September 29, 2023 - Long Drive for a Late Lunch at the "Lil Black River Cafe" in Grandin, Missouri

Friday, with friends Bob and Ronnie, we took a two-hour drive to the "Lil Black River Cafe" in Grandin, Missouri, to order their famous crab cakes.  It was a beautiful day for a drive. We drove over there last year about this time of year for the crab cakes. Unfortunately, the chef was out so we they weren't available to get them, but we still had a delicious lunch. This time Bob called ahead to make sure the crab cake dinner would be available when we got there.  

Grandin is a small town in Carter County, Missouri, which is a sparsely inhabited county of rolling hills and dense forests in the middle of southern Missouri. Grandin was once the home of the largest sawmill operation in Missouri. All that is now gone and the town is down to a population of 236 people as of 2020, probably less now. Here is a picture of the restaurant which sits on the Black River.  There is virtually nothing left of the town of Grandin so the restaurant is supported by people who come from miles around to dine here, as we did. 

The restaurant is only open Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Chef provides truly gourmet meals at very reasonable prices, as well as home-made cinnamon rolls and fresh-baked bread.  The crab cake meal consisted of garden salad, two large crab cakes, potato of your choice, mixed vegetables or corn, and bread. The crab cakes were outstanding and everything on the plate was delicious. We couldn't eat it all and brought some home for another delicious meal. We also purchased several cinnamon rolls and a loaf of rye bread to enjoy at home as well.

The Chef and owner of the restaurant is from Florida. He got tired of the rat race down there. Through a real estate agency he found this old building for sale in Grandin around 2014. When he purchased it there wasn't even any plumbing in the building. You can get on their website and see the pictures of the renovation. The building was totally rebuilt and added on to for the restaurant. In addition to a regular breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu the restaurant is available for private parties.

Across the street from the restaurant is a little church with this sign out front. We thought how it was painted was hilarious so I enlarged it.

On the way home we drove by the "Royal Oak" charcoal factory. I was only able to take one picture because my camera locked up for some reason. Here is a picture of the domed concrete furnaces that burn the wood in the background and the wood slabs piled up in front for burning. I would love to tour this place sometime and learn the entire charcoal making process.

It is amazing what all is out there when you drive around the country. I will leave you with this.

 

September 21, 2023 - Farm to Table Community Dinner in Perryville, Grilled Fish, and Possible Trip

Last Thursday evening we attended the Perryville "Farm to Table Community Dinner" on the square. This dinner is a fundraiser for "Downtown Perryville Advancement", a non-profit corporation which works on projects to revitalize and promote our downtown square.  They have been putting this dinner on for seven years but this is the first year that we have attended. 

The dinner is held from 6:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. on a street just off the square. The meal is served on picnic tables with white linen table clothes, linen napkins, woven placemats, golden tableware, and water and wine for enjoyment with the meal. It was a five-course meal served family style and each course was better than the prior one. Many of the food items were prepared by or donated by local businesses. 

Here are a couple of pictures. The first is as everyone was arriving, staking out a place to sit, and enjoying appetizers, beer and wine.

The lady with the white hair in the following picture is MaryJane Buchheit. Her granddaughter is the organizer of the event and operates a restaurant/bar which she named after her grandmother - "MaryJane's Bar and Grill". It is the white building on the right in the picture below. In addition to Mary Jane's, Carisa operates "JStreet Eats" next door, as well as lofts on the second floor of the buildings. She owns and has rehabbed the entire block.

While eating the meal we were treated to live, easy-listening music by two fellows. One was on the guitar (Roger Prost - I have known him for years) and the other played guitar and sang. I didn't catch the singer's name but I must say he was quite good. You can see them on the left in the picture. 

In the next picture the lady with the blue hair is Angie Hoeckele. She and her husband own "Hoeckele Bakery and Deli" here in town. They baked and donated all of the rolls for the meal.  Hadley's Candy Store in the background is operated by a twelve-year-old who wanted to make many candy options available locally. I hope she makes a million bucks! (I'm a sucker for candy so I'm trying to be a good boy and stay out.)

Here is a picture while everyone was sitting down enjoying the meal. I didn't take this picture but I put it in because of who is in it. The green arrow points to my good friend, John. The red arrow points to Kelly. I'm not sure where I was at the time.

We were blessed with beautiful weather for the event. All of the food was wonderful and plentiful. One course came right after another. I was absolutely stuffed. It is great to see the community turn out for this event. I must say, however, that I was surprised at how few people I knew. We were some of the oldest people there. I guess that is life, you retire, and younger people take over the reins. I am proud of what they are doing to keep our community vital.

