Iowa – TooBusyForWork

Sorry if you are getting tired of “oops, no posts”

Yeah, I just got rather tied up and distracted about bunches of things. Sadly it wasn’t as warm in Iowa as it was in California and Nevada, so the sandals had to come off for a while.

We did make it to “The Lutherie” in the Des Moines area to get the ukulele crack repaired. He did a fabulous job. I am now religious about case humidifiers. I have even gotten a hard shell case which will keep the moisture inside better. The luthier recommended the sound hole humidifier shown at the bottom of the uke, so I got one of those too. No More Cracks!

Once we got home we were quickly engulfed in grandkids’s end of year activities. All three of the local grandkids had music concerts, and most had two of them! And then came a severe but luckily pretty isolated hail storm.

It came straight from the west and put holes in our siding on that side. We also need a new roof since it was damaged too. We spent quite a bit of time contacting roofers and getting estimates for the roofing and the siding. We definitely weren’t alone either. The roofing company signs were going up the next day, and some roofs are already repaired. Ours will be later in June.

Pella is a small town that was settled by Dutch immigrants. It has a strong Dutch heritage still, and the Pella Tulip Festival is usually the weekend after Mother’s Day. We had friends who visited it earlier, and they warned us the tulips were in full bloom two weeks early. We chose to take a day trip, and I am glad we did. My FB page has a full dump of the pictures , but here is a sample. The windmill is an authentic re-creation, and it is the home of a local museum. The tulips were magical. There are thousands and thousands just in the town square, and more thousands in the parking strips nearby.

For Mother’s Day I told Kevin I wanted a roasted chicken and sweet potatoes. I made the spatchcocked chicken and he did the potatoes. He also bought an adorable little tiny cake. Since I started the Mounjaro for my diabetes, I have very little appetite and small meals are the rule. We ate the chicken for 3 days LOL!

One of the things I am now determined to add to the house are window well covers. In our community, deep window wells are used as access alternatives for the basement living spaces. We have occasionally discovered mice who fell in, but sadly we are discovering baby bunnies now. We found two in the last few weeks. Both were rescued and placed back in the flower garden where they have a hole.

Oh, and I live in a very manicured suburban area without any mature trees. We were one of the first houses here, and ours is just 8 years old. We have planted trees, and neighbors have also as the other homes were built and purchased, but it will be a long time before we get any significant number of big trees. But we do get wildlife! The first year we were here, our cameras picked up a wandering mink, and we have seen possums, raccoons, rabbits, and at least 3 different cats. The deer was a first for us though.

All kind of other things are happening too. A heart murmur was discovered at Kevin’s annual physical, so he has appointments scheduled at Mayo Clinic in Rochester to further characterize the aortic stenosis the caused the murmur. He might need surgery, he might not, but we both felt more comfortable going to Mayo for a significant issue like that. I had my annual MRI to follow up on the DCIS breast cancer and lumpectomy, and a biopsy resulted showing a small area of hyperplasia. Not cancer, but it moves me into an even high risk status of future cancer. So I have an appointment at Mayo too! Lucky it is only a couple of hours away, and it is a common option for people from my small city (50,000). Sigh.

We did finally get news the motorhome was fixed, and we went to Vegas to pick it up after all the initial medical appointments. We spent one night in Fort Morgan, CO and the next night in Cedar City, UT. This is what we woke up to in Cedar City.

We were better prepared than most of the motel customers, but Kevin did go buy us some lightweight jackets the night before.

I am not thrilled with Velocity Truck Center in North Las Vegas. They did fix the engine issue, but they knocked an electrical wire out of its socket that I had to pay to get repaired (hard to prove it was all working before, but it was!). As usual with electrical issues, it took a lot more time to isolate the problem than to fix it. Then after a couple of nights at the North Las Vegas Elks Lodge again, we headed to Needles, CA for a night on our way to south of Williams, AZ where we boondocked last night and tonight. This area is full of OHV trails! We had a great ride today.

Here is a video of the smoother part of the area.

http://May 22, 2026 https://youtu.be/3bBrOCMV-zI

And another one of a bit rougher OHV section.

http://A bit rougher trail south of Williams, AZ https://youtu.be/lWPNxrN1fNw

We are gradually heading back to Iowa. We will be staying in Gallup, NM the next 2 nights hopefully to look at some Navajo rugs.

