Year end review 2020-Part 7-Sept. RV trip day 10-16

Sept. Part 2

The next place we stayed was called Sheyenne Oaks Horse Camp and RV Park. We were in the town of Leonard, North Dakota. This place was well off the beaten path and it took us awhile to find it over some pretty rough roads, but it was worth the trouble.



It had beautiful green grass and trees as well as a smattering of leaves that were beginning to turn to their fall colors. The campsites were wide and spacious and there were only two rows of them down the middle of the grounds, with horse corrals on the outer sides. Many of the campers were there with their horses and I enjoyed walking the dogs along the road past the majestic animals. I have always been fascinated by horses. I’ve never been able to own one and I haven’t even had many chances to ride them, but I think they are in a tie with dogs as the most beautiful creatures on the planet.

The combination of the aroma of horses (their breath, their hide, their feed-yes, even their manure) and campfires was an intoxicating combination. I found myself inhaling it deeply and being filled with a sense of contentment. The camp was clean and well-maintained and we thoroughly enjoyed our one night stay there.


Roscoe and Zuli liked it too.

From there we headed for our visit with my nieces in Chanhassen, Minnesota. When we crossed the state line, we were not on a major roadway so there was no “welcome to Minnesota” sign, but Siri let us know we were there. We drove many hours that Friday and a lot of the scenery looked like this: dirt roads and dry cornfields. . .

We reached our campground and made arrangements to rent a car for our stay so we didn’t see Jessica until the following day.





After the peace and serenity of the Horse Camp, there was a distinct difference in the atmosphere we encountered on our first night here. As you can see in this picture, the campsites to the left of ours (on the side where our bedroom slide-out is) were occupied by a very large group of people. What you can’t see is the noise they made that night and well into the wee hours of the morning. I mean, we knew they were having a good time, talking and laughing and carrying on, but they had no consciousness of how much they were disturbing anyone around them. Vladi and I thought about calling someone to report on them because all campgrounds have restrictions on noise between certain hours, but we kept hoping that someone else would make the call or hoping that we could fall asleep despite the noise. I think they finally quieted down around 2 a.m. I took this next picture in the morning to show what their campsite looked like in the aftermath of their party.



We had made plans with Jessica and her family to do an Urban Adventure Quest in Minneapolis that day so we met them in the city, near the starting point of the Quest.

The first thing we needed to do was admire the recently built Viking stadium with it’s menacing replica of a Viking Ship. We weren’t able to go inside but a couple of pieces of my sister Samantha’s artwork reside there. The day was cloudy and cool, which were perfect conditions to see how the glowing red eyes on the dragon head at the bow of the ship would have looked on a stormy sea.




John got some really cool shots.

From there we moved on to the start of the Quest. I was really excited to see how engaged Rylee was with figuring out the clues and finding the answers to the questions. John was enjoying it, too, but his primary focus was on getting great photos as we explored. Vladi and I had our usual level of interest but because we had the dogs, Vladi had to spare some of his attention for them. Jack was excited to be out with all of us, but he didn’t care one whit about the Quest (which was understandable since he’s only 7.) But that meant that Jessica couldn’t really participate fully because she had to keep an eye on her very energetic little boy.

A little aside about Jessica and her kids. . . She calls them Smylee Rylee and Happy Jack, perhaps projecting her hope of infusing their lives with joy. Jessica herself is one of the most joyful people I know, although it was not hard to see the stress that the pandemic has imposed on her. She has been working from home and maintaining the schooling of her kids at the same time. It is not an easy task for anyone and I know she can’t wait for in-person school to resume. As we did the quest that day, Jess tried to divide her attention between solving the puzzles and keeping an eye on Jack, who was bouncing between things that caught his attention like a marble in a pinball machine. He is keenly aware of his dad’s camera and loves to clown around in an attempt to entertain both his mom and his dad. I think he gets a great deal of validation when he can make his mom laugh. In the following pictures, you can see how intent Rylee and I were on figuring out the clues in the Quest, while Jessica tried to keep track of Jack.












She was really good about giving him her full attention at times, when he discovered something that really interested him. But I don’t think she ever really felt relaxed that day.

We roamed around a historic area of Minneapolis and saw the old buildings where both Gold Medal and Pillsbury Flour were milled.








It’s kind of hard to see us in this picture that Jessica took from across the street, but we wanted to get the “Gold Medal Park” in. Vladi is between the words “Gold” and Medal”, I’m between the E and D of “Medal”, John is by the P in “Park”, Jack is in the A, and Rylee is behind the R.
Across from the park at one end were these gorgeous trees aflame in their fall finery.



