Laundry day in Shipshewana
A busy day in Goshen and Shipshewana
Our Rockwood pals at the FROG Rally
Tony wrote yesterday about why we attend FROG (and other) rallies. I am still coming down from the excitement of the friends, food, and activities of the 2025 FROG rally.
We had quite a day yesterday. We had sat visiting with friends Tony & Tina, and new friends Pat & Rose, the previous evening. We all chatted until our eyes were drooping, then reluctantly called it a night and went to our separate Rockwoods.
The party’s over
Saturday, the fun was over and it was time to pack up and move on. Packing up can be a chore, but saying our “so longs” is worse.
I don’t know about you, but we are terrible at keeping things stowed away when we are stationary. Being in one place for nine nights created quite a mess of — stuff to put away. I started working on that slowly, as we made our coffee and got ready for the day.
Breakfast
We walked over to the dining hall, figuring there would only be donuts on the last day but also hoping to see some people we could give hugs until next year. We were pleasantly surprised to find SOS, or chipped beef and biscuits available. Though I’ve been trying to avoid bread, I did have a biscuit and beef, and someone had kindly taken half a fritter so I took the other half. Half the guilt, maybe? Maybe.
We found people to say goodby to, and then made our way back to our MiniLite to finish packing up. We took a couple of breaks to take selfies, help neighbors, and chat with our friends.
The moment of truth
We had an appointment to get our rig weighed by My RV School, so we finished hooking up, and got in line for our turn at the scales.
We had not had this rig weighed yet, and we were pretty confident but also a little apprehensive about what the scales would show.
We got on the scales, one time for each axle, and Jeff did some calculations then gave us the lowdown on what the numbers were showing. We were in pretty good shape, and overall the weights were good. He told us we could stand to push a little more weight to the front of the truck, by lifting our weight distribution bars a bit. He had only one more customer, and said if we did the adjustment, he would weigh us again.
So we pulled up out of the way, and adjusted the bars. We weighed a second time and things were even better distributed. So we are even more confident in our set up now, and Tony has some more information to add to this hitch review, coming soon!
Behind the wheel
I told Tony that this short drive day was a good opportunity for me to practice hooking up, driving, and backing into the campsite. He agreed, so we swapped roles and I got behind the wheel. Backing to the hitch took me a few tries, but I got there before he gave up on me. Driving forward is easy enough. Our drive was all county roads, no big highway, so I did have to pay attention to oncoming traffic. The first half or so of the trip, the speed limit was 50. I finally got comfortable driving that speed, when the limit dropped to 35 and then I had trouble slowing down. Ha!
At the campground, Tony grabbed a walkie-talkie and hopped out of the passenger seat to guide me into our site. One trouble I had before, was knowing when the front wheels were actually straight. I would put the steering wheel in the right position, not realizing I still needed to turn it a whole circle more.
In the Ram 2500, I learned that the lines on the backup camera showed me if the wheels are turned. So when Tony said “straighten out” I actually could figure out when I was straight!
There is a lot to remember and pay attention to when backing into a campsite, and I was really glad to have Tony watching my every move in case I forgot something. It took me a few tries, but I finally go the trailer in the space. The Level Mate said we were level, so no messing around with that!
We unhooked, and then went back to our “regular” setup jobs. I opened doors, brought out steps, put down the jacks, etc. while Tony hooked up the water, electricity, and sewer. Then we hopped back in the truck to get groceries before the store closed.
Grocery run
We had been planning to stay in the Elkhart Campground, but while we were packing up it occurred to us that it was only for the two days of the weekend. We have a lot of plans next week, which I’ll tell you about in a separate post.
So anyway, we decided to go to Shipshewana and stay in our favorite campground there. We really like to shop for groceries at E&S bulk store, which only takes cash and closes at 3:30 on Saturdays. They - along with most businesses in Shipshewana, do not open on Sundays. We took the 12-volt Bodega cooler to carry our goodies home.
Stocked up, we were ready for our afternoon coffee fix. We drove over to Das Koffee Haus, but they closed moments before we arrived. We went next door to Ben’s soft pretzels, and had a pretzel, and bottles of coffee from Das Koffee Haus! I had a hot dog wrapped in pretzel, so I felt less guilty and got some much-needed protein with my snack.
Laundry day
Next on the agenda was laundry. We were really getting low on clean clothes!
I have used the laundry room in this campground many times. There are two washers and two dryers, so I figured my day was going to include a lot of trips to the laundry room. I had even booked a campsite nearer the building, instead of near the road where we can watch the Amish buggies all day. It’s quite a sacrifice, I tell ya.
Heading back to the campsite with our groceries, we saw Sky and Coby, who we met through Cheryl and Terry. We stopped and said hello, and they told us the the laundromat in town was really great. The benefit of a laundromat instead of the laundry room was that I could get everything done at one time. I was convinced! We put away the groceries, and I started gathering up all the laundry. There was a lot of it! I filled both bags, loaded up the soap box, and made sure I had the roll of quarters we had just purchased, and headed to town.
Suds and Duds really was a nice laundromat, and they have a couple really large washers that take a credit card instead of quarters, so I was able to save quarters for other machines (and other days) I got everything washing, then I worked my puzzles and goofed on on Facebook until time to dry. I did not use my quarters to play Galaga, but I could have; they had an arcade machine that had Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man games.
Incidentally, Suds and Duds also has a do-it-yourself carwash, if other parts of your life are dirty.
Sometimes I bring dry laundry back to the trailer to fold, but there were several convenient tables and rolling carts, so I set up a folding station and got it all done at a comfortable height. I bagged everything up and headed back to camp.
Dinner
We had planned to cook some pork chops and vegetables for dinner, but we were both wiped out from our day of moving, and the freaking humidity! The humidity has been really really high the whole time we’ve been here. We’ve run our AC pretty much non-stop for the past couple of weeks.
We decided to make sandwiches instead. Tony cut my bread, and one slice was really thick! I didn’t mind, and I piled on ham, turkey, cheese and lettuce. I was channeling my inner Dagwood Bumstead! I almost couldn’t get my mouth around my sandwich, but it sure tasted good with a gherkin on the side!
TV Time
We sat back and watched our binge-watch shows, The Good Wife and the original Night Court, then turned in a little early to rest away our big day. I also hung the new magnet/white board that we bought a few days ago.
Sunday
Today we are staying inside, out of the humidity, getting caught up on some work before our busy schedule starts up again tomorrow morning.
Stay cool out there!
