Winter Solstice --- Two Peggies

Winter Solstice

Today is the day of the least sun here in the northern hemisphere. Up north it’s easier to be aware of this. In the place where I grew up it is quiet, covered with snow and plants are dormant. A few hearty animals are out and about in search of food. People are spending more time indoors near their heat though there is much to do outside as long as it isn’t too cold, like below zero. Here the sun sets early but things are still green and there is the noise of road construction going on in the background. It’s nice enough that people are out walking about and the swimming pool was busy this morning with aquasizers. It’s easy to forget that this is the time of year for quiet contemplation and that tomorrow the time of light will begin to gradually increase ushering in a new season of growth and beginnings. For now though it is time to be quiet and listen.

Tomorrow, I will get on an airplane and head up to Minneapolis. So much for quiet contemplation. I will make snow angels with Edie, drink wine with my sisters, eat good food, celebrate the holidays with my favorite people and then come back home to Palmdale ready to begin a new year.

Two Peggies,

On the day after I arrived in Palmdale, I went to the walking exercise class that meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There, I was greeted by a small group of familiar faces. One such person approached me with a full smile of welcome and I searched my memory for a name to go with her somewhat familiar face. I came up with Peggy… thinking, I’ve seen her picture on Facebook a couple times. Peggy was so surprised that I knew her name. She was really impressed because she hadn’t been here last year but was here the year before that I should remember her name. I said that I had an advantage because I was friends with Peter on Facebook. We walked back towards our RVs together and she told me that they had replaced their motorhome. That didn’t fit with what I had read on FB because I know that Peter and Peggy were looking at buying a mobile home here. There were a couple of other things that weren’t congruent with what I’d heard but I figured I must not be up to date. So I went home and told him that Peggy Pazucha came to exercise class and I pointed to the motor home that they live in. Don said, “That can’t be them. They bought a mobile home.” I doubted him and said they must have changed their mind. He said, “That’s not where they are parked.” Maybe they moved, I thought, but doubt was beginning to form in my mind. I looked at Peter’s blog and I knew that the Peggy I met couldn’t possibly be the same Peggy. But they are full timers and they were here 2 years ago but not last year. That’s about all they had in common. Peter and Peggy are from Wisconsin and they didn’t travel all over the country this year. The other Peggy is Peggy Pendill and is married to Dick and they are from Maine. I introduced Peggy to Peggy the other day after the children’s Christmas show and they have a little resemblance in that they are both white, about the same age, and not much difference in size. One has gray hair and one is more blond. One is very talkative and outgoing and the other is more reserved. One is at almost every event around here and the other I will need to go seek out so I can get to know her better

Good to be home

Here is where we’ve been since the beginning of November.

11/1 – 3/2016 – Army Corps Springhill Campground, Fort Smith, AR – Great place
11/4 – 5 - Home Sweet Home RV Park, Texarkana, TX  - not very sweet and definitely not homey
11/6-7 – Margaritaville Casino, Bossier, LA
11/8-9 – Diamond Jacks Casino RV Resort – so we could have cable television to see election results. What a waste.
11/10-11 – Timberline RV Park, Marshall, TX (another Passport America bust)
11/12 – Walmart Parking Lot in Henderson, TX – so we could go to the Syrup Festival
11/13-17 – Tyler State Park, Tyler, TX a great stay to see the Supermoon
11/18-24 – Rainbow’s End RV Park (Escapee’s Headquarters) in Livingston, TX for Thanksgiving.
11/25-26 – Lazy Longhorn RV Park, Victoria, TX (great stopping place)
11/27-30 – Mustang Island State Park, Mustang Island, TX – beautiful Gulf shore stay. Windy and salty.
12/1/2016 till 3/31/17 (planned) Palmdale RV Resort, Los Fresnos, TX – Good to be home with friends.

It’s good to be back at Palmdale. This is our 3^rd year and it has the feeling of coming home.

I haven’t written since the election. Actually, I did some writing but didn’t post it and don’t know if I will. I wrote it out of the anger I felt about the election outcome. My thoughts going forward on that subject is that our priorities need to be to protect the civil rights of those who might be vulnerable to the new government and work to take the House and the Senate in the midterm elections in 2 years. Other than that I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the subject.

It took almost a month for us to get here to the Valley since we were in Shreveport the last time that I wrote. We spent a couple of weeks in the Piney Woods of Eastern Texas on our way here. One of the highlights was Tyler State Park where we spent a week. The campground consists of a clearing in the woods with a circle road with campsites on both sides. There we enjoyed some “real” camping with campfires, walks around the lake and through the woods. We also had an awesome view of the Super-moon with very little light pollution.

Making syrup from ribbon cane

Before we got to Tyler State Park, we spent a night at the WalMart in Henderson, Texas after we enjoyed a day at their Syrup Festival. Years ago a major crop there was Ribbon Cane. The process was to press the juice out of the cane and then cook it in huge vats until it becomes a thick golden colored syrup. I thought it tasted kind of like Karo dark syrup. There were 30,000 people attending this event in a town of 14,000. Pretty amazing

Pressing cane using mule power

We went on to Rainbow’s End Escapee’s Park near Livingston, TX for Thanksgiving. This was our 3^rd Thanksgiving at this location. It was a good place to stay for the holiday. Then we moved south and after a couple of nights in Victoria we moved to Mustang Island State Park near Corpus Christi. While in Victoria we visited the important Texas sites in Goliad where Santa Anna won a battle against the Texas revolutionaries and then assassinated all the men who surrendered.

Don standing by the cotton gin

screw that was placed at the

site of the battle of Goliad

This, along with the Alamo helped spur the Texans to win their independence. Thus ends your Texas history lesson for today.
Mustang Island State Park was great. We walked on the beach and I got my fishing license and we fished off the jetty. Didn’t catch any fish though. It’s beautiful place with huge grass covered dunes between the campground and the Gulf. Then we readied the camper for traveling and hooked up the car and headed south to Palmdale.

Don has a question to which we found the answer.

