Ever since we went on the road we have always said "Its all just part of our great adventure" when strange or unpleasant things come along. In the past ten and a half years we have had pretty much all of the types of experience that life typically brings, from having our home towed away by a wrecker to planning & attending the funerals for family members. We lost our faithful companion, Fancy and we brought Muffie into our lives. But just when we thought that we had experienced most everything, economics and government regulations forced my former employer, 3M Company, to make major changes to how they provide supplemental coverage for retirees who are on Medicare!
Thank heavens that 3M went to the trouble of provinding a third party councelor to help us through all of this.
There are so many choices and insurance jargon with all of them, that even with help this was a very time consuming thing. We began all of this several weeks ago, digging through many pages of information on the Medicare website and reading volumes from the 39 different companies that supply possible coverages to people from Livingston, TX. Fortunately, 3M is paying most of the cost for our needed coverage and so that allowed us to have some of the most expensive coverage available, and thus the best and most complete.
When we first learned that new regulatons were forcing the company to stop the "excess coverage" plan that they have supplied us for the past ten years, we did not expect things to go well. But to our amazment, we actually will now have improved coverage with less out of pocket expense than with the old plan. Excellent insurance coverage is out there and available to seniors on Medicare, but the cost is such that we would not have been able to afford it, were it not for the generous subsidizing of my former employer. What a relief to have finished the process!
But what an undertaking. We probably had at least 40 hours of research in the project before we got our telephone appointed contact with the councelor. At that point, both of us were online and he was on a speaker phone, to walk us through the selecton process. After two hours on the phone Friday evening, thanks to our having already made some of the decisions, we had everything but applications completed. The councelor then called us again on Saturday and that took another two hours and at the end links were emailed to us for our completion. On Sunday we spent another hour or so on the internet, but only part of it worked. Finally, after about an hour on the phone and another 30 minutes online, the thing seems to be complete! What a relief! I'm still not sure about the adventure part...................
It was a beautiful day today in Kentucky! The temperature was in the upper 60's and it was sunny. What a wonderful day for nearly Thanksgiving. With weather predicted to be about to go bad, we took the grandkids to a park. This one is on the edge of Ft. Knox, but it is a city park, the land having been donated. It was once the city water supply but is now a very nice place for families and yet just on the edge of town. We did some hiking and general recreation, and of course grandpa had to take pictures. It did make for a very nice outing.
The weather man tells us that things will be changing in a few days with cold and rain expected. The area has been dry, but has had several days of rain now since we moved back to Ft. Knox so we are very ready for some good weather. It was particularly good to get out as Pam & I have just finished suffering through the process of a major change in our health care program and all of the research and enrollment headaches. I suppose that we should be greatful for what we have, but with government regulations having forced changes in the plan provide from 3M, it really doesn't sit very well. Even so, it does appear that we will still have pretty good coverage into the future.
They say that all good things must end and so it seems. On Monday we said goodbye to Rich & Ginver Davidson and moved back to Ft. Knox RV park, Camp Carlson. We will return to Lee Bottom in the future at least to visit as they have really become like a part of our family.
We finally got some very much needed rain so perhaps the grass seed that I spread on the airfield will grow now! We look forward to spending a couple of weeks with our kids and grandkids here.
It must be getting close to time to move as today I finished my last project for Lee Bottom. Rich & Ginger have been 
considering expanding the volunteer program here and recruiting more than one couple to help for the big annual fly-in and the first thing to go with that is more RV sites. They put in a second site at the north end of the runway that has water and sewer, which was where we stayed when we first arrived this year. Today I completed a project to get power available on their property across the road from the south end of the runway so that there are both 30A and 50A outlets available for an RV site there. There is water and so all that remains is to run a sewer line to the newest site and the system is there so some plumbing is all that remains to be done.
My part of this was to make the power available. The main feed from the meter was into a box which had several available circuit breaker slots. The property was purchased not long ago and the box was in need of attention with a lot of rust from a co
ver not fastened shut. I had to cut one of the screws off and brush and repaint the face plate, then run feeds for a 50A and a 30A RV outlet, installing new circuit breakers to feed them. Electrically it was a fairly simple project but like most things done with old equipment there were a few glitches along the way. Even with a few challenges the project has now been successfully completed and next spring the plumbing for sewer will be done, but not by me.
