Leaving Minnesota

I’m writing from Omaha, NE where we are waiting an extra day so that we can see Don’s Cousin Dave who will be coming through here later today on his way to Wisconsin. We left Minnesota. It seemed like in a hurry because once we got a few miles south of the Twin Cities, there wasn’t much to hold us in Minnesota and we kind of fell out of the state into Iowa. We need to get to Missouri before October. From here it looks like we will barely make it since we tend to stay an extra day everywhere we stop.

A strange thing has happened. I stopped taking pictures. It could be that I haven’t seen Edie since September 6 and there isn’t much worth taking. Once when we were riding our bikes over by Des Moines I wanted to take a picture but my phone battery was dead so that didn’t work. So I don’t have many pictures to post.

Grandpa and Edie taking a break while Mom and Dad play.

The last couple of weeks in Minnesota were busy. We ate a lot of good family meals and there was the State Fair day with Kay and then again to see Garrison Keillor’s last state fair gig. Elaine, Kay and I visited our beautiful Cousin Nancy at her house in St. Paul. It was good to see her. She is fighting cancer and I wish she didn’t have to do that. Sister Elaine hosted a family meal when I got to see most of my family. We got to have Edie overnight on September 3 while Greg and Peggie went to see Lynard Skynyrd at the State Fair Grandstand. It was a nice warm day so we were able to spend time in the swimming pool and play until the end of the day. She missed her mommy but eventually we all were able to get to sleep. Now I miss her and her parents, too. I’m afraid I won’t get back to see her until I go back for her 4^th birthday in January. Our last night in Elk River we met Niece Aleatha at Cowboy Jacks for a $2.00 burger and some bingo. Aleatha went home about $30 up.

Garrison Keillor at the State Fair

Kelly was able to arrange her schedule so she could be in Minnesota for Labor Day so we got to see her again before we left. She came to the big family gathering at Elaine’s house and we went in to Greg’s the next day so we could see them all again. So I got to sit in the circle with the 5 of us and Edie in the center which seems to be how our family is structured now. It feels good to be there.

Frisbee

Elaine came with us up to the Jug Band Boogie on September 13 that marked the end of our stay in Minnesota. We left the camper at Brother Dick’s in Brainerd and drove the car up to Camp Deer where we stayed in a cabin. 

Deer Lake Sunset

Deer Lake Charlie’s is a bar that sits at the corner of Highway 1 and East Deer Lake Road about 20 miles east of Effie, Minnesota. It is where the annual Jug Band Boogie is held on the Sunday after Labor Day. About a mile down East Deer Lake Road is where you can find Camp Deer which is the place where my cousins run a resort that seems to be frozen in time. It looks much like it did 60 years ago when my Aunt Ivy and her husband Harold Dunlap ran the place. What’s not frozen in time is me, my siblings and our cousins who bear little resemblance to ourselves 60 years ago. There have been a few changes. The wood stoves in the cabins have been replaced with gas and this year the electric lines were buried between the cabins.

Relaxing by Deer Lake

I have so many pictures of the sunset over Deer Lake that this year I didn’t bother though my sister Elaine did and I will borrow some of those pictures. Every morning my Cousin Norman comes down to the the “office” and starts a couple of urns of coffee and slowly people from the resort and the neighborhood show up to have coffee and tell stories. Cousin Jim and his wife Em come down from the house they built up on the hill for their retirement. It was really good to see them. I even got to see Cousin Kathy who came down from Brainerd for a few hours. She is slowly cleaning out the cabin which my grandparents built for themselves and in which her mother lived until she wasn’t able to stay by herself.

We rented one of the “big cabins” with Dick and Ludwig along with Elaine. Ludwig’s band, The Fat Chance Jug Band played in the Boogie. Ludwig also played the wash tub base for another of the contestants. The Jug Band Boogie is an event like none other. The pool table is covered with a sheet of plywood and slowly is filled with food… really good food from people’s gardens and crock pots with really good Louisiana red beans and rice, meat balls. Four judges selected from the crowd and wearing bright colored tee-shirts with the message “Never underestimate the power of a judge.” On the front and something to the effect that judges can be bribed on the back. A large deck in the back of the building is set up with beer being sold as fast as possible both at the bar and on the deck. They also sell “set-ups” for people who drink something other than beer. Needless to say it is not a sober affair. This year, like last year, was a beautiful warm sunny late summer day, the kind that is treasured this far up north this time of year.

We left Effie and drove to Brainerd where we picked up the camper, hooked up the car and headed south. It seemed like a big hurry. We had to pick up the other Aqua Hot part at the UPS in Maple Grove and weren’t sure where we should stay though some of the folks we met at the Boogie had suggested a campground in Owatonna. It seems crazy but we couldn’t find a place where we knew we could easily get off the interstate in Minneapolis where we could stop and have a chance to see Greg’s family again and we just kept on going all the way to Owatonna where we stayed at River View Campground for one night. That was a very nice place with pull through sites and full hookups.

