Officially gone at 2:46,
Central Daylight Time, Monday, May 25, a full 9 hours and 15 minutes ahead of schedule (we
planned to leave by midnight...). The first day was a stressed one. At our first rest
stop, just about an hour into the trip, we notice that our tow vehicle (my Saturn) was
covered (I mean COVERED) with oil. Coated. The front of the car was black with this stuff.
So was the engine compartment in the motorhome. Needless to say we were a
bit worried. We checked the oil and the transmission fluid - all levels looked good. We
knew we had sprung a leak but couldn't find it. We decided as long as the fluid
temperatures and pressures looked good, we would keep driving. We headed toward Little
Rock and a Cummins Service Center to get the Mother Ship looked at. After missing the exit
and U-turning around, we made it to Mid-South Cummins about 10:30 in the morning, and met
the nicest mechanics ever. David White and James took a look at it, filled her up with
power steering fluid (so that's what that greasy oily mess was...) and had us up and
running in no time. It turned out that all that stress and worry was over an 89 cent
o-ring that had blown apart on the hydraulic pump for the steering. No damage done. Total
bill $98 (including 12 quarts of transmission/power steering fluid). "Whitey"
and James even washed the back of the motor home - and they washed my car - even scrubbed
it down with a brush and rinsed. Some of the other workers actually got booted off their
lunch area so these guys could wash my car.
I know you are all concerned about our pets. Cassie and Chaz had kind of a rough first day. Chaz was very tired, and insisted on sitting up, even when his eyes were closing. Cassie was a nervous wreck with all the different beeping and rattling and the moving - she doesn't like any of that. She spent the entire first day cowered under the passenger seat. Once we stopped and parked for the night, she recovered, but (hard to believe) she wouldn't eat! She came out of hiding, but was still a bit skittish. As we travel a long, Cassie is getting a little more brave. She slinks around a little while we are moving, but still scurries away when she hears loud noises. Chaz sleeps right at Doug's side - as long as he can see Doug, he is happy.
Bumper sticker of the day: "I AIN'T STUD'N THE DEVIL" What does this mean? Is it
"studying" the devil, or is it "studding" the devil? Pretty big
difference between the two.
Kentucky - the Blue Grass State. State fossil is the brachiopod. We choose to spend
the night in Bowling Green - home of Western KY University, Flea Land, Camping World, and
Corvettes. Leave Bowling Green at 7:00am for Lexington - home of the 1998 World Champion
Kentucky Wildcats!! and to lots of Doug's family. Emily graduates from high school on
Saturday, so we're here to get some visiting in, and see the ceremony.
We make it to the Kentucky Horse Park Campground (49207) in time for lunch. This camp is
the prettiest so far, and will be a beautiful place to spend the next few days. Our site
is surrounded by large oak and pine trees and lots of bluegrass - it smells very sweet in
the morning when the dew is out. I've gotten in a couple of good runs - today was a five
miler through the campground and the park. The Horse Park itself is a living museum to the
equine - they have all kinds of breeds, a mare and foal barn, a farrier's shop, a harness
shop, five different breeds of draft horses etc. It is working horse farm with a large
educational component - and beautiful grounds to boot!
The campground has a wonderful shower house, so instead of filling our holding tank we
have been using theirs. Even though I've always been a backpacker and never thought
of this lifestyle as "camping", I'm still loving it. We get to to travel all
over the country, stay in really beautiful places, and yet come "home" every night. We still
get to hike and bike and run and swim and raft, but we get our own bed in the evening.
Kind of the best of both worlds - I'll always want to do the long hikes and the tent
camping, but this is really good!!
This evening we went to dinner with Doug's sister Kathy and her family, his mom, his
brother Scott and wife Valorie, and his Grandma Fern. We were there to celebrate Fern's
95th birthday. She is still going strong, very vibrant and energetic. Still very much the
intellectual - asking probing questions, discussing current events. I sure hope I'm half
that sharp at half her age!!
When we got back to the campground, we were locked out of the Mother Ship. The lock was
stuck. We both had keys, but it was jammed somehow. We got Pop-a-Lock to come out and
jimmy it open, but now we always carry the other keys - the ones to the drivers side door.
We don't really like standing around at midnight trying to break into our home.
Emily's graduation
was at 2:00. She was "co-valedictorian" - a political distinction from the
headmaster of the school. Everybody that I talked to thought Emily deserved it outright.
Her speech had a few candid but obscure comments directed toward the staff of Sayer
School, which I'm sure most of the audience missed. Her talk was absolutely outstanding -
very mature and motivational. The other "co-valedictorian's talk was silly -
"I remember our senior class trip..." blah blah blah. Obviously, I'm a bit
one-sided, but still...
After the graduation there was a pool party at Kathy and Stuarts house - all of the family
was there and we had a great time. Kathy prepared a wonderful spread and everybody packed
it in. It was really nice to have a chance to visit with family that we don't see much,
especially Carl, Tara and Renee. Carl is a character and an absolute delight to talk with.
He uses phrases like "tall hog at the feeding trough" and "knee-high to a
grasshopper".
North to the Mall! We had a very long day driving - all the way from Lexington to
Menamonie WI - 783 miles! This included our biggest one day state count: Kentucky,
Indiana, Ohio, Indiana (yes, again - look at the map and see how we went around Cinnci),
Illinois and Wisconsin. This route had more large fiberglass animals than you could
possibly imagine - elk, moose, dinosaurs, buffalo; but we were continually amazed by the
overwhelming lack of cows grazing contentedly on hillsides in a state that is famous for
CHEESE. Really. I think we saw maybe 15 cows in all of Wisconsin.
After crossing into Minnesota, and went straight to the Mall of America. (insert trumpet fanfare here). It was amazing. The mall part wasn't very big, but there was a complete amusement park inside, three levels of stores, eight full sit-down restaurants (plus regular mall food). We spent several hours wondering around, taking care of business, sending postcards. After the mall, we went west to The Flying Goose Campground in Fairmount MN. This was a beautiful campground. It had 3/4 miles of lakefront, shaded sites, and a pair of Mute Swans named Fred and Ethel.
We next went west through South Dakota, and spent the night in Wall - home of the famous Wall Drug. It was the biggest, tackiest
tourist trap I have ever seen. It had a regular drug store, a soda fountain, a restaurant,
all sorts of quirky exhibits and displays ( including a Jurassic Park dinosaur that roared
every 15 minutes). There are signs for Wall Drug all over the world (really) and probably
every ten miles from the MN border advertising this place as the "Free Ice Water
Store" - a gimmick the owners started in 1941 (?) to drum up business. It worked.
Wall SD is built around Wall Drug.
We also drove through the Badlands this
afternoon. Amazing landscapes - it is often described as a lunar landscape and it
really is almost eerie how different it is from the surrounding countryside. It was
really incredible with some storm clouds dancing overhead and the sun going down. There is
also a prairie dog
town here and we got to chase the little diggers around with the zoom lens. After our
drive, we had a horrible meal at a place in town called the Cactus Cafe. The food was
inedible, but the beer was cold.
In the morning we woke up to 2 inches of snow! - quite a change from the heat and humidity we saw in Kentucky just a few days earlier. Luckily the roads were clear so we were able to leave, and the dusting of snow on the Badlands was picture perfect. We drove to Mount Rushmore through some heavy clouds, and were concerned that we wouldn't see anything, but luckily the clouds parted and we had wonderful views of the faces. It is really incredible to see the faces in the rock - what an engineering feat to get those perfect portraits using dynamite and power chisels!
We spent the night in Big Timber, Montana - just west of Billings, and are off to Helena
in the morning.
Back to the Journal List