day for us, but we would gladly take many more days like today.

First off, here is a picture of the major tree limb that came down near us in the storm last night.  It made quite a noise when it crashed to the ground.  Fortunately we were on the lee side of the storm, because if this thing had dropped on either the van or the trailer it would have had very serious ramifications for us.  If it had taken out our camper, that would be a six month wait for a new one to be built for us, and even the van isn't a configuration that we would be able to find immediately.

It was my turn to ride today, and I started with a brisk quartering headwind that only got stronger as the day wore on.  Fortunately, I managed to complete the 42 miles to Odell, IL by 10:15 am, before the winds really started to howl.

You never want to ride a bicycle while staring at the ass-end of an endless row of windmills.
It sort of tells you that you are in the wrong neighborhood...

Odell is where we pick up Route 66 and start heading south to St. Louis.  But it is also the closest point that we will be this year to the Camp Inn factory in Necedah, WI, so  we headed northwest to take care of some business there.

The main issue was a rather vexing leak issue that had we had discovered last fall in Alabama.  There was a large dose of Murphy's Law that was at work in regard to trying to successfull resolve this issue, and we finally decided to let the factory put it back together the way it should be done.

But we also took advantage of the fact that we could get some other minor upgrades done and avoid the extra shipping cost.  The first was a solid maple (?) diffuser for our air conditioner, which should make it far more effective, especially this fall when we will be in the humid half of Texas and the Deep South (it keeps the cold air from immediately being sucked back into the warm air intake, thus doing a much better job of cooling the interior of the camper).

We also opted for a custom fit, food-grade plastic cutting board that fits over our galley sink.  I had converted a bamboo cutting board for that purpose, but we were never completely happy with that, worrying about how well it could be cleaned.  Plus it was bulky.  The new board is smaller, lighter and should be much easier to keep clean.

The other thing we were interested in were new amber marker lights for the outside of the trailer.  The old ones were susceptible to rock chips (we've lost three that way), but when the manufacturer went belly up, Camp Inn bought the molds and equipment.  They now make a thicker marker light made of a tougher plastic, which hopefully will hold up much better than the old style.

While all this was taking place, we relayed to Craig Edevold (one of the Camp Inn owners), who was working on the leak issue, about a time in Northern Idaho when Lana got her leash wrapped around the side table where we place our refrigerator.  She saw a squirrel and took off, collapsing the table and sending the $750 refrigerator crashing to the ground.  Fortunately, the only casualties were some minor dents in the table.  Everything else did just fine.

I mentioned to Craig, the genius behind the original Camp-Inn camper, that it is a shame that it wasn't possible to lock the leg in place with a triangulated brace.  He took only a second or two to ponder that when he thought that it would be possible to mount a piece of angle iron to the camper frame, and that we could use the existing table leg to create such a triangulated brace to support the table.  

He found some scrap angle iron, cut off a piece, drilled two holes in the frame and we had an instant prototype!  The only thing that he wasn't sure of was whether the six screws that hold the leg support to the bottom of the table would handle the increased lateral load, and whether the brackets on the side of the trailer would be adequate to withstand the additional horizontal load created by the new design.

So our job over the next weeks and months is to monitor both issues and to report back on how well this worka.  If it works as well as we hope, it may be a permanent (though undoubtedly more sophisticated) change to future production models.

This table leg used to extend perpendicular to the table. 

Now it rests on this bracket attached to the frame.

We also got a handy tip for what to do with our breakaway chains and cable: hang them on the tongue jack handle (they also greased our tongue jack wheel for us).  We used to clamp these onto our propane tank, but we like this solution a lot better:

We finally got a chance to go out for dinner after a long, long day.  We opted to return to Buckhorn Cafe, where we had dined the night before we picked up our camper, nearly four years ago.  It has a Polish/Eastern European menu (with the necessary American menu items), so it is always a treat for us to have some interesting non-franchise food for a change.  We had the Hungarian goulash.

We are camping for free tonight at the Camp Inn factory.  They have a small primitive campground with room for perhaps a half a dozen or so teardrop campers, with access to a toilet and shower.  They provide a key for the latter, plus it is possible to camp next to the factory for access to power and water.  We prefer the more private primitive camping.

Camping at Camp Inn.