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Leaving Missouri for Oklahoma

We left Pulltite on Saturday instead of our planned Sunday departure. I did get quite a bit of sewing done, and all the sub-blocks are now complete. I don’t think I have posted a picture of my sewing set up so here is one of the table and machine.

I have plastic tubs with sewing supplies on the sofa to the right of the machine, and pressing is done on the dining table to the left of the machine. Works pretty well! I have started using a small hand held iron instead of a big one, and I really like how flat it gets my blocks.

We decided to move a bit closer to I-44 to make going to and from Iowa a bit easier. We parked the coach at Meramac Springs Country Store and RV Park, and it was a hard! The park was full, but they said they had room for a rig our size. Wrong! With the narrow roads, tight turns, and overhanging branches, it took 20 minutes to get us wiggled in the spot. Even then we couldn’t open the awning without hitting the guy next door. We were amazingly lucky that the park emptied out after the weekend since I don’t think we could have gotten out without backing out the same way we got in if there were other campers around. I ended up going through two other campsites to get out to the road. Ugh. We will mark that a solid “Never again.”

We did drive back to Iowa to get our voting done though. Black Hawk county made it a very quick and painless process. We also dropped my daughter’s birthday present off at her our – a gift certificate for a massage plus some Ozark candy. Then back to Missouri Monday night. We did some laundry (I absolutely love having a washer and dryer in the coach!), and we just relaxed. Tuesday we drove into Oklahoma and bought a PikePass to allow easier travel on the tollways Oklahoma specializes in. It will also work in Kansas, and we do use the Kansas Turnpike too. We needed two of the RFID sensors, one for the motorhome and one for the Jeep. We thought the Jeep one had messed something g up because all of a sudden these three LED lights started lighting up! We had never even seen them before, and Kevin was at a loss. The Jeep dealer assured us they were an aftermarket add-on, so Kevin finally traced it to the AirForce 1 auxiliary braking system we had installed for towing. A bit more debugging, and he fixed the problem. Weird.

We also ended up buying a Dyson battery powered vacuum cleaner at the Costco in Iowa City on the way back home. The cat tracks litter everywhere, and I need either the generator or shore electrical power to operate the central vacuum. Since the tile floors will eventually scratch if we close the slides with dirt on the floor, this seemed like a good idea. We got the “Animal” model, and it cleans very well. Not much battery life on “high”, but the motorhome is much smaller than a house so it works fine for us.

We spent Tuesday night at the Walmart in Vinita, OK, just off the I-44 Turnpike. Nice and quiet. Wednesday we moved to Twin Falls RV Park in Oklahoma City. Very nice place with concrete pads, patios, lots of trees, and lots of space. Price was reasonable at $50 or so. We spend tonight here too.

Yesterday we saw my niece, her husband, and their four month old baby boy. He was the most solemn thing! Bald as a billiard ball with a classic baby stare. He played with Kevin a bit, then I held him and immediately seemed to put him to sleep. I have that effect on adults sometimes too! We also had lunch today with my sister, the baby’s grandmother. Pretty uneventful, but she doesn’t pick the best places to eat. I definitely expected better BBQ in Oklahoma, but the sides were pretty good.

Tonight we are finishing up some laundry, the bikes are back on the Jeep, and we will pull out of here tomorrow between 8:30 and 9:00 to miss the early morning traffic. It will be probably 9 hours on the road followed by another 9 hour day afterwards so probably no posting. It should be smooth sailing on I-40 all the way though. As long as we don’t hit bad winds in the Oklahoma/Texas/New Mexico plains we will be fine.

More about the Ozarks

I am sitting in a parking lot that actually has internet, so I can post some more about the Ozarks.

First, just the general beauty of the area. The trees went really turning colors yet, but you can see just the promise of future color.

Love the fog that shows in the valleys.

