Living Our Dream

Lehman's Hardware

Berlin, OH - Events of Monday, July 21 to Thursday, July 24, 2014

Except for working a few projects, we have been pretty lazy here in Berlin, OH. One of the days we were hanging around the motor home, we noticed someone working over at our neighbor's rig. It was an Amish electrician. Wait, what? Although the Amish are very industrious and they seem to do very well in the building trades, we're not sure about an Amish electrician since the Amish shun the use of electricity. We found out later, even though the electrician was pretty sharp, he was unable to diagnose a minor electrical problem that our neighbor had been having for quite some time. Several other electricians before him were unable to track down the cause either.

Amish electrician

On Monday, we decided to go back to Der Dutchman for the breakfast buffet. Since just about everything is closed on Sundays, all the tourists go home so we had the restaurant pretty much to ourselves on Monday. The buffet was as good as it always is.

Margery loading up her plate at Der Dutchman breakfast buffet

By Thursday, we were tired just hanging around, so we decided to go to Kidron, OH to check out Lehman's Hardware. Lehman's specializes in hard to find items like wood stoves, non-electric appliances and tools used by the Amish as well as a variety of other farm implements, old fashioned toys and kitchen items. It wasn't a super-exciting sightseeing outing; but hey, it was better than all the repair projects Paul has been working on.

On the way to Lehman's, we stopped at the bakery at Der Dutchman and shared an apple fritter. The apple fritters are delicious, but they are pretty big and quite dense so they are very filling. We usually get only one and split it because neither one of can eat the whole thing. And we couldn't stop at the bakery without having a cream stick, so we shared one of those, too.

Paul about to take a bite of an apple fritter

After Der Dutchman, we followed back roads to Kidron. We like to drive the back roads of Amish Country to see the well-kept Amish farms.

Amish farm

You can also get a closer look at the Amish buggies with the slower-paced traffic on the back roads.

Amish buggy

Another buggy full of kids

With large families and plenty of hard farm work to do, the Amish farmhouses almost always have laundry hanging out every day except Sunday. There is so much laundry to do, many of the farmhouses have long clotheslines that run on pulleys from the house to the barn.

Amish farmhouse with a long clothesline

Another long clothesline

When we arrived at Lehman's, we knew right away from all the Amish buggies parked across the street it happened to be auction day at the livestock auction. There was an accompanying flea market, so we decided to go check it out before going into Lehman's

Flea market at the cattle auction across the street from Lehman's

The flea market wasn't all that big, so we turned our attention to the cattle auction. An Amish farmer and his son were just arriving with a wagon hauling a cow to sell.

Amish farmer bringing in a cow to sell at the auction

We went inside and watched the auction for a while. They bring the livestock into a pit area where they can be viewed by the potential buyers in the gallery. The auctioneer and his assistant stand in a podium across from the gallery.

Cattle auction

After watching the sale of several cows, we headed back across the street to Lehman's Hardware.

Lehman's as seen from the balcony of the shops across the parking lot

Inside the entrance, they had an exhibit of 3-dimensional wood carvings by Amish craftsman Paul Weaver. Except for a few of his early works which have some separate pieces glued in, all the later works are carved from one solid block of beechwood or mahogany.

Several of the 3-dimensional carved scenes by Paul Weaver

Detail of one of the scenes

We spent about an hour at Lehman's. Margery had a good time looking at the kitchenware. They have a lot of hard to find gadgets.

Kitchen gadgets galore

Paul spent a lot of his time looking at the garden tools. He ended up getting a garden trowel called a Soil Scoop. He had one back when we had a stick house, and now he needed one to use to plant annuals when we get back to Florida this fall. It's very handy for planting in a bed that has already been prepared and mulched with either plastic or organic material because its curved shape enables you to remove the soil from a small diameter hole without disturbing the surrounding mulch.

Soil Scoop

As we said, going to Lehman's wasn't a big, exciting sightseeing adventure, but It was fun to look around at the hand-cranked flour mills, sausage stuffers, wood-fired kitchen stoves, apple peelers, kerosene lamps and old fashioned toys.

More Projects

Berlin, OH - Events of Monday, July 14 to Thursday, July 17, 2014

We didn't do much last weekend except hang around the motor home. We also hung around on Monday; and while we were playing with Freeway, we noticed his duck, which is one of his favorite toys, was coming apart. Freeway likes cloth toys, but he is very hard on them. Margery frequently has to "do surgery" to sew them up, but the duck was pretty old and it was beyond repair.

A while back, Margery realized the duck was just about on its last legs, so she ordered Freeway a new toy to take its place. It is a dinosaur, and it's almost as big as Freeway is. We "retired" the duck and got out the dinosaur.

