Trip to Bob & Donna's place was uneventful. Got set up and it is still very hot. A/C still freezing up if we put it on 'auto' instead of high.

Bob had to have his hard drive replaced. Some puter place in town did it. He said they were supposed to replace his 80G drive with a new 80G drive but when he clicked on his 'C' drive all it showed was 15G. Somethings not right. I ran BelArc Advisor and it showed he had 80G but 65G was not being used. I posted this on "http://forum.worldstart.com/" which is my favorite puter help forum. Someone came back with the info I needed to partion the other 65G to a 'D' drive. Took awhile but it worked. That forum is awesome for puter help. And Bob is happy!

I posted on the RV.NET forum about the A/C problem and got the suggestion to check for the sensor. I reached up into the unit, felt around and sure enough the sensor was laying at the bottom of the unit instead of clipped to the coils. So much for help from the manufacturer or Camping World. You'd think they would have mentioned this. Fan is still noisy tho.

Off to Effingham. Our cell phone doesn't work at their house so we checked our messages. Our friend in Effingham, Danny Macklin had died. He was the owner of Danny's Place where we went for fish on friday nights. Another message said that my Uncle Wes (Aunt Marcella's husband) had died. This was on my birth family's side. They live in Windsor, Ont (by Detroit) and we got to visit them a couple of years ago. Sure glad we were able to do that. We've been wanting to get back up there but these last 2 years we haven't been able to go hardly anywhere.

We stopped at the Harrah's casino near St. Louis for the night. Next AM as we were getting ready to leave, we got a call that Kay's first cousin, Bill Wernsing, had died that night. Bill & Kay grew up together and it was rough on her. So our first week in Eff was helping/visiting with family.

Kay had to get new glasses. Her vision had changed some and was giving her headaches. Of course her prescription was a weird one so it ran $400. Now--that is just for the lenses, they reused her frames. I'm still getting by with readers from WalMart. And when I need prescription glasses the VA will supply them. Probably look like Clark kent! Or a nerd! VA is not known for their fashionable frames.

One of the other campers pointed out a Kildeer nest in the ground with 4 eggs. I took some pics and checked on them the next day. They were hatched! Took more pics and later went out to do some followup pics and they were gone. This is all within 24 hrs. No sign of the egg shells either. This bothered me so I looked up Kildeer on GOOGLE and found out that the chicks leave the nest as soon as their down dries. If I had known that I would have brought out a chair and kept an eye on them for more pics.

I masked off the compartment door that I had reskinned in Fl and sanded/painted it. Paint shop said it probably would not match exactly and it doesn't but is close. I still need to put a clear coat on it. Then I'll tackle the fiberglass work.

One evening Lyle & Diane had a poker party. Good way to see our friends by going to one house instead of us running around trying to catch them all at home. Poker, beer, food, friends=good time.

We had the slideout awning replaced while here. When Chad was on the roof he commented on how loud the A/C was. He said he would contact Dometic and see what he could work out. He called and said they would replace it with another new unit. We needed to head to Rantoul for Kay's jury duty so when we head back south we will stop in Eff and have it replaced.

Off to Rantoul with a stop in Arcola, Il to visit with my friend Ed Krzinowek for a couple of hours. After we got set up in Rantoul we drove to Champaign to have dinner with my brother, Tony, his fiance,Cathy, and our friends Don & Pat Farlow.

Next monday Kay started her week of jury duty. It wasn't bad as she got home early a couple of the days.

The toilet started wobbling even more so Kay started calling around--insurance & Monaco factory to fix it. We could get into the factory in the middle of Sept so we stayed in Rantoul til then. Insurance says they will cover it except for the deductible. WHEW!!!! I was going to try and fix it myself but it looked like the slide would have to come out to access the floor under the kitchen cabinets. I don't have the tools or know-how to do that.

Next door to us are a couple of guys that are repairing the water dept's building. They stay there for the week and go home on the weekends. I got to talking to them one day and we had a few get togethers after that. Nice guys.

Received an email from Hughes (my internet satellite provider) about upgrading my modem for a $25 shipping & handling charge. A few months ago they were charging for the modem+S&H. Ordered the new one, installed it and glad I did. I can see a big difference (better) in performance.

The town sponsored a farm show one weekend. Was this place packed! The RV park had units doubled up on all sites and many dry campers (no hookups). There were a lot of vendor RVs parked at the actual show itself. One day we were returning to the park from Champaign and one lane was closed by the sheriff and there were tractors entering the highway from a side road. As far as we could see down the side road there were tractors. And we passed about 2 miles of tractors on the highway. This is one behind the other--not spread out. Someone brought in a couple of truckloads of golf carts. They rented them for--2 seaters=$70 a day, 4 seaters=$90 a day. After the first day they brought in 2 more truckloads of carts and all of those got rented.

Our friends--Lyle, Diane & their granddaughter-Laney (spelled wrong but I can't remember the correct spelling) came up from Effingham. We drove them around, showing them my old stomping grounds. Then we stopped by the air museum. Rantoul used to be the home of Chanute AFB before they closed the base. That's how I ended up living there--I'm an Air Force Brat. Anyway the museum is interesting and if you are traveling that way it is worth a stop.

I got a new camera--a Canon SD850 IS. Nice and compact with a 4X zoom. I'll still use my other camera (10X zoom) for those long shots but the Canon is small & easy to carry.

Spent a lot of time with friends--Joe, Linda, Herb. Usually went to the VFW as I can run into old friends there as opposed to the local taverns where mostly young people hang out. I've been gone from here for over 30 yrs so I don't know too many of the youngsters. Sometimes I can't even recognize the ones I used to know. I haven't changed but they sure have. LOL

There was a small Airstream rally while we were there. Those are the silver ones you see on the road. They had big ones, small ones and many in between.

Later                                        Pictures