With our stay in North Platte NE complete…we departed last Sunday for the 330something mile trip down to Junction City CO…birthplace of our Majestic at the New Horizons RV factory. We pulled in about 1500 and got ourselves parked in front of the repair bays on the right side of the property…then had some leftovers for dinner and had an early bedtime as we were tired and had to meet Ken (service manager) early Monday morning.

We went and visited Ken at 0631 right after he started work on Monday morning…figuring we needed to be first in line in order to be done by Friday afternoon…we have an appointment in Elkhart for bearing maintenance next Monday. Gave him our list which included 3 items…adding a support for our microwave at the rear, we replaced it a couple years back and the bracket that holds it to the wall is failing meaning only the bolts from the cabinet above are holding it…repainting the lower front end under the bedroom and behind the kingpin with rock guard paint…and repairing the T-molding on the rear of the LR slide that was damaged in northern CA when we inadvertently dumped the passenger side wheels into a rut in the dirt turnaround. He said fine…we told him we needed to be done by Friday…he said fine and headed off. To our amazement by 1300 on Monday the bracket was installed and the molding installed and ready for paint…and the rock guard paint was on order from the local supplier they use for paint. Late Monday he told us that he would probably get us into the paint booth Wednesday evening which meant we would sit around doing nothing on Tuesday. We figured that was situation normal for service visits based on past history.

Tuesday about noontime…he knocked on our door and told us he had changed his plan…we would go into the paint booth Tuesday evening so we needed to move out. We headed over to the Motel 6 (Tom Bodett left the light on for us) about 1500 after they took the rig off for painting. We showed back up about 0820 Wednesday morning and the painting was done and we were back in front of the service bay…it al looks great. That meant we were done but by the time we officially figured that out it was about 1200 so we decided to just stay and head out Thursday. We were scheduled to overnight in Higginsville MO about 30 miles east of Kansas City on Saturday night anyway…and after checking to ensure site availability we went ahead and setup a reservation for Thursday through Saturday nights. We went out and had some sushi for dinner…amazingly pretty good for Kansas…way, way better than the sushi in Cody WY…then stopped at Walmart for some groceries. 

Our friend Robert had arrived Monday for some work…and although we had time to chat with him for a couple of short periods he is in the throes of battery and tire issues…and with us being at the hotel on Tuesday night we didn’t get a chance to have dinner with him and a detailed chat about life since we saw each other last.

Thursday morning we hitched up and were ready to go a bit after 1100…we knocked on Robert’s door to say our “until next times”…no answer…turned out he was asleep so he didn’t hear either that or the text or phone ring.

I have to say…things have improved considerably for service at the New Horizons factory. Ken moved from the main building out to an office in the service facility…which gets him out of sight of the customer lounge and employee lounge. In addition…the new CEO Brian is slowly changing the culture of the company to be more customer and service oriented…and we have to say it’s a most definite up-tick. I can’t say for sure what improved things…but this is the first time ever that we had no issues with getting what we needed accomplished and ahead of schedule to the good.

We headed east out of Junction City and south around Kansas City ending up at Great Escape Campground in Higginsville MO. We had stayed here before…and we recognized the buildings and layout when we arrived…but at least as far as Neil was concerned it wasn’t what he thought it would be even though he recognized it when we pulled in. He was thinking of another place we overnighted in the past somewhere in the middle of the country…it was located in the same place relative to the freeway exit as Great Escape is and somehow he got the two of them mixed up. No worries though…we quickly checked in and pulled into site 57…one of their super sites which means it’s wider and longer than most…right down by what they call the lake but we would call it a pond. It had poured rain as we headed toward Kansas City…but by the time we got east of town most of the storm had thankfully passed north and west of us so it was dry in Higginsville. 

We went over to the local winery/brewpub/eatery for dinner…had a decent but not really worth $20 bottle of wine and an outstanding mushroom and roasted garlic pizza…it had fermented sourdough crust that was really, really tasty…too bad there wasn’t just a bit more of it.

We’ve got nothing at all planned for our stay here in Higginsville…we need to go fill Big Red with diesel as we need to fill up once between Kansas and Elkhart and we’re already unhitched here while our next stop is just an overnight no unhitch required site. We’ll need some DEF before we get to Elkhart but will just pull around in the truck stop where you can pump it instead of having to get multiple boxes and put them in. Neil’s grilling some lamb chops today with fresh grilled corn and grilled balsamic mushrooms…and we’ll finish last night’s white wine at Happy Hour and open something or other to go with the lamb. Tomorrow is the Alabama game then off to Mass and an eatery she found up in town. 