Freeway and his new toy, Barney

Freeway LOVES the dinosaur. We call it Barney since it's purple. By the second day, Freeway figured out how to pick up Barney so he didn't trip over it and so the feet wouldn't block his vision when he was carrying it.

Even though living and traveling in an RV full-time may seem like vacation everyday to some, life on the road still involves maintenance and repairs. When we're stationery, we do some of the more involved projects. On Tuesday, Paul decided to tackle one of those.

We have been having a problem with water and ice accumulating on the bottom of the refrigerator section of the Samsung RF197 residential refrigerator Paul installed about 2½ years ago. This is a known problem with earlier versions of this refrigerator caused by a design flaw that allows the drain tube to freeze up. The tube is supposed to take water from the ice that melts off the cooling coils during the defrost cycle and drain it to a pan under the fridge where the water can evaporate. With the drain tube blocked by ice, the water has nowhere to go and overflows into the refrigerator section. Because the freezer is directly under of the refrigerator, the floor of the refrigerator is quite cold so some of the water freezes.

Samsung has a new aluminum clip that goes on the defrost heater coil and extends down into the drain tube to keep the drain tube from freezing. New refrigerators are being shipped with the clip already installed, and Samsung will also install the clip at no cost if customers experience the drainage problem while the refrigerator is still under warranty. Unfortunately, our refrigerator was made before Samsung started using the clip, and it was already out of warranty when the problem started.

It only takes a few minutes about once a week to mop the water out of the bottom of the refrigerator with a dish cloth and remove any ice, but that was getting old so we decided it was time to install the new clip that's supposed to fix the problem. Paul chose to do it himself rather than to pay for an expensive service call from an appliance repairman.

The part number of the clip is DA61-06796A. Paul ordered it from ApplianceParts365.com for $1.97 plus $6.50 for shipping. Their service was very good with the part arriving in about 4 or 5 business days.

Paul decided to replace the clip on Tuesday because the weather was predicted to be relatively cool. To get at the cooling coils, you have to remove a plastic cover at the back of the refrigerator; and to get at the cover, you have to remove the food and all the shelves. Since we only have a couple of small coolers, most of the food would have to sit out for an hour or two, so Paul didn't want to do the work on a hot day.

Shelves and food removed showing the panel at the back of the refrigerator

Installing the clip turned out not to be as big a job as Paul feared it might be. The only problem was that a small piece of the foam insulation that is attached to the back of the plastic panel broke off because it was stuck to the ice that had formed in the area around the drain tube. Fortunately, Paul was later able to tape the piece of foam back into place with some high/low temperature aluminum duct tape he happened to have. Keeping the foam intact is important because it also helps direct the flow of cold air.

In the photo below you can see the black defrost heating coil with an ice dam covering the drain tube below it.

Ice dam below the coils

Paul melted the ice dam using Margery's hair dryer, and he melted the ice that was down in the drain tube with boiling water. He then installed the new clip.

New clip installed

Everything went back together fairly quickly, and within about 2 hours of turning the refrigerator back on, it was back down to around 40º. After several days, there was no sign of water in the bottom of the fridge. Here's hoping the clip keeps doing its job.

Paul likes to keep busy by working on little projects, but he definitely prefers upgrade projects to repairs. Unfortunately, Paul recently had another repair that was a little more critical than the refrigerator. One morning there was a pop as he was flushing the toilet. After the pop, the flush valve didn't close when he released the pedal, and the water valve didn't shut off. Uh-oh. Fortunately, Paul was able to pull the pedal back up with his toe to close flush valve and shut off the water. When he took the pedal assembly apart, he found the return spring had broken.

Unfortunately, you can't buy just the spring. The spring is only available as part of a spring cartridge, which consists of the spring and a lever in a plastic housing. Tamper-resistant screws prevent dis-assembly of the cartridge because the spring is under fairly high tension. Paul ended up ordering the cartridge from Factory RV Surplus where he got the ladder parts. Their price for the part wasn't the cheapest, but total cost of the part ($24) combined with shipping ($14) was competitive with other vendors. When Paul called them, they said they had the part in stock and that they would ship it the next day. Because they are located fairly close to Berlin in Elkhart, IN, the part only took one day to arrive.

Spring cartridge

Paul installed the new spring cartridge as soon as we got it on Wednesday. Although the part is expensive, the fact that it is a pre-assembled cartridge makes it very easy to install. Just pop the cover plate off the side of the foot pedal, remove two screws from the water valve and move the valve aside. The spring cartridge sits behind the water valve. Just slide out the old cartridge and push the new one into place. Then reinstall the water valve and pop the cover plate back on. Done.