I did already make one big purchase though. I bought a new super nice Pono ukulele. It is all acacia wood with the standard goodies upscale ukuleles have – geared tuners, ebony fretboard, bone saddle and bridge. It sounds divine, and I am not yet worthy! I am an advanced beginner, and this is at least an intermediate instrument, so now I have to buckle down to be worth of it. It will be fun!

First week at home in 4 months

We definitely did the right thing by staying at Canton two nights. The wind gusts towards our destination were 45+mph. The winds were great when we finally got on the road towards home on Wednesday. 22 October. We put the motorhome on a site at Big Woods park, our standard clean up location. We cleaned and cleaned! All kinds of cabinets were opened, emptied, and cleaned. Amazing how out of date seldom-used spices accumulate! The other thing we did was clean out under the slides and do a major cleaning project on the floors. Our Dyson stick vacuum died on this trip, and we replaced it with a well-regarded Shark version, but it is heavy and doesn’t clean nearly as well! I found a good sale during a “Prime Day” special, and I bought a Dyson v11. We filled a trash can halfway with cat hair the Dyson picked up! It was rather embarrassing.

On Sunday we had some of our kids and grandkids up for dinner. It was awfully nice to see them after so long. The cats adjusted quickly and seem to enjoy the extra space. I realized I hadn’t put up too many pictures of them, so here is a cute one of Minnie on the cat tower.

These next two are while camping, but they are awfully cute.

My other big news is that I bought a baritone ukulele! It uses guitar tuning and chords, but just on four nylon strings. I am so, so happy with it. I have already learned some of the simpler chords and can sing along with the “easy ukulele” versions. It also convinced me to try to sell my acoustic guitar. Hopefully I can cover most of the cost of the ukulele with the sale of the guitar.

Kevin also replaced the toilet in our hall/guest bathroom. It was only a standard height with a round bowl – not very comfortable for adults. We replaced it with a really nice comfort height elongated bowl version with smooth sides. He also added a bidet sprayer, because once you get used to a bidet you have real trouble using a toilet without it.

In other local news, construction has begun on the fallow land behind us. It had been platted years ago around the same time our place was platted. My concern has been the area behind us is higher than our lot, and I was worried we would get flooded. However the rough grading showed they dug a deep swale in the right spot. Obviously it won’t be as deep as it shows here because they will back fill with top soil and then sod. But it pretty promising! The picture below is a screen capture from Kevin’s drone. The other thing is they finished the street the other side of this lot! It took only 2 days to finish the three blocks of city streets.

I am pushing myself to start sewing tomorrow. I need to finish the last 3 months of my Kona Block of the month. On 1 December we will have our last meeting where we will talk about finishing approaches. I also need to get a couple of quilts quilted. Oh, and there is always Christmas items to finish!

Oh, and I forgot to add: yesterday was Halloween and we had 340 trick or treaters! We had maybe 20 pieces of candy left at the end of the night because we planned for a lot of kids. The weather was cool and crisp, and there are hundreds of kids in the neighborhood. We are known as one of the neighborhoods with the “good stuff,” so we get children from other neighborhoods coming by. It was great fun. Kevin had the garage nicely warmed with propane heaters, and we sat in the garage with the candy, animal crackers, and chips. We ran out of chips and animal crackers way before we ran out of candy, so we will add more of those next time.

Family, quilting, and the RZR (mostly)

My daughter did officially graduate with her MS in Midwifery! We camped near where her ceremony was. She is part of the University of Iowa’s very first class of Midwives, and she already has a job beginning in September. Until then she will continue as a L&D nurse as she has been. It takes quite a while to get the official go-ahead to schedule boards and the her DEA license. Luckily her employer is paying for all of that. The evening of the ceremony we had all the local kids, spouses, partners, and grandkids at a restaurant for dinner. It was great fun to see everyone and I not have to cook or clean! We also had a smaller group out to the camp for a peach dump cake and my famous New Mexican style green chili chicken enchiladas, both cooked in Dutch Ovens.

I also have gotten some quilting done even with multiple dentist and medical appointments. We try to condense all our visits into a short period when we guarantee we are home, and this year both of us have had to have follow ups which take even more time! I still have one more next week, but Kevin is finally all done.