Then there are the “wild” horses that roam the area. They are wild in the sense they aren’t owned by anyone, but they definitely are habituated to people. We saw these three, two mares and a foal, at Echo Bluff State Park parking lot. The foal got about 3 foot from me, and one of the mares grazed about 5 foot away. Definitely used to people!

That is the front of the car hood showing red. They moved even closer after I took this.

Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day, so I mostly just sat outside and read. It is the kind of day that makes me really, really regret I can’t get on the river, but I just don’t feel well enough. Today is a wet and cold day, so we are just hanging out at the state park campground using their WiFi. When I get back I intend on sewing for a while and then just generally cleaning up. With all the cloud cover we will definitely have to run the generator, and that means I can vacuum. After vacuuming, I will mop, and the floor is in desperate need of it!

Goodbye Alabama, hello Missouri!

We finally got all our warranty work done on Wednesday last week. We headed out fairly early on Thursday for Missouri. We had reservations at Echo Bluff State Park in the Ozarks, and we made it in good time. The campground at Echo Bluff, known as Timbuktu for some unknown reason, is just a big meadow with good interior roads, concrete patios, and lots of space between sites. They have planted trees and shrubs, but it will be another 10 years before the place looks good. Until then it is a very inexpensive and convenient place stop for a night or two – full hookups were $30. We got all the laundry done, and drove down in the car to Pulltite campground, the NPS campground we wanted to stay at for the next week. No hookups, narrow gravel interior roads, grass sites that aren’t very level, but only $6 a night without senior pass. I was worried about overhanging trees making it impossible to get the coach down the steep hill, but we decided it would be fine if I drove slowly and used both lanes a small needed.

Friday morning we left Echo Bluff and drove the 8 miles to Pulltite. Yes, that is how it is spelled. It was misspelled years ago from the expected “Pulltight” meaning the horses had to be carefully driven down the steep hill to the river. And the river is still,why we come. The Current River is a lovely gem, part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. Clear, cold, spring fed rivers are a joy to see any time of year, even in the cold and rain we got moving in. We will stay until Sunday, a total of 10 days.

It was overcast when I took it, but we are in a lovely riverbottom of deciduous trees.

We just drove around sight seeing until Tuesday when we made a purposeful trip into Springfield to see the World Of Wildlife museum at the Bass Pro Shop headquarters. Very, very nice, and well worth the price.

I did take some pictures of the Ozarks, but I haven’t downloaded them from the camera. I will do that tomorrow and post more.

Repair frustrations and more of the Natchez Trace

We are still sitting in the Tiffin Service Center parking lot. Sigh. We got into the paint shop on Friday, and today we had the paint finished up (buffing and such). They did a great job. I drove the coach back to our parking spot, hooked it all up, and 15 minutes later was asked to come to the cabinet shop. We only have one item left – a very poorly finished bathroom door. The very nice young man said the door had to be replaced, not repaired, and it would be two weeks! I nearly died. He saw my face, and said he’d go look to see if they had a spare one sitting around. Luckily, they did, and he said he’d get it put together and sprayed in “a day or two.” Yet another sigh, but not as big this time. We are hoping to get into Missouri on Thursday, but we will see what happens. Thank goodness I allocated lots of time for this trip.

On Saturday we took another trip along the Natchez Trace, this time heading towards Nashville. The pictures are from along the Trace.

This shows the old footpath and how it divides into different paths to go around what became mud puddles as the path as it wore down.

This is the Gordon house from 1818. It is t open for visitors, but it is pretty impressive anyway. The owner had a concession from the local Choctaws to operate a Ferry and trading post. He did just after the house was built, but his wife lived here until 1849.

This is the Inn (known as a “stand” in this part of the country when the Trace was active) where Meriweather Lewis committed suicide. Poor fellow was being stiffed by the US Government on a bunch of bills that he then had to cover from his own pocket. He was looking at bankruptcy, and was depressed. He is buried about 100’ away, his grave marked by a broken column indicating his early death. So sad.