 

Grilled fish:

Saturday I pulled all of the Northern Pike caught in Minnesota out of the freezer and prepared them to be grilled. They made nice fillets. I gave them a good coating of Old Bay and turned the heat on low, watching them the entire time so I wouldn't overcook them. 

Northern Pike taste great but they are full of tiny pin bones. Once the fillets cooled, I sat on the deck and picked all the bones out. It was a beautiful day to sit outside and complete this tedious task while listening to a some great music. The meat is now ready for fish tacos or fish soup when we get the urge.

Homer Trip:

We have had no word on when Homer may be out of the shop. We are hoping by October 4th so we can head to Helena, Arkansas, to attend the "King Biscuit Blues Festival". We have been going to this three-day event off and on for over fifteen years. There are usually four music venues going at once. Unfortunately, none of the venues have shade for sitting and listening to music. The last time we went was two years ago, but it was so hot we left after only one day. For a $75.00 donation to the Fire Department we can park Homer in a field with other campers  behind the main stage. There is no shade there either and no hookups. While we can run the generator to cool Homer and then sit inside until evening when it cools off, that is not our style. We like to roam around throughout the day with our folding chairs enjoying the different music playing in the various venues. When it is really hot this isn't fun for these old folks. If Homer is ready and the weather looks to be bearable, we will head out. I'll report.

  

September 11-12, 2023 - The Natchez Trace Parkway; Vehicle Troubles

MONDAY MORNING:

We left home Monday at 10:00 a.m. headed for the North terminus of the Natchez Trace, South of Nashville. It was 278.5 miles from home to the Natchez Trace Parkway. The parkway is 444 miles long beginning in Natchez, Mississippi, and ending South of Nashville. After just a couple of miles on the trace we crossed the Double Arch Bridge. Here is a picture from below and some information about it.

At this first stop I had to take the obligatory pictures. It is hard to get a good picture looking into the sun.

As we traveled down the parkway we stopped at two scenic overlooks to take in views of the hills of Tennessee. Beautiful greenery stretched for miles in all directions.

The park maintains three campgrounds along the parkway. The most Southern, our destination for the evening, was the Merriweather Lewis Campground at mile marker 385, about sixty miles from the entrance. The campgrounds are free and have no electric, water, nor dump stations. We arrived at 6:00 p.m. and found a nice site for the night. It was a long day so, instead of cooking anything, Kelly made sandwiches for supper. We were lucky enough to find some wood to make a campfire. Here I am enjoying the fire and an adult beverage as Homer relaxes on the pavement.

It was a warm evening so cooling off Homer for sleeping, with no electric, took some ingenuity. We had opened all the windows and vents upon arrival but at dark it was still 80 degrees inside. We carry a 12-volt fan but getting it situated so that it blows up in the bunk area for sleeping has always been an issue. Unfortunately heat rises and the bunk area is always warmer. This trip Kelly came up with a great idea. She put the fan on top of the folding plastic end table we use outside and then put that table on top of the dining table. With the fan up high, it worked like a charm to cool off the bunk area. Between the fan and a couple of stiff drinks, I was able to fall asleep. By 1:00 a.m. it was cool enough that I needed a cover. I got up and turned the fan off because I was worried about battery capacity. At that point the fridge, the fan, and my CPAP, had all been on about four hours drawing off the batteries. At 1:00 a.m. the batteries read 12.3 volts, not bad. (Homer has two 6-volt golf cart batteries which provide more capacity than 12-volt deep cycle batteries.) I went back to bed and slept until 7:30 a.m., which is very unusual for me.

TUESDAY MORNING:

When Kelly got up at 8:00 a.m. I turned on the generator to make coffee and so she could curl her hair. The generator started right up but we had no power. What? It had been running fine at home and putting out power as it should. My first thought was the circuit breaker on the generator must have tripped. But before I went outside to check it, I had the good sense to check the house circuit breakers. I found the main breaker and another breaker had tripped. I reset them and then all was well. I have no idea why these two breakers tripped since no electric had been on all day.

I made each of us a cup of coffee in the Keurig. We decided to make another cup and head down the road. We would stop later for a brunch in the park. I tried to make another cup of coffee and I got an error message to the effect that these K-cups were not approved K-cups for a Keurig. The message contained a phone number to call if this happened. These were the exact K-cups I just made coffee with, and the same ones we have used for several years. I tried another K-cup with the same message. What the heck? I put the Keurig away for travel. No second cup of coffee.

