We arrived last night at another Boondockers Welcome site in Salida, CO. They are having a big kayak festival this weekend, and the town is really busy. We decided to do some sightseeing today, so we drove across Monarch Pass to Crested Butte. The Madonna Mine is one of the biggest sights on the eastern side of the pass.
Huge area was minedThe mill is still impressive
The pass is high enough that Kevin and I were both yawning a lot to get more oxygen in our lungs. We live at 800’!
The GPS told us why we had no oxygen
The views in Crested Butte were the standard lovely vistas.
Looking from Mt Crested Butte to Crested Butte
We had Father’s Day dinner tonight because tomorrow will be a hard day. We are driving all the way to Cheyenne, WY, and we have to get going early to miss the hoards coming from the front range into Colorado Springs and Denver. The roads can come to a complete halt by late afternoon so we want to get through early. Our host has been lovely here, and we are going to another Boondockers Welcome site before heading to Buffalo, WY and a real campground! We disconnected from our host 20 amp electricity as soon as it cooled down enough to turn off the AC, and we will be running on battery and solar until we get to Buffalo. Checking out the new lithium batteries!
We went back to Creede on Wednesday to drive the Bachelor Loop Byway. It is a relatively short high clearance route driving by many of the mines that made Creede the biggest boomtown in Colorado with 10,000 people.
The mines and mills were impressive. The Amethyst mine was the biggestTram and rail lines were laid along the mountain faceOld mill with tram and rail lines
The same day we went to the Bachelor Loop we also went to Great Sand Dunes National Park. However it was so crowded we didn’t do anything except drive through and double park briefly for some pictures. The reason I wanted to go so much was because the river was running. There is just something impressive about a flowing river backed by the sand dunes. However i didn’t check that the picture I took was any good before I left; it wasn’t. You will just have to take my word for it.
Our first blooming cactus! Found at Great Sand Dunes
Our last day at Del Norte was Thursday, and we decided to go to Pagosa Springs across Wolf Creek Pass for lunch. As usual, the drive was gorgeous.
From one of the scenic viewpointsTreasure Falls
We had a lovely brunch, but Pagosa Springs was so crowded we didn’t do anything except drive through the edge. What a crazy time, and it is only mid June! The biggest tourist time is usually mid July, so I will far, far away!
We left this morning for our next spot in Salida. We are staying at a Boondockers Welcome spot again. This time we are at the edge of town and parked in their driveway. It is pretty unlevel, but there is a reason Kevin keeps a LOT of leveling blocks. The hosts are very nice. The best thing is that we had absolutely no need for AC after we set up! Finally we are getting cooler weather building in.
I am not quite sure what we are doing tomorrow, but we will figure it out!
We are at a nice little RV park in Del Norte, CO called Woods and River. We got a lovely shaded RV site right on the Rio Grande. The only problem is there is a major mayfly hatch going on! I am talking enough mayflies to make every trout in the river gain a half pound without really trying. Mayflies by the hundreds! Add to it the cottonwood fluff that is coming down, and we look like we are in a blizzard. We haven’t been able to stay outside, but at least I can get a good river view out of the motorhome front window. However their in-park WiFi is bad, and my Verizon Mifi is experiencing network management, so I have to tether to the phone. It is a pain. We drove out a few miles to a BLM site, and the Mifi is screaming fast! I will try to mostly catch up on my pictures.
The nearby town of Del Monte, CO has an old fashioned drive -in movie! We had a great time watching “In the Neighborhood,” a musical with modern, rap style lyrics and lots of dancing. It was a great show, but we got back way past my bedtime! Worth it though.
I left off with the Dawson cemetery on Saturday, 12 June. We continued along the road to Cimmaron. The town has really invested in tourist infrastructure with lots of signs and historic markers. I particularly liked this old mill.
There was lots of beautiful country, as one might expect. I took pictures of the views, not the towns. Every town was crowded. Taos was dreadfully crowded, and we didn’t get out of the car at all. I was bummed because it was one of my favorite places. Interestingly the Taos Pueblo has been cut off for COVID precautions. The road is closed except to key card access.
Palisades SillBighorn sheep were grazing along the roadThe views go for milesEven the meadows were lovely.
On Sunday we headed to Capulin Volcano National Monument. Nice place. The views are amazing.