“How long can you pull a car in first gear at 60 miles an hour before the engine explodes and it bursts into flames?”  The answer, “Somewhere between 1.5 and 2 miles.” Not much more to be said about that. There are excuses… we changed our normal hook up routine… I was distracted… Don didn’t ask if it was done…. And the outcome remains the same. We destroyed, or maybe I destroyed our 2014 Toyota Corolla that has been our loyal transportation since August 2014. We selected it specifically because with a manual transmission it was the recommended dinghy-tow car for that year.

Don first noticed a lot of smoke coming from behind our camper and pulled to the shoulder. I had been putting up the floor in front of the passenger seat and reversed that. He was urgently trying to get me to hurry that.  He was able to get out and I joined him as he asked finally double checked, “Did you set up the car?” All I said was, “Oh Shit!” Some nice people had stopped quite a distance behind us and were walking up to us. The first thing I noticed was plastic parts in flames under the car. We agreed that we had to get the car unhooked from the RV so it didn’t get burned up, too so we went to work on that. When our helpers reached us, they threw some water on the burning parts under the car. They noticed that the fire was burning under the hood and asked about a fire extinguisher. I told them where to find the fire extinguisher in the camper. They went to get it and came back and asked a couple of times to get the hood up. They put the fire out at about the same time that we got the car unhitched.  Our newfound friend looked at the engine and said, “Look at that. I’ve never seen anything like it. Your pistons are laying in the rocker panel.” They informed us that they had called the fire department and as they were leaving and we thanked them, they gave us their card for Lorelei Brewing Co. in Corpus Christi (www.loreleibrewing.beer) and invited us for a free beer. They thought we could probably use a beer about then and that was true but we decided not to take them up because it just wouldn’t be practical under the circumstances. But we owe them big time and the next time we get to Corpus we’ll pay for our beer. I highly recommend to everyone who goes to Corpus Christi to check out this micro-brewery.

The fire department went flying by us in search of smoke as we stood there in shock for several minutes. We waited, knowing that they would be back when they figured out that we were the fire. That happened. They helped us make the car towable by tearing off some of the parts that were dragging on the ground and improvising a hook that was lost from the tow bar. A fireman bent a S hook from a bungy with his bare hands so that it wouldn’t come lose. We drug the car to the Toyota dealer in Harlingen, TX near were we’re staying with some slight hope that it could be fixed. It was totaled so for the last 18 days we shopped for a car. Tomorrow we will pick up a 2014 Honda CRV which is another car that can be flat towed even with an automatic transmission.

I still mourn for that little car. Not the best ride but 37 miles to the gallon. Irreplaceable. No one gets a manual transmission any more. I had plans for that car. I figured we would give it to Edie in about 11 years and she would be the only person in her generation to know how to drive a stick. Sorry Edie.

Apparently, we still had more to learn about this lifestyle.

Our Toy Toad

Election 2016

On Tuesday morning, I woke up after a good night’s sleep. When I got dressed I donned my favorite white tee shirt, the one from the Little Rock Corn Bread Festival of 2014. White because I read on FB that people were wearing white in honor of Hillary’s election. It also seemed right because I bought it when we visited the first President Clinton Museum. We moved the camper from the parking lot at Margaritaville Casino in Bossier, LA over to Diamond Jacks Casino RV Park so we could have electricity to run our television all night and wi-fi. Bossier is the city across the river from Shreveport. Then, we took a road trip on the Boom and Bust Trail around northwest Louisiana stopping at the State Oil and Gas Museum in Oil City, Louisiana. On the way back, we picked up our favorite pizza from Papa Murphy’s for dinner while we watched the returns. We got back to Diamond Jacks around 4:00 PM and I took a long walk finding the way over to the Boardwalk Outlet Stores by foot. As I walked, I was feeling good about participating in this historic day when we would elect our first woman President. It was a beautiful day.

When I got back it was about 5:30 and Don had turned on the television and set it up so that he could switch from CBS to PBS to Fox. I took out a fresh bottle of 2-Buck-Chuck and poured myself a glass of celebratory wine for the occasion. I turned on my new computer so that I could stay abreast on Facebook. Then we watched as the talking heads chattered about election news. By about 8:00 PM here, election returns were coming in from the East Coast. I baked the pizza in 2 batches. I have to cut the family size pizza in half, tray and all, in order to fit it into my Convection-Microwave oven. At first, the news was focused on Florida. Everyone was waiting for the returns to come in that would reverse the Republican lead. Then they were looking at the other “swing states” and we were watching the same trends. When the returns from the population centers came in…. then we would see the change. 

As I took out the second half of the pizza, I noticed that the CBS news team were looking alarmed as one by one the swing states swung wrong. I’ve watched this news team all year. I’d never seen them look like this. I began to be concerned. After dinner I began to pace and at one point I found myself flapping my hands. I remembered that this is a symptom of agitation and extreme anxiety. I cleared the table and washed the dishes and sat down with my laptop and began to play solitaire. I played and lost over and over again until I realized the returns weren’t going to change. At 10:14 PM I posted, “How can this be happening?” on Facebook. At that point I couldn’t tolerate the television. I went into my bedroom closed the door and pulled the covers over my head. I tried to read. I tried to breathe to calm myself. I had only had 2 glasses of wine and I knew that more wine would not be helpful. Don continued to say that there was still hope. When he turned off the television and came to bed at 10:30, I knew that even he had given up. That began one of the longest nights of my life as I grappled with this new reality that I could not tolerate. I compared it to the time my mother died but even that was more acceptable. She had been sick for a long time. I compared it to 9/11 but that made more sense than this. Ever since he descended on the escalator to announce his candidacy, I was positive that the citizens of our country would not elect this misogynistic, xenophobic, racist, homophobic, narcissistic sociopath to the presidency. It was completely and totally not acceptable. It didn’t make any sense to me. I took some of the sleep aid we have and tried to sleep. I got up. I tried to read. I played more solitaire and solved a Sudoku and a crossword puzzle and took some more sleep aid. I did a 15 minute mindfulness practice and tried to focus on breathing. At 1:17 PM I asked on FB if anyone else was able to sleep. It helped that many of my friends were also still awake. I knew that I was not alone. At about 3:30 AM I finally was able to sleep for a couple of hours until I woke up and realized that not only was the nightmare real but that Don had my favorite pillow. I gave up and got up. I couldn’t stand to look at the news. I looked at Facebook but even though I could tell that many others felt like I did, I still could not stand to spend much time reading about it.