I did finish the May Kona Block of the Month, this time quite early for once! I am glad this is just about the last of the brown and dull green blocks. We will be moving to more cheerful colors soon.This one was the easiest yet; just a square in a square, some flying geese, and some squares.

I have quilted two quilts. The first one had been sitting in the “pieced not quilted” pile for far too long. I wanted a quilting design that would contrast the linear pattern, so I decided to use two different sizes of circular templates connected randomly with wavy lines. I am actually pretty proud of the circles; it is HARD to quilt around circles! And yes, it is actually nicely square. Luna kept coming by Kevin’s right foot and he twisted around some.

See those pretty circles?

I also quilted the Turkey Giblet quilt I pieced during our winter trip. It is so busy I just quilted it in a random meander with black thread. The first picture is pretty true to the actual color; the other not so much.

Kevin worked on the RZR more. He had all the important pieces one, but he still needed to improve how to get it on and off the truck. Our last little RZR had a removable cloth door that he could climb out of easily. The new one has solid plastic doors that remove with screws. The first few times he needed to get out or in he climbed through the open roof, but obviously that wasn’t a long term solution. He decided to build up the wooden supports in the truck so the door was above the truck side walls. Note the ladder in the second picture; it is definitely needed. Luckily the RZR still fits on the truck hitch attachment which was a pleasant surprise. We were worried the hitch would need to be lengthened an inch or so. He also bought new tires so we now increased the total ground clearance about 2” while maintaining the narrow width we need. Impressive! BTW, that’s our old AZ tag; we now have a new one for the new rig. He installed this one to make sure the lighting worked.

Of course when you get a brand new rig from the dealer you are taking a chance of finding some kind of factory issue. Yup, we have one. The steering is misbehaving some, so the RZR has been at the shop since late last week. Should be home next week, or so the service shop said. They’ve seen it before and seemed to know just what to do.

And here is an in-process picture of my bleeding hearts and shade garden getting weeded by my granddaughters. Their parents don’t like their faces on the internet, but we all agreed this one was ok. The bed looks much nicer now!

Nicer after the granddaughters did weeding

My only remaining quilting task here is adding a first border onto the green Mystery Monday quilt I did a year ago. I need to enlarge it to king sized for our motorhome bed. I am also prepping for a class I will be teaching at the Rocky Mountain Motorcoach Association “Ramble” – a rally in October in Farmington, NM. I will be teaching folks how to make oven mitts. It was a popular class last time I did it at the FRVA international convention a couple of years ago, but this is a much smaller rally so I am not expecting more than 4 or 5 people. I am providing supplies for 10 though, just in case. I need to get the insulation cut at least, plus see how much fabric I need to buy new and how much can come from my stash. I have plenty of time for the fabric, but the insulation comes on a big roll, and I don’t want to haul that around!

Other than that we are just getting organized for our trip beginning the first week of June, assuming I get clearance from my doctor which is very probable. We won’t be back until the week before Halloween, our longest summer trip yet.

On the road again for winter 2024/2025 trip

We are now on the way to Quartzsite, AZ where we spend most of the winter. I haven’t been in the mood for much since my last post. I just had no energy, and I was taking 2 hour naps every day in addition to sleeping more than normal at night. To no one’s surprise except my PA, I had a thyroid problem. She increased my thyroid medication (I had half of my thyroid removed many years ago due to benign nodule), and I feel human again! Not enough to finish the sewing I had planned, but enough to prep for Christmas and the trip.

Last time I noted we were heading back early for a quilting class with Kaye England. She had this really complex block that needed precision piecing, and it was a challenge. I only completed 4 of the 16” blocks in 3 days, but that was with lots of discussions. I intend on using them for a runner on a sideboard. I picked colors that will go very well with my china.

Two blocks of my Kaye England class along with the china I use

We finally did get an opportunity to see the comet that came through. I think it was named something unpronounceable: Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. We were in Iowa, and usually the skies are too hazy to see faint objects, but this one was quite visible to the naked eye if you knew where to look. My iPhone picked it up pretty well.

I did get a bit of quilting done. I did two Hunter’s Star quilts, and I got both of them quilting before running into a wall. I really like the result of this circular quilting on an angular pattern.

