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. 
.

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.