Sunday we’ll be off 330 miles through St. Louis to Casey IL then another 265 via Indianapolis IN on Monday to Elkhart where we’ll park at the MORRyde factory for our scheduled service on Tuesday Sep 17. We’ve got another appointment at the Quadra Bigfoot Leveler factory in nearby White Pigeon MI on Thursday…and then a scheduled stop in Cincinnati 269 miles south on Saturday Sep 21. If we get done early enough and can move Quadra to Wednesday…we’ll head on over there and if we’re done early we’ll see about getting into Cincinnati OH a day or two early…but mostly we’ll be hit and miss for those few days not knowing where we’ll really overnight until the day before probably. 

Once we get to Cincinnati…we’ll be back on schedule for the eastbound portion of the US-50 trip having just missed a little of it between Kansas City and Cincinnati…after our extended stay in Cody we’re looking forward to some Fun Stuff©…although I’ve got none of that for ya today.

Interesting stuff found on the net.

I don’t know what to think about the Democratic presidential candidates…apparently since basic Civics is no longer a required course in high school none of them learned about things like constitutional rights and what is and isn’t legal. For example…O’Rourke says that “Hell yes, we’re going to forcibly take your AR-15s and AK-47s”…but there’s a little trouble with that. First off…an AK-47 is a fully automatic military rifle that is already illegal under the Federal Firearms Act of 1934 unless you have a federal firearms permit. Second…the AR-15…despite what you read in the media about it being an “military style assault rifle”…is nothing more than your basic semiautomatic rifle…just like every other rifle in the world except for single shot bolt action rifles or muzzle loaders. The difference is that it has a detachable magazine…which may or may not have a lot of capacity…and it is black and looks scary. It’s also arguably the most popular hunting and target plinking rifle in the country depending on which source you believe…and it was the target of the much lamented by liberals Clinton era Assault Weapons Ban which did pretty much nothing to reduce crime. However…I can understand that liberals and gun haters want to get rid of them…but then there’s that pesky second amendment. I’m even fine with liberals and gun haters trying to get an amendment passed and ratified to repeal the second amendment. However…they claim that’s too hard and that is why we need “common sense gun control”…essentially they don’t have support to repeal the amendment so they want to nibble around the edges…just a little now but then next time they’ll be back wanting another nibble. Nope…ain’t happening. The amendment is pretty clear…and despite the liberals claims that it doesn’t apply to “military weapons”…as I noted the AR-15 isn’t a military weapon and back in the late 1700s private citizens could own their own artillery pieces if they wanted to…so the amendment clearly didn’t limit by intention or by wording. As I said…go ahead and try to change it…it’s hard but that’s because the founding fathers deliberately made it hard…because they wanted to prevent politicians from screwing it up without a real majority of the population supporting things.

Another example…Medicare for all…which not even the liberals most fervent partners in labor unions support. It will cost the government somewhere between $10 trillion (Democrat estimate) and $20 trillion (Republican estimate) over the next 10 years to implement. Even at the low end…that’s another trillion a year added to the current $4 trillion federal outlay…a 25 percent increase. Obviously…this will require a massive tax increase to fund…at least Bernie Sanders admits that this is true but all the rest claim that it will be paid for “out of savings”. Not sure how that works…and it’s all BS anyway…but that’s what they claim.

Third example…Ms. Warren’s wealth tax. She wants to tax…in addition to increasing income tax on rich people…the net worth of people over $50 million by 1 or 2 percent a year depending on how much money you have. This is essentially just a confiscation…but there are a couple of problems with it. First…it would require determining every year the net worth of all of those rich people…and that’s pretty impossible to determine. For instance…how much is a Van Gogh painting worth if it’s not sold…or how much is a privately held business the size of say MORRyde where we’ll be next week worth? Second…even if this impossible valuation could be done…it could certainly not be accomplished by any government bureaucracy on an annual basis. And the biggest problem…it’s unconstitutional. The constitution specifically says that any direct tax shall be apportioned according to population with the sole exception as authorized in the 16th amendment that an income tax can be applied directly to individuals. Some Democrats are claiming that the 16th allows a wealth tax…I guess they just can’t read. That’s the problem with loose construction of the Constitution as opposed to strict construction. The latter says that “the constitution says what it says” and the former says “it means whatever we want it to mean today” and “it’s a living document that needs to be reinterpreted for modern times. Strict constructionists (i.e., conservatives) believe that you can apply the rules and words in the constitution to modern times but you can’t just invent new rights out of thin air.

Don’t any of those people know how the government is supposed to work according to the constitution? Apparently not.

Got ya on that one…didn’t I?

Cyas.