Focht Family Blog

I finally put the pictures of the deck on the computer. Here is our finished deck:

Timmy has officially started Cub Scouts and Nathan has found groups in Statesboro and Pennsylvania for them to do things with. Timmy is a Lone Scout which means he doesn’t have a troop. Timmy will go to a meeting for the first time on Monday. Here is Timmy in his uniform….

Samantha has started Junior Girl Scouts. Samantha is a Juliette which is the Girl Scout version of a Lone Scout. The groups around here are finishing up their year end things but there are a few events that we are going to go to. The one she is most excited about is a all-nighter at the mall! :) Here is Samantha in her sash…

Tinkerbell is adjusting to life in a RV. She has learned how to get up and down the stairs by herself and she is doing pretty good with potty training. I took a few more pictures of her since she is now off of her blanket…

We just can’t seem to stay away from Nappanee for long. I think the RV is homesick. While we were driving to Pennsylvania we started having problems with the headlights. We called Newmar and they said that we could come in for service on Wednesday. We made it to Nappanee early in the afternoon on Tuesday and parked at the laundromat. We haven’t been able to find a laundromat the last few days and we had 4 large baskets full instead of our usual 2. After laundry we parked in Camp Newmar to get some sleep before our early wake up call.

They worked on the RV today and fixed the headlights. It was a bad switch and was covered under the chassis warranty. Have you noticed that most of our issues have been Spartan, not Newmar? They want to touch up some paint on some new screws they put in tomorrow but we have decided we will leave tomorrow and just touch up the paint ourselves. Tomorrow we plan on leaving Newmar by 9:00 and start our trip to Atlanta. I think we may stop for a meal in Nashville at one of Nathan’s customers but we will see.

Nathan and I have decided that we should stay in one place for the summer so that the kids can get some time with other kids. So we came up with a list of what we wanted in a campground and I stumbled upon a nice campground in Transfer, PA named Shenango Valley RV Park. So, instead of heading south when we left Iowa we headed to Pennsylvania so we could check out the campground. We called the owners and they told us we could come out and look at the campground on Monday because they were at an RV show in Erie. We arranged to have dinner on Sunday with my Aunt Sue and Uncle James in Cleveland.

As is often the case with our travels we changed plans. We drove to Erie and spent the night there on Saturday so we could go to the RV show and check out the campground exhibits. Erie was a scary town. We actually had a teenager throw a snowball at us while driving through the streets downtown. I told Nathan I was glad that it was just a snowball.

The RV show was held at the Bayfront Convention Center. It is on the lake and the lake was frozen. I took some pictures of the icy lake and of the marina with all of the boats out of the water…

The RV show had 18 campgrounds exhibiting but we decided that Shenango was still the only one we wanted to look at. Next we drove back to Cleveland for dinner with my aunt and uncle. Here is a picture of my Aunt Sue and my mom while we were waiting for dinner…

After dinner we drove to a Walmart in Chardon, OH for the night. The next day we went back to Pennsylvania to check out the campground. We had a lot of fun running up and down the hills covered in snow. We checked out a couple of areas for possible sites, the playground, the pool, and the river. We ended up putting a deposit down on two seasonal sites at the top of the campground further away from the playground. The sites are further away from overnight sites so we figure there will be less traffic on “our” street. Nathan is already designing the deck he is going to build so we can sit outside and watch the kids. We will try it for a season and if we like it then we will continue to “season” and travel during the winter months.