Altoona, IA - Gee, But It's Great To Be Back Home 2

Perhaps Paul Simon said it best in his song: ’Keep The Customers Satisfied.’

Gee but it's great to be back home

Home is where I want to be.

I've been on the road so long my friend,

And if you came along

I know you couldn't disagree.

We’ve been gone a long time - since October of 2015. We love to travel, to see new places, have new adventures, meet new people but there’s something satisfying about living with familiar things. We can see Cathy and Tom, we can see my brother, Jack, we can see our friends, Shirley and Jerry (when they get back here from their year’s journey) and other friends that we miss, we know where the grocery store is, we know where to get our hair cut. We know the best way to get where we want to go - though the first time we went to Cathy and Tom’s, we took the wrong road.

We’re the red, black and silver RV in the picture here. Seems that the setting sun is shining on us. Nice campground, look at all the space we have.

So, we’re happy to be back. Of course, now we have our annual appointments and there is always RV maintenance along with RV cleaning - lots of RV cleaning (we usually don’t clean the basement storage areas since they usually don’t get too dirty but this time we will). Our refrigerator slowly gave up the ghost during our last few weeks and has died altogether now. Our washer/dryer has quit also. We need to get the RV to Freightliner for an engine tune-up and the Jeep to Stew Hanson, where we bought it, for its tune-up. Plus a myriad of little things that we need to get done before we start off again.

But over the last 2 weeks we haven’t been idle. Gary has gotten the washer/dryer to work and we’ve caught up with our laundry now. He did lots of things but here you can see where he took it out of the little cubby where it resides, balanced it on two chairs and took off the top so he could get at the wires inside.

He’s not sure what he did but he took it apart, cleaned all the contacts, put them back more securely and it works. Did all that bouncing along the highways in Alaska jar something loose? Who knows.

After spending quite a bit of time finding a new residential refrigerator that fits our hole, we’ve ordered it - a special order since it is not a usual size - it’s on its way and should be here by Friday - in 3 days. We can only hope it isn’t delayed until Monday. During this time we’ve been living out of a small electric cooler that Shirley and Jerry loaned us.

Meanwhile Gary disconnected our old Norcold refrigerator and we had it in our living room for a while as he disconnected that black thing on the back called the cooling unit. Then we wrestled it out the front door and it now sits in back of our RV waiting for the delivery crew to take it to the refrigerator graveyard.

The parts sat by our RV for a bit until we got them into the trash.

We took a nice sunny, calm day to clean the RV and it gleams now though we still need to find another calm day to wax it.

We spent some time with my brother, Jack, in Fort Dodge where he made us a pizza - lots of meat, lots of cheese and lots of sauce. He was too busy and too focused putting all his toppings on and couldn’t smile for the camera. He wanted to make it perfect for his favorite (and only) sister and favorite (and only) brother-in-law.

We’ve had our annual physicals and our dental and eye exams.

But these are all such mundane idems, not something for a blog. Who wants to read about an eye exam? The refrigerator removal might have been remotely interesting but I have no pictures. What was I supposed to do? Put down my end as we were carrying it outside, pick up the camera and ask Gary to smile while he’s holding his end?

I was able to finish all the blogs over the last 3 weeks of our trip back to Iowa, put the pictures with the stories and get them published, starting with August 10th: ‘Let’s Start With a Cinnamon Roll.’

Our September is too dull to blog on and I’m plain out of words. I’ve been blogging for 8 years now, starting in 2008 with our first winter in Big Bend, Texas. I’ve enjoyed it and have enjoyed your comments both on the blog and in e-mails. But it’s time for a rest. Maybe I’ll pick it back up in November but for now, I’m resting.

Thanks for reading. I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading as much as I’ve enjoyed writing. I hope I’ve piqued your curiosity about some of the places we’ve been. I hope I’ve interested you in some of the history that we’ve learned about. It’s a great big wonderful country that we have here and we’re enjoying seeing as much as we have. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing it through our eyes or have enjoyed comparing what we’ve seen to what you’ve seen in the same places.

Again, thanks.

Fort Dodge, IA - Back to Iowa

We drove from Medora, ND over to Fargo, ND and we passed by the largest Bison

and the largest cow before we hit the border.

It’s difficult to miss the oil fields of North Dakota, though they are much quieter than they were several years ago.


And, of course the herds. 


Here you’ve got oil refineries and hay bales - both a large part of the North Dakota economy.

At Fargo, we headed south through South Dakota and into Iowa. We stayed at a Walmart in Sioux Center overnight because we wanted to stop to see some friends in Orange City. We woke up - earlier than we had planned - and not the way we had planned. No one plans the screech of a train whistle piercing their deep sleep - 4 times at 5:05. Nope, the dulcent tones of an alarm for me. But, we were awake, ate a hurried breakfast and headed to Orange City. During the winter Smitty and Delores live in their home in Val Vista in Mesa where we stay. In the summer they move back to their home in Orange City. Both of their spouses died a while back and they have now married and are a happy couple. We can hear Dolores laugh in her kitchen, it crosses the street and enters our RV. Neat.

Then it’s across the fields of Iowa to get to Fort Dodge where my brother lives - the corn looks lush: tall and green. the soybeans look equally as good. Looks like a great harves for the Iowa farmers.

Lots of wind turbine blades on the move. We noticed lots of new turbines as we drove through familiar territory.

In Fort Dodge we like to stay in Kennedy Park a country park. but there is a problem with Kennedy - there are no reserves. Well, not the usual kind of reserves. But there are those who ‘reserve’ for their friends by putting cars in the sites. This cuts out those who truly play by the rules of the park: first come, first served.

We got there about 11:00. Gary parked at the entrance to the park and I walked around looking for a full hook-up spot. I found the last available one, asked the family next door if I could borrow their wagon to put on the spot until Gary got there with the RV. As Gary drove in, I walked to the spot, took the wagon back, walked back to the spot to guide Gary in when: a woman almost ran me over with her Jeep to get into the spot then smugly said: ‘we’ve paid for it.’

If I had remembered the system, I would have checked the tag on the electric pole and read that they had paid (maybe) for 8/24 and this was 8/26. But, her car was there. Kennedy park is nice but the management is extremely poor. No one - not the host, not the hostess, not the rangers - ever seems to notice that people reserve spots with their cars for days on end. Put your car in a spot on Wednesday, leave it there til Saturday when your friends come with their RV. It’s a lose, lose, lose, lose, win situation. Those who wanted to rent the spot on Wed, Thurs, Fri lost the spot, the campground lost money. Only one person won: it’s all about them. I don’t mind ‘First come, first served’ but let’s be fair about it.

Here are 3 spots with a car, a Jeep and a truck in them with tags that say 8/24. All ‘reserved.’ NO RV showed up until 8/27 in any of these spots.

AND, here’s the kicker: at $22 per spot per night - that’s $88 times 3 or $264 the campground lost.

Love the clouds massing across the sky. Long ago, when we moved here from a wooded lot in New Hampshire, the first thing I noticed was that we could see weather systems coming in. In New Hampshire, all we could see was the sky over our house. Here we can see from horizon to horizon.

And, now we’re back in Altoona, IA.