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.