The green Hunter’s Star went to a friend of my oldest son, and the pink one was chosen by my youngest granddaughter.

Kevin got a new 3D printer that is MUCH faster and significantly larger than his old ones. He has been having a ball with it. He made these two things for Halloween.

Christmas was also celebrated with some 3D items. He played around with his two color printer for this tree. The little lights made it interesting.

He made some villages. This was my favorite.

He finished with a really superb tree that we added to our nativity set displays. The lights are actually color chasing, and there is a remote you can use to change the colors. Pretty impressive. The buffet is the one my blue Kaye England table runner is going to go on eventually.

And my motorhome sewing area is all complete! Kevin added latches for the storage unit, and the fabulous red chair is one I bought at the Kaye England class. The low back fits my lumbar curve perfectly, and it is amazingly comfortable. I am absolutely thrilled with it. I tried it out with some sewing before Christmas (putting a bunch of blocks together into a small throw), and it works well. I will fine tune the setup this winter.

For my birthday I got a fat quarter bundle of some lovely Christmas fabrics, and I will be sewing that if I can decide on a design. I also have plans for a Turkey Trot quilt, and I am doing a Moda Block of the Month with a local quilt shop via Zoom. I will have plenty to do.

Since it is Christmas, I thought I’d show a picture of our Christmas lights. We added railings earlier in the fall, and putting lights on them was one of the primary reasons. It is much easier to drape railings with lights than putting them on the eaves!

And it wouldn’t be a good post without pictures of the cats. Luna climbed up on this chair at Thanksgiving as soon as we put it out before the family arrived. She was definitely saying, “MINE, MINE, ALL MINE!” Minnie, in her normal way, decided to play “There is no cat.” She loves hiding underneath things.

Minnie in today’s edition of “There is no cat.”

We actually left the afternoon of 27 December, staying in the Osceola, IA Walmart lot. Tonight we are staying in the Emporia, KS lot. And the next two nights we are staying at Arcadia Lake in Edmond, OK while we visit my sister. After that we will see what the weather is before deciding our final route to Arizona.

Late posting again

I have no idea why I sometimes just can’t get in the mood to post. It might be because I am also active on Facebook and post some things there. But I can’t use FB as a search tool to show where I’ve been and what I have seen, so here I am back to it again.

We were, as usual, really busy at the FMCA convention. I taught a class on collapsable storage containers that went really well. Everybody got finished, and that’s a major accomplishment by itself. It helped that everyone knew how to use their sewing machines! Here was a sample I made.

We had thought about just gradually and slowly heading back home, but we decided to pretty much just head straight back with only a bit of detours. We spent Thursday, 22 September, in Caldwell, ID at the Elks Lodge. Nice place. Then we stayed at dry camping spot at Stanton Crossing, ID for 3 nights. There was a nice museum there we visited too. Nice change from all the crowds in Oregon. From there we went to northern Utah on the southern part of the Uintah Moutains and a nice boondock site along the Mirror Lake highway. We did some riding and generally kept relaxing. On Friday, 30 August, we were in Laramie at the Walmart. Saturday we stayed at Cabelas in Kearney, NE. Sunday we stayed at an Elks Club in Des Moines. On Monday, Labor Day, we made it home, though it was late enough in the day we just stayed in the motorhome at the local campground (Big Woods Lake) again. It is so easy to just put the motorhome in a spot and unpack gradually!

I really haven’t done much sewing this entire summer. I did finish a couple of quilts that were mostly pieced in the motorhome. The triangle one only needed binding, but the Hunter Star needed quilting and binding. Much easier to quilt on the sitdown Sweet 16!

Now we are off again. We left this morning for Red Bay, AL for our yearly motorhome service, to fix a few nagging issues, and to get a bit of remodeling done We stayed in the Walmart parking lot in Bowling Green, MO, between Hannibal and St. Louis. About 270 miles from home so a nice day’s drive.

What’s been happening since April?