Sunday we just hung around locally. I made some of the wonderful Instant Pot egg bites with sausage and cheddar cheese this time, and I also made an Instant Pot cheesecake. Both turned out wonderfully. I also got my sewing machine set up to get some work done on the quilt for the coach. Hopefully I will have all the blocks done before we go home for Thanksgiving.

 

Scenic south and Tiffin warranty service

We finally made it to the Tiffin Service Center campground on Monday afternoon. We got the call while we were on our way to Tupelo to visit Elvis Presley’s birthplace museum. Oops! Back to Red Bay to make the move.

We did get to drive just over 40 miles on the Natchez Trace on our way to Tupelo though. It is the oddest National Park I know. More than 400 miles long, but only as wide as the road in many places. Here is a view of the gorgeous heavy deciduous forest along most of the route. Obviously it is still late summer in this part of the country.

We did take time to walk part of the original Trace which was just a foot trail.

This section led to a small and lonely Confederate cemetery. There is a tiny Confederate flag someone left.

We also stopped to see the Pharr Indian Mounds, dating from 0-200 CE. Pretty impressive after 1800 years!

Once we got settled in the Tiffin campground, we just relaxed and watched TV. Kevin’s newly installed satellite is working great! This is not a campground for relaxing outside. Not only is it miserably hot here, but it is another parking lot, suitable for waiting for service but not camping.

Yesterday we decided to drive to Meridian, Mississippi to buy me a fold up sewing table. I have one at home, but forgot to bring it! We both figured it would be good to just keep this one in the coach. Kevin feels like death warmed over with his bronchitis though I am beginning to recover. It was 7 hours in the car because we took a “scenic” path. Not terribly scenic though since it was mostly just a road through lots and lots and lots of trees.

We did get with the service writer, and he said we had a couple of days wait to get into an Express Bay. That gives you two techs for two three hours to get most of our warranty items done. The final item will be in the cabinet shop, and that requires an additional wait. Sigh. Luckily the two days wait turned into a day and a half, and we moved into the Express Bay a little after noon today. All of our items were taken care of, but a ladder from the next bay fell against our coach and put a nice big scratch in the paint. Another sigh. They are hoping to get us into the paint shop tomorrow morning, but we will see. We still need the cabinet shop, but I am hoping they put us in the wait line immediately rather than waiting for the pain shop to finish. Oh well, the parking lot is free since we are under warranty, and it is full hookup.

i am also including a picture of cotton fields since they are everywhere around here!

Made it to Red Bay, Alabama

We left Iowa about 1:00 pm on Friday after running a number of last minute errands. We spent the night in the Walmart parking lot in Hannibal, MO. Nice quiet place. We got around Saturday around 9:00 and headed to Jackson, TN. We spent the night again in a Walmart parking lot. Like most small towns on a Saturday night, there were some young idiots in very loud cars cruising the parking lot, but it got quiet well before midnight. Since we only had 100 miles to go, we took our ever loving time getting out. We finally got to the Tiffin Service Center campground by noon. However we found out the campground was already full. Tiffin recommended we go to the Red Bay campground a couple of miles away. It is just a big gravel parking lot, but it has 50 amp full hookups. Cheap at $25 a night, but it would have been free if we were at the Tiffin site. Hopefully we can move in the next day or so. The roads all the way from Iowa we’re divided four lanes with the exception of the last 20 miles or so.

We have all our forms filled out for our warranty work, and some time tomorrow a Tiffin SC rep will come out to evaluate the time needed to complete our list. That will decide how long we have to wait our turn.

I admit this is a short post without pictures, but I should have more to post when we can get out and about. It is, unsurprisingly, very, very green here. It was also ridiculously hot today, almost 90 degrees! Should be better tomorrow, but I still miss my cool, dry mountains and deserts. All those folks who retired and moved to Florida – good for them! I can’t even imagine it.

