Bill & Jan's Excellent Adventure: Leak Fixed, and Beginning to Move

Monday, September 1, 2025

Leak Fixed, and Beginning to Move

We chilled at the Elkhart Campground for the weekend waiting for our appointment with Ronnie at what used to be Marv & Tom's Truck Repair to see if he could fix our leak with a new fitting or if we would have to pull the entire hose and replace it. We got parked and immediately Ronnie came out to take a look, he absolutely confirmed it was the fitting itself, not a loose connection.

This is the manifold, reservoir, and pump for our hydraulic
slides, the circle is the bad fitting. This is located under our entry steps.

The hard part is trying to figure out where the other end of the line is, it leaves the step well, joins a hundred other lines, wires, etc, goes through the front right wheel well and then back into the coach's basement above the fuel tank, unfortunately it all disappears into an unaccessible metal ceiling over the tank. One of Ronnie's mechanics, Austin came out to try to find the hose run.

Now our appointment was originally with Stuart's, an HWH, the manufacturer of the slide system, service center, but it was arranged that they would work together to get our problem solved. It was finally decided with a lot of my added input that the solution we would go with would be to insert a new section of hose using a union instead of the very painful, read very expensive, solution of tracking down the entire hose. It was then determined that I would move the coach over to Stuart's so the owner, Andre could swage on new fittings.

Andre and Austin working on the new fittings

Austin making the final connection of the union and new hose

Then we made our way back to Ronnie's shop so we could operate the slides, check for leaks, and top off the lost hydraulic fluid. It was successful, but unfortunately it took most of the day and made it too late for us to try to go anywhere other than back to the Elkhart Campground.

We still ended up with one extra day and decided it made the most sense to see if we could just add a day to our existing reservation at the Starlight Campground in upper Michigan, Mancelona near Traverse City, Leland, Petosky, Charlevoix, etc. And that is what we did.

We had heard of a neat place with a good restaurant in Leland, a town we had never been to so off we went. It took us right through Traverse City, and wow, we had forgotten how busy that area was. The Cove restaurant sits right over where the Leland River from Lake Leelenau feeds into Lake Michigan in a historic area called Fishtown.

We had a great lunch, you knew we'd have to get back to food soon, right?

A very good seafood chowder

Whitefish basket

Walleye basket

And yes we can report the walleye won hands down, although the whitefish was good as well.

They had one of the few remaining Amphicars left parked outside!

And one of the strangest looking boats moored nearby, homemade???

Had a nice round about ride back, it is very pretty country up in this area, lots of cute towns and beautiful lakes.

On our ride the next day we found a Polish restaurant, Polish Kitchen with great reviews and gave it a try, we don't know very much about Polish food, but really enjoyed it. We decided to try a bunch of different items, like a sampler.

Started off with a delicious cup of borscht

Then from the top, Bigos, a sauerkraut and meat stew; Krokiet, a crepe stuffed with
cabbage, mushrooms, carrots, and onions in a mushroom sauce; then
a gobaki, a cabbage roll stuffed with rice and pork

Then kielbasa and sauerkraut with pierogis

It was delicious and we had plenty leftover for lunch the next day:-)

We then drove back through Petosky and Charlevoix, it is always amazing how blue the water is up here in the Great Lakes.

We wanted to again see the Mushroom houses in Charlevoix, they were designed and built by Earl Young starting in 1918 through to the 1950's, 30 houses in all, he didn't use blueprints, quite amazing and unique. Here's a small sampling.