And here we (still) are, in beautiful Swiss Valley Campground.

It's Sunday evening and we're all set to leave tomorrow morning for the Wisconsin Dells!

Yup! The truck is fixed, running like it has never before, and we'll be able to continue our summer travels like planned.

After 1 1/2 years of trouble, it looks like the Diesel repair place here in town (BK) has finally fixed all our problems with the truck.

Can you believe it? Miracles never cease!

Not that they didn't have their own problems with 'the beast' either! After replacing one injector, another one went 'out of whack' so we ended up replacing all four. 

Than we had to return it again because we had 'blow-by' from the engine, which turned out to be a small copper washer that hadn't settled, and a second time because the return line seal was leaking.

Fortunately, the injectors were under warranty and both returns were 'mistakes' on their end, so we only ended up paying for the work on the injectors.

We're very relieved to be able to get 'on the road' again, which, by the way, is only possible because Doug helped us out financially. 

He's been our 'bank' before and we're thankful beyond words!

So let me show you a little bit of our surroundings. These pics were taken during a foggy morning walk along the creek:

This gorgeous dragonfly is actually a Black-winged Damselfly or an Ebony Jewelwing ...

And these I took just before an evening storm ...

We had some interesting neighbors one day, this guy had owned a bar and had completely covered his RV with a decal of the inside of it!

Before our truck troubles, we had planned to visit the historic town of Galena, and we were now actually closer to the town than from Lena, so we went ahead as planned and drove over on Saturday.

I mentioned the storm in the previous pictures, well, this was the result of it:

The Illinois river had flooded and they actually had closed the flood-gates, something that happens very seldom ...

  

This small town in northwest Illinois is known for its well-preserved 19th-century buildings like the 1826 Dowling House and the Ulysses S. Grant Home. 
A large section of the city is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Main Street is made up of a whole bunch of cute small stores. 
At a lot of the places that sold food, you could sample almost everything, and after a few of those we were stuffed which saved us on lunch!

Besides Galena there's not a whole lot to do over here. Yesterday we visited the Dubuque County Fair:

                                               

As county fairs go ... it's very 'small town USA'

We watched several animal 'shows', where they judge them against the standard ...

They do take there prepping seriously! This guy is using a hairdryer!

For some odd reason the rides weren't operative yet, which seemed strange for a Saturday morning, but oh well, we never go in any of them so we didn't really care.
We actually got in without paying to begin with, so that kind of evened it out (not on purpose, I swear, but there was nobody around at the entrance booth?).

We did golf twice while here, at the Public Golf Course of the Fillmore Recreation Area. James managed to score a great deal online: $10/pp for 9 holes with cart!

Such style .. such grace ...!

James also took the opportunity, while we were waiting, to fix everything caused by the tire blow-out, like the broken sewer pipe, the fenders and the grey tank that had sprung a small crack.

  

There was a lot of drilling, screwing, caulking and painting going on!

While he was at it, why not, he welded on a new, bigger and thicker, plate for the spare of the RV. 

The previous one had cracked due to metal fatigue.

And that spare tire was the only one that still had a white rim, so of course that one was painted black too. 

     

Can you tell that sitting still drives him crazy!?

Well, I'm coming to the end of my ramblings here. 

Merlin has a new favorite spot (yes, I know, he goes through a lot of those) 'his' blue chair in front of the RV, under the goose-neck:

Watch out for that 'Killer-cat' on guard duty ...!



                         Huh, me?

And on a sad note: finally after about 20 years (Seriously, I'm not kidding), the last of my favorite HEMA coffee cups gave up the ghost!
My morning coffee will never be the same!




OK, so tomorrow we're leaving, let's cross our fingers that the truck is truly fixed, and if everything goes well my next post will be from Wisconsin!