Remind us not to do this again

Remind us not to do this again.  Miserable drive south.  We avoided snow – barely.  But rain and road crud abounded. 
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When did we leave Puget Sound?  Before the snow, before the freeze, but not before the rain.   Enjoyed a weekend with the family and our special great grandson Kolden at the Warm Beach Christmas lights in Stanwood.  

Lucky us not too cold and not wet.  Nice spot at Kayak County Park – a new camping area for us.  A mile long beach down the hill.  
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Transporting ourselves down to Puyallup to allow convenience to visit with a couple friends and to enjoy spending the day with our friend Caroline who turned 106 that day!  With several of her friends and folks who lover her, we enjoyed cake time, visit time, and lots of hugs.  

"Smile, Caroline"

That day was the most rain Seattle had ever had in one day.  5.38"  Caroline's caretakers basement apartment flooded as did many in Seattle that day.  

Bremerton always has more rain - 7" this day

Traffic back to Puyallup was at a standstill every direction.  Way nasty.  Access to our RV required boots.  (Didn't that already happen to us this year in Wisconsin?)  

Waterfront campsite

The worms yell "help:

One more day and we were able to leave on a dry day all the way to the Oregon Coast….where it rained again.  Blah blah blah.  
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Stops at Tillamook for a toasted cheese sandwich, cheese curds, and took in the remodeled self-guided tour.  

Heat Shrink isn't bad, the Metal Detector is interesting, 
but the Blue Octopus vacuum sealer gets our attention

Trying all the different varieties of Tillamook cheese

Curds which used to be a by-product has found it's calling, and the price was $3 more a pound than last visit and more than their top level cheese.  
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Continuing south looking for gray whales which should be heading south at this time.  Didn't see any spouts.  
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Landed Christmas Eve in Florence Oregon at the Elks RV lot.  Lucky us!  The Elks has a community-wide free dinner on Christmas day.  We were invited.  

Wasn't this nice!

It was great.  They served nearly 950 during the 3 hours.  Very organized.  Very good.  
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Onward!  Rain and spots of sunshine between showers.  Roads covered with tree pieces from a storm that had passed by recently.  
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Onward! Thru the Redwoods.  More branches and twigs on the roads and a few broken redwoods.  Caused us no trouble.  
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We arrived in Ukiah … to rain.  This time there was no flooding … yet.  As we got closer to the California Sacramento Delta the weather got better.  Sunshine as we traveled through wine country.  
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Starting to notice road damage from recent storms.  Notice???  Bumped through hubcap sized pot holes.  Shook us all up.  A wheel cover nut lost it's way.  The dinghy braking system wasn't happy with the bumps and sent us an emergency message telling us so.  But no actual problem.  Then we lost the auxiliary lighting to the little car.  Whew.  
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New Year's Eve in Visalia.  Favorite town with all the groceries, shopping, and eating you'd want to do.  At this point, we decide which pass to climb to get around Los Angeles.  Just a day or two before both passes were closed due to heavy snow.  

We do not drive in conditions like this!

US News Headline

On our travel day – no rain – no snow – no freeze!  Yea!  Up over Tehachapi Pass – snow mounds on the shoulders.  From there, we traveled Pearblossom Highway to I-15 and down to Riverside to meet up with and camp with Laurie's brother.

OSHKOSH TRIP SUMMARY - SUMMER 2019

"THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME"

Land of Memories Park, Mankato, MN

In our travels east we didn't travel through Kansas.  But we got to know more about the people and history of the states we did travel through.  

We tried to stay on US Route 12 going east.  A few detours because roads were closed due to high water and we chose not to travel straight through the center of Minneapolis.  

First really long trip in our new to us Vista 29'.  The engine held up giving us an average of 7.28 per gallon with air conditioning always on and pulling the C-Max.  

The 6 cubic foot refrigerator/freezer was smaller than we are used to but we have a 3 cf tailgate fridge.  Good place to store drinks, breads, fruits, and veggies.  Still learning to take advantage of that.

The whole wall slide worked - thank goodness.  Learned to make sure everything is out of the way when we bring the slide in as the slide was stronger than the bamboo hamper.  Boo hiss.  Found out the slide is suspended on raised rollers and does not slide on the floor.  This let us keep our throw rug in position.

Solar panels and awnings for which Dean never saw a use were used a lot especially in the hot sunny days.  Batteries were always topped by the solar panels and with the endless (kinda) sun in the mid-West the awning worked nice to cool us down.