The view from the top of Capulin National Monument are spectacularA nearby much smaller cone to show the shapeCapulin’s cinder cone core
The next day we packed up leisurely and went to Del Norte, CO as I noted in the first paragraph. Tuesday we took off on more sightseeing, this time along the Silver Thread National Scenic Byway which is basically highway 149. Much of the road parallels the Rio Grande, and I particularly wanted to see the headwaters. Couldn’t quite get there because a creek had the road flooded, but we did get a decent long distance view.
Slimgullion was a massive landslide 850 and 450 years agoViews into the Weimenuche wildernessThe Rio Grande headwaters are at the end of the farthest lakeMining history everywhere! This was a bentonite clay mill.The Slumgullion Pass was high!
I will continue with our last two days in Del Norte later. This has been hard enough. Hopefully the Mifi will have good service.
We spent the last day, 9 June, at Canton Lake in Oklahoma driving to Boiling Springs State Park. The park doesn’t have hot springs like the name implies, but it has bubbly natural springs that have been an attraction for thousands of years. The park is small, and it was really, really hot, so we mostly just drove through, stopping at some of the sights. The park facilities were mostly built by the CCC in the 1930s. The big pool and wading pool have had updates since them, but the buildings are still mostly CCC work. The National Park Service did the architectural work, and it is pretty obvious.
A church group was enjoying the big conference center, also built by the CCCA wonderful old water tower built by CCC
We left Canton for our first Boondocker’s Welcome stay on 10 June. We stayed at a working ranch just barely into Texas off I-40. BW is a subscription service for overnight stays offered by volunteer hosts. There is a $50/year charge for the service, but no charge for the location unless there are other amenities offered. In our case, we got a halfway level site with a gravel base, 50 amp service (!), and nice views for no cost. The hosts get “paid” with a membership in BW themselves. The electrical service was nice because it was still hotter than hell! We could have used our generator of course, but the lack of noise was nice. I gave them a thank you gift – two bowl cozies made with a great camper fabric with a red background. It turned out the wife of the couple was also a member of the FB group RV Quilters, just like me. We had a nice chat.
The forecast was for significant wind on 11 June, so we left our BW site by 7:15 to get as much driving as possible in before the winds got extra bad. It was over 300 miles to Raton, our next spot, and some of it was white knuckle driving. I can handle 20-25mph steady winds without issue, and up to 30-35 in a pinch, but we eventually got winds so gusty we had to pull off the road for a couple of hours. It was NOT a fun drive, but we eventually made it.
The Raton KOA is the lowest level of KOA, a Journey. This category is for locations oriented towards those passing through, not those looking for many amenities. They gave us a tight 30 amp back-in site with nice trees for shade, but we had to position the rig very carefully to fit; it was not designed for a 40’, 4 slide motorhome! We made it, but there was no option to open the awning! Luckily the trees were quite nice, and I sat in the shade for a few hours each day. This KPA has pull-through and 50 amp sites available, but those are held for the overnighters. It was rather amazing watching the park transition from mostly empty to completely full in 3 hours each day. Every morning the first folks started leaving around 6:00 am (yes, I wake up ridiculously early!), and the park was empty again by 10:00.
Since the drive in was so tough, we ate dinner at the Colefax Ale Cellar, a brewery with good sandwiches and better beer. We ended up buying some of their great dark beer to take with us. It is hard being a stout and ale drinker in a world of IPAs, but they had some good ones.
We got around the next day to drive to a long loop to Cimaron, Eagle Next, Red River, and Taos. It was a great trip! I always stop and read all the historic markers, and we accidentally found one about the town of Dawson, an old Phelps-Dodge mining town. What a serendipitous find! The drive in was lovely. The community was a classic company town with a population of 6,000. When the mines closed in 1950, some parts went to other company towns but most was just razed and the debris removed.
Not much left of the town
The community was infamous for two horrific mine explosions, one in 1913 and another in 1923 with a total of 383 miners killed. The company provided the metal crosses since so many were immigrants away from their families. Some families added traditional markers later. The cemetery is maintained by an old settlers group, and they have big gatherings every 2 years.
The old cemetery was well kept and poignant
I have really bad internet here, so I will leave the rest of our trip for another post.
Today’s visit was to Tulsa, OK and the Gilcrease Museum. Thomas Gilcrease was an enrolled member of the Creek nation who became one of the numerous oil magnates in eastern Oklahoma when oil was discovered on his family land. He was fabulously rich, but his passion was for the history of the Americas. He collected hundreds of thousands of items, buying entire collections when he could. There were paintings, sculptures, pottery, textiles, and an incredibly valuable collection of paper and books. He was in debt in 1954 and offered the entire collection to the city of Tulsa for a greatly reduced price of $2.5M, promising to pay even that back in the future. The museum is managed jointly by the University of Tulsa and the city of Tulsa. There are now over 500,000 items in the collection making it the largest collection of material regarding the Americas in the world.