With those repairs out of the way, we were looking forward to something more interesting. Stay tuned.

A Couple of Projects

Berlin, OH

When Lora and J. Michael travel in their RV, they use a soft-sided crate for their 80-pound boxer, Gunnar. They had previously loaned the crate to someone whose dog ended up putting several big tears down the middle of the front screen. Lora subsequently sewed up the tears to repair them; but on one of our outings over the 4th of July weekend, Gunnar figured out how to break through the stitching where the screen was repaired. Lora and J. Michael got back to their trailer to find Gunnar snoozing in the middle of the floor instead of in his crate. Fortunately, he was a good boy and didn't get into any trouble.

We had some shade screen left over from making a new fabric skirt for the tow shield we use when towing our Equinox behind the motor home. The shade screen is similar to the original screen in the crate except ours has smaller openings in the weave. Margery volunteered to try to repair the crate using the screen we had on hand and to return the crate to Lora and J. Michael the next time we see them.

One morning, Paul got the screen out of the storage bay then measured and cut a new piece for the dog crate. After pinning the new screen into place, Margery set up her trusty Singer Featherweight sewing machine outside on the picnic table and got busy.

Margery sewing new screen onto the dog crate

The results look pretty good. Here's hoping the repair holds. It should because Gunnar normally isn't destructive, and he isn't obsessed with getting out of his crate. The previous repairs must have just attracted his curiosity.

Repaired dog crate

While Margery was sewing, Paul walked down to the office to pick up a package that had arrived with supplies for another project. A couple of months ago just before we left Florida, Paul heard a crunching sound while he was climbing the ladder on the rear of our coach. When he checked it out, he found several of the plastic end caps that hold the ladder rungs in place were badly cracked.

One of 4 cracked end caps on our ladder rungs

Further inspection revealed numerous other end caps had smaller cracks like the one in the center of the cap shown in the photo below.

One of the smaller cracks in numerous other end caps

When Paul researched the problem online, he found the ladder components used on our motor home are very common and are used on many RVs. He also found out that cracking of the end caps happens fairly often, especially after the plastic has been exposed to the sun for several years. The good news is the screws that hold the rungs in place are long enough to go completely through the vertical rails of the ladder. Even if the cap would be completely disintigrated, the screws would probably still support your weight, although the rung would be pretty unstable if both end caps were gone. Because it is a potential safety issue, you may want to check the end caps for cracking if you have a ladder on your RV.

After going to two Camping World stores (one in Florida and one in Alabama), a couple of large RV dealers in Alabama, one large RV parts store in Alabama, and after checking numerous online RV parts suppliers, Paul found no one seems to stock replacement end caps even though breakage is a fairly common occurrence. Paul finally found replacement end caps at Factory RV Surplus. Since there were only a few end caps on our ladder that weren't cracked, and those were badly weathered, Paul decided to replace all of the end caps. They are kind of expensive at $5.50 a pair, but he figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Our ladder has 9 rungs, so the total cost to replace all the end caps was around $60 including about $10 for shipping.

Because we were leaving Alabama and were not going to be in one place long enough to receive a package, we waited until we got to Berlin to order the new end caps. The service from Factory RV Surplus was excellent. Paul ordered the end caps right before the July 4th weekend, and they arrived shortly after. Each pair of end caps also includes new screws - four shorter screws to hold the pair of end caps to the ladder rung and two longer ones to hold the rung to the ladder uprights.

End caps with new screws

As Margery was finishing up the sewing project, Paul started removing the ladder rungs and replacing the end caps.

Paul replacing the ladder rung end caps

Worst of the broken end caps

It only took about an hour to finish the ladder repair. Now Paul can feel a little more confident when he has to get up onto the motor home roof.

Another advantage to being on the upper level of the campground other than having better Verizon reception is being able to see the sunset. The evening after we finished our projects, we were treated to a beauty when the clouds from earlier in the evening lifted just as the sun was going down.

Berlin Sunset

We spent the next few days relaxing and running a few errands including stops at Walmart, Walnut Creek Cheese and a few other places. As we said, we don't have a lot planned for the summer, but we're bound to find something to do. Stay tuned.

Eighth Anniversary

Berlin, OH - July 10, 2014

We started our eighth year of full-time travel at a repair garage southeast of Cleveland. We had to have the throttle body actuator on the engine of the motor home replaced when the motor home unexpectedly went into reduced power mode on I-77 after leaving Amish Country in Berlin, OH last summer.

After a one-day delay to get the motor home repaired, we hit the road for a tour of New York and New England. Except for a few business trips for Paul, neither one of us had been to New England before.

