August!

 

8/29/26 August

Today I drug myself to this computer to do some writing whether I feel like it or not. The battery was dead from neglect. I left it unplugged and apparently left it on. I hope that it can fully recover. There is much to write about. We’ve traveled out west with our RV, visiting family and friends along the way. We came home and rested for a week and then went to Pennsylvania to take care of our granddaughters and allow Kelly to get in some extra hours of work. We are just now recovering from that trip after 6 days at home. We’ll have another couple of weeks off before we head up to the Jug Band Boogie and our trip up the North Shore in September. I’ll write about those things and post some pictures.

We drove up to my brothers’ house by Brainerd on July 24th to pick up our camper. We had BLTs with Mark and Byron and loaded the camper to head up to Fargo on the 25^th where we stayed in my brother Doug’s driveway. We enjoyed a lovely dinner with Doug and his wife Georgene at Doolittles Woodfire Grill after spending the afternoon visiting. It was in Doug’s driveway that one of the stabilizing jacks of the camper broke, so we continued our journey with 3 working jacks. Doug gave me 4 books to read along the way with instructions to pass them on to others when I finished them. The first one I read was My Other Heart by Emma Hanami Strenner about a baby who is picked up at the airport when her mother was trying to get back home to Viet Nam. The second was Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog about the Sioux experience at Wounded Knee.  Both of those books are now with Peggy and Edith. The third book was The Hill: A Novel by Harriet Cark about a girl who visits her mother who is serving a life sentence in prison. I left that one in Pennsylvania with Kelly.  The book I finished last week was Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground by Zayd Ayers Dohrn. I remember those stories from the news. I’m still processing that story. It came to me that the fight against racism, imperialism and unnecessary war is back bigger than when those kids took it on. I will pass that book on to the next person I see who wants it.

On Sunday, we headed west. We stopped in Lisbon, ND and had lunch with our Palmdale neighbors, Lyle and Judy. They gave us a tour of their city where they’ve lived all of their lives. That was a lovely day. We headed down the road to Dickenson, ND where we stayed at the Phat Fish Brewery (A Harvest Host venue). We, of course had to try out their beer and have dinner at their restaurant. We ran the generator that night to have AC as it was about 100 degrees during the day. The next morning, we realized that our batteries had not charged overnight. Our converter was not working. Fortunately, Don brought along his battery charger and trickle-charger, so we stopped in Dickenson and ran the generator to run the chargers and charge up the batteries. We’re lucky to have a refrigerator that also runs on propane, so we used that feature when we didn’t have shore power. We had canceled reservations at the National Park because of restrictions on generator use. It was so hot we had to have AC to sleep at night, so we spent 2 nights at the Medora Campground where we had full hook-ups. There, we could plug the charger into shore power to keep our batteries charged.  

At Medora, we toured Teddie Roosevelt National Park one afternoon. The next day we spent several hours at the TR Presidential Library and in the evening enjoyed the Medora Musical at their amazing outdoor amphitheater. That experience was well worth our stop. We have driven to Montana many times throughout our life and have never stopped in Medora. This was a treat.

On Wednesday we headed to Montana. We spent our first night at the Itch-Kep-Pe Park in Columbus Montana by the Yellowstone River. We have stayed at that campground many times in our motor home and in a tent years ago. The next day we drove up the road toward Mystic Lake but never made it that far. We toured around the places where Don grew up and visited the cemetery where both of his parents are buried.

We stayed the night at the Yellowstone Cellars & Winery in Billings. Before we parked the camper, we stopped by Don’s brother Bill’s new house. We visited with Bill and Carol and got a tour of their lovely new home. We went to park the camper at the winery, and they joined us for a very enjoyable dinner. We had hoped to spend another day in Billings, but the forecast was another blistering hot day, so we decided to head up to the mountains where it was cooler.

Don’s hearing aid battery went out so we found some help at The Hearing Aid Institute that services Starkey Hearing Aids. Apparently, our charging cord wasn’t working. He charged it up for us and gave us a new USB plug for our cord. We were on our way up to West Yellowstone. We stayed 2 nights at The Gallatin National Forest Campground near the entrance to Yellowstone Park. There, we shared a double campsite with a young woman named Martha Robinson and her father who are traveling around to National Parks and Forest Protection Tour. You can follow them at a QR code that I will share in a picture. We enjoyed sitting down to dinner with them and hearing about their travels. Their next stop after Yellowstone was going to be Olympia National Park in Washington.

We toured the North Loop of Yellowstone on Saturday. On Sunday we hooked up the camper and traveled the South Loop exiting the park at the South Entrance. We traveled to the Tetons and stayed at Jackson Hole Still Works in Jackson WY. You can drive up and pick up a Sloshie  (made from their spirits) to go from their window. The next day we drove around and enjoyed the beauty of the Tetons before we started heading back east. We stayed at another Harvest Host venue up winding switchbacks and hairpin curves to Troubles Line Shack in Dubois, Wyoming where we enjoyed amazing views and a good dinner.

Then we got serious about heading east. Our next stop was at The Big Lost Meadery in Gillette Wyoming. There, we were invited to join the team “The End of The Bar” in a game of trivia. We were actually able to contribute an answer on a key question about the snowiest places and won the team a free drink. We held our own with a bunch of Gen Xers though we had no clue when it came to the music.

After that we were on I90 beating our way across South Dakota. Motorcycles were beginning to gather around Sturgis. In Sioux Falls, our next-door neighbor was a rental RV from Florida with 2 Brazilians who had reserved motorcyles to ride to Sturgis. We landed at Tower Campground in Sioux Falls. We wanted full hookups to empty and flush out our tanks so we could go park that troublesome camper after we fixed all the things that needed fixing. New jacks, another converter and a few other things. It is now parked back up at Marks’ waiting our next adventure.

We had a week to fix the camper, do laundry and get a little rest before we headed off to our next adventure.

This time we flew to Philadelphia to hang out with Kelly and her girls for a week. Kelly wanted to get some extra hours of work, and we had a wonderful opportunity to hang out with Jett and Andalusia for the week. Some highlights of the week included a day at the pool, dinner at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord in East Earl Pennsylvania. It is the largest smorgasbord in the world and if you can prove it’s your birthday, you get a free meal. Don was able to do that, so we celebrated his birthday there. Jett and Andalusia ran a successful lemonade stand so they had some of their own cash to shop at the most amazing gift store you can imagine. We put together a Lego set and took Jett to the pottery studio at Pendle Hill where she learned how to use a pottery wheel and made a present for her friend. We took Andalusia to the Swarthmore Farmer’s Market while Jett went to a birthday party. It was a really good week but we needed to rest when we got home.