When I was a child, I came to the museum. I remember most the wonderful impressionist paintings. At that time they had the material organized by type of artifact, so the paintings were all together. Now the museum is organized by what part of the Americas the material came from, a more helpful view IMHO. I will show a tiny bit of the wonderful items.
I said earlier how much I like Impressionists. This is a piece by Kevin Connywerdy (Kiowa/Comanche) called Touched by the Spiritt
This was one of my favorite modern paintings
Then there was this one by a Portuguese Hawaiian, Harry Fonseca) of a Hopi subject, Three Coyote Koshare. What a great take on the legend!
This is the first painting in the gallery of Native American ethnography – a modern view
Then there are the landscape. Blow this one to the largest size you can to see the beautiful rendition of a prairie scene.
One of the Native American impressionists
Traditional paintings are also in the collection.
Very traditional painting of a Crow encampment
Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the ruling the agreed the Cherokees were an independent nation whose treaty rights should be respected. Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears where thousands died. It was painted by the nephew of the famous founder of Methodism, John Wesley, who raised him.
Chief Justice John Marshall by John Wesley Jarvis
I live in Black Hawk County in Iowa, named in honor of this Sac and Fox chief.
Chief Black Hawk and his son whirling Thunder, also by John Wesley Jarvis
Classic American landscape artists are well represented like this one from John Singer Sargent.
Landing in Brittany by Sargent
But my favorite of the landscapes had to be this study of the Grand Canyon. The photo I took of the attribution is too blurry for me to make it out!
My favorite of the Grand Canyon landscapes
And then there is sculpture. The Gilcrease owns 18 of the 22 bronze sculptures created by Frederic Remington. They are wonderful, but I found this life-mask of Abraham Lincoln’s face and hands more moving.
A face and hands mask of Lincoln
There is a nicely done exhibition of artifacts from the Pacific Northwest. This raven effigy made from a whale vertebrae was amazing.
Eskimo raven effigy of unknown age
There was an entire wall of original paintings by Audubon. I chose the American Turkey to photograph.
Audubon original of a turkey
Again I was lucky my back held out, but I sorely regretted not being able to spend more time just standing and enjoying the individual items. We spent 2 hours, and it wasn’t nearly enough. It was also raining so we didn’t go see the historic gardens. Obviously I need another visit!
After Hamilton, MO we drove to northeastern Oklahoma and Copan Lake, a relatively small Corps of Engineers lake just at the OK/KS border. Site was fairly unlevel but lovely.
Copan Lake at sunset. Lots of trees in the water.
I set up the sewing machine since we would be here a few days. This is my current setup. I got a bunch of appliqué done, but it was so slow!
My sewing setup at Copan
I also experimented with our newish Air Fryer from Gourma. I took a “just add water” muffin mix and added some gorgeous blueberries. I reduced the recommended temp by 25 degrees and the time by 15%. It worked!
Muffins made in the Air Fryer
We found this grumpy snapper trying to cross the road. He was big; his shell was close to 12” long.
Moved this very irritated snapping turtle across the road
We were primarily here to visit some places neither of us had been to since we were kids. The first spot was Woolaroc Animal Preserve and Museum near Bartlesville, OK. It was the retreat of Frank Phillips of Phillips Oil Company (Phillips 66 fame). There is a LOT of old oil money in this part of the state, and they spent lavishly. Frank decided he wanted a large ranch with exotic animals, space for his friends to come out and play cowboy, and to show off the early American artifacts he had. As you enter the attraction (now owned by a foundation), you drive through a series of large animal pens.
Water Buffalo in Oklahoma?Not worried about us at allLake at WoolarocDecorative waterfallLichen encrusted rocksEastern Oklahoma is known as “Green Country” for a reason. The small building is the Phillips family mausoleum.
This year they had a fur trader’s encampment set up with two re-enactors. We are close to the Arkansas River, and fur traders travelled up the river to the mountains.
The older re-enactor was voluble and knowledgeable. He even let Kevin fire his muzzle loader! Kevin didn’t hit the target, but he did get close!
Kevin firing a flintlock rifle.
We finally got to the museum. The entry is definitely old school “Noble Savage” style, and much of the interpretation inside is similar. The artifacts make up for it though!