I knew I said I wouldn’t post a lot while I was home, but zero seems a bit excessive! This post has a lot of medical info so skip it if you aren’t interested; I am guessing that is pretty much all of you! I was in a blue funk with back pain and trying to get it treated. It took a extra weeks to see the pain med doctor, then two trials of a treatment that had to be two weeks apart, then another 3 weeks before I could have the real treatment – lumbar medial nerve ablation. I finally got that just before we left Iowa. So far, so good! It isn’t perfect, but it is improving. Doctor said it would be 4-6 weeks before I felt the full effects, and it has only been two weeks.

I did do a few things though. More medical things included seeing a real MD dermatologist instead of the Nurse Practitioner I had been seeing. He took a good look at my face and said I had so many pre-cancers I needed a topical chemotherapy. I had to apply it once a day for two weeks, and it basically burned off the bad spots. It was pretty bad with burns and sores on most of my face. The results are good though, and I have the smoothest skin I have had for years.

We go to hear the Waterloo Symphony play the sound track to “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” along with the move, and it was more fun than I anticipated. We also went to my granddaughter’s first dance recital. My but I am glad my daughter never really took to dance! It is a lot of effort for both child and parent. I also got a railing installed at the front of our house. Seems like that wouldn’t be a big deal, but it too, forever to get the welder to come out for a measurement, then weeks to get it built and installed. The result is nice though. It will make a much more confident series of steps in the snow. Kevin is looking forward to decorating the railings with lights at Christmas.

Railings for both sides of the steps and along the porch

We did get to watch another astronomical event, the huge aurora that happened 10 May. We went a little way outside of town, but the light pollution in Iowa made viewing challenging. We did a peak though. There really were pink, green, and purple shades, but the reduction in size needed for the blog makes it seem worse than it was.

We actually left town on Wednesday, 19 June, the latest we have left for summer in a long time. Between my pain med appointments and Kevin’s dentist appointment, that was the earliest we could make it. We spent Wednesday night at Lake Manawa State Park near Omaha on the Iowa side. Thursday we spent at Mormon Lake State Recreational Area in Nebraska. Both of those are nice places. Saturday we spent at the Pine Bluffs RV Park in Pine Bluffs, WY which was very handy but not very nice. Dirt, lots of trains that had to blow their horns, etc. Sunday we spent at Lyman, WY KOA. Nice place, but we were eager to head into the mountains. It had been so HOT everywhere, and I longed to get to cool mountains. We ended up boondocking along the North Slope Road near Marsh Lake, UT at 9300’. Ahhhhhh!. It is in the Uinta National Forest, but you can only get to the area from Wyoming. Beautiful spot, and we are staying until Saturday morning. We have been doing some nice RZR rides, but there are so many pretty pictures I willDo another post on them. But here is a preview showing out campsite.

Eclipse then home

We woke to a cloudy morning on 8 April. It didn’t look promising for viewing. Kevin kept watching the cloud cover on weather apps, and just before totality we quickly drove 20 miles northwest. We got amazingly lucky, and the clouds parted just enough to view totality! There were still some high thin clouds, but we could see the “Diamond ring” and then the darkness fell. All the birds stopped singing, and even the insects stopped their sounds. Very odd, but just like what we observed during the 2017 eclipse in Idaho. Soon it was over, and we got absolutely no good pictures! We were rushing so much to get to a clear spot we had no time to set up gear. Oh well I have memories.

We spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night at the RV park in so-so weather. We spent Thursday, 11 April at the Walmart in Abilene. Nice spot for an overnight parking location. We spent Friday at Mustang RV Park in Oklahoma, leaving very early after deciding to make a run for home because of a bad storm coming in. We made it to the KOA in Topeka, KS on Saturday, then home on Sunday. We put the motorhome at our local county park, open but without water. We were too tired to unpack, so we just slept there that night. Monday and Tuesday were unpacking – ugh. It always seems a lot more trouble to unpack than to pack. But we are now home, and the cats adjusted quickly. I think they like the extra space for their zoomies. They run from the bedroom through the living room and down the stairs multiple times a day.

April and May are our medical appointment times, and we are both pretty busy with our respective dentists and doctors. Kevin is getting his dental implant finished, and I have appointments with a dermatologist, ophthalmologist, and the pain medicine guy. I need a dentist appointment too. The pain med will require at least two follow up appointments, and the derm probably will too. Sigh.

