We interrupted our 2025 RV trip as planned due to some unforeseen circumstances and came "home " to the Ankeny Iowa area on 19 June. We have been camping at Griff's RV Park ever since. So who goes to within a few miles of your "sticks and bricks" and still lives in your Alliance coach? We do! This thing is so comfortable and we have all the necessities here. To me that says a lot about the Alliance Paradigm. We could easily live in here fulltime, and we know a lot of our Alliance family do, and typically six months out of the year we do also, but we choose to maintain a residence here in Ankeny. That is how we roll, for now.
While home we dealt with the two main reasons we diverted here: (1) our furnace / air conditioner decided to go belly up while we were on the road. It was obvious from the pictures and video our son provided we needed to replace it. 17 years is apparently too much to ask for out of appliances this day and age. Ugh! I am trained in HVAC and it was obvious it was time, so we hired a contractor to replace both, and I have no regrets. I was not factoring in that expense right now, but it is what it is. The new one should outlast me. A huge thanks to my friend and fire department comrade Frank Curtis for all his assistance, and to Andy Roberts from Roberts Heating and Air Conditioning in Carlisle Iowa for the excellent install.
The other reason we diverted home was our grandson Lucas Buehner in Battle Creek MI graduated from high school (we attended after the Alliance Rally) and enlisted in the Army. He was slated to attend basic training at Ft Sill Oklahoma so we designed the second phase of our 2025 RV travels around attending his basic training graduation there at the end of August. Well, the Army had other plans and when he showed up to enlist days after his high school graduation they informed him his basic training location had changed to Ft Jackson South Carolina. So..... the trip we had planned out to Oregon sweeping around and down to Ft Sill Oklahoma at the end of August would no longer work. I spent over 42 years in the Air Force and Air National Guard so the military change of plans was not surprising! There is nothing to do at that point but "improvise, adapt and overcome"! I am sorry we could not reconnect with all of the folks along that route. We will reschedule a trip your way!
So we pointed the nose of our truck/camper southwest from Cedar Falls and headed "home". We were lucky that our homebase campground, Griff's Valley View RV Park had an unexpected opening until 1 Aug. Perfect! So we landed here on 19 June and have been calling this home ever since.
While here, in addition to modifying our trip plans and getting our new "cold make it happener" installed at home, we were able to remotely tune into several days of our grandson Jon in Wisconsin as he competed in the state bowling singles tournament up there. He will be a senior next year and has a lot of great things going on with his college classes, employment at Kolar Arms Company and his final year of high school. ** Note to self, graduation attendance plans for 2026!! We are so very proud of Jon and all of his accomplishments.
The younger Ankeny grandson, Calvin, will be a 7th grader this next year and played 12U USSSA baseball this summer. We were able to watch many of his games including the state tournament where they placed second. He recently garnered the team hitting award for the third year straight!
So needless to say we have made the best of having to pull the plug on our trip plus we have got a lot done here at the RV as well as at home. But the time is rapidly approaching to bug outta here. The trip to get us down to South Carolina and attend Grandson Lucas's graduation is planned, and we are whittling away at the pre-departure list.
While home and doing the preventive maintenance on our coach, I discovered a slow leak from our fresh water tank. Further investigation revealed a crack in the plastic fitting where the PEX pipe connects. I contacted the factory and there is no good way to repair it. The tanks are made from High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). Unfortunately there are no reliable adhesives, epoxies or chemical welds that will hold in the long run. Hot air welding or "soldering iron" welding is a possibility but not reliable in the long run.
So we modified our trip and made arrangements with the "mother ship" - the Alliance factory, and they were able to work us in for a replacement fresh water tank installation. Better to catch it now than on the road somewhere. We are thankful a small change to our itinerary and we will be able to get this handled. I'm telling you folks, Alliance is second to none with their customer support.
So here is our trip. We secured reservations at Ft Jackson SC first, where our grandson will be graduating, and then designed the rest of the trip around that. We will have a stop near Peoria IL and then divert up to Elkhart and Alliance RV factory. From there we head south to Camp Atterbury for a couple nights then down to bourbon country. We arranged a couple distillery tours and then down to Mammoth Caves for a few nights, From there we will check out the nuclear facilities north of Knoxville before heading down to Columbia SC and the graduation. After that we will head to the coast and Myrtle Beach to see our dear friends Michael and Donna Pizzi and make our way over to Georgia to see Air Force buddy Brad Herren (and the Legends distillery!) and our friends Ralph and Lindy. After a quick stop in Tupelo we make our way to Arkansas and see our great friends Mike and Rachel Ellis before turning the corner and heading north with a stop in Missouri (hopefully to see our high school friend Elaine) and home to Iowa on 17 Sep. If your travels are going to intersect ours, holler out.
That is it for now.
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