For all the next day I stayed away from the news and from Facebook. We spent a couple of hours walking around the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum and in the afternoon walked over to the outlet stores to buy Don some shoes. I saw a little of the news and it seemed like both the President and Hillary were treating this man like he was the President-Elect and it helped to normalize this very abnormal event. Many of my wonderful friends posted uplifting and positive messages. I read those and avoided the extreme ones. I talked to Brother Bob and like the good political person he is, he talked about the things the Democrats can learn from this fiasco. I saw a clip of Hillary’s speech and I realized that she probably handled the loss better than I did. I realized that this man it totally unpredictable and that we really don’t know if he is as bad as I think. I don’t have much faith that he will be any good but maybe he won’t be so horrible. What choice do any of us have but to continue to live our lives from goodness and love while actively standing up for everything that is good about our country. Someone suggested that the Cub’s World Series win took up all the good juju for the year. I’m sorry Cubs fans but I would trade that World Series trophy for a different election outcome any day.

The good thing is that this horrible election is over. I only hope that we don’t have another one like it in my lifetime. I continue to be judicious about what news I can tolerate and maybe will take a break from news for a while. This is how grief is. 

How About Them Cubs!

In Illinois when the conversation begins to lag or worse yet becomes tense and unbearable, what you say is, “How bout dem Cubs?” It gives you something else to talk about such as their need for a new catcher, pitcher or outfielder to allow them to win the championship. Thank God for “dem Cubs”. We’ve never needed a conversation diversion worse than we do now. Thank you Cubbies. I began this blog post a couple of weeks ago and finished it up this miraculous morning after the Cubs won the World Series.

Someday when I have adjusted to all my new technology and have my pictures back in my control I will again post pictures. Until then you will just have to make do with my words.

I’m awake in the wee hours and not for the first time at 3:00 AM because I don’t have sense enough to disconnect from the news cycle or Face book so I live with chronic anxiety of impending disaster come election day.  I thought maybe writing about it might help to settle me down. Maybe I should write about something different since just about anything I might say has probably already been said and you can read about it on-line.

We’ve been traveling since September 1 or so and put on about 1000 miles but we’re only about 500 miles from where we started. By the time we get to Kansas City, we’ll be closer yet. Right now we back in Springfield at the Illinois State Fairgrounds Campground. We’ll be visiting friends here and checking out old haunts.

Here’s where we’ve been since I last wrote about a month ago.

9/20- 23 Tiki RV Park and Campground, St. Ignace, MI

9/24 Friske Orchard, Ellsworth, MI

9/25Turtle Creek Casino, Traverse City, MI

9/26-9/30 Timber Ridge RV Resort, Traverse City, MI

10/1 Cabella’s, Grand Rapids, MI

10/2-5 Conestoga Grand River Campground, Coopersville, MI

10/6-7 Blue Chip Casino, Michigan City, IN

10/8 Hollywood Casino, Joliet, IL

10/9-11 Burnridge Forest Preserve Paul Wolf Campground, Elgin, IL

10/12- 18 Illinois State Fairgrounds Campground, Springfield, IL

I continue to struggle with my technology. My phone doesn’t connect to wi-fi still and my computer will not update. Now I have a message that the “NET framework needs to be repaired” and I should not restart my computer until that process is completed. That is going on in the background while I write. Kelly called me and shamed me about my obsolete technology when I complained about my problems last time and I will be shopping soon. Now I have a message that this copy of Windows is not genuine. When I have access to decent wi-fil I will call Microsoft again. Good thing I’m retired and I have time for this stuff.

But I’m not writing so that you can know all about my technical problems. For the second time since we started doing this I gave the wrong zip code to My South Dakota Address so now my mail is lost out there somewhere. Eventually it will be found and I can get it but the problem is that it has our ballots and is somewhat time-sensitive. I will feel awful if the D gets South Dakota by 2 votes and we don’t get our ballots in time to vote. I’ve made several mistakes lately like this but I’m still able to joke about cognitive decline.

It’s been good to spend some time in Springfield. We’ve enjoyed a lot of good meals with old friends and still have a few to go. Today the temperature will be a record 90 degrees and we will need our air conditioner again.  

Since I wrote the above information on October 18, we have been at the following places.

10/19-29 at the Klinkenborg’s Blackberry Iris Farm in Excelsior Springs, MO.

10/30-31 at Camp Mi Casa on the Route, Carthage, MO (This is a great stopping place near I49. New well place connections, long pull throughs and excellent Wi-Fi.)

11/1-3 Springhill Park COE Campground, Barling, AR

My technology problems did not get better and it has been about a month since I last wrote the above post. I finally capitulated and bought a new computer. Now I’m working with Windows 10 and Office 2016. As you can see, there is no change in my writing. I’m still operating with Brain 1949. The good news is that we got our ballots in Springfield and were able to vote plenty early so our ballots made it to South Dakota. Not that it made a whole lot of difference in South Dakota but it seemed important to me to vote in this election. The bad news is that this election is not over yet and every day seems to increase my anxiety.

Meanwhile, we are slowly working our way south and are being exposed to local election issues. In Missouri, the Democrats have gone after the Senate seat so we were repeatedly reminded of how bad Senator Blunt is. In Kansas, their Republican Governor is ruining the schools and trying to replace the supreme court with his cronies because the existing court found his policies unconstitutional. Here in Arkansas where we are now they will be voting to legalize marijuana or not. Also, the Chicago Cubs are playing in the 7^th Game of World Series tonight and it will be 85 degrees here in Arkansas. Now that is a miracle. It is a most unusual year that is for sure.