My poor 830 Record sewing machine had to go to its doctor on Saturday too. I got a thread sound up at the stand and broke the needle. I can’t get it to do any free motion quilting since, and it broke 5 needles when I kept trying various repairs I knew about. It sews ok on straight stitching, but there is thread wadding up on the bottom when I do FMQ. Hopefully I just pulled something out of whack and the machine can easily (and inexpensively) come back from it. I will find out in a week or so. The RZR is in for some major preventative service too since we really don’t know how it was cared for before we got it. We have out a few thousand miles on it! We had a regular oil change done when needed, but this is a more extensive service. We find out that dollar amount next week too, depending on whether they fine anything serious. We don’t think so, but …

I won’t be posting much, normal for me when I am home. Staying in one place just isn’t as interesting as traveling. We do have one short trip planned with my son in law and his two children the week after Memorial Day. Then we will be leaving for our western summer in mid-June.

Off for snowbird trip 2023/24

We had a fabulous Christmas hanging with the kids and grandkids. Kevin got his 3D printer going and made some fabulous decorations. I apologize for the remnant threads; I got too excited to notice them.

The pattern describes it as a snow globe

We didn’t put up the big tree, but Kevin made sure we had our presents under a lot of trees. Most of these were actually experiments with his new printer he got (early) for Christmas. It is a newer Ender 3 that goes with us in the motorhome.

We actually left the house on Boxing Day just after noon. Since we weren’t having folks over to our house for the holidays, we had more time to pack and sort. One of the advantages of having a son and DIL nearby with a big house who likes to cook is they host at least one of the big holidays. This year they chose Christmas. We ended up spending the first night in the Lakeside Casino RV park. It is only a bit over 3 hours from home so we got in early enough to put water in the tanks. And guess what we woke up to the next morning?

Yup, 2” of wet heavy snow. It didn’t get any better later in the morning. We just waited for the highway to be clear and Kevin pushed the snow off the big slide toppers. The other slides are much smaller and came in without issue. Since we left so late we on,y made it to Emporia, KS where we stayed in a Walmart parking lot. The next day (Thursday) we made it to Texola, OK right on the Texas line. It is a small and very quiet campground, and we have stayed there a few times before. All through Missouri, Kansas, and most of Oklahoma we went through small snow squalls. They were never very heavy and they never lasted long. It was tedious though. I was thrilled when we made it to Amarillo and the sun came out. New Mexico was even more clear, and we are spending tonight in the American RV Park on the west side of Albuquerque. Tomorrow we hope to boondock outside Williams, AZ, and then make it to Quartzsite, AZ by Sunday. We plan on staying there for quite a bit of the winter.

I haven’t shown many pictures of my adorable cats recently, so here you go! They are sisters, but they don’t often snuggle up like this. Minnie, the tabby, was snuggled in the blanket, and Luna, the black one, just squished herself in.

Back from server problems (I hope!)

For the last few weeks the site has been plagued by hosting problems. It would be up for 5 minutes then down for hours then up for 30 minutes down for 5 … You get the message. I contacted Bluehost, did the standard wait for an hour for text support, you all know the drill. Nothing they did seemed to work, but a couple of days later it started working for longer and longer. I finally trust it to stay up long enough to get a post up, even though there isn’t much to say.

Kevin added a 2” lift kit to the UTV, so we took a short trip to the local OHV park to check it out. It is a small area, but it has enough variety to make sure everything was working well. It gave us a total 1 1/2” increase in height. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is gave us 11.5” in the front and 9.5” in the back now. That is a significant change and will be very helpful in the Arizona rocks this winter.

We were the only people around so we had some nice animal sights. While we didn’t see this beaver, we certainly knew it was around!

There were some visible animals though. We saw at least 20 turkeys in two groups, one big and one small, plus a single deer who didn’t see much in us to worry her.

We also had one more group ride from the Volga, IA. There was an awful lot of rain beforehand, so this trip also was re-routed to mostly gravel roads. I felt sorry for the organizers. They had cleared more trails and gained additional landowner permissions for newer locations, and then they had to hit mostly the gravel roads! However even the gravel roads are lovely in Allamakee county.

One of the characteristics of group activities in Iowa before the corn is cut is the guys head into the corn instead of the provided toilets. It makes for shorter lines for the women!

