Wednesday, September 7, 2011

FUN DAY AT THE STARK COUNTY FAIR

Tuesday, September 6 – WOW has the weather changed. The high today was 59. Due to the electric problems here in Marsha's brothers driveway, we can't turn on any electric heat. We don't have our propane heater set up yet and refuse to do it this early! 

Today, we received our paperwork from the Livingston Texas Tax Office (Polk County) to register our new CRV. Thank goodness we can do this by mail because we won't be in Texas for a couple months. It's a pretty comprehensive under-taking. Several forms to fill-out, copies of titles to send in, and of course a check to write for fees and sales taxes.

We have an Ohio 30-day temporary tag on the car now, so need to get new Texas license plates before October 2.  We have our mail received by the Escapee Club in Livingston, so we'll have them received and forwarded somewhere down the road before our temporary tag expires. Hope this works out!

FLASH BACK TO
Wednesday, August 31 – It wouldn't be a normal Fall in Ohio if we didn't attend the
Stark County Fair with Marsha's dad. This is the 162nd year for the fair.

Midway
midway

Dad grew up on a farm so he really enjoys checking out the animals, 4-H entries, and machinery. To make it even more enticing, if we arrived before noon, entrance was FREE! We weren't the only ones looking for a good deal....the place was packed. We overheard a parking attendant say that they had already parked 1200 cars and it was only 11:30 am.

We were impressed with the crowd, fair ground cleanliness, and the number of animals on display. With much to see, we headed to the goat barn to begin our animal tour.

Some interesting facts…
Fair

Next was the pigs. There were some BIG BOYS among the many entries. Marsha loves to look at the pigs. She is enthralled with all the different ways they sleep.

pigs

Then the beef cattle and milking cows. Fred, Marsha's dad, was a milk farmer so we spent some time examining the cows. He actually worked the fields with a team of horses as a young boy.

cows

Scottish Highland
cow.scottish-highland-cattl

Get the lowdown on this one. Image gaining that much weight each day.cow-sign
cow...big

Speaking of horses, that was our next stop. This horse's name was Bella. Not to be confused with our cat Bella.
bella

Of course, there are the llamas.
llama-and-paul

There are always those cute little babies.
babies

Not only did we view the horse stables, but today the trotters were racing so we stopped at the track to view a couple races. It wouldn't be as much fun with out placing a bet, so we each placed $2 on a horse picked at random.

horse-race-betting

Marsha had horse #2, Fred #3 and Paul #4. Paul's horse led the entire race.....except the last few feet.

Paul's horse out front.
horse-paul-in-lead

It was a photo finish with horses #2 & #3 finishing in a dead heat in first place. The two dollar bet was good for a return of $12.50. That should cover our lunch!

Marsha's photo finish. We were just slightly behind the finish line.
horse-photo-finish

We then walked through the political area where people running for office were handing out tablets, fly swatters, rulers, buttons, bumper stickers, and flags. Not being a registered voter in Ohio any longer, we breezed through grabbing a couple free items.

Of course no visit to a fair is complete without visiting the “huckster” barn where people were selling "must haves" like gutter guards, aluminum siding, replacement windows, swimming pools, Vegamatics, dicers, miracle creams for back pain, and tickets to heaven.

Marsha's favorite area is the hobby barn where quilts, knitting, canning, flower arranging, cakes, pies, huge vegetables, photography, and other hobbies are entered for showing. Marsha should have entered one of her amazing baskets! OH…thanks hon for that endorsement.

This is for our friend Louise, Duane and Louise's Travels, who does amazing quitting, and for a recent fair winner herself, Paulette, Rick & Paulette's RV Travels.
quilts

The flowers this year were amazing. Marsha never saw a brown sunflower.sunflower

Pie judging for our friend Joyce, who every year judges pies at another local fair.
pie-judging

We roamed through the machinery, the trapping & hunting buildings, the 4-H areas, and of course 100's of food wagons. Amazingly, we were able to skip the sausage sandwiches, fries, onion rings, and soft drinks.

The men had to check out the tractors.
dad-tractor

If you ever complain about having a neighbor toooo close, check this out.
too-close 

Now that is close. That's how they park them in the fairgrounds. This one was our favorite.
browns-camper

It was a great day at the Fair. Tired from walking all day, we headed to a local eatery for sandwiches to conclude a wonderful time. Thanks for lunch, dad!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see ya'll again. Have a great day!

