After a great night’s sleep, we woke to our first sunny day this week and, as all of the major items we’d come to Forest City to have worked on at the Winnebago factory had been satisfactorily completed (admittedly, we did not test/checkout every last one of the minor repairs), we were itching to get on the road again.
We’d also had the factory perform some overdue scheduled maintenance, install an internal 50A surge protector and replace our roof-mounted digital aerial (seems two overhanging tree branches which we hadn’t seen and had hit the aerial had a significant and detrimental effect on our reception).
As we were reading our motor home for departure, we ran into a minor problem when one of our bedroom shades, which had just been repaired to resolve that issue, wouldn’t go up properly.
The good news, we were able to get on the schedule to have this issue addressed relatively quickly. Yet, it was almost noon before the job was completed. Finally, however, after topping off our fresh water tank, we were finally on the road with plenty of time to reach our planed destination in Rock Island, Illinois.
While the scenery had not changed over the past couple of days, everything looked so much more inviting with the sun having replaced the gray overcast of the past several days.
Once on the main roads, we quickly discovered that our problem of the driver’s side windshield wiper literally jumping off the windshield when we were being passed by any large truck, particularly semis was still with us and, in fact, seemed worse than before arriving in Forest City.
So, after 45 minutes on the road, we made a U-turn and reluctantly headed back to Winnebago knowing full well that unless they’d squeeze us in as soon as we got there, we were destined to spend another night at one of their Service Department (power only) sites.
Again, we didn’t have to wait too long for our rig to be taken into the shop, although it was close to 3:00 PM before they were through with it and just after the hour by the time we were on the road. Not excited about a 5-6 hour drive, we reset our expectations to Waterloo, IA, about 125 miles away where we identified a KOA which was still open in November.
Along the way we saw a few interesting houses,
old RV trailers,
Sculptures made from home oil tanks and milk cans,
transportation from another day,
and farms
before the light faded.
However, as we approached Waterloo, off to the west …