So we headed South on 35. Near Des Moines we stayed in Jester Park. This was probably the best campground that we have seen in our travels. The only drawback was that they only had electric hookup. That was fine as we were only there a couple of days. We had a beautiful site next to the Des Moines River with large level pads. Don’s friend from his days selling spark plugs, Jim and his wife Faye live nearby. They invited us for dinner along with  Jim’s friend Brad who lives in Minneapolis and Jim took us on a bike ride on a rails to trail that crossed the river on a trestle bridge. That was where I would have taken a picture if I could. We stayed an extra day so we could enjoy the park some more and I had a chance to make a batch of granola.

We came over to Omaha on the 18^th and are staying at Walnut Creek Recreation Area just south in the city in Papillion. This is a very nice RV Park with nice big concrete pads though many of them are not very level. We just have electric hookups. Don’s cousin Steve and his wife Dana live in Omaha. They invited us over to their house for Elk Burger and the Nebraska football game. After we came home, we watched the exciting conclusion of the football game and decided to go for a walk. We started our walk about 6:30 or so and thought we would just go around a little lake. Well, there was another lake behind that one and when we were about into the walk for ½ hour or so, a sign said that the entire loop was about 1 hour. We kept on walking and seemed to be going for a very long time. A horse trail went off in what we thought was the direction of the campground. The trails are all surrounded by 4 foot prairie grass so it was hard to tell where we were. Well, the horse trails looped back and forth and it got dark out. We were beginning to wonder where we might end up as we could only see far enough to know that we were still on the trail. Eventually we saw cars going on a road so we went cross country through some sumac bushes to the road and were only about a ½ a mile from the campground. We got back to the camper at about 9:30, ate some leftovers and went to bed. We figure that we walked about 6 miles that night and took no water or food with us. Fortunately I took a sweatshirt with as it did get cool. Today we are meeting up with Ray and Cindy, our Palmdale friends. This is where they live. Tonight, Don’s Cousin Dave and his wife Carol will be in Omaha for the night so we will go back to Steve’s so we can visit them. They are on their way to Wisconsin to see their daughter and her family.

From here, we are heading for Missouri where we get to see Kay and Max again and stay on their property for a while. I think they have some work for us. We are also hoping to fix the Aqua Hot while we are there. Nights are getting cooler and we will be needing it. 

Minnesota: Part II (or Edie)

So here is the reality in which I live at the moment. It is the 27^th of August 2015 and we have been staying at the Mississippi Riverwood RV Park in Otsego, MN for 17 days. Before we came here we attended the Minnesota Blue Grass and Old Time Music Festival at El Rancho Manana near Richmond Minnesota from August 6-9. We spent one night at Johnny B’s cabin near Clear Lake after spending about a month in Brainerd at Dick’s house.  

What is reality after all.

Is it my state of mind which is not too great some of the time.

Is it how things appear to be to someone looking in from the outside.

Is it the emptiness that I feel sometimes amidst the fullness of my life.

Is it this can’t find the words to describe ennui… anxiety…unsettledness…sadness….running away from feelings…craziness….compulsive crosswording, word games, solitaire, puzzle solving…. Anything but sitting stillness that drives me. Or simply the fact that I don’t have internet where I’m at.

I got up early… 5:30 AM because I couldn’t sleep and figured that I might write something that I could put up on my blog since I haven’t done that in about a month. I don’t have enough data to be able to even go to look at the blog to see where I left off. I believe that was about the end of July after I came back from DOM.

Our first stop was to spend a day with a friend from our college days, Johnny B. and his wife Becky. They were staying at their cabin near Clear Lake, Minnesota. For people not from Minnesota it is important to know that many people, it seems like almost everybody here, have lake cabins in which they spend whatever free time they can during the summer months. In fact the day before we left Brainerd we went to visit our other childhood friends, Jim and Lisa at their cabin up on Bonnie Lake by Merrifield. That is a place with good memories since I spent many hours playing in that lake with Lisa’s cousin Marga who was my good friend in high school and their families had adjoining property at the lake. It is much changed. Turns out that when Jim told his parents they were going to see us and mentioned my family name his dad told him that my great grandmother Gorton was the midwife who helped Jim’s dad get born. All these years and who knew we had that connection. But I digress…

