Walk-In and Look Around

Belleville, MI, was a nice place to stay for a few days. The Wayne County Fairgrounds and RV Park are exactly like your imagination tells you: lots of grass, with gravel interior roads and sites very close together. Probably because the price is reasonable there are mostly seasonal campers or workers in the area. A 25 year old motorhome two sites down apparently had electrical issues and ran the generator all night and most of the day. Annoying, but not fatal. However, we were happy to leave this morning.

Interstate 94 heads west out of Dearborn, eventually going through Chicago. We sampled about 80 miles of it before heading south on I69 toward Ft Wayne, IN.

Like last year, we seem to be running south just ahead of the anticipated "turning of the leaves".

Turning west again on Highway 6, we drove directly into Nappanee, IN, the home of Newmar, our coach maker. We don't have a formal appointment, so we checked in with Jeanne, the lady who makes the Customer Service thing happen and found that she had been "warned" of our arrival! She started the paperwork and directed us to the rv overflow parking area. These sites do not have sewer connections and are very close together, but water and 50 amp electricity is available, and the area is secure. Perfect for a few nights!

The weather in Nappanee is very cool with a brisk wind. We turned on the television to check the local weather and got hooked on the Weather Channel's special coverage of the huge storm approaching New England. When we left Michigan this morning we ran into several areas of severe rain, but didn't give it much thought until tonight. It turns out we have dodged a bullet by leaving the area between Michigan and Maine today. Buffalo, NY, has received over two inches of rain in the last two hours. Bangor, Maine, is expected to get five inches of rain overnight. D's friend in Harrisburg, PA, is in the middle of a downpour and may endure some flooding.

The conditions are just right, with a "tilted trough" according to the Weather Channel, that is funneling moisture from the south into the northeast. Tropical storm Joaquin (get it….walk-in….) is approaching the US, bringing a huge amount of moisture with it. The potential landfall is somewhere on the east coast this weekend.

The entire East Coast is being impacted by this very wet situation, with locations in North Carolina all the way to New England getting rain measured on the "inches per hour" scale. While we sympathize with all the people that must endure this weather pattern over the next few days, Donna and I are extremely happy to have just skirted the trailing edge. We're hoping that our luck continues as we go farther west!