The entry to the museumSo so many items in a small spaceA tiny piece of the outstanding pottery collection at WoolarocHand made birchbark canoe made by an Ojibway woman in Minnesota. They didn’t think she was worthy of identifying by name 🙁
My normally very sore back let me walk through the entire thing, though I didn’t get to dawdle much. All the physical therapy I have been doing seems to be (finally!) working.
Not everything was old. There is a scale model of an oil field and a lot of equipment. The airplane was one of many built by small companies in the heyday of early aircraft. The company that built it no longer exists.
Some modern items too
A few miscellaneous things to note:
The restaurant is just a concession stand in these COVID times, but the BBQ bison burger was pretty good. We at dinner at a local diner, the Cohan Restaurant which just happens to be the only one in the very small town. Mediocre, but edible.
Next post will be about the Gilcrease Museum, another incredible place we visited on this trip.
We had the motorhome on the road Tuesday morning by 9:00 am. Yup, we were anxious to be traveling again! We had packed, vacuumed, and brought the slides in on Monday, so all we had to do was finish picking up the house a bit and packing toiletries. Oh, and there was a stop to pick up a McMuffin and a McGriddle. Luna responded ok to the traveling, finally coming out after a few hours on the road, but Minnie wasn’t seen until we parked.
We stayed two nights at Country Charm RV Park in Hamilton, MO. It is a pretty place but the interior roads were a bit tight with the Jeep hooked on. I did like the view though! We were on the outside loop, and summer is well underway here.
The view from my chair outside the motorhome
Hamilton is the home to Missouri Star Quilt Company, a sort of Mecca for quilters. They own a large number of shops in the small town, each one with a different style of fabric. For example, one shop was full of only batiks, while another was filled seasonal fabrics. I ended up buying some novelty fabric that will become a gift for someone when I get back.
The town also has a number of murals.
As you can see, it is also the boyhood home of J. C. Penny. We didn’t stop by the little museum that the house is now though. You can just barely see it through the trees.
Hidden by trees is the J. C. Penny home
It turns out that Sisters on the Fly, a women-only fishing group that has small vintage trailers, was having a gathering in town. They allow tours of their cute rigs occasionally, but we didn’t stay around for one. I am guessing they were the ones who planted a flock of flamingos on the grass nearby.
We also went to an Amish grocery in Jamesport, MO. They had all the wonderful bulk food items I usually get in Kalona, IA. We ate lunch at The Country Cupboard in Jamesport. Nice chicken friend steak! I think only southerners are really good at making this, and I certainly can’t fry anything well. We then came back to the campground, relaxed, and enjoyed the absolutely gorgeous weather – high of 75, puffy clouds, no wind, moderate humidity.
I also cooked some strawberry muffins using the bake setting on my Gourma brand Air Fryer. Tomorrow we head to northern Oklahoma. They were wonderful! I lowered the temperature 25 degrees and decreased the time by about 15% since the air fryer is basically just a small convection oven. I have an oven in the motorhome, but it takes a long time (and lots of power) to heat and cook. The air fryer should be very useful for baking when we aren’t connected to electricity.
Oh, and a bonus video of Minnie discovering another cat in the mirror. Watch the photobomb at the end.
My husband is an engineer in his soul, and he discovered 3D printing during COVID. I have been meaning to show the goodies he has printed for the motorhome. He has printed even more for the house, but those are more standard. These are almost all unique and built from custom computer aided design models he created. He uses FreeCAD now, but he previously used TinkerCAD. Note he uses PETG fiber for the items in the motorhomes. During storage on a hot day the more common PLA deforms from heat. He started with an Ender 3 printer, but he also has GEEETech 3 color printer.
Starting from the front of the motorhome, driver side.
On the driver’s side one of the first things he made was a holder for my phone and a pen. Then he added the eye glass holder. Recently he added an on/off switch and holder for the USB items around the dash such as the dash cam and the driver GPS. He added the screw holes to match the purchased switch. Note the passenger does the real navigation in our rig so the driver GPS is just for situational awareness and is an older model.
Combo phone and pen holder next to a switch to turn off USB devices. An eyeglass holder has my reading glasses in it.
Here is the charger and some cord wraps. Note everything is custom sized to fit the commercial hardware. All the items stay put by sliding a small attached “blade” between the wall and the dash.
Holder for USB and miscellaneous chargersA better view of the two cord wraps
A cup holder with straight sides replaced the ridiculously short one that came with our Tiffin. We like straight instead of shaped cup holders because they fit more of our travel mugs.