In Springfield, we enjoyed a couple of good meals and wine with good friend Dwight and his son Adam, we ate out with friends Jon and Kathy and I enjoyed lunch with old friends from Catholic Charities, Pat, Sari and Mary (sorry we missed Danielle and Cindy) and then with Kathy Edwards. A couple of meals and some hours at dear friend Mary Krusz’s house. I enjoyed those meals immensely. We also took a couple of walks around Lincoln Memorial Garden and stopped by to see old neighbors on Vigal Road. We sat on Jerry and Donna’s porch and looked at our old house. It hasn’t changed on the outside and the mums that I had planted continue to grow and bloom in October. Nostalgia for that good life we had there.

After we left Springfield a few pounds heavier because we had to eat out so much in order to enjoy time with our friends there, we stopped in Hannibal, Missouri for a couple of nights to see our old friends Dennis and Vivian Lagergren. When we met Dennis and Vivian back in the 70s they were this nice young couple with 2 school age children. Now their family is so large that Thanksgiving dinner fills their basement. Their 7 grandchildren are now pretty much all married and have filled up the house with babies again… 3 new ones to be born this month and next month. I love the fact that Vivian enjoys her adult grandchildren even more than she did when they were babies. Even though I have seen them only briefly over the years I kind of get to know them as she talks about them. We enjoyed some good meals and a spirited card game with them.

This is our normal route through the Midwest. We stopped for a week at Kay and Max Klinkenborg’s in Excelsior Springs Missouri. They let us leave the camper plugged in for the weekend while we went over to Ottawa, KS to see Don’s sister Eileen and her husband Deed. Deed fed us some of his world famous pulled pork and we enjoyed visiting and catching up in addition to watching some Cubs baseball. We went out for dinner at a German restaurant in Paola, KS and ate some amazing desserts. Go there if you are ever in the KC area. On Monday, we went back to the Klink’s and got to work painting their house. We took 4 days to paint the exterior of their house and it looked like new. Unfortunately, the last 2 cans of paint Max got from Home Depot were mixed up wrong so he had a little bit of repainting to complete after we left. Needless to say, Kay fed us copious amounts of good nutritious food. She knows how to keep a work crew motivated and we went out to eat a couple of times at local restaurants. Besides the good food and being useful for a change, we enjoyed many hours of laughter and conversation with these good friends.

And then on a blessed Friday night, Kelly Ruff flew into Kansas City and we picked her up at the airport and got to spend about 40 hours with her before she went back to Philadelphia on Sunday. We took her over to see Niece Melissa’s son Mason’s flag football game before we went to the KC Royal World Series of Barbeque out at the raceway. You would think that one would be able to eat some world class barbeque at an event like this but that is not the case. The judges get to eat it as do friends of the contestants but normal people like us… no. It was kind of a bust but Melissa came with her two children. We enjoyed a beautiful summery October afternoon while Kendall age 12 and Mason 8 taught Don how to play Water Bottle Flip. Later we joined Melissa’s sister Amanda and their dad, Deed at a Mi Ranchito in Lenexa, KS for dinner. We then went back to the camper with Kelly and enjoyed a conversation and  a couple of drinks long into the night while talking about important ideas and things getting all that we could out of this rare visit before letting her go back to Philadelphia on Sunday morning. While Don took her back to the airport, I got the camper ready to head south. Even though it still seems like summer, we know it won’t last much longer.

We stopped in Carthage, MO for Halloween and to watch game 5. We toured Joplin, MO and saw a lot of new houses without many trees around them. We took a walk through their recently opened Mercy Memorial Park. It is at the site of the hospital that was destroyed by that awful tornado 5 years ago. All of the museums and Civil War sites around there were closed because it was Monday so we bought some hamburger and enjoyed a nice warm evening outside.

Yesterday we drove here and have a couple of days to check this place out before we head to Louisiana where we will spend a week or so. I realized that I didn’t write much about our trip through Michigan or time in the Chicago area.

As I read through what I’ve written I realized that I never reported on our trip through Michigan. My last blog post was on September 19 when we were in Marquette Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior. We left there and went to St. Ignace Michigan and stayed across the road from Lake Huron just north of the Mackinaw Bridge. While there, we took our bikes on the ferry to Mackinaw Island where we rode around the island and enjoyed a beautiful September day. As Don says when he talks about this place is that it lives up to everything that is advertised about it. We drove north one day to go to the Tahquamenom Falls State Park. We rented a row boat to go across to an island by the water falls and walked around this very unusual falls with red water not from iron but from the tannins from the Cedar, Spruce and Hemlock trees that grow there. This was also a place to get our laundry done and make granola since we had full hookups.

Then we crossed the bridge and stayed for a night at a Harvest Host venue, Friske’s Apple Orchard on our way to Traverse City. Here we had a beautiful fall day and we picked some fresh Honey Crisp from the trees so we ate apples for a couple of weeks.

Once we reached Traverse City, the weather changed. We had become accustomed to warm sunny days and expected that to be with us always. Instead we had cool rainy days through the rest of our trip through Michigan except for the day we climbed the dunes at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I will post some pictures from the highlights of our trip through Michigan. Besides the Dunes the highlights include Slabtown Burger in Traverse City, picking raspberries on a rainy day at The Extraordinary Berry near Benton Harbor, MI , the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, ArtPrize “The radically open international art competition”, and The Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, MI.

At the Ford Museum

Art Prize Exhibit

Leaving Minnesota - year 3

I wrote this about a week ago and just now have an opportunity to post it. Writing about leaving Minnesota brought back all the ambivalence I was feeling at the time. 

Today I am sitting at Thompson’s West End Campground in Washburn, Wisconsin… waiting for a call back from Microsoft technical support because for some reason my computer refuses to install updates. They said they would call an hour ago. Don’t know how long I should wait. But that is my problem, not the problem of my dear readers.  I started this 2 days ago. Now I’m in Marquette. I did get a call back from Microsoft and they worked for hours and hours actually reinstalling Windows 7. And after all that was done I went to install updates and nothing had changed. Now I no longer have Wi-Fi for time being. I also am having problems getting my phone to connect to wi-fi. Enough about that.

Last time I wrote was from Mississippi Riverwood on August 26. Seems like a long time ago. We left there on September 1, the day after Greg’s birthday. He’s 40 now. Life does go on even after you are retired.

