Here we are, on the road: We’re in Morton, MN

June 22, 2013 Lorraine’s report

Hello from Jackpot Junction Casino in Morton, Minnesota. Well, we moved on into Minnesota, and man oh man did we have a really big thunder, lightening and rain storm last night. It was really pretty amazing to watch the entire sky, all around us going off with all the lightening. The Doppler radar showed Red all over us, it went on for what seemed like hours. After all of that, then the rain started. Not sure how much it rained, but it was a fair amount. It's a bit soggy in front of the coach this morning, Chuck said it rained all night. And it is so muggy here, too. I'm happy we came all this way and have managed to stay out of the big storm's way. The people here must sure he used to all this crazy weather. They seem to take it all in stride.

Sunday we will move on into Mystic Lake, the Shakopee Sioux RV campground where we will stay during the reunion. We have taken our time getting here.

We have seen so much this trip. We have seen the Grand Canyon, the Trail of Tears in OK, the Painted Dessert and the Petrified Forest. We spent time in Albuquerque, NM since Chuck wanted to do that. We went to Dwight D. Eisenhower's Library, saw the Dala Horses, and Coronado's winter dwellings. We saw the Kearney Arch in Kearney, NB; the Flint works in OK where the guide did the bow and arrow shots, flint napping and the dug out homes there. We got to visit with good friends, Dan & Wanda Jackson in OK.; it was so nice to see them.

It has been fun to see and do so much!

I would like to thank my sister Thelma, for her prayers for such a safe journey. It was really appreciated, especially through OK, that could have gone differently had we been there a week earlier.

So the last time we wrote, we left the next day, on a Sunday. We went into Sloan, Iowa. We got there and they don’t have any water at the site. We had to go to security and fill up with water. By the time we were finished, we had lost several hours getting water. They didn't say they didn't have any water on the sites, only power, no sewer. We could have filled up with water before we left, had we known that before hand.

Monday found us going through that town and out to the Lewis & Clark State Park where we found the Keel Boats they used on the rivers. From there we went to Sioux City, Iowa and toured that town. We stopped at a river boat casino and enjoyed ourselves.

From there we took off the next day and drove into Larchwood, Iowa, to another casino, the Grand Falls Casino. They had full hookups, water, sewer and power. This was a good casino, we both took money out and the food was good, with $4.00 breakfast buffets.

Wednesday we took off in the car again, this time to get our motor home and car license tags We proceeded to get that, but after a bit of running around. Found out we can get it from a kiosk in a mall in Sioux City. Who knew.

We also found a walk in clinic; my left foot that I had aspirated a few weeks ago didn't take and I now need to see another surgeon or some other doctor to take it off. This was the second time I've been to a doctor on this part of the trip. Will have to get it taken care of here soon, it hurts all the time now.

Friday found us moving on down the road into Morton, MN. This RV park is in back of the main casino; we didn't know that they had a nice, new, big campground farther back. But the spaces in the new section were all reserved, so we are right behind the main casino. We went into the casino, but it was so full of people. I didn't do that well, so we came home and enjoyed a quiet evening home.

Sunday we will move again, but this time into the Shakopee Sioux Casino; that is why we are writing tonight.

I want to wish Rick, my son, a very Happy Birthday on the 27th. That is the day that Susy and Kaitlyn come out to the family reunion. Wish you could be here too. So that's it for me. Until next time...

Lorraine

6/22/13 Chuck’s report

Rick, wish you a Happy Birthday on Thursday, hope you have a good time. Too bad you are unable to meet with us for the family reunion next weekend, that would have been nice.

We are back in Minnesota, we have been here in 2008, 2010 and again last year. Every time we’ve been in Minnesota we’ve been evacuated to the storm shelter at least once during our stay due to thunderstorms.