We headed out of the campground and rounded the bend to the Merriweather Lewis home, burial site, and part of the original trace. Here is a picture of the home and a picture with Homer in it so you can get an idea of the size of the building.

There was a monument nearby explaining the significance of the trace. Here is a picture. I hope you can read it.

Next to the monument was a part of the original trace so we walked part of it. Of course, originally the trace wasn't graveled. LOL. I can't imagine what an ordeal the trace would have been for travelers back then.

We then headed South on the parkway but within ten miles the transmission started to act up again. GREAT!

There is no cell phone service on most of the parkway. We decided it was not a good place to be stranded so we turned off at the first state highway. It was Tennessee Highway 64. I programmed the Garmin to take us home, hoping Homer would make it. I had no idea where we were and luckily the Garmin routed us on U.S. Highways most of the way, which all had a lane to pull off on if your vehicle broke down. Here is a map I copied off my Atlas. (I'm going to have to learn how to get better maps for pictures.) The pink is the trace parkway, the yellow is the route we took across Tennessee back to Missouri.

It was a very LONG trip home. The transmission slipped into neutral at least fifty times in two hundred miles. Several times it appeared it wasn’t going to go back in gear and that we would be stranded out in the middle of rural Tennessee. We took Tennessee Hwy 64 to U.S. Hwy 641, to U.S. Hwy 412, to Interstate 40, then back on U.S. 412 to Dyersburg, Tennessee, then I-155 to I-55 in Missouri. I had never driven these roads before nor been in this part of Tennessee. I was shocked at how desolate Tennessee was, even along major U.S. highways. Towns were about twenty-five miles apart and most consisted of little more than a gas station/convenience store. We trudged on hoping for the best. Kelly just kept patting Homer's dash telling him he could get us home.

Early in the day Kelly's arm rest pulled loose from the door. It had been fixed once or twice before. It is only made out of foam rubber covered with vinyl. The foam has deteriorated due to age, which makes it hard to fix it well enough to be pulled on all the time to close the door. Here is a picture.

Also, while riding along, all of a sudden, the window blind behind Kelly fell down. We just laughed. Kelly took a selfie with it as we travelled on.

At least ten times throughout the day we thought we would be sitting on the side of the road flagging someone down for help. Once we made it to I-55 I felt we were back in civilization if Homer crapped out. As we approached Cape Girardeau it dawned on me that we would be better off driving Homer directly to the transmission shop rather than home and then there. Cutting across from Cape Girardeau to Leopold, Missouri, was only a thirty-three-mile drive, versus going home (which was a thirty-five-mile drive), followed by a forty-eight-mile drive back to the transmission shop. Driving to the shop and leaving Homer, however, would necessitate finding someone to come and get us, and all of our stuff including food.

We stopped for lunch in Cape Girardeau and called John and Carlene to see if they could pick us up in Leopold later in the afternoon. They said they could, so we finished our lunch and headed to Leopold on two-lane state country roads with no shoulders to pull off on. This plan ended up being a good one because for the last couple miles before we reached the shop in Leopold, the transmission was jumping in and out of gear regularly. I must say I was never so glad to see a shop parking lot in my life.

While we waited for Carlene and John to arrive from Perryville, we started packing into Walmart bags all of our food, clothes, medicine, CPAP, etc. You pack an RV for a trip there and back. You aren't prepared to empty it and leave it somewhere on the road. I had asked John to bring a cooler for the freezer and some refrigerator items. We had so much stuff everything would not fit in their large trunk. One box had to sit in the backseat with Carlene and Kelly. I hope we remembered to bring everything we need. We arrived home at 5:00 p.m. and quickly put everything away and chilled out for the rest of the evening. 

What a trip!

This was our second attempt to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway. The last time we didn't even make it to the parkway when a front caliper locked up and we turned around and came back home. This time we traveled about fifty miles of the 444 mile parkway. I say we don't ever try to drive the trace again, Kelly says completing the trace is now a goal!

While waiting for our John and Carlene to arrive I looked at the window blind, which now laying on the table, to see why it fell down. On the end that came off I found a hole and no peg of any sort to hold it in the bracket.

Here is a picture of the other end. You can see the spring-loaded peg is a fairly large piece. I couldn't believe that in quickly looking around I didn't find it for repair and reinstallation. Crazy.  If I don't find the piece once Homer is back home I will have to improvise a fix.

Finally, many thanks go out to:

John and Carlene for taking time in their day to drive forty-eight miles to pick us up and haul us and our stuff back to Perryville; 

to

Homer for making it back to the shop;

and to

The Good Lord for watching over us the entire way home.