There was one area where we had to work on clues without getting too close to the many people who were out and about. Rylee spotted this table where a guy was set up spray painting posters of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had died the previous week (9/18/20). He was giving the posters away as they dried and Rylee really wanted one, but the line was really long so we just couldn’t wait, but I was really impressed that Rylee not only knew who she was but considered her a hero.



John set up the timer on his camera to get this shot of all of us. Zuli is laying on the ground in front of Roscoe but you can barely see her because she’s so dark.



Jess took this selfie of me and her. Look at those earrings she has on. Bacon and eggs. I love that girl so much!

Vladi took this picture. We called it our “self-portrait”. We thought it looked a lot like him and me.

The area where we got this picture was another part of the quest. There were the cutest little whimsical creatures all around. And the green grass was luscious.






At the end of the Quest, Vladi got this picture of me and the kids. We all had a lot of fun together that day.

We headed back to Jessica’s house to have some dinner. We had talked about going to a new restaurant that she wanted to try and she called to check that they had outdoor seating. But when we got there, we discovered that the patio was way too small to accommodate our group and our 2 big dogs. There was already a family with a baby stroller and there were not very many tables. So we decided to go back to the house and have pizza.

We set up a table in the driveway in accordance with the rules of the pandemic. The CDC guidelines stated that it was safer to stay outside if you were with people that were not members of your own household. The pizza guy delivered our boxes at the end of the driveway and Jess offered us drinks from what she had in stock. That was when I was introduced to Grain Belt Blu Blueberry Lager. It’s a beer that’s brewed in Minnesota and wow, was I impressed! For me, it ranked right up there with my favorite Bud Light Platinum.

After dinner, Vladi and I headed back to our campground with plans to return the next day when Jocelyn and Dan would drive up from Mason City to join us. The campground was much quieter that night, even though the group was still there and we were relieved to get a good night’s sleep.

Nobody really wanted to get up early that Sunday and the drive for Jocelyn and Dan was 2 or 3 hours, so we got together in the early afternoon. I brought the girls the items from Rand’s house that I wanted to deliver as well as Jessica’s special request of Cactus Cooler, which she can’t obtain in Minnesota. I also gave them each copies of some letters that my mom had written on a trip she took to Hawaii before she married my dad. Jessica is very interested in family history and Jocelyn loves to read so I thought that both of them might enjoy the letters.

Jessica wanted to take me and Jocelyn for a ride in a convertible VW she had on loan from a neighbor, to show us the beautiful colors of the trees around her neighborhood. I think Jess also just wanted to get out of the house for a few minutes. 

By the time we got back, it was time to organize the things we were making for dinner. Dan ended up doing almost all of the cooking. Fortunately, he enjoys it and he’s good at it. None of the rest of us really wanted to cook but we were all looking forward to the Mexican feast we had planned. We set up a table in the garage (with the door open for good ventilation) and all helped ourselves to the array of choices of food.

After dinner we took pictures.








I love these girls so much.

We got done with dinner early enough for Jocelyn and Dan to head home before dark and Vladi and I didn’t stay too much longer.

The next morning, our campground was pretty much deserted.



After returning our rental car, we headed for Newton, Iowa.







Our drive that day and the next as we traversed Iowa and then a small part of Nebraska was beautiful and again, the wide-openness was fascinating. Nebraska was another state that we wanted to check off of our sticker map, since we had visited all the states around it, but never ventured over it’s border, so instead of heading straight down to Missouri, we made a short side trip to Omaha.











We had a restful couple of days before heading into October and on to our next visit.

Year end review 2020-Part 6-Sept. RV trip Day 1-9

Sept. Part 1

By September Vladi and I were itching to take the RV on the road and as far as we could tell, campgrounds were open and many states had less restrictions than California so we decided to plan a trip. We would only visit my sister and nieces and we would deliver the items that they had requested from Rand’s house so that we wouldn’t have to do that on our bigger trip. We mimicked our 2016 trip, even going on approximately the same dates. And wouldn’t you know, both times were right before elections in which Donald Trump was running was running for president. His first campaign was against Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine and the second was against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. On the trip in 2016 I was surprised to see so many Trump signs in the sparsely populated areas where the landscape was dominated by ranches and farms and in the areas where there was a vast distance between homes. There were very few signs supporting the Clinton ticket. On this trip, in 2020, there were many Trump signs again, in the same types of places where we saw them last time. But this time, there were a few more signs supporting his opponent in the race. Still not as many as we wanted to see, but more.