Yesterday there were thunderstorm warnings in our area with forecasts of heavy rain, lightening and possible golf sized hail and of course winds, only these were straight winds, not tornados. Security came by and told us about heavy lightening but we were watching the weather on TV and on the computer and it didn’t look that bad where we were so we just pulled in the slides and kept a close eye on things. I have seen and experienced a few lightening storms but nothing like this one, there was sheet lightening all around us for hours. The TV had some sort of lightening track counter and it was showing over 800 strikes per hour.

Luckily, all we got was heavy winds, lightening and thunder and lots of rain. We finally went to bed but the storms kept coming most of the night but at least our weather radio didn’t go off with any new warnings after about 10 pm. Forecast for the next couple of days is for 30% chance of thunderstorms, hope we get the 70% instead. So far today all we’ve seen is clouds, no winds, lightening or rain today.

Last week we wrote our blog on Saturday due to our travel plans on Sunday. Well, here we go again, we are planning on traveling tomorrow so we are writing our blog on Saturday once again. I think we are less than 100 miles from our planned stop at Mystic Lake RV Park in Prior Lake, MN. so it should be a short travel day once again.

Last week we were planning on staying somewhere around Omaha, NE. or Council Bluffs, Iowa but the College Baseball World Series was going on and I couldn’t find any available sites except at a casino in Council Bluffs. But they wanted $79/night because of the World Series. We like to stay at Passport America and casino RV parks but usually they are in the $20/night range. I don’t think we’ve ever paid $79/night except for very special places, for sure never at a casino where they hope to get some money from you for gambling too.

So we continued on to a casino, Winnavegas, that we’ve stayed at before in Sloan, Iowa. I had forgotten they didn’t have water at each site, just electric and our water tank was almost empty. I had some issues finding a water spicket and finally had to pull up right next to the casino to get a hose hooked up. Last time we were there, a truck pulled in right alongside of us with a refrigeration unit running, not hooked to anything, just parked. I asked the truck driver if she would mind moving to a different spot and she was very uncooperative so we moved instead. This time we saw where they had a truck parking lot so no trucks were in the RV spots, yea.

Next morning we decided to do some touring of the local area. We went to Lewis and Clark State Park, they had a keel boat info area but unfortunately, it was closed and there was only one of the four boats at the dock. But it was a very nice State Park and it was on a large lake too. We then drove into Sioux City and checked it out too. Sure are lots of corn fields in the area!

Tuesday we left after dumping our holding tanks and drove into Larchwood, Iowa where we stayed at another casino, Grand Falls. When we stopped and got out of the rig, I saw where we had lube oil all over the passenger front tire and rim, shoot. It looked like we had blown a seal again, we had a similar problem in California back in ‘09 and had to have the seal replaced on both front hubs, luckily it was covered by warranty from Spartan that time but this time we are way out of warranty so any repair will be on our dime.

I pulled off the front hub cap and it was immediately apparent what the problem was. The hubs have an oil bath on them and the outside is a plastic view piece to check the level with a plastic plug in the middle of the view piece. Well, the plastic plug had come out and we were leaking oil as we traveled. I didn’t have any oil to refill it but the repair should be simple once I got some, refill the oil to the proper level and reinstall the plug. Usually we don’t get away with the easy repairs, glad this one was no problem.

We went into the casino to register and pay for our site and of course had to try the slots too. We also tried out their buffet for dinner that evening too.

Next morning we headed into Sioux Falls, SD. where we hoped to get new license tabs for our coach and car. But when we got to the City Hall they informed us we could only get our tabs in person in the county where we are registered, in this case that was across the state. We told her we would just handle it via mail until she told us there were two places in town that had machines where we could get our new registrations and tabs. We found one inside a grocery store and I must say it was one of the easiest updates we’ve ever experienced. I think all states should go this route, we had everything finished in less than 10 minutes, new registrations and tabs in hand and paid for.