It wasn’t peak color, but it was still nice.

We also took a trip to the largest OHV park in Iowa near Ft. Dodge. I was not a fan. I like to ride to see scenery, not for an adrenaline rush. The majority of the area is a bunch of trails emphasizing mudding and fast corners. Of course there were some lovely spots.

We also went to a local community playhouse to see “Noises Off,” a backstage/front stage comedy of actors in a play. I am sorry to say it was awful! The actors did what they could with the play, but the play itself was pretty bad. Too bad because it is a lovely theater, and we hope to go to other plays there. We also went to a presentation of “Annie” at Gallagher Bluedorn theater at University of Northern Iowa here in town. Nicely done, but I never can figure out why theater seats copy airplane seats in size! My knees bump up against the seat I front of me!

I also got a truly disgusting cold/sinus “thing.” That has lasted for two full weeks now. I dosed myself with a huge amount of meds in order to visit a pain doctor for a steroid injection in my back. It is already a little bit better, and I hope it improves significantly.

No real quilting, but I am prepping for a class on ruler quilting offered virtually by a quilt shop not too far away. The result will be a whole cloth quilt using a Westerlee arc ruler. It will be three hours each night on three more nights. Our first night was a bunch of background and how to set up for the quilting part. I had to do an awful lot of marking to get started, and I still have to get it trimmed and sandwiched by Tuesday! We will see. I have a backup plan of scraps to use for the practice. Maybe my next post will be a picture of the result.

Back home from Alabama

On Monday 18 September, we got the rig detailed inside and outside. They did a pretty good job, but the exterior detail didn’t include any waxing which disappointed me. I think we will go back to the guy we used before next time. We left on Tuesday morning and spent the night at the Perryville Elks Lodge. It was a big parking lot that wasn’t very level, but we managed to get the rig in the best place possible and leveled with blocks. They had a 20 amp socket for electricity, but we didn’t need it, so we dry camped. I had planned on having a drink in the lodge, but it stunk of cigarette smoke so I gave up on that idea. Wednesday night we stayed at the Mississippi River RV Park in Canton, MO. It is run by the city. It was a great spot immediately below Lock and Dam 20. We got to see a few barges coming through, but the river is so low there wasn’t much traffic.

We decided to put the rig at Big Woods Park again to get everything cleaned, emptied, and winterized. It was nice to be home again. The cats seemed to agree, and they were running around immediately. While we were home in the first week I had a doctor’s appointment, met with our financial advisor, went to church and later choir practice, and got my COVID shot. I didn’t do any sewing at all!

We went on a charity UTV ride on Saturday, 30 September. It was for the Waterville Fire and EMS, a volunteer group. It was HUGE! They had three different groups starting at different times along different routes for a total of almost 600 rigs. The vast majority were UTVs, but there were a few ATVs in the mix. It is mostly on private land open only to donation rides like this. There had been a LOT of rain in the last week – 6+” – and the trails were wet and the creeks full. We got that figured out when our first creek crossing got people stuck! In the picture below the one in the back was buried to his axles. The two in front of him on the left were pulling him out with tow straps, and the one with the red lights went around the stuck rig on the right like we did. The water did come inside the RZR, but it is designed for that, and we were fine.

This is about the separation of the rigs on the trail. As you can see, the trails were quite muddy. But the rain made for some lush vegetation.

There were pre-planned stops every hour or so. I liked the view at this spot a lot. It is absolutely a classic view of the northeastern Iowa a landscape.

The ride was billed as the “Fall Colors” tour, but we were at least a week away from significant color.

“And the woods were lovely, dark and deep”

It was a 5.5 hr trip going only 39 miles with long stops, but that is to be expected with a large group. We had to wait for at least one rig with tire problems. We went on this same ride last year when the RZR was brand new, so it was nice to how much more comfortable we are with it this year.

Another thing we got done was to replace out dying maple tree with a new honey locust tree. Frost Tree Farm is great to work with. He took out the maple for free, planted the locust, added mulch to it and the elm, plus even pruned my crabapple tree in the front! He is retiring soon though, so these trees better grow.

As always, the posts will be less frequent while I am at home, and we will be here until after Christmas. I will be doing some sewing though, and I will post that as I finish the quilt tops I have ready for quilting.