Well…come Thursday morning we looked about and all the stuff that was gonna get done on the rig was done so we quickly packed up, paid our bill…which was much smaller than it would have been if we had gotten everything done…and hit the road. We’re sort of irritated that the two upgrades we wanted the most didn’t happen…but the service department just really didn’t seem much interested in trying to figure out how to get them. I’m guessing that New Horizons management has put their emphasis on production of new units for sale rather than trying to provide great after the sale service to current owners…more money in the former I ‘spose. Seems a bit penny wise/pound foolish to me as with no sales rooms and little to no advertising the company primarily relies on word of mouth from current owners to get new customers. That being the case…tales of great after the sale support and willingness to figure out how to meet requests would go a long way…but mebbe that’s jus me.

Anyhoo…we got on the road about 0900 for the 171 mile trip to St. Joseph MO where we pulled into the Beacon RV Park about 1330. On our approach from the highway we were going through sort of an automobile row part of town, ya know the one where there’s dealer after dealer in a row…and wondered whether this would be a nice place or not. The front office area didn’t look too great either but by the time we got pulled into site 14 we had changed our thinking. Once you’re inside the park it’s a pretty nice place with grass and trees around and it turned out to be pretty quiet…we’re downhill a bit from the main road so most of the traffic noise goes over us. The folks that run it are friendly…so we’re calling it a keeper.

We lazed about the rest of Thursday afternoon out under the tree in the Zero Gravity Recliners…then had to close up the house and turn on the A/C by evening time as it didn’t ever really cool down inside…and the A/C has been on ever since as it’s been in the upper 90s all weekend.

Friday Connie worked awhile then we goofed off again…between the 3 week vacation and chasing repairs/upgrades all week in Junction City we were pretty beat down.

Saturday we headed off to the Pony Express Museum here in St. Joseph…which was the eastern terminus of the horse mail relay back in 1860-61. It was started by  William H. Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B. Waddell who were already partners in a freight business to the west at the time. The service (officially it was not the Pony Express but rather the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company) guaranteed 10 day service (15 days in winter) for mail from St. Joseph to Sacramento CA through the central route over the Rockies…through present day Nebraska and then via Fort Bridger WY and Salt Lake City UT to Sacramento…cutting north of most of the Rockies through South Pass and then over the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe. Cost was $5 per half ounce which was later reduced to $1 per ounce…the system operated for about 18 months from April 3, 1860 through October of 1861…when the cross country telegraph was completed in late 1861 it spelled the death knell of the service…which we found a bit strange because while you can do a lot by telegram there were still some things for which an actual paper document needed to be sent. While it was in operation it was far faster for getting mail from the east coast to California than any of the alternatives which included ship around Cape Horn in South America and a ship to Panama followed by coach to the Pacific coast of Panama followed by another ship to California. It grossed about $90,000 and cost $200,000 to operate so as a service went it was a money losing idea. We found it sort of funny that something that only existed for 18 months ended up being so famous in western lore. We didn’t take many shots in the museum…here’s one of the monument outside the restored stable.

After our tour we headed home with stops at CVS (cheater reading glasses), Radio Shack (headphones for Connie) and the Hi-Vee grocery for some more veggies…we’re trying to eat a bit lighter with more fresh fruits and veggies so that we can lose some weight and get back to where we want to be. We headed home then back out to Mass at 1600 so we wouldn’t have to get up early today. Dinner last night was seared Ahi Tuna…pretty good piece of fish we found…and we’re having steak tonight.

It rained most of the night and morning but looks pretty nice now so mebbe Neil will go out and get a ride in before dinner. He’s working on some computer backups as well…all of their 50 GB of photos taken on vacation need to get backed up to the  external drives Neil keeps in the car and BAT.

Cyas.