I will write about the places that we’ve been and the things we have seen and done beginning with Aleatha and Kyle’s wedding reception or Shindig. They roasted a pig out at Kyle’s dad’s place and a bunch of people from both families gathered to play games and eat a feast.

It was a cool overcast day with occasional spatters of rain. Overall it was a good celebration with this young couple starting out. After the shindig, we went back to our camper. Later Greg and Peggy joined us along with brothers Ludwig and Dick. We build a bonfire and enjoyed one of our last days at Mississippi Riverwood. On Sunday we went in to Greg and Peggy’s to celebrate Greg’s birthday and enjoy an afternoon with them. I got to play with Edie one more time. Then we spent a couple of days getting the rig ready to travel and left on Thursday and headed up north to sister Jean and brother Mark’s house where we stayed for 4 nights. We had a few days to get ready for the family reunion and enjoyed some really good meals around their big table with family members.

The family reunion was on Sunday and we had about 100 people come. I got to meet some people who I didn’t even know I was related to, see some cousins who I hadn’t seen in forever and of course, play with Edie one last time before we left the state.

On Labor Day we headed farther up north. We took 4 days to get to Camp Deer where we stayed for the Jug Band Boogie. We spent 2 days in Grand Rapids at the county fairgrounds. While we were there, we got some groceries and got some rest. We met some Palmdale friends who have a summer cabin up there for breakfast. We then moved to Scenic State Park up by Big Fork for a couple of days. Brother John’s wife Mandy joined us for dinner along with brother Mark who was in the area doing a radio show in Grand Rapids. We enjoyed some steaks and a bottle of wine while it poured down rain outside. We took another day to rest there before moving up to Camp Deer.

We enjoyed 3 days at Camp Deer with more family time. Brother’s Ludwig, Dick and Byron along with Sisters Kay and Elaine and her husband Loy also came up for the Boogie.

More family dinners and some good time watching the sun set over Deer Lake, bon fires by the beach, a little bit of fishing and of course listening to the jug bands on a beautiful September day brought our summer in Minnesota to an end.

We spent a night in Duluth overlooking the harbor where I was able to get my laundry done before we left the state.

On September 13 we headed into Wisconsin and followed Highway 13 along the Lake Superior to Washburn just down the road from Bayfield where we camped for 4 nights. On our way there we stopped at Brother Dick’s recommendation for fish chowder at the Village Inn in Cormucopia. On Friday we went to Patsy’s in Washburn for a hamburger and fish fry, also on Dick’s recommendation. W went over to Bayfield on Wednesday and caught the fairy to Madeline Island

and spent the day checking out the island. The next day we took a cruise out to the Apostle Islands and stopped at Michigan Island where we toured the light house. On Friday I spent a good part of the day trying to get my computer fixed and on Saturday we went to Big Tap Chataqua the season closing festival at Big Top Chataqua at Mt. Ashwabe. The Big Tap and “Fatty 5K” has music in the Big Top along with local microbreweries and wineries handing out samples along with some food vendors. The local restaurants have tables set up along a 5K hike up the ski mountain where you can get a taste of some of the best local foods. They also have a hay ride up to the top of the mountain for those who prefer.. that would be Don.

So yesterday we drove here to Marquette and will spend some time checking out what there is to see and do here.

9/1/2016 – 9/4/2016 – Left Mississippi Riverwood and moved to Mark and Jean’s place in rural Crow Wing County

9/5/2016 – 9/6/2016 – Itasca County Fairgrounds, Grand Rapids, MN

9/7-9/8/2016 – Scenic State Park near Big Fork, MN

9/9-9/11/2016 – Camp Deer, Effie MN

9/12/16 -  Lake Head Boat Basin Campground, Duluth MN

9/13-9/17/16 Thompson’s West End RV Park, Washburn, WI

9/18-9/19/116 Ojibwa Casino in Marquette, MI

Summer

I’m trying to write outside in the screen house here by the river on this beautiful cool pre-fall summer day. But of course a lawn mower starts up. It’s also a perfect day for mowing at the end of this rainy summer here in Minnesota. The river is still full as it heads south which is, of course, the direction that we are beginning to think of going…after we take a sideways route across Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula. This is our last weekend here at Mississippi Riverwood.

Full moon over the river

Not much is planned for this weekend except for Niece Aleatha’s wedding reception which is being held at the same location as the wedding was last April. She has had a busy summer and baby Marjorie Helen is getting chubby and strong already. I haven’t seen her since July but FB pictures tell me how much she has grown.

 It is good to have a fairly quiet weekend as we have not had one for quite a while. Two weeks ago we packed up the camper and headed up north to the Minnesota Blue Grass and Old Time Music Festival at El Rancho Manana. Brothers Ludwig and Doug were there as usual and Greg, Peggy and Edie joined us. Great music, good food,

Breakfast at the festival

good company and late nights are the typical experiences, only made better these last 2 years because with Edie I can go and hang out in the family area and enjoy watching her string beads and paint or walk through the magnificent mud on the road up to Old Wash Machine Field where my brothers camp. We can’t camp there anymore unless we leave the camper behind.

At Deb's houe

Then last weekend we headed up to Duluth with Greg’s family to see the Tall Ships Festival. Niece Deb and her family are on vacation out west and let us stay at her house. She has a wonderful old two-story house in the city. It is filled with the comfortable feeling of their lives, books and plants and a basket of rocks, with 2 cats we took care of while we were there. Her 2 teenage children let us use their rooms. They had found some toys that Edie enjoyed.

This weekend we just have the reception and we will have dinner with Greg and Peggy Sunday night at their home. Edie starts pre-school on Monday so they are moving to the school schedule. Greg will be 40 next week. So we better celebrate that. Don’s gift to Greg this year was in the form of labor. They painted on Kelly’s house and Greg got the money for both their work and purchased the supplies to move his fence. Then the two of them spent a couple of days getting that done. They also spent a day putting a slide topper on the big slide-out on our camper.

The Unicorn

The winner (I was the judge)

Baby

Of course, I just babysat while they were doing all of that. That includes camping in the living room. I don’t fit in the tent along with all the luggage so I slept with my head in the tent. I competed in a beauty contest with a unicorn, Barbie and Baby. Edie won the contest of course. She was hands down the most beautiful.