Cup holder with straight sides
Moving to the passenger side, the first item made was, again, a phone holder. Then he added a sunglasses holder and a chapstick/floss holder.
Holder for passenger phone, glasses, and lip balm
This gives a top view of the GPS holder on the passenger side. It is based on a commercial screw on base. Note it sits in the window groove for stability.
Holder for passenger GPS (Garmin 890)
The TPMS has its own holder of course. It also sits in the window groove.
Holds TPMS control head
Our rig has a small drawer that is pretty useless by itself. Kevin printed this little insert to hold a travel mug, his wallet, a couple of checkbooks, and some miscellaneous documents.
Insert for small cockpit drawer to hold cup and papers
We have now moved out of the cockpit and to the living quarters. Kevin’s watch was always getting bumped off the charger by the cat, so he made a little holder to keep it more stable.
Holds watch for charging
i love Janet Sadlack’ss RV microwave/convection cookbooks, but they are small and we’re always getting misplaced. Here is a spot for those plus a few other small cookbooks. It is glued to a holder for a power distribution center.
Holder for small cookbooks and USB outlet
The wall here is rather cool in cold weather, so I wanted a quilted wall hanging to block some of the cold. I had quilted this wonderful Stonehenge Fabrics panel a few years back, and I think it fits well. While the wood is attached with screws to the backside of the cabinet, the quilt is mounted on a rod made removable with the printed black end cap.
Holds wall quilt to keep cold out
Here is the end cap close up. The quilt holder rod is made removable by the screw.
End of the quilt holder
Moving more to the kitchen is this magnetic cover to go over the ridiculously bright microwave control panel. It was the test item on Kevin’s 3 color printer when he bought it.
Cover for microwave control panel
I am generally happy with my utensil caddy, but there wasn’t much room for tall items like the spatula. Kevin printed the side car and glued it to the purchased caddy.
An add-on for my utensil caddy to support tall items
There is only one item in the bathroom, a small holder for the translucent box. The holder has clips that slide on the purchased soap dish attached with command adhesive strips. You can also see the wonderful soap my friend makes at Wild Waters Soapery in Salt Lake City.
Holder in bathroom
Back to the bedroom. The electronic control panel made by Spyder is distracting in the night, so Kevin made a cover that slips over it at night.
Cover for Spyder panel in bedroom
Remember I mentioned earlier the cat knocks things off? It happens in the bedroom too, so Kevin made a holder for his phone charger that positions the phone for contact charging.
Holds iPhone securely on charger
While we don’t watch the bedroom TV often, we needed a way to control the controls. This holds the one for the Dish and the TV itself.
Holds bedroom controls
I think that is everything! He’s been busy, and the Ender 3 printer is ready to go with us on our trips. It lives in the cabinets underneath the table in the kitchen area while traveling. When in use it sits on the bathroom dresser.
I am definitely in the mood for getting out again. We haven’t bee out since the last trip at the end of April. For Mother’s Day we had most of the kids and grandkids come over for dinner. It was nicer than just the two of us going somewhere, though I did do the cooking LOL! We had pot roast, carrots, and potatoes so it wasn’t too hard.
The kitten are growing like weeds. They are so well behaved! Never any scratching even when being held against their will. They don’t scratch anything except their scratching post except for my big rolls of batting downstairs. I have had to move them all to an inaccessible spot since that soft batting seemed just right for little kitten climbing. We kept them on kitten food since they were so small, but we are transitioning them to adult cat food now. They seem to like it just fine.
It is hard to get a picture of them playing without it being fuzzy! They were chasing the magic red dot (laser pointer).Minerva was particularly fond of the doll bed we got for my granddaughter’s birthdayAnd they do cuddle sometimes
I have been sewing some. The king sized quilt for our bedroom at home has the main center part completed – 80” square. I need to add borders, but I haven’t gotten in the mood. I did finish quilting three quilts for my quilt guild though. As before, just utilitarian meandering, but it keeps me in practice. I am not a person comfortable with completely scrap,quilts, particularly in big pieces. I find these dreadful, but the people who donate fabric to the guild should have no doubt every inch of useable stuff they give to us will be put to good use.
The last one, just before I started quilting it.
I also have made Kevin a pillow case for the travel pillow he uses for his knees at night. We found a little pillow at a truck stop this winter, but it has a satin cover and slips off the bed during the night. A cotton cover keeps it in place better. I am also just finishing up a bunch of bowl cozies I am going to use as small gifts on our upcoming trip.