With all the storage in this unit, some drawers are huge and would be loaded heavily.  Dean put in stronger catches and we had no longer had a problem with drawers opening while traveling.

The tailgate kitchen was a great place to BBQ from.  And as said above, the refrigerator helped a lot.

We managed 9 days with no hookups without running out of water or filling our waste tanks. (A few Navy showers though).

We had son and grandson aboard for a week and we all still speak to each other.  Son says Loft bed is comfortable (we use it for storage).

Still a problem with the odd black tank plumbing...a 6' long cable opens the gate valve and all of that crud has 6' to run before getting to the sewage hose.  Not sure how we'll fix that but at the tank probably install a tank rinse.

Due to some sketchy plumbing, we ended up with a plumbing leak when running on the fresh water pump.  Dean, the mechanic, was not looking forward to figuring out how to fix it.  As it turned out we were in a town that had all the component$$ necessary and Dean learned a bit about PEX plumbing and even has a new tool!

Learned that the jack leveling system works good but this system is not made to manually retract one jack at a time.  Different from our previous jack system (HWH).

The two front tires that had flat spots when we purchased - still do - tires look ok but go lumpity lump lump lump.  Some roads worse than others.

Again we learned that we do not enjoy trips traveling on schedules.  For most of the trip we spend calculating our next 10 nights to make sure we get where we want without having to travel over 150 miles a day.  (Remember, old friends, we used to only go 50 miles a day.)

ROUND UP 

TOTAL TRIP DAYS                                   =  77       
DAYS  RV TRAVELING                             = 46
DAYS AT RALLIES & EXPLORING          = 31

TOTAL MILES TRAVELED                       = 5093    (TO OSHKOSH = 2265)                         
MILES PER GALLON AVERAGE             = 7.28 
HOURS ON GENERATOR                        = 37

PRICE PER GALLON                                = LOWEST: $ 2.51 Glasgow, MT         
                                                                   =HIGHEST  $ 3.09 Vancouver & Clarkston, WA

CAMPING - (no rest areas, no WalMarts)  =HIGHEST $47 Cardwell, MT  |    
                                                                    =LOWEST $5 USFS Quartz Flats, MT 
               ELKS - 5   |   GOOD SAM - 7  |  PASSPORT -  0   |  GOLDEN AGE - 11
                    

UPPER MIDWEST OBSERVATIONS

THE UPPER MID-WEST

The New Your Times recently put out a detail on how wet the midwest was this year.
Click the link below:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/11/us/midwest-flooding.html

A very wet year in all of the states in the mid-west.  Farmland was too wet to plant and there were many new little (or not so little) ponds everywhere.  In June, as we traveled through the area we saw MANY acres under water.  When we traveled the area in August we saw fields with healthy crops but the fields had irregular borders around the water that was still left in the field.  The farmers just worked around them.

Also from the above link - this is the area we traveled in this summer

SOUTH DAKOTA

Every town of greater than 100 folk seemed to have a city park and a place to camp and for RV's (utilities) to spend the night.  And their counties had numerous campgrounds too. 
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We couldn't cross this bridge taken out by the flooding to the campground on the other side
at Fisher Grove State Park

Not Miss Lily, nor us, nor the Vista liked SD's pavement on Hwy 12.  Concrete sections with spacers in between.  Kathump kathump ad nausem

Possibly a saddle wouldn't fit on this dinosaur

The Grand River Museum in Lemmon was a nicely done facility with history, art, dinosaur bones and many interesting displays explaining the Christian interpretation of natural history

Grand Casino Bay Campground turkey herd Lake Oahe, Missouri River

MINNESOTA

Western Minnesota was still trying to recover from their wet, wet snowy winter and many dirt roads were a mess.

They were stingy with state maps when we requested one, and various travel bureaus had none either.  We had a hard time finding our way around the state with all the roads and bridges that were closed.  Finally we picked up a state BICYCLING map for our travels.

1^st time through we had to skip a few parks as the rivers were too high in the campgrounds.   At Land of Memories park the Minnesota River was too high and our reserved site was underwater.  Ranger said take any other site.  As there were only 2 campers in the park, we had plenty of choices.

Passed a signpost to Keister, MN (as in "Preparation H" ads), but by that time we were getting leery of traveling off main roads in Minnesota so passed it by.

But we got a waterfront site on the Mississippi in Winona.  This campground had still been flooded two weeks prior.