The first stop on our year 8 summer travels was a visit to Niagara Falls. Paul hadn't been there since he was a kid, and Margery had never been there.

From Niagara Falls, we traveled to New England. We went through the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, then we dipped down to visit Lowell, MA and the area to the north of Boston.

From Boston, we headed north again to Bar Harbor, ME. By far, the Bar Harbor area and Acadia National Park were the highlight of our summer. We loved the rocky Maine coast and the way it changed appearance depending on the time of day and the level of the tide.

After reluctantly leaving Bar Harbor, we headed south with stops in Topsham, Maine; Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts; Newport, Rhode Island; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; and Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.

Some of the things we saw in year 8

New England was the last major U.S. geographic area we had to visit. With the addition of the 6 New England states plus New York, we have explored 46 of the 48 contiguous states since we started in 2006. Depending on the hurricane season, we're hoping to visit the last two, New Jersey and Delaware, on our way south this fall. We are not planning to go to Alaska with the motor home, but we may take a cruise there someday. We obviously won't be going to Hawaii with the motor home; and because of the great distance and expense, we won't be probably be going there without it either.

America is an absolutely beautiful country with a wide variety of landscapes, flora and fauna that are breathtakingly exquisite and delightful. The uniqueness of each area is fascinating and beautiful in its own right. You never know what you'll find around the next bend in the road. We are so grateful for the opportunity to travel, see, hear, and learn of God's creation.

After touring New England, we spent a couple of weeks in Pittsburgh for visits with family and friends and for our annual doctor appointments. From there, we made our way south for a month in Lower Alabama before heading to our snowbird roost at Blueberry Hill RV Park in Bushnell, FL.

Year 8 travel route

We traveled about 4,300 miles in year 8 - not nearly as far as the 15,200 miles we went in our first year, but more than the 2,600 miles we went in year 7. In our eighth year, we made 29 stops with an average length of stay of about 12½ days per stop. In year 7, which was a slow-down year, we made 25 stops for an average of about two weeks at each stop. Even though we went a longer distance in year 8, our travel style was still somewhat leisurely.

During our stay in Florida, we decided to take advantage of a special offer by the owners of the RV park and commit to two years at the "6 & 6" rate in exchange for having pavement and landscaping added to our site and for getting a storage shed. The "6 & 6" rate means we can use the site for up to 6 months a year and store our RV on the site for the other 6 months. Even though we probably won't stay for the full 6 months most years and we definitely won't be storing our RV on the site, the price for "6 & 6" is only a little higher than what we would pay for staying 5 months at the regular rate. We usually stay 4 months, but we plan to increase the length of future stays to around 5 months. We decided the small increase in cost was worth it for the convenience of having pavement and so Paul could do a little gardening and also have a shed where he could keep a small workbench and some tools.

Blueberry Hill site before

Blueberry Hill site after

We left Florida late this spring and stopped in Alabama. Our stay there was shorter than usual because of the fact we hung around Florida much longer than usual in order to see our paving and landscape get completed. We then headed north with stops in Memphis, Nashville and Crossville, Tennessee. From Crossville, we ended up back in Ohio's Amish Country again.

Even with our 9th year promising to be an even more leisurely travel year than year 7 or year 8, and with our commitment to the "6 & 6" rate at Blueberry Hill and the resulting likelihood we will stay in Florida longer than before, we're still not ready to give up RVing in the foreseeable future. We plan to keep rollin' down the road.

July 4th Weekend

Berlin, OH - Events of Friday, July 5 to Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Scenic Hills RV Park started filling up for the long holiday weekend on Thursday afternoon and evening. A few others, including our daughter, Lora, and our son-in-law, J. Michael, arrived on Friday. They were planning to stay through the long 4th of July weekend all the way until the following Tuesday. We walked over to greet them when they pulled in around noon then left them to finish setting up. We shared a snack in the afternoon, and we shared dinner then s'mores around the campfire in the evening.

We started off Saturday morning with the breakfast buffet at Der Dutchman restaurant in Walnut Creek. Der Dutchman specializes in Amish-style country cooking. The breakfast buffet, which costs $8.29, has scrambled eggs, French toast sticks, pancakes, fried mush, a couple of kinds of potatoes, biscuits and gravy, bacon, sausage, hot and cold cereal, fruit, frozen fruit slush, pudding, cinnamon rolls and more. We ate way too much.

J. Michael, Lora and Margery at Der Dutchman

After breakfast, we headed east to the Walnut Creek Amish Flea Market.