Isn’t that the cutest fabric?
I modified my fabrication process to pre-wash both fabric and the batting. Then I made sure all three layers (fabric/batting/fabric) are quilted together. Hopefully that help them keep their shape after washing.
We do have the first part of our summer trip planned. In a normal year we would just take off, making reservations only at destinations. This year we are slightly spooked by reports of massive numbers of people on the road, so we made more reservations than normal. We leave on Tuesday, 1 June, to go to Hamilton, MO, home of the Missouri Star Quilt Company and their multiple shops. We will stay there a couple of nights then off to eastern Oklahoma to visit some tourist locations we haven’t seen for 30 years or more. Then we head to Canton Reservoir where I worked as a seasonal park ranger before my senior year in college. I haven’t been back since, so it should be fun. We have reserved a Boondocker’s Welcome site in far eastern Texas off I-40. I figure I will give the hosts a couple of bowl cozies as a thank you. We are hoping for good enough weather to hit up a bunch of Native American sites in New Mexico. Eventually we will head north to Cody, WY for an FMCA chapter rally followed by Gillette, WY for the big FMCA national convention. We then have reservations at Badlands NP during a new moon for Kevin to get some astrophotography done. We will gradually head back to Iowa then, time TBD.
I will be getting some shoulder surgery done when we get back. I have a bone spur that is giving me grief. I have been using cortisone shots to manage it, but I figured it will only get worse. Hopefully there isn’t much rotator cuff involvement. Rehab is something between 2 and 12 weeks, depending on what they have to do. Sigh. Even with an MRI they can’t tell until they get to look inside.
Kevin has been busy making even more modifications and updates to the motorhome. I will post those after we get on the road so I can take good pictures. The expensive one was 600 amp hours of LifeBlue LiFePO4 batteries with internal heaters. I am really looking forward to off-grid camping with those! Some of the less expensive modifications are woodworking and others are 3D printing, and they are quite cool. We even got our yearly diesel maintenance done, this time at the Decorah Truck Country shop. Nice folks. It was a more extensive list than we had for previous yearly, so it also cost more. Sigh. Just the price of owning a diesel motorhome.
We finally went camping again! On Wednesday we went to a local park that is a whopping 7 miles away – Big Woods County Park. It is a lovely place with long sites. Most are wide, but they have two rows of “buddy sites” where if you pull in correctly you will face the folks next door. Luckily we found a site that backed up on the bike route and lake. We were hoping to dewinterize the motorhome, but the water wasn’t going to be turned on u til Thursday. Whoops! We stayed at home for the night and went back on Thursday to dewinterize. We got everything set up except the water softener which we forgot at home.
We were doing this to have the three oldest grandchildren out – twin girls, 11, and a boy, 7. We picked them up at lunch after a soccer game on Saturday, ate some take out pizza, then went to the camper. It was much colder than the forecast had shown when we set it up, so I felt bad we couldn’t do the bike riding we wanted to do. A windchill of low 40s just didn’t appeal to me. We left the kittens at home, thinking an introduction to both the motorhome and three children would be a bit much! We did have a lot of fun even in the cold temps. There was a nice playground, a sand spot at the edge of the lake to build sand castles, and a nice fire pit. We made layered green chili chicken enchiladas in a Dutch oven and campfire biscuits on Saturday night. Sunday morning had monkey bread in the motorhome oven along with eggs and fruit. They said they wanted to do it again, so I call that a success!
We picked up the kittens after we dropped off the kids, and they adjusted faster than I expected. Luna was thrilled we could open up the screen door. Don’t worry; behind the grill is a screen!
I didn’t get a picture of Minnie because she was either running around like crazy or hiding out, her two favorite things to do.
The weather was so absolutely gorgeous while we were packing up on Monday that we decided to stay an extra day. We road our bikes around the lake and some of the nearby trails, soaked up sun, and generally had a wonderful start to the camping season.
See how pretty our “backyards was?
Once we finally got packed up, we decided to drive to Cedar Rapids to get the motorhome washed. It hasn’t had a bath since July, and it was in dire need! We just don’t have a place to wash it ourselves, so we went to a newer truck wash, AFCS Truck Wash. Astonishingly no one was in line in front of us! They did a good job, and it was well worth the $75 it cost. As we drove out, there were 2 motorhomes and a semi truck in line behind us, so we really were lucky.
Next trip might be Mother’s Day, or it might be a warmer weather overnight with grandkids at a different campground. Time will tell. We take off for the summer right after Memorial Day – YEAH!