Toured the SPAM factory in Austin,

Far-East versions of SPAM

Camped in Sleepy Eye,

Named for Chief Sleepy Eye who had droopy eyelids

Saw the many buildings forming the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

Some of Rochester's Mayo Clinic Buildings (Google Images)
No stops for us this time

 Hardly ever mentioned as something to see was Rochester's Ear of Corn water tower.

Second time through Minnesota – our road was detoured then after 12 miles the detour had a detour and once again we detoured another 6 miles by then we were 20 miles north of our destination and 30 miles east we gave up and headed to North Dakota.  Still recovering from the floods.

WISCONSIN

The residents really really like to mow lawns and trim– huge lawns – and huge golf course- style mowers.

Yards full of different kind of deciduous trees planted in no pattern around the lawn.

The zero-radius mowers cut close to the trees so maybe they didn't have much trimming. 

And, oh yes, they have a big air show annually!

NORTH DAKOTA

Think maybe the ND roads commission hires the farmers to mow and bale all the roadside grasses.  Make a little money for the farmers?

ND seemed to have thunderstorms most every night.  We made it out of the state with no hail damage.  One afternoon though, we got to meet a good number of our fellow campers standing in the campground bathroom during a Severe Tornado Watch - siren and all.  After 40 minutes and no storm action where we were, the Weather Service canceled the Tornado Watch.

Very thick and dark clouds and then the siren was heard

Traveling through the state we ran into several 12-14 mile long pavement replacement construction.  Nicely done but very long slow and narrow segments.

ND also bragged about being the Continental Divide (Jamestown) (east-west),

Laurentian Divide (north-south), and the Geographic Center of North America (Rugby).

We saw fancy ice fishing houses with wheels being used as camping trailers in the summer.

The key to identifying the ice fishing home camper was the wheel wells for retractable wheels.  .

Found a plan of an ice fishing house.  Thought for sure it would have a stove for heat in it but it didn't.  Did find many ice access holes but no refrigerator or heat source (duh).

They live in 2 time zones – we never knew what time it was.

Many old farm buildings collapsing - area still being farmed but these buildings not being used.

BAKKAN OIL FIELDS GO BOOM

Wanted to see the Bacon..no the Backen.. no the BAKKEN oil field in the Williston Basin of North Dakota where a lot of fracking and pumping are going on.  

This is the only picture I found that showed the wells -
each dot is a well (but maybe even more than one well at that location)

What a massive undertaking.  Most traffic on the roads are semi trucks.  
Some tankers coming from the pumps with signs:

Crude Petroleum Oil

Others with rock to assist in creating a new pump area.  

And more with Sandboxes carrying a special sand mixture used in fracking.  

We passed several wide-load parades with tanks, pumps, electricians, and at least one truck carrying the orange windsock flown at each pumpsite. 

Each tiny little existing townsite has multi-story apartments springing up to house the workers.  Workers that put in pumps and pipes, haul the oil, wire the pump,  pump the crude oil and haul to a storage tank complex where it finally gets hauled away and pumped into our cars.

Most of the traveling is on dirt roads.  

They all end up on the paved road throwing mud and rocks.  

We got bashed with a melon size crunch in our windshield 

by one of the thrown rocks.  

TED ROOSEVELT'S PARK – Badlands, Bison, and Prairie Dogs

Finally got to see the badlands of north Dakota in Theodore Roosevelt National Park– not as spectacular of color as those in SD but nice.  

Saw wild horses, wild buffalo, and wild prairie dogs.  Bison and horses were brought into the park so are they really wild.  Their ancestors were brought into the area to help build a herd.  A National Park zoo.  Traffic backed up at the sight of any animal. 

momma bisons and bison babies - looks like they spend a lot of time there

"wild" horses

Prairie Dogs were the most fun

Will have to save the town of Medora, and the north section of this national park for another time.  Put just in case you get there before us....

SCANDINAVIAN HERITAGE CENTER MINOT

Seeing this church on the way into Minot put it on the must see before we left town.  

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This park was set up for and by the local clubs with Scandinavians heritage (Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden).

Beautiful walk-around park.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON -
I was told that his stories were always dark and didn't end nice.  Really?

LEIF EIRICKSSON - Icelandic Explorer 

SIGDAL HOUSE: 

An original 1770 built home brought over from Norway and rebuilt.  

Came with short ceilings (folks were shorter) and an ogre in residence. 

Rosemaling on cabinet doors from about that same time

STABBUR – storehouse

DALA HORSE – a Swedish symbol

GOL STAVE CHURCH

Full size and true to detail church from the town of Gol, Norway.  

A Christian church from around the year 1200.

Interior

Carved around the doorways

You've been told!