Most mornings Muffie and I get up and start the coffee around 6 to 6:30 am and with winter coming on that means that it is usually still mostly dark. I 
enjoy watching the sun coume up and the soltitude of the early morning, especially when we are in rural areas, which is the kind of place that we usually spend most of our time. At Lee Bottom that means watching the sun come up over the hills just across the river on the Kentucky side. There are frequently deer on the airport at this time, with coyotes and assorted other critters also frequent visitors. Down along the river there is also often wildlife coming down for a morning drink before going somewhere to hide for the day.
Yesterday the early light caused a view of the river that really grabbed my attention! It has been quite chilly at night for several weeks now and we have had some freezing weather, but most days have been at least 50 with many into the low 70's do there has been almost no ice even on the dog's water dish. I looked to the river as it began to be light, and at first it looked like chunks of ice, floating in the water!
Actually, as the sun rose over the ridge it became clear that it was just a factor of the light reflecting from the water and the "ice" quickly dissappeared! That is fine with me as we did see just a little sleet fall one morning since the weather began to change and show is something that I do not miss. With luck it won't do that until after we are gone, in about two more weeks.
Today started off in an unusual way for us. Frequently there will be fog that rises off of the river in the early morning hours while sun is shining from clear skies above, but today was especially so. We found that by 8am there was bright sunshine everywhere except for about three feet of fog right on the ground. It was much like what coastal areas call a marine layer, but 
far from the ocean. It did make for some very interesting views.
The day was a pretty good one too as plumbing has never been a favorite job of mine but that was what I had been asked to help with. Ginger & I first went into town to a house that they are remodelig to address an issue there and by noon we had it figured out, and corrected. In the afternoon we looked into a problem of too little water volume into the restroom/shower that is provided for visiting pilots. The shower had so little flow as to be unusable and the toliet tank fill seemed to take forever. We disassembled and flushed lines and blew air through them bringing out a considerable amount of debris and, it worked! The water flow is now restored and things work as they should once more.
A beautiful morning lead to a very successful day!
One of the things that we have found we enjoy about spending extended time in locations as we travel is that it gives us a chance to explore not only the interesting places, but also to discover the history of an area and to experience the ties to the past. A question frequently asked about this location is, why is it called Lee Bottom Flying Field. The answer to this comes in two parts. Back when airplanes first began to be seen in the skies of America, all places to land were just open fields, usually planted to grass and so the precursor of an airport was the "flying field." Since this was the first such facility along this part of the Ohio River Valley, and because it has always been a grass field and even though it is now a maintained runway it is still of grass so the owners chose to use the old name. Lee Bottom Airport is a currently registered landing field, recognized by the FAA.
The name "Lee Bottom" comes from the local community which was originally "Lee's Bottoms" because a family named Lee first settled here to claim the land and to clear it for farming. At one time, nearly this entire section of the valley was owned by R.J. and Sarah Lee. A small town grew up on land sold by the Lee family and at it's peak it had both a sawmill and a brick factory, as well as the usual local businesses. Today, little is left of the community that was once here, but a few remnants can still be found in parts of the runway and on properties 
adjacent to it. For those who look closely, there is an old grave yard, just to the north of the runway's end and in the timber across the road. It contains the graves of the founding couple, as they watch over the valley that they opened, for eternity!
Today was a beautiful day and so we had a number of planes stop by. One of those was a rather interesting one, a Russian built YAK-50. It was a 
Russian entry into the world of aerobatic flying. There are quite a few in this country today and one stops by here 
from time to time. After a short visit, the pilot returned to his craft to start the engine and go. Alas, even airplanes sometimes fail to start! This unique craft has an onboard air system and the starter is air driven. For some reason it has lost air to the point that it would not crank, a bit like a low battery.
Like most airfields we do have a ready supply of compressed air, but that wasn't quite as simple as one might think as this is a Russian built airplane and so the air fittins are unique to it and do not fit American air supplies! So what do you do when an airplane does not start? You have to crank it. But not with a crank but by hauling on the propeller. This can be an interesting thing, even tough it was the standard way of starting an engine, many years ago. In fact, many of the planes that fly into this area were that way originally, but most have electric starters today.
With most airplanes you would just jump start them, much like you do with an automobile, but not when the starter runs on compressed air. But the airplane is not started, and has flown away and our routine here has returned to normal.