Entrance to Walnut Creek Flea Market

Walnut Creek Flea Market is one of two nearby flea markets, both of which are indoors and both of which have mostly new merchandise consisting primarily of decorative items with a country flair. The Amish are excellent woodworkers, and both flea markets have nice selections of well-made, solid-wood furniture.

Inside Walnut Creek Flea Market

Paul especially liked the tables made from slabs of burl wood at one booth. The contrast in textures between the smooth surfaces and rough natural edges of the slabs and the rich contrasts of wood color made the pieces very interesting.

Tables made from slabs of wood burl

From the Walnut Creek Flea Market, we headed back to the west and stopped at Walnut Creek Cheese, which consists of a complex of buildings. One area has groceries including bulk foods, meats, cheese and produce. There is also a section with various jellies and jams and a section with kitchenware.

Walnut Creek Cheese

We looked for a new napkin holder in the kitchenware section with no luck, but we did get some fresh produce Margery needed for a recipe for dinner and we got some cheese for snacks.

After finishing our shopping at Walnut Creek Cheese, we headed for our last stop of the day - the Holmes County Flea Market, which is located just down the road from the campground. We can see the flea market from our site at Scenic Hills.

View of Holmes County Flea Market from Scenic Hills RV Park

Inside the Holmes County Flea Market

After walking around the flea market, we headed back to the campground for an afternoon of relaxation. We shared dinner again followed by another campfire.

Paul had been fighting a cold, so we just chilled out around the campground on Sunday while Lora and J. Michael went to play mini-golf in Sugar Creek, which is several miles to the east of Berlin. Shortly after they returned, we got together again to share another dinner and a campfire.

On Monday, Paul was feeling somewhat better so we all went onto downtown Berlin to check out a couple of the shops there. Downtown is always busy on weekends, so a Monday was a perfect time to go there except for the fact it was threatening rain.

Our first stop was Sol's Craft Mall. Sol's is a craft co-op that has three buildings. The photo below shows the main building with the faux turrets called Sol's Palace. The second building is to the immediate left, and the third is out of view to the right.

Sol's Craft Mall

Crafters rent space by the month then pay a 15% fee on all merchandise that Sol's sells for them. The spaces are separated by pegboard partitions. Some of the crafts are hand made while some are obviously mass produced.

Craft spaces at Sol's

Cute sign for sale at Sol's

There was also some nice country-style furniture displayed at various locations throughout the mall as well as some that was featured on a ledge across from the second floor balcony.

Country-style furniture

Paul liked the chainsaw-carved bears that were out on the porch. Prices ranged from $125 for the smallest one to $350 for the largest.

Chainsaw-carved bears

We had planned to check out some of the other shops along the main street in Berlin, but it started to rain pretty hard while we were in Sol's. When the rain let up a little, we made our way back to the car stopping into a couple of shops on the way. We decided to leave the rest of Main Street for another time when it wasn't raining.

From Main Street, we hopped into the car and headed to Hershberger's Farm and Bakery. Hershberger's started out several years ago as a roadside produce stand, but it has turned itself into a pretty big tourist attraction. Today, they have a petting zoo, a store selling country crafts, a pet shop, a produce stand and a bakery. The also sell home made jams, jellies, pickles and the like.

We stopped first at the petting zoo where they have sheep, goats, cows, ducks, rabbits and more, plus pony rides. Some of the babies, like the calf Lora is petting in the photo below, are allowed to roam free knowing they won't stray too far from their mothers who are in pens.

Lora petting a calf at Hershberger's

We got some fry pies for dessert at the bakery and a tomato for our lunches. We made our way back to the campground where we all relaxed a while.

Later in the afternoon, we all headed out to Der Dutchman for dinner. Lora got a hot roast beef sandwich and the salad bar, Margery and J. Michael got hot turkey sandwiches and the salad bar. Paul, who was still a little under the weather, just had the salad bar. Everything was delish!

After dinner, we went back to our rig for some games and for our fry pies. Yum!

Since rain was headed our way, Lora and J. Michael got on the road early on Tuesday morning so they could make it home and get unpacked before the rain hit. After they left, we went out and ran a few errands, then relaxed back at the rig. The bulk of the rain ended up drifting off to the north. We only got a brief shower in the early afternoon in Berlin, so it was no problem for Lora and J. Michael to make it home to Pittsburgh without getting wet.

As we said, we'll be here in Amish Country most of the summer, and we'll be taking it easy much of the time. We'll probably eat out some, we may do a little sightseeing, Margery will work on her crochet projects, and Paul will probably have a couple of small projects around the motor home. Since we won't be doing any major sightseeing, our blog posts may be a little less frequent than they usually are in summer; but we'll still have some news to report on, so stay tuned.