I planned to write a daily blog on the trip because we had purchased a wi-fi booster that was supposed to give us better access to the internet. And since the last trip I had purchased a laptop that I could take with me. Well, long story short, that didn’t work. I started out writing on the first day and when I tried to save what I had written, I got an error message telling me that I needed to be connected to the internet. I tried a few different things, but was not able to figure out what the problem was. I managed to handwrite that first day’s entry, but I lost everything I wrote in the next few days. I handwrote one more entry, but I was very disappointed that I didn’t get to do a daily journal because though my pictures help me remember what we did, the details that I wrote down in my computer were lost.

Here is my entry for the first day:

Tuesday September 15, 2020

Day one

After nearly a year since our last adventure in the RV today we set out for a monthlong trip to see my sister and nieces.

It's been such a strange and unsettling year. COVID-19 reared its ugly head in March and quickly became a global pandemic. Over the last seven months our interactions with other people have been altered to the point of unrecognizability. We have all kinds of new rules about keeping our distance, keeping our faces covered, not shaking hands or (God-forbid) hugging. There is a limit to how many people can be inside a business at one time, we have to wait in lines six feet apart, we can’t eat inside restaurants, we can’t go to theaters, gyms, churches or sporting events. Kids can’t go to school and a lot of people have lost jobs if they can’t be done from home. Everyone has felt this foreboding feeling of wondering how long it will last and when or if life will ever get back to what we thought of as “normal” again.

The racial tension over the death of George Floyd in May (as well as many other deaths of unarmed people of color), the economic disparity between rich and poor, the political polarization between Democrats and Republicans along with the difference of opinion over the severity of the virus has contributed to a horrifying atmosphere of rage and hatred in the country.

Getting out on the road seemed to be a good way to get a fresh perspective.

As we set out, hundreds of fires are burning up and down the West coast. From my perspective this is clear evidence of climate change. And that climate change is creating very dangerous conditions on our planet. But that is another thing that opinions are divided about.

Anyway, to get back to our trip, Vladi and I left our home in Thousand Oaks this morning at about 11:00 AM. It was a pleasant 80 degrees and the sky was a hazy blue. By the time we had driven over the hill into the San Fernando Valley (30 minutes) the temperature had climbed and the air had become thick and gray with smoke. We could smell it and feel the burn in our eyes. Our first destination was two hours away, but the air remained thick and gray for the entire distance. And the temperature was over 90 degrees all day.

Our campground is in Beaumont, CA. and we're getting smoke from the “Apple fire”. Fires get named by their point of origin and this one started on Apple Tree Lane. It is somewhere north of us, far enough that we're not in danger but close enough that it smells like we are in a fire pit. And the air tastes like ash.

You can see from the redness of the sun that there is smoke in the air.

We're curious to see what kind of trip this will be. We're pretty used to the restrictions we've been living with in California, but we're not sure what to expect elsewhere. We're pretty sure that we won't have any trouble finding campgrounds to stay in, but other than that we're not sure what we will be able to do and what we won’t.

At our first stop the pool and jacuzzi are open (and look inviting) but the clubhouse, store and kitchen are closed. The laundry room, showers, and bathrooms are open. We are waiting until the air temperature goes down a little before we venture to the pool/jacuzzi. I'm just hoping that the other campers aren't all waiting for the same thing. No one was in the water earlier.

That was as far as I got in my writing on the first day. And by the way-we never did make it into the pool or jacuzzi.

After camping at Cherry Valley Resort on the first day, we headed to Las Vegas (9/16) for our second night.

We went to a KOA there that we had stayed at before. From our previous camping experiences, we know we can always count on KOAs to be clean, and well run. Our night there was uneventful and the next day we headed to Utah. The air had been hazy with smoke so far and I tried to get pictures showing that the hills/mountains in the distance were not clear and sharp as they would have been if the air was clear and clean like it was on our first trip.



It seemed to get a little better when we hit the border of Utah, and St. George, with it’s distinct red rock cliffs, was as pretty as we remembered it.

We stopped a bit beyond St. George, in a town called Richfield. We had gotten off the highway to find a gas station where we could use one of our gas cards and GPS sent us into a little tiny town and to a street corner where a Phillips 66 station had been at one time. There was still a gas station there, but it was not one where our cards would work. We had to use our bank card because at that point we weren’t sure where the next station would be. Of course, when we continued on, we saw all the stations we could have used just a little further down the highway.

We got to our Richfield KOA (9/17) and found it to be very pleasant, with nice green trees and big concrete pads at each campsite, as well as a table and clay fireplace. The staff didn’t seem too worried about wearing masks and although it made me a little uneasy, we followed their lead. Actually, the people at the gas station weren’t wearing masks either, and as we travelled through Utah, we realized that the whole state was not being very cautious in regard to the virus.

Richfield was the first place where I had a problem with saving my work on my computer and realized that my plan for recording each day was probably not going to work.

One of the ladies in the office was really sweet when she saw us trying to take pictures