Camping close to home – Big Woods Lake campground

We got back from Estes Park safely. We had intended on camping at Fall Lake in northern Minnesota, but the forecast was for lots of rain and cold. We instead decided to camp near home with the motorhome, trying out the new doodads Kevin has been installing. It let us know what we didn’t have in the coach which is handy when you are heading out for 7 or 8 weeks. We were able to have most of the kids and all the grandkids out for dinner one night. Luckily there was a small playground since the coach is pretty small for 9 people! It was about the only night we didn’t have rain.

The weather has been terrible. It has rained, and rained, and rained. We actually had the wettest month on record, and we still have days left! Not just the wettest September, but the wettest ever. This is NOT the way the river is supposed to look in September. I bet the farmers will be using an awful lot of propane to dry the corn this fall.

We even got a backsplash installed in the house. I am quite pleased with the look even though the grout needs re-done some. That will be finished tomorrow. Kevin and Nick adjusted the electrical boxes to get that nice, even look.

Even though we are leaving tomorrow, there is still one more thing Kevin intended on finishing, a portable water softener. We are just going to take it with us, and he can work on it later. Everything else got done: solar, solar controller, electrical monitoring system, battery monitoring system, cell phone booster, dash cam, and a new satellite antenna. We definitely don’t “camp” with all this stuff! It is nice for “living” though.

Tomorrow we pack up and head to Red Bay, AL for some warranty work. We will probably spend the first night in the Walmart at Hannibal, MO.

Wildfires and more elk

We decided to go sightseeing today, but at a lower elevation since I had a bad headache the last two days. We took a lovely trip from Estes Park to Glen Haven then on into Ft. Collins via backroads. We wandered through a valley and crossed over a creek a number of times. It was classic Colorado backroads – mountains, ranches, hills, creeks, pines, willows, cottonwoods. Just as we got to the Cache le Poudre river (highway 14) we saw lots of smoke and then an active wildfire. Fire trucks from volunteer departments and the Forest Service passed us on the road, including a big van with Pike Hot Shots. When they bring out the Hot Shots, you know a fire is getting serious work. We pulled over and watched for quite a while. Here are some pictures and video. As usual, I apologize for not having the video in a easy format, but it is worth it.

Those itty bitty dots on the cliff top are firefighters.
The fire was only a few hundred feet from the road

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The Fire is known as the Seaman Lake Fire, and it is already partially contained according to this source: https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/09/12/seaman-fire-prompts-voluntary-evacuations-threatens-poudre-river/1280800002/

While in Loveland for lunch, we found we had a fire going flat! Walmart changed the tire, but I wasn’t willing to buy any of theirs. We ended up going to Big O Tires in Estes Park, and we get four new tires put on tomorrow. Painful price though.

After the pain there, we decided to head one more night out to RMNP for the elk. This time we decided to go to Horseshoe Park, and what a good choice it was! We first saw the young buck with his small harem of 3 we had seen in Morraine Park. Then came a much bigger buck with a large harem of 13 cows, yearlings, and calves. We watched while the big buck ran off the younger and stole his little harem. Of course there was much bugling involved. It was wonderful.

Tomorrow will be new tires, a leisurely breakfast in town, just goofing off, and a Chuckwagon dinner. Then home on Friday.

Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park

We finally got out of town! We are taking a trip to Estes Park and RMNP as an anniversary present to ourselves (40 years). We are not camping this time but instead staying at the Inn On Fall River, a first for us. It was a very, very long drive! We did eat dinner at an incredible Thai restaurant called Bai Tong in Loveland. We will definitely have to do that again. We got a two room suite that has a huge patio next to Fall River. The place is standard tourist rustic but clean and tidy. Chairs and lounges are on our private patio, plus a number of other “common” spots around the property. When we are here we have mostly just stayed on the patio. I love the sound of moving water. The pictures are from when we arrived and the next morning.