Barbie

Grandma

Brother Jake was discharged from the hospital to the Forensic Nursing Home in St. Peter. His condition is somewhat better. He is fed through a feeding tube and gets oxygen. He still has pneumonia and is very weak and bedridden. The bright side is that the nursing home is state funded and has adequate resources to provide good nursing care and it is a comfortable, clean and well lit. Overall a very nice facility. He may actually recover. Kay and I met with the social worker and she seemed to genuinely care about him. We should all get such good care if we find ourselves in that situation.

Our cousin, Jimmy Dunlap died last weekend. He is not the first in our generation to die. We have other  cousins who have died from cancer in their 50’s. Those were just not right. But Jimmy was 70. He was a few months younger than brother Bob. They were the first 2 children in our generation back in 1945. Jim was the personification of tall, dark and handsome. He was also big enough to take me by the hands and swing me around until I was dizzy back when I was 8 or 9. He and his sister Kathy spent days at our farm and we spent days up north at Camp Deer where they lived. But there is no funeral now. They will have a memorial event next spring. I hope we are back in the state for that. The week after Labor Day we will be up at Camp Deer for the Jug Band Boogie where we can give our condolences to Em (Jim’s wife) and Norman (his little brother).

Labor Day weekend we are planning a family reunion by Brainerd. You wouldn’t think we would need a reunion a week after a wedding reception but that is just how things work out. After the Jug Band Boogie, we will head out east and then south and west to visit friends in Illinois and Missouri before going back to Texas.

Here’s some poetry or something

Running in Flip Flops

I wear flip flops most of the time now and

Often I have to run

A foot race with barefoot Edie, laughing all the way

Catching that girl when she trys to get away…

Yes, I can still outrun her.

To get to the other end of the camper to check for obstacles

To the driver’s window to consult with my driver

Then back to the other side to check the branches of the tree

Then to the back so he doesn’t go too far.

No, we are not yelling at each other.

Just trying to communicate.

Yes, I run in flip-flops even though it is not recommended.

Writing prompts:

Running in flip flops

Leaving Minnesota

My son is 40

2 funerals and a wedding followed by a family reunion?

An Existential Crisis

A long time ago before I did much of anything as an adult I was a French major at the University of Minnesota so I made these associations.

My brother Jake is about 2 ½ years older than me. My sister Jean is between us so we weren’t all that close in age. I started out to write a humorous post here but in order to put the humor in context, I have to write about Jake and that is a sad story. The summer I turned 18 and was about to head off to the University to major in French, Jake was discharged from the Navy because he was disabled. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia which I knew about at the time because I had just completed a 1 semester high school class in psychology. When I read the letter my mother showed me even I could diagnose him and it was like I lost him then. That was 49 years ago. Fast forward to today. His life took a turn for the worse this year when he was transferred from the VA hospital in St. Cloud, MN where he has spent much of his life, to the Security Hospital in St. Peter, MN. He has not done well there and developed pneumonia and was hospitalized in Mankato, MN about an hour’s drive south of Minneapolis. They managed to save his life and after several days on a respirator in ICU he was transferred to another room where he is being maintained with oxygen, a feeding tube, fluids by IV, a catheter and is completely bedridden. He is conscious and can communicate and knows what’s going on.  

So this is the sad situation that brought my sister Kay and me to go to Mankato to see him and find out what he wants for his life. Not surprisingly, it turns out that he just wants to get out of it, life that is. He has a court appointed guardian and can’t make his own health care decisions so one of our goals was to find out what he wants so we could communicate that to his guardian. We did that and we spent several hours there with him because you see I didn’t lose him 49 years ago and even though many of my experiences growing up with him were pretty negative as is the case with just about all of my 12 brothers and sisters he was one of the first people that I knew in my life. It made me very sad and I wished that I could at least help him be more comfortable.

When Kay and I arrived at his room, we found him as I’ve described above. A young man sitting in the corner of the room is a staff person from St. Peter Security Hospital. He has someone with him 24/7. I guess because they think because of his past behavior that he might pose a threat to hospital personnel. Anyway, both this young man and the one who came to relieve him were both kind and respectful towards Jake and us. It’s probably good for Jake to have someone with him so I won’t complain about them being there. They are also helpful and know what’s going on. When Jake said that he wanted to sit in a chair, the nice young man informed us that physical therapy would be there within the hour and they would get Jake up and sit him in a chair. We tried to make small talk but Jake wasn’t interested in much of anything except sitting up so we just waited for the thinking he might do better once he was sitting up. So we waited. Jake dozed off and Kay went back to the car to get the crossword puzzle we had been working on. When she came back she said that she took the stairs down and that she was worried because there was a sign on door at each landing that said “NO EXIT”. We waited. Jake began asking for Ashley whose name was on the white board as his nurse. We paged her and Heidi (the second name on the board) showed up. She said that Ashley was at lunch and would be back in an hour. Jake told her that he wanted to sit in a chair. She said that PT was going to be there soon to help him sit up. So we waited some more. Jake continued to tell us to get Ashley or Heidi from time to time and we told him that someone would be there soon. Eventually I went to the nurse’s station and asked. They said that they were trying to locate a chair he could sit in so I went back and reported that to Jake. And we waited. These things happened repeatedly over the course of the 3 hours we were there. PT never did show up and we never did get to meet Ashley. The St. Peter’s staff shift changed and eventually we left because it was getting late. As we walked down the stairs and I saw the NO EXIT sign on every door down 4 flights of stairs it appeared there was no way out. I said to Kay, “Oh my God, we’ve been trapped in an existential play!” And I remembered being a French major in college reading existential plays, “No Exit” by Jean Paul Sartre, and “Waiting for Godot” by Albert Camus   Samuel Beckett. Google up the plays and read the Cliff Notes or the whole play to understand what we went through that day.

Rivers

(I wrote this a couple of weeks ago... just now getting posted. Pictures to be added later.)

This has been the summer of rivers….

The Mississippi from our back yard

Here at Mississippi Riverwood, the Mississippi is high and flowing fast – for the Mississippi, that is. Most of the time it is in no hurry. It has 1230 miles to drop about 1000 feet to the Gulf of Mexico.