Being stranded anywhere along the way would have been quite challenging, stressful, and expensive. There would have been an expensive tow, an issue of finding a shop to fix Homer, maybe a motel room for a day or two, and a car rental to get us and our stuff back home, and a trip back to get Homer. It was a bad trip but could have been much worse.

P.S. Once home and settled in, I plugged in the Keurig to get the phone number to call when it didn’t recognize the K-cup. It recognized the K-cup and was ready to make coffee. It figures.

September 7 - 9, 2023 - Homer is Out of the Shop; Third Set of Access Door Catches; Repaired Ladder Support

HOMER IS OUT OF THE SHOP:

As I mentioned in the last blog, Homer needed to go to a transmission shop. The shop we chose is in Leopold, Missouri. It has been in business for many years and has an excellent reputation. Upon calling them I learned that they do not make appointments. It is first come, first served. You leave your vehicle there and they get to it when they can. With that in mind we immediately took Homer over on August 29th. We described the intermittent problem to the service writer. He thought the problem was quite unusual and stated that it may be hard to diagnose because the issue flares up so haphazardly. He advised that it could be up to three weeks before a technician could even look at Homer. Yikes! We left Homer to get him in line for repair.  

Since Homer was going to be at the shop for several weeks, we called and cancelled our campground reservations for the Carri-Yals RV Rally in Jefferson City, which begins on September 11th, and we notified the hosts that we couldn't make it. Surprisingly, on Thursday morning, September 7th, I received a call from the transmission shop saying that Homer was ready. We were shocked. It had only been eight days since we left him there. 

The transmission is partly controlled by the computer and partly inside the transmission. The technician got found several corroded connections for the transmission. He further found that someone at one time had rerouted the wiring harness. This caused the wires to the transmission to be stretched really tight. He cleaned all the contacts, routed the wiring harness back to the factory specs, did a test drive and found Homer to shift just fine. The service manager suggested we pick Homer up and take him for a long drive to see if this work resolved the problem. A $201.00 bill, not bad.

Upon receiving this news, I immediately called the campground to see if there was a space available for next week. A 200-mile trip to Jefferson City was just what the technician ordered. The campground manager advised that, upon our cancellation, he had let our spot go to someone else. He further advised that there were no other spaces available until the end of the week, when the rally would be ending. Bummer. No rally for us.

THIRD SET OF ACCESS DOOR CATCHES:

With Homer home I was able to make a few of the repairs he needed after the trip to Michigan. The first was the converter access door. I had just recently "improved" this door attachment by taking out two spring-loaded cabinet catches and replacing them with two magnetic cabinet catches. I was sure this method of connection would be an improvement. It was not. The magnetic catches did not work well with all the bouncing that goes on going down the road. Here is a picture of one of the three magnetic catches recently installed.

Looking for a solution, I found a package of the spring catches that are used on all of Homer's cabinet doors. They hold very tightly. None of the cabinet doors have never come open going down the road. Here is what these catches look like. The flat piece is screwed on to the cabinet and the longer, thinner piece is screwed on to the door. When the hook on the door piece pushes into the catch a spring inside trips the part sticking out and it locks inside the hook on the door portion of the latch. 

Here are the new catches installed. This will be my last revision of the locking mechanism for this access panel door. If these don't hold I'm going to break down and screw the access door on.

The new catches hold the access door snuggly. I almost need a screwdriver to pry it open - just the way I want it!

REPAIRED LADDER SUPPORT:

The second repair undertaken was the reconstructing of one of the ladder support tubes. This failure is partially due to old age but mostly due to the fact that these supports were only riveted on to the fiberglass wall at the factory. A rivet provides little lateral support since it hardly spreads out on the inside of the wall. I have already replaced the two other connections on this side of the ladder. Here is a picture of the fitting that pulled loose. Every time I climbed up the ladder it pulled out more. It was providing virtually no support. In addition being loose like this allows water to leak inside the wall.

First, I drilled out the rivets to get the horizontal support tube loose from the wall. This part was easy. The support tube is attached at the other end to the ladder with a bolt. This bolt goes into a nut in the middle of a round fitting which is wedged against the walls of the tube. You can see the rusted bolt head below. This bolt had to come out for this repair. The chances of it screwing out after 30 years were NONE. 

I drilled the bolt head off. Here is a picture of the support tube after I got it off. The rusted bolt stud on the left is the section that went through the ladder tubing. 

The aluminum bracket, which had been riveted to the wall, came off the tube quite easily. Here is a picture.

