Thursday 23 July - Baraboo WI

8am sausage and pancake brekkie at the rally.  Joined the caravan south to the House on the Rock.  Amazing, spent over three hours there.  It’s a rather segmented house designed by Alex Jordon and built on a chimney of rock which is incorporated into the design.  The Infinity Room is spectacular - 300 feet long, 220 feet of which hangs unsupported 156 feet over the valley floor below. It is anchored by many tons of concrete at the other end, I forget how many.  The “room” has over 3,000 windows, so mostly glass and once you get to the end of the walkable space you can look down through a window in the floor – spooky and you could definitely feel the structure move as people walked along it.   Also incredible is the world’s largest carousel, featuring 269 handcrafted animals, 182 chandeliers and 20,000 lights.  The music rooms were equally fantastic.  Only for looking at, no riding on.

But still no cell phone coverage so drove 20 miles west to Madison City to get cell coverage.  Extremely disappointing news!!  The kit was not shipped on Monday as promised.  We phoned the manufacturer to give them a good old Kiwi bollocking (Kim’s way).  They have the kits but they are not complete, they need bushings.  500 bushes were sent earlier in the week but they went AWOL.  There are another 500 bushes on their way but they won’t have delivery confirmation until mid-afternoon tomorrow. I am sure you can imagine the colour of the air on receiving this news!!!  We have wasted four days not only in time but additional cost of rental car and accommodation!  Anyway we found out the factory sells the kits 5 at a time to a place in Florida, we phone them, they have 8 in stock, good!  Dottie, the very helpful parts lady, tells us it is 5pm there and she won’t be able to get hold of a trucking company to find the best way to expedite delivery until the morning (Friday).  She promised to get onto it first thing in the morning.

The evening meal was an authentic hot dog dinner, Kim was looking for macca’s afterwards.  Then we went down to the square and listened to the Circus Brass Band, it was pretty cool and very loud.

Friday 24 July - Barabloo WI

The motel manager/owner phoned us at 6am to see if we were staying on!! Of course he didn’t get much sense from us at that ridiculous time, we were dead to the world.  Woke properly an hour later!  No coffee in our room.  No shampoo either.  Had ‘negotiations’ with motel manager/owner (he’s  from India, but at least he was interested in cricket) and agreed on a rate to continue staying here for another three nights, through till Monday morning! 

Drove 5 miles to get cell phone coverage to sort out the kit for the coach.  It seems to be under control for now.  Dottie will email confirmation of the order and the freight details.  The trucking company promises that for $808 they can get the kit to Elgin by 5pm Monday.  We could have had it delivered by noon if we felt like parting with $1,726.  5pm will be fine I think.  Phoned George, they can’t take the old one out in advance for various reasons so it is agreed they will start work on it first thing Tuesday morning with a view to having it on the road for us by the end of the day.  Still means we will miss our parking date at the FMCA rally and the first of the training sessions we had booked in for, but at least we won’t be forfeiting the whole non-refundable US$400.

Missed breakfast so came back to Baraboo for brunch : )  Broke my jandal – my only footwear here : (

Went to Walmart to find replacements, didn’t have any in my size and I mean none : (  Bought a smaller pair for $0.99 to save me going barefoot  : /

Went to Tanger Outlet Mall, bought some cool jandals, threw out 99c jandals.  Bought a dress too, starting to smile a little : / 

Back to Baraboo, find laundromat, no clean clothes (except new dress).  Missed Circus World tour : (

Going to happy hour now : )