Unlike the rivers from where it originates in Yellowstone Park. Those rivers are in a hurry. As we were driving along somewhere near the Idaho/Montana border, I realized we had left the Snake River

The Snake coming out of the Tetons

behind and were following the Madison and I thought, “Wow! This water is headed to the Mississippi.” And I pondered the scale of the watershed that drains into that river, from where I was over to the other side of Ohio or somewhere. I’m not sure where that divide is but maybe as far as the Appalachians. Those mountain streams we were near, formed from recently melted snow are racing, tumbling down hill

The Yellowstone in Yellowstone NP

The Yellowstone following I94

sometimes dropping 1000 feet in ¼ mile. The Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin join up to form the Missouri River which takes it’s time to cross the Great Plains and the prairies to join the Mississippi in St. Louis. The Yellowstone
passes through Columbus, Laurel and Billings and joins up with the Missouri downstream near the Montana/North Dakota border. Highway 94 follows the Yellowstone to the edge of Montana.

Then we moved Down the Missouri to Pierre, South Dakota where we ate Walleye harvested from that river on its way to St. Louis.

The Colorado at Glen Canyon

The Rio Grand in the RGV

But we started the year in the Rio Grande Valley, just a few miles from where it finds its way into the Gulf. That place doesn’t look like a valley. There are no great hills or bluffs going down to the river. The land is flat there. We found the Rio Grande again in Albuquerque where it looks more like a normal river. Somewhere through Arizona or Southern Utah, we came into the Colorado River watershed. The Colorado and its tributaries have carved out amazing and beautiful canyons and waterfalls in its hurry to get to Mexico and the Gulf of California. It needs to move a lot of water to take care of so many thirsty people and their bountiful crops as it travels along the California-Arizona border. We saw that last year. This year we spent time near the Green River before it joins the Colorado in Canyonlands National Park in Utah and the Virgin River in Zion National Park. In those places they warn of flash floods where a river can rise 20 feet suddenly and if you’re in a canyon, you have nowhere to go so the river will do whatever it wants with you and you’ll probably never get to tell about the experience.

Salt Lake City has the Jordan River which goes to the Great Salt Lake which goes nowhere. Kind of a landlocked watershed, I guess.

As we traveled over the Wasatch Mountains into Idaho, we came into the Snake River Plain. The Snake and its aquifer feed Idaho. If you’ve eaten potatoes from Idaho, you probably got a little bit of the Snake River. It comes out of the Tetons and snakes its way through central Idaho where it provides abundant water to make Idaho a bread basket or potato basket, field upon field of potatoes, wheat and some hay for the many cattle. In June green as far as the eye can see. We were in Pocatello on June 5 which is the 40^th anniversary of the Teton Dam failure. That was the news headline. On that day in 1976, the Teton Dam collapsed and the reservoir emptied into the Snake River at a rate of 2 million gallons per second. Only 11 people died but the town of Rexburg now has a flood museum which was closed on the Saturday afternoon we were there. All of the towns along the river that we visited (Pocatello, Idaho Falls and Rexburg) have their flood story to tell. The Snake joins the Columbia River in Oregon when it leaves Idaho and heads over to the Pacific Ocean. We traveled along that River on our way out of Oregon last summer.

Where we’re parked on the Mississippi now, we are about 180 miles from Lake Itasca where the river starts and already here, north of Minneapolis, it is a big river.

I last posted on this blog from Fort Pierre, South Dakota. Here’s where we’ve been since then.

July 9 – Finstead’s Oak Haven Campground, New Ulm, Minnesota

July 10-13 – Dakotah Meadows RV Park by Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake, Minnesota

July 14 – Reunion with college friends Jerry and Colleen Bahma, Jim and Lisa Fallencheck and Larry and Marge Teig at the Bahmas in Spicer, Minnesota

July 15 – present at Mississippi Riverwoods RV Park in Otsego, Minnesota. We plan to stay here until September 1 and begin moving north before heading south again. We will take the rig up to the MBOTMA festival in a couple of weeks and then return here. 

It’s nice to be staying in one place for a while. Here we are a 45 minute drive from Greg’s place if the traffic is cooperating. Since we are on the route “up north” on Friday and Sunday afternoons it can take longer. But on a week day, Greg can make the trip pretty easily or we can go in to the city. We have a screen house on a patio in which we have set up our table and chairs. The table adjusts to a low height making it ideal for art projects (Edie is into water colors) or now writing on the computer. It’s a little bright but I’m making it work. I get to watch the river and enjoy the breeze in the shade.

I feel some pressure to try to get to see her as often as possible since it seems our time in Minnesota is so short. I’ve agreed to head out right after the Jug Band Boogie the week after Labor Day again this year. We’ll be going east through Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula and then down through Michigan to Illinois. We have our obligatory trip through Illinois and Missouri to visit friends every fall before we head to Texas.

Mystic Lake and then some

Here is where we've been

June 20 Buffalo Campground – Targhee National Forest, Island Park, ID – beautiful setting

June 21 – Buffalo Crossing RV Park, West Yellowstone, Montana- right next to the park

June 22 – Bakers Hole Campground, Gallatin National Forest, West Yellowstone – beautiful setting on the Madison River

June 23-24 – Itch-Kep-Pe City Park Campground, Columbus, MT – No hookup but big sites and on the Yellowstone River

June 25-July 2 – Mountain Range RV Park, Columbus, MT -

July 3 -  Riverside Campground and RV Park – Belle Fouche, SD – Ugh. Dog poo. Crowded

July 4 – Happy Holiday RV Resort, Rapid City, SD – very crowded

July 5-8 – Fort Pierre Motel, Fort Pierre, SD – practical for fishing

When we leave Columbus today, I will take out a new color highlighter to trace our journey. July 1 is the anniversary of our journey. Two years ago we finished wrapping up our affairs in Illinois and headed north to begin putting together our life on the road.