After that, we headed over to a urgent care place to see if we could get a doctor to help Lorraine with the cyst she has on her foot. She had it aspirated when we were in California back in May but they didn’t take out the sack and it just grew back and was bothering her again. We stopped at a doctor in Oklahoma and they wouldn’t do it so we were hoping to have better luck here. But after filing out all the paperwork and talking with the doctor, they wouldn’t do anything either, said she should see a surgeon vs a family doctor. Guess we’ll try to find one while we are in Prior Lake for our next stop.

Lorraine was having good luck at the casino where we were staying so Thursday morning after we ate at their morning buffet, I left her there while I headed out to find some lube oil for our front hub I mentioned earlier. I found an auto parts store that had a bottle with a spout, just what I needed. After taking care of the lube oil problem, I washed the bugs off the front of the coach and cleaned up the lube oil mess. I then went back to the casino to get Lorraine and played some slots myself.

They had a deal going on where they gave you coupons for a drawing depending on how much you had played that day. Seeing as how Lorraine had been there most of the morning, she had a few coupons for the drawing but she never got her name drawn, shoot. The minimum prize would have been $150 in free play, the max would have been $1000 free play. But even though she didn’t get to play the game, we both won some money on the slots so it wasn’t all bad .

Friday morning we had breakfast at their buffet once again, then left Larchwood and headed here to Morton. We were only a few miles from both South Dakota and Minnesota so it wasn’t too long until we saw the “Welcome to –" for both state signs along the way. We had a pretty strong wind hitting us from the side for most of our drive, enough that we had to slow down. We also ran into a couple of places where maintenance crews had the road closed we wanted, luckily our GPS didn’t fail us and we made it without any problems.

After getting set up, we checked out the casino and while we were eating at the diner we saw our neighbors come in. They told us the security folks had just came by and suggested everyone leave their rig and head for the casino due to thunderstorm warnings with lots of lightening. Seeing as how we had left our dog in the coach, I decided to head out and check out what was happening. As it turns out, all we experienced was a bit of wind with the lightening, no big problem. That is, until later that evening like I previously mentioned.

We’ve been in a couple of thunderstorms on this trip while we’ve been in the middle of the country. We pulled in our slides a couple of times, just in case but so far we haven’t had any big ones and no tornados either. But there have been big storms either ahead of us, where we were planning on going, or behind us, where we had been. Hope we can keep up that kind of luck, don’t need any big storms around us.

The temperatures haven’t been getting as warm as we travel North. The highs have been in the mid 80s, low 90s during the day and cooling off to the low 60s at night. It does feel hotter though because of the high humidity in the area. I’m glad we have the air conditioners but when we only have 30 amps we can only run one air so it doesn’t cool off as well during the day.

Tomorrow we plan to get ready and move on to our next planned stop in Prior Lake. We will be there at least until after July 4th. We have the family reunion on my Mother’s side of the family next weekend, our daughter, Susy and grand daughter, Katie, will be flying in to spend some time with us and we will be able to visit with our friends, Dave and Sandy, who live in the area. So we will be busy while we are there, not that we haven’t been busy on our trip up here but a different type of busy and we won’t be traveling every two or three days either.

Let’s see, since we left California in May we’ve been to 10 states, three of them new to us since we’ve been on the road, been to lots of National parks, state parks, museums of all kinds, seen lots of great country and even met with some old friends we haven’t seen in awhile. We’ve checked out lots of smaller towns and areas in all of these states, still looking for places we may want to settle down when we get off the road.

All in all, we’ve had a great trip, much better than staying in one place in our opinion. We told ourselves we would try this lifestyle for maybe 5 years and that was almost 6 years ago now and we still have lots of to see and do before we plan on settling down somewhere. In the meantime, we hope to continue with our travels, seeing/visiting new areas, meeting with old/new friends and enjoying ourselves. We don’t even have any plans for the rest of the summer or the fall yet, will work on that during the next couple of weeks of down time.

I’ll add a few pictures but shouldn’t have too many as we haven’t been to many places this week.

The Archway across the freeway in Kearney as we were leaving town last Sunday.