Since John is retired and Becky is a teacher, they spend much of their summer at their cabin. Don had asked John when he talked to him if he had room for us to park our “camper”. John had said yes. When we arrived and pulled up on the road in front of their cabin, we walked back to where they were sitting on the deck overlooking the lake- beautiful setting.  As we walked back to take a look at how we might get the “bus” onto their land, John just said, “Donny, you said you had a camper. That is no camper.” After about an hour of maneuvering and more than a little damage to his yard, we were situated where we thought we might put down our jacks to level it out. One jack extended completely into a hole in the ground. We used some 2’X8’ pieces that we carry with us to make a bridge over the hole and leveled again only this time the back wheels were about 6” off the ground. We decided to give up on that and didn’t bother putting the slides out. We retreated to their deck by the lake and enjoyed some beer and wine, had dinner and caught up with our stories and reminisced about the times and people we knew back then. The next day as we examined the condition of his grass, we apologized profusely about the damage. John just said, “Don’t worry about it. It is worth it just to have the story to tell when people come over. It will recover.” After breakfast with John and Becky, we pulled out and headed over to the Blue Grass Festival about an hour’s drive up Interstate 94.

We spent 5 nights at El Rancho Manana. Four of those nights we were packed in with a thousand other campers side by side. Brothers Ludwig, Doug and Dick along with Greg and Edie all camped in tents up on the area known as “Old Wash Machine Field” or Old Wash where some of the best jams occur though we heard plenty of good music long into the night coming from the jam next door to us. El Rancho Manana is a huge campground…. I’m sure it used to be a farm. One area known as “reserved camping” is a regular campground that borders a lake. We were not able to park there because it gets reserved very early and we were too late. The rest is normally used as a horse pasture. As you enter past an office/bar known as the Ranch House you go past a horse corral and head into the festival area where the “rough camping” takes place. Here you find acres of campers and tents put up wherever you can find a spot that works. Roads wind through this area of pasture and woodland with trolleys (wagons with benches which are pulled with big tractors) providing transportation for people from their campsites to various venues. The main stage is a well equipped stage with state of the art sound on which you can see and hear some of the best blue grass musicians in the world.

 It starts early and runs into the night.  The audience brings their own chairs and lines them up on a long low hill with trees providing dappled shade. You can buy a MBOTMA tee shirt or CD’s offered for sale from each of the performers. Not far from the main stage is the food court with another performance venue where you can sit under a canopy and eat some good food while listening to more music. There is the “Family Area” with another small stage where children get the chance to participate in music, make crafts at the craft table, or play at the May Pole. I spent some good hours with Edie at this place. Another stage is set up down the road just for dancing. Impossible to get to all of the things you are interested in especially when you want to just hang out with people around the camp site. This year we volunteered at the front gate on Friday morning and were rewarded with free tee shirts.  We stayed an extra night here because we couldn’t get into this place until the 10^th. It was that night after everyone was gone that we were alone in the field and they drove the horses up to the pasture at Old Wash past our camper.

So we came here to Mississippi Riverwoods in Otsego, MN. Right next to Elk River where Sister Elaine lives. We can look out our front window and see the Mississippi going by. We are about 45 minutes from Greg’s house in Minneapolis. Here we also have a playground and swimming pool. On one particularly hot Saturday, Peggy brought Edie out here and we were in the pool until we started to turn into prunes. Grandpa went out for water wings and came back with a flotation device that allows Edie to move freely and independently around the water while she gets used to it. She made giant strides in feeling comfortable putting her face in the water. Since then we haven’t had good hot days to enjoy the pool though Greg brought her out when it got into the 80s and we played until she turned blue from the cold. Don’s birthday was a cool rainy day when Greg and Edie came out to deliver birthday cards and doughnuts. The second day we were here, we had Elaine, her husband Loy and their daughter Aleatha out for dinner. Aleatha brought some very good sweet corn that someone brought to the bank that day. She also got to show off her new Jeep. On Saturday, Brother Dick stopped by for the night. It was a chilly night so we baked a lasagna and stayed in. The next day we set out to buy some 2’X4’s for Greg’s garage project and saw a sign for the Nowthen Threshing Show in Nowthen (a little town 5 miles down the road). So we went there and spent most of the day enjoying watching old steam engines run saw mills, threshing machines, a tractor parade and a tractor pull to end the day. We finished the Home Depot Run and came home. By then it was late enough Dick stayed an extra night before heading down the road to his daughter Colleen’s house in Rochester. We spent Monday in Tuesday in Minneapolis. Don and Greg fixed his garage door while I enjoyed spending time with Edie who has become an amazing 3-year-old with awesome verbal skills and an incredible imagination. We spent hours at a couple of Minneapolis’ wonderful parks.

 Yesterday was her first day at -School.

We have a couple of weeks left to get this bus ship-shape and ready to head down the road again. There-in is the source of my unsettledness. While I look forward to seeing old friends and new places as we head out, my heart is pulled to stay here near the people that I love.

But before all of that happens, we still have to go back up North to the Jug Band Boogie at Deer Lake Charlie’s in Effie, MN.