Surprisingly, there was absolutely no corrosion on this bolt. It not only unscrewed easily but the round fitting wedged inside with a nut in the middle was like new. This was great. I cut off the rusted stud in the support tube and turned the tube around to use the good nut to reattach it to the ladder. 

In the past when I repaired the other two supports I used stainless steel boat rail connectors which I found online. Here is a picture of the fitting. The price of the part and shipping had increased 50% since July of 2022. This little puppy now cost $40.00 with shipping. It is much heavier duty than the thin riveted aluminum one it replaced.

Here is a picture with the area with the support tube off at both ends to give you an idea of what I was repairing.

The first step to install the new fitting was to figure out how to mount it to the wall. For the prior replacements I had used toggle bolts. Here is a picture of a toggle bolt for those who are not familiar with them.

Toggle bolts are readily available and work great. You drill a hole in the wall large enough to accommodate the width of the winged portion when it is folded down. It is spring loaded so once it is pushed through the hole in the hollow wall the winged portion expands to provide wide support around the bolt. I went to Buchheit's to get two toggle bolts for this repair. A drawback of the toggle bolt is that it requires a fairly large hole in the wall while the bolt itself is rather thin in diameter. In the prior replacements, due to the small size of the toggle bolts and the large holes in the new stainless-steel mounting brackets, I had to back these bolt heads with stainless steel washers. These repairs obviously hold much better than the original rivets but I wasn't totally thrilled with them. 

At Buchheit's I found a new type of expanding bolt called a "Pull Toggle". I'm sure it has been around for a while but I never saw one before. For this project the "pull toggle" had two advantages over a toggle bolt. It has an even larger holding surface on the inside of the wall for strength and it allows for the use of larger bolts to properly fill the holes of the stainless-steel mounting bracket. Here is a picture of this device.

Here is how they work. You bend the black plastic zip tie so that it is flat with the steel portion and push it through the hole in the wall. You then pull the white plastic piece on the zip tie toward the wall to tighten it up for threading in a bolt. I thought this was going to work well but I immediately had a problem. The black zip tie would not fit through the hole in the bracket. With a utility knife I carefully trimmed about a 1/16 of an inch off of each side to so it would pull through the hole in the bracket. Problem solved? Nope. I then found that the stainless-steel bolt and the black zip tie would not both fit through the mounting hole in the stainless-steel bracket. I also had noticed that in order for the bracket to fit flush with the wall, the white plastic part would have to be cut off. The white plastic part is all that keeps the rest of the toggle from falling into the wall until you can get a bolt threaded on. What I had to end up doing to make this work was tricky. 

I taped the now trimmed zip ties to the tube support, which I had inserted into the mounting bracket. Taping them on would keep the toggle from falling into the wall once I cut off the white plastic part. The taped zip ties held the bracket inside the wall in place as needed. Luckily the stainless-steel bolts I purchased to replace the ones that came with the "pull toggle" were long enough that I could insert the bolt through the stainless-steel mounting bracket and then thread it into the pull toggle in the wall just enough to keep it from falling down in the wall. Once each bolt was threaded into the metal "pull toggle" I cut off the zip ties. Now, however, without the zip ties available to pull on the silver "pull toggle" inside the wall, I had a problem of keeping enough pressure on each bolt in order to tighten it until the portion inside the wall made contact with the wall for final tightening. Additionally, before tightening the stainless-steel mounting bracket to the wall I had to place butyl tape on the flat side of the bracket to keep moisture out once tightened.  It took a while but with a small screwdriver keeping pressure on the head of each bolt I was able to get the bracket tight.

 

This repair took just over two hours, including the time I went to obtain parts. Not bad. The ladder is once again sturdy and the repair looks great. It is stronger than new in my opinion! You can see the flimsy, riveted bracket on the other side of the ladder. Someday it may fail as well.

READYING FOR NEXT TRIP:

Since we had planned on being at the rally and aren't going, next week is free. We decided to once again attempt to drive the Natchez Trace. We had tried to make the trip last year but in Nashville we experienced a locked front caliper. After a roadside inspection by a mobile brake service, we decided to come home and get it repaired rather than risking another problem on the road. As it turned out that was a good decision because the caliper had to be replaced. I have a doctor appointment early Monday morning in Farmington, Missouri, so after that we will head to Nashville. The campgrounds along the Natchez Trace have no hookups and no water source nor dump station. I have filled Homer's water tank to the brim and filled four jugs of drinking water. The weather looks like it will be comfortable so it should be a nice trip. I'll report.