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.