It was a dark and stormy night when I reached Mark… for him, not me.  He was still driving and he was near Lake Michigan after having crossed two and a half states.  Every so often he’d say, “Wow!” and I’d know there had been another massive lightning strike like you only get in the Midwest.

Mark was exhausted.  He said that when he was getting ready to leave the Walmart parking lot in Manchester, TN this morning, a big truck clipped his other side mirror and loosened it.  He had to screw it back down before he could go.  Then there was a lot of road construction on his route and traffic was often at a crawl.

When I called him, he was about forty miles from the Goshen Fairgrounds where he plans to settle tonight and tomorrow night so he can conduct his business.  His GPS couldn’t find the fairgrounds so he had set it generally for the center of Goshen.  I went to Google maps and found where he was and where the fairgrounds were and was able to talk him through how to get from point A to point B.

I remained on the phone with him as he pulled into the fairgrounds and found the RV parking.  Unfortunately, all of the RV sites were back-in and he wasn’t sure how he was going to back in with a trailer on the back of his RV.  It was made all the more difficult in the pouring rain and the dark.  He kept getting out and looking at what he needed to do.  Finally, as I understand it, he ended up driving into a back-in site from the back side, which is generally a no-no, but it was around 11:00 his time and he was tired and just wanted to go to bed.

He didn’t have time to take any pictures today, but I took a screen shot of the street view I took of the fairgrounds he’s staying in tonight.  Remember, this isn’t a real-time shot but something that was probably taken during the summer:

Goshen Fairgrounds

You can see the RV parking in the lower right corner of the screenshot.  You can see a body of water at the top of the photo, and there’s a straight brown line going at an angle from top left to center right.  That long brown line is a railroad track.  I hope he gets a good night of sleep!

Please be praying that Mark accomplishes what he went to Indiana to do.  There is an RV supply place in Elkhart which is just northwest of Goshen.  Mark plans to go there tomorrow to try to set up a business account with them.  This is important because the one RV supply place in Door County views mobile RV techs as competition and refuses to sell to them.  That’s part of what caused the demise of the last guy who tried to set up a mobile RV business in Door County.  This is also why Mark is going to have a competitive edge in Door County.

As an aside, I have to say that I am very proud of my man!  Last fall he went around and met all the campground owners in Door County, gave them a survey to find out if there was a market for him to go into this business full time, and wrote up a business plan.  He attended a small business training one weekend in Green Bay, and then, through a lot of hardship, he attended the ten week training in Florida to become a certified RV tech.  Now he is establishing business sources and connections.  He’s going about this all the right way.  We have been living on a shoestring, but he has designed his own business cards and ordered a couple sign magnets for the truck.  He printed up his own brochures at home.  It may not be the most auspicious beginning, but as his business begins to grow, he can do a better job of advertising.  So far, he has been building this business on our own dime without a business loan.  Between Mark’s hard work and determination, and God’s blessing, I am seeing Mark’s dream begin to come to fruition.  If you would keep him in your prayers as he embarks on this adventure, I know God will grant him success.