On July 1, ten of us hiked back out of the mountains…. 3 miles around Mystic Lake then some steep switchbacks up the mountain and a long hike down-hill through rocks and switchbacks for another 3 miles till we were all safely back to the trail head. I measure success by the safe return of all the hikers and once more we all made it. Not that I’ve ever been on the trip when anyone was injured but in my imagination it could so easily happen. From the time that we begin planning a trip… in this case it was in September last year until everyone is safely down the mountain, I have some anxiety that increases in the weeks before the trip and doesn’t go away until we are all safely home. Now I can sleep soundly again.

Of course it is worth it. Mystic Lake never fails. We spent five days amidst indescribable beauty. I will let the pictures tell of that. We ate delicious trout cooked on an open fire. We took a day hike over to Silver Lake. We set up the cribbage board on a makeshift table under the tarp shelter that we built when it was raining. It didn’t rain too much so there wasn’t much cribbage played. Don found a couple of trout holes and they brought in 2 meals of delicious trout. These were bigger trout than we have ever caught up there. Nephew Andrew fed us with large pots of soup, cheese and salami in addition to the trout.

Here is what I wrote about the hike up the mountain the day after….

“Everything

        in the

     universe

     has

       rhythm.

Everything

            dances”

    Maya Angelou

That is the title of this journal. Today, 6/28/16 I am sitting on a log just down from our camp on Island Lake in Montana. On Sunday, 6/26 we made the hike up the mountain and around Mystic Lake and across the log jam to where we are now – Don, Ludwig, Greg, Kelly, Ken, Lori, Paige, Andrew, Stasha and myself. We are here till Friday, 7/1 when we will make the return trip – a trip of a lifetime. Eleven years ago when we came up last, I thought that I would never come back. I said to Greg that in 11 years, Edie will be Paige’s age and you can bring her here. I doubt I will make that trip. But we are here now.

There were doubts along the trail but today I think everyone is glad they came. If we can all return with no serious injury the trip will be an awesome success. That is my only criteria. So here I am at Island lake but I will address Mystic Lake which is always the name of this trip.

Mystic Lake,

We always brag on you when we extol this trip and you never fail. When we know our pack is too heavy, our shoulders and hips ache, our legs are so weak we don’t think we can take another switchback, we come around the corner and there you are below us, nestled down in the mountain, blue as blue. We can hear the whisper of the dam. Far below, we can see people sitting on your beach beckoning us down…blessed down. The switchbacks on this side are steep and rocky. We have to be careful with our tired legs but now we have gravity working for us. We go down to you with renewed vigor. We lay those cursed packs in a pile and go to our people for rest and the refreshment of your cold clear water. Now the dam is a roar and you welcome us. This is our reward for now.

And then comes the hard part. Our leader is not content to be here because on your other side beyond the log jam that separates you from Island Lake are beautiful level camp sites among the Fir and Lodgepole pines. Our hike is not over. So we trudge on somewhat renewed and hopeful because we got a drink of your fresh cold water. We can’t tarry too long as the day is getting late and we have to move along. Now we are getting discouraged again especially as the trail takes us up hill again for a while. We get another break at Huckleberry Bridge to give us one more boost before the last leg. We load up our packs and set our again – quiet and determined, most of us trying a little stoicism. Then we come to the log jam. Even for those of us who have done this before, we think, “This is STUPID!” But our leader, with the stoutest of our group has already found a way across and taken our youngest member. We have no other choice. Let me describe the log jam. That’s just what it is. Old dead trees have fallen in the lake and drifted to clog up the narrow river that runs from Island Lake into Mystic Lake. There is a small soggy island in the middle and on the other side of the island another log jam only longer. Many of the logs are solidly wedged together, some are floating and some are rotten. It is slow going but even the most novice of hikers who have made it this far can make it across.. if they take their time and have some guidance from the braver and more well balanced… and especially if one of them helps carry their pack, even though their legs are shaky from exhaustion. The sun is getting low and thank God the cook has found the firepit and has started a fire when the last of us finally straggle across. We can set up our tents, air up our sleeping pads and lay out our sleeping bags…. Heaven.

Then we can join the others around the camp fire and enjoy the fajitas made from steak and fresh vegetables thanks to Andrew and Stasha Switzer.

Now, Mystic Lake, you can continue your magic promise to restore us so that some day we will actually come back.

                                                                                        Love from the hikers

Our Billing's hosts, Bill and Carol Ruff

Fishing lessons

The log jam

A beautiful picture

Camp

Ken's fish

The after picture

Today, a week has passed since we came down from the Mountain and I am sitting in my camper in Pierre (pronounced peer), South Dakota. We’ve met up with some of our friends that we made in Texas, Ray and Cyndi who live in Omaha and their friends Harvey and Doreen who live in Belle Fouche, SD. 

We are at the Fort Pierre Motel where our friends are staying. We have full hook-ups here in the parking lot.  The reason we are here is because of the Walleye fishing which is good. The guys caught some walleye yesterday and we took them to a restaurant where they cooked our fish and served it to us along with a salad and potato. They are fishing again today and tomorrow so hopefully we will have some walleye in our freezer when we get home. While the guys are fishing, I’m doing some sightseeing and shopping with Doreen and Cyndi. I’m also checking out the Little Spa on the Prairie for a massage. We are here for 4 days then we will stop by our “home” in Madison, SD, pick up our mail, renew my library card and take care of our vehicle registration before we finally get to go home to Minnesota and Edie.  

Pierre is the second smallest state capital next to Montpelier, VT. The population is 13,600. Around here they have the Missouri River dammed up creating lakes in which they have a lot of fish. State government and walleye fishing are the only reasons for this town to be here. Tomorrow, we will tour the capital building and I will learn more about my state’s government. It seems like the right thing to do. I have seen no evidence that the legislature is in session so I expect not much to be going on. The town seems to be thriving with small businesses and shops downtown. I guess that goes with politicians, lobbyists and walleye fishermen. Their spouses and partners need something to do out here in the prairie. It’s actually nice to be back in the Midwest with big thunderstorms and a little moisture in the air.

Before all this happened, we spent some time at Yellowstone Park and enjoyed some waterfalls in Idaho on my birthday. Here are some pictures.

The view from the river walk in Idaho Falls, Idaho

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone