June 11, 2013
The kids had a great time playing with their cousins.
They rode bikes
(Sparky said they better be used 5 times on our trip or he’s never bring bikes on a trip again),
played in the tree house
rode the zip line
and the tire swing.
Sparky, who is normally not mechanically inclined or even remotely interested or motivated by auto-anything decided to peruse the Winnebago and Chevy owners manuals. As my sister-in-law sat visiting Sparky came flying through the door to tell me he had found not one, but two batteries! They were located in the floor below the driver and passenger seats and had to be accessed from the side of the floorboard in the well of the step just inside the door. Wow, found at last! They didn’t have a date on them but if anyone else had a hard time finding them like we did then we were sure they were old. So glad I paid $25 for that original owners manual.
Two hundred dollars netted us two deep cycle marine/ RV 575 cca batteries and a few quarts of SAE oil. Sparky installed the batteries and tried the generator and it fired right up! Wow, I am SO glad that we didn’t have time for a re-build to occur. Having a stop day just a few days in was a great opportunity to finish up things we hadn’t gotten to and also to fix anything new we noticed.
My brother helped Sparky get the TV up and running. Nice, the extra things we didn’t have time for before we left are coming together. I realized we could call ourselves the electronic bus because we have: 1 smart TV, 4 smart phones, 3 laptops, 2 iPads, 2 Kindle fires, 1 iPod, 1 iPod radio, 2 external speakers, 2 DS, 1 leapster , serius radio, GPS, automic digital clock, hot spot and a partridge in a pear tree. And don’t forget charges, inverters, and batteries, (lions and tigers and bears) oh my!
Legoboy and his cousin decided they wanted to sleep in the tree house overnight and my sister-in-law and I tried to scare them, but no such luck. They just said, “hi mom”… We then encouraged them to ride the zip line in the dark with only their headlamps. Aren’t we good, safe, protective moms? LOL. The 9 yr old cousin went first as he was more confident with this being his zip line and all. He rode in the complete pitch dark. Legoboy was a little bit more apprehensive and decided he needed the headlamp. He screamed the whole way but was laughing too. They both kept saying, “that was awesome”. We pulled them back up to the platform of the tree house so they could slip off the seat and be right back in the tree house without touching the ground. 
Sister Bear decided to bunk with her little cousin inside and Sparky, Carboy and I had our third night in Flyer. I give it a five on the comfort scale, really missing my memory foam.