 

On Monday we took the standard RMNP drive: up the Fall River Road to the top of Trail Ridge Road, continued down the west side of the mountain, then back to town on Trail Ridge Road. It was an incredible first three miles. We saw 2 moose (an unusual sight), a herd of elk, and a herd of mule deer. I didn’t get pictures of any of those, but we made up for it later. We took a break for a bit, then we went to find the bugling elk, the primary purpose of this trip. I have seen thousands and thousands of elk, but we have never been here for the rut when they bugle. We ended up at Moraine Park, and we found this guy and his harem.

 

It wasn’t a big harem, but he took it very seriously, bugling like crazy when another buck came into range.

We also saw a number of mule deer including this guy.

I didn’t get a good picture of the harem, but he had six does with him.

Besides animals we obviously saw some gorgeous scenery. The aspen are changing colors on the hillsides, and it is glorious. I took this from the west side of Trail Ridge Road, and even with the haze it is lovely.

 

Since Monday was so successful we went to Denver today to visit their REI. It is huge, but a royal pain to get to and park since it is right downtown. We did get some new Helinox folding chairs. I found them obscenely expensive, but comfortable and very compact. They will fit in a backpack or on the bike carrier with ease. We also bought a Big Agnes air pump for our tent camping air mats. They are downfilled so you can’t just blow them up with your mouth, and we haven’t found our old pump since we moved! We still have some hope of going tent camping in Ely, MN next week though the weather is not looking good.

We came back from Denver though Boulder to Nederland to Estes Park. Much nicer scenery than I-25!

We haven’t decided what to do tomorrow, but we will probably go to Horseshoe Park to look for elk there.  We have a Chuckwagon Dinner scheduled for Thursday evening, then we head home on Friday. My poor kitty is staying with my son, and he says she isn’t terribly happy. She did come up to get petted for a few minutes, so it should improve. She just isn’t an animal that likes change or new people.

WordPress work plus the cat

I really, really need to update my WordPress templates so they look more like a “normal” blog with search keys and date markers so I can navigate through old posts easier. I ended up buying a book on WordPress that I picked up at Barnes and Noble. Yes, I know I can find anything I want online, but I really like books. I can skip around easier, underline, and use an index among other tasks. So I am now going through the book beginning to end. I am still working through it from beginning to end, but it is slow going. The first chapters include material I already know, but I don’t dare skip something because I undoubtably will miss something important.

I did take a break from reading for a couple of reasons. First, it was our 40th anniversary on Sunday. We spent the night at Nicolet Mansion B&B in Jordan, MN, southwest of Minneapolis. It was a lovely evening, night, and breakfast. We had dinner at an odd restaurant – Suzette’s in Jordan. The exterior and much of the interior screams “Diner!” due to the block exterior and booths with blue vinyl upholstery. The appearance is quite deceiving, though the European reproduction paintings give a hint. The chef is Cambodia by birth but European-trained, and the food was fantastic. For dessert we had ordered a chocolate fondue at the B&B which was quite fun. Of course it rain a lot the day of the anniversary and today so we didn’t get to the Renaissance Festival or the zoo like we had planned. It was still quite nice.

Our other distraction has been my poor cat. She had one surgery to remove a growth that turned out to be a skin cancer. She then had a second surgery to make sure they had got it all, and she is still recovering from that.

Doesn’t that look terrible? It is basically almost half her neck covered in a bunch of huge stitches. It is in the wrong spot to protect by an Elizabethan collar, and she pulls off any bandages we put on top of it. It must be dreadfully itchy, and she tries to scratch it. Luckily we head back to the vet tomorrow, and hopefully the stitches can come out.

On successful note, Kevin got all the solar installed. Our sons didn’t come up, so he had to do it himself. I was fairly irritated about it, but he took it better than I did. Oh, and I got a new electric bicycle, but I will talk about that next time since I haven’t got much of a chance to ride it.