Monday, September 5, 2011

DUMPING…PLAN B

Monday, September 5 – When we purchased our used motor home two years ago, there was a macerator pump in one of the storage bays. Paul has never had a situation where he needed to use it. After driveway camping in Marsha's brothers driveway for about ten days, he decided to hook it up and try dumping the holding tanks in Rick's sewer clean out in the nearby garage floor.

The macerator pump hooks to the motor home sewer outlet just like a normal dump hose. Instead of using a gravity flow to empty the holding tanks, the macerator works like a garbage disposal grinding the sewage and pumping it through a 3/4 inch garden hose to a sewer inlet, usually found where the house sewer system joins the county/city sewer system.

Paul hooked up the pump to the 12 volt electrical plug located in the wet bay in order to test it prior to attempting to dump the sewage. Not surprisingly it didn't work. So Paul tore it apart to see if he could locate a problem. It had some rust abound the motor windings that Paul cleaned up and then oiled everything. Still no luck. After examining the wiring, Paul thought it was wired up incorrectly. So he re-wired it and then plugged it back in the 12 volt outlet. IT WORKS!

Marsha's dad, Fred, helped Paul hook up the pump and then manned the end where the hose entered the house sewer system.

dad-hose

2-dad

Paul turned on the pump and slowly opened the black tank valve. He half expected the thing to blow up and cover him with sewage. But amazingly it worked like a charm. Paul dumped both the black and then the gray tank, no problems and no mess!

mh

This was wonderful. We now do not have to pullout and find a dump station to dispose of our sewage.

We finally got time to visit our old neighbors the Darrah's. We were close friends when we lived in our stick and brick house. They lived just across the street. Marsha "adopted" Anna as her granddaughter. That was when Anna was just a wee baby. Now she is in 4th grade, 10 years old, and just about as tall as Marsha. What a cutie! (That was our barn in the background.)

me-and-anna

Anna has a brother, Anthony. He is now 5 and what a handful. He is walking on his own and says about 20 words. He could say Paul but had a bit of a problem with Marsha.

anna-and-anthony

We had a wonderful visit. Thanks Ron, Janet, Anna and Anthony for a fun afternoon.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see ya'll back real soon. Have a great day!

Saturday, September 3, 2011

OUT WITH THE OLD…IN WITH THE NEW

Thursday, September 1 – We gave our Jeep Liberty a good bath yesterday, inside and out. While working, we discussed the idea of weather or not we should consider replacing the Jeep.

THE OLD
1-jeep

It has about 100,000 miles on the odometer, has a few mysterious shake, rattles, and rolls, and gets pretty bad miles per gallon. So we decided to shop around a bit and see what's out there. We narrowed our search down to a Honda CRV and a Chevrolet Equinox – both towable four-wheels down. After reading reviews on line, examining them extensively, driving both several times, and negotiating with sales persons, we decided on purchasing the Honda CRV.

Dealership
2-dealership

The presentation of the keys.
3-getting-keys

THE NEW
4-proud-owner

6-passenger-view

7-back-view

Now we need to move our Air Force One braking system to the new car, get the Blue OX base plates installed and move our bike carrier to the back of the Honda. A little unexpected upgrade but one we'll probably be glad we accomplished in the future. If any one out there tows a CRV, we would enjoy hearing from you. We have all the steps in towing the vehicle, but if anyone has any insights they would like to share…PLEASE do!

Marsha also found out today that the surgery to correct her eyelid droop won't be taking place until December 16! She was told that both eyelids will need to be done, and our insurance carrier is so slow that it will take over six weeks for approval. We aren't going to wait around until that date, so everything gets shoved around. Now tell me about Canadian Heath Insurance and how people are forced to wait for medical care. This is the second time, in less than a year, that our insurance company has delayed medical care.....CRAZY! It won't do any good to change insurance companies. We are retired school teachers from Ohio, now making our residence in Texas, and until we qualify for Medicare we're stuck. Looks like Marsha will have to fly back to Ohio to have surgery unless she wants to jump through all these hoops again with another doctor in a different location.

One quick note:  THANK YOU to all those who leave us comments. We appreciate them so much, but sometimes we have a reader leave a comment anonymously. That is just fine, but we do like to reply to all of the comments. So if you don't get a direct reply, it's because we can't find your email address. We thank everyone for all the wonderful comments. Please keep them coming.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see ya'll back real soon. Have a great day!