The Adventures of Myron and Dorcas: Missouri

Day 4 was a rather long and dull driving day. We traversed the remainder of Tennessee, from Nashville we cut northwest across a corner of Kentucky, entered Illinois and crossed the Mississippi River at St. Louis. We landed at Hickory Ridge Campground in Montgomery City MO after driving 452 miles, a rather long driving day.

Site #73 at Hickory Ridge Campground

The next morning we continued the long trek across I-70 through Missouri and Kansas.

Passing Kauffman Stadium, home to the Kansas City Royals

After 4 days and about 1200 miles I finally coerced Dorcas into taking a turn behind the wheel.

Don't she look good piloting the big rig?

Our route so far

After a modest driving day of 318 miles, we stopped for the night at Covered Wagon Campground in Abilene KS. Abilene is famous for being the boyhood home and final resting place of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Site #53 at Covered Wagon Campground

This evening we explored Abilene. Besides the Eisenhower connection, Abilene is known for its murals.

And it is also known for its colorfully painted cowboy boots scattered about town.

Dorcas modeling the world's largest belt buckle

We learned of a jazz band concert happening at a local park this evening. These concerts only occur here once per month, so we were fortunate to be present on this night. The musicians were very talented and consisted primarily of local high school and college music teachers from the area. Before the concert I was able to talk to the drummer and reminisced about when I played in the stage band in high school. They actually played several tunes we played way back then.

Lick HERE to view a short video montage of the concert.

We find some awfully nice things when we are actually able to get off the interstate and stop for a while! We should try to do it more often!

We are running a little ahead of schedule, so we plan to learn some more about Ike tomorrow morning.

Dorcas and I departed Hannibal MO about noon on Friday September 29th for a leisurely drive south and west to Sedalia MO to attend the Newmar Kountry Klub 37th International Rally. This is not the first time Dorcas and I have been to Sedalia. The KATY Trail passes through Sedalia, and in 2007 Dorcas and I, along with Wayne and Lynda, biked the KATY Trail from its eastern terminus in St Charles MO to Clinton MO and back, a total of about 440 miles, camping along the way. Click HERE and HERE to view posts from that trip. On that trip we spent a night in the campground at the Missouri State Fairgrounds. This rally is likewise held at that venue.

Sedalia is famous for, among other things, being the destination of the cattle drive on the old Rawhide TV show. I've been looking for Rowdy Yates, but I haven't seen him yet.

There are ~450 Newmar coaches here from all over the country. We "caravanned" with the NKK Fulltimers Chapter and were parked in a gated compound with about 45 other Fulltimers members. The compound had room for at least 100 coaches, and our chapter was able to park ourselves, so we were able to double space. All sites had water, sewer and 50A power, uncommon luxuries at a fairgrounds site.

At the Region 5 Social: members from FL, AL, GA, MS, NC, SC, TN and VA

EV charging stations were located around the fairgrounds.

Have you ever seen a solar picnic table? The solar panel provides shade and power to a battery bank located under the table. Also, there are mobile device charging outlets on the post. COOL!

Freightliner usually brings a naked chassis to major rallies and sells parts and conducts seminars. Our coach is built on a Freightliner chassis. Spartan is the other major RV chassis manufacturer and also had a chassis display.

We ate well at the rally, three dinners and three breakfasts were provided. In addition to the meals, there was an ice cream social and a non-stop popcorn machine and lemonade.

And then there was the entertainment.

Julia Neville

Kenny Ray Horton

Black and Whyte Dueling Pianos

When I get the time a may post some video clips of the entertainers. In the meantime there's THIS. At least three of these dancers are friends from our NKK Tarheel chapter.

I took the drone up one day, but the wind was blowing about 30 mph. Bad plan. Trash cans were tumbling across the parking lots and awnings were being ripped from coaches. My DJI Mavic Pro usually handles wind pretty well. The camera is mounted on a gimbal that normally responds pretty quickly and is generally stable in moderately high winds. Not so much on this day.

I hit a power line on the takeoff and had an injury. That made for a dicey landing. Thankfully I have several pairs of spare propellers on board.

After replacing the propellers I went up again. Dumb ass! Even aloft the drone was very difficult to control. Note to self: Don't fly drone in gale-force winds, and particularly watch out for power lines.

One great thing about this rally was the opportunity to get some repair items accomplished. The vinyl on our entry door had begun to delaminate, a known issue. PTL Engineering, the manufacturer of the door was here and made repairs. They also replaced several hardware items on the entry door and screen door. Best of all: NO CHARGE!!!!

My entry door shade failed a few years ago; a bracket broke causing one side of the shade to come loose. Subsequently, while trying to determine how to repair, I just secured it with masking tape.

Automotion Shades is a 2nd tier supplier and provides the shades to PTL Engineering for our entry doors. Automotion Shades was also present at the rally. Although they did not have the parts on hand to make this repair, they did agree to send me a new shade unit that I can install myself later.

There were 60 Newmar factory technicians at the rally performing miscellaneous repairs, and 20 other Newmar Corporation employees coordinating repairs selling parts and generally conducting customer public relations duties. We had a slide out serviced, specifically to resolve a squeaking issue and to check the motor mount bolts.

Our Sanicon device, otherwise known as our poop pump, has not functioned for this whole trip. I was uncertain whether the motor had failed or if there was some other electrical issue, such as a blown fuse. The malfunction occurred shortly after I had made another electrical repair that could have blown a fuse. I checked all the fuses I could find, but all were good. Newmar technicians determined that the pump motor had, in fact, failed but did not have the part in stock either at the rally or at their factory in Nappannee. This is just as well since the cost of part is close $500. We have an extended warranty plan, but Newmar would not work with our warranty provider for work performed at the rally. When we get to Florida I can make repairs at Eagles Pride, our on-site full service RV center at The Great Outdoors. Our out-of -pocket costs will only be $100 for parts and labor there. SWEET! Newmar technicians also made some other minor repairs and adjustments and answered some technical questions. Best of all: NO CHARGE!!!!

We have also been having problems with a waste tank sensor calibration for some time. Our black waste tank would go from reading 0% to 100% with the first flush on an empty tank. Our monitor panel would also black out and become non-responsive for no particular reason. ATC Electronics (formerly KIB Engineering) manufactures our tank gauges and monitor and was a supplier present at the rally. Three guys from ATC Electronics came to our coach and spent almost 2 hours calibrating our black tank sensor. The process involved filling and emptying the tank multiple times while entering different calibration values directly into the electronic control module using a PC and proprietary application. They also replaced our monitor touch panel with an updated model, which will make the calibration process easier, should we need to calibrate the sensors again in the future. We can now reliably view all our tank levels! Best of all: NO CHARGE!!!!

Old tank touch monitor panel

New tank touch monitor panel

Finally, we bit the bullet and bought some new house batteries. The house batteries provide 12VDC power to all the house functions, such as lights, pumps, blowers, electronics and inverter. Our OEM batteries are about 6 years old, which is close to their useful life. They have been performing well, but they will likely fail soon, so we decided to suck it up and replace our 8 6V AGM batteries with 6 120 AH Lithium batteries. These Elevation LiFePO4 batteries have almost 4 times the useable output, 1/3 the weight and 1/4 the volume of our old lead acid AGM bank. They have a 12 year warranty, so we will likely never need to replace our batteries again. I wish I could say that about our tires! We currently have 400 watts of solar up top, but Newmar, in their infinite wisdom, installed cheap flexible panels, which are prone to cracking cells, reducing efficiency. They are also installed close to our raised roof rails often putting them in shade. I figure they are only producing about half their original expected output. So new and improved solar might also be on our shopping list. I'm embarrassed to say how much we paid for these new batteries. Suffice it to say, they were NOT FREE.

Old battery bank

New lithium battery bank

The rally basically ended Friday night and most people departed Saturday morning. Dorcas and I had been very busy with seminars and repairs and such, so we elected to stay over one more night and depart Sunday for Rally #3 in Branson. That allowed us a day to explore Sedalia and see the sights. Following are some scenes from about town.

A record store selling real vinyl records!

Sedalia is home to the world famous Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival, which was in progress when we biked through in 2007. Scott Joplin was the king of Ragtime music. He lived in Sedalia for a while and wrote and published some of his famous works while living here. During the festival dozens of world famous ragtime performers play on a dozen outdoor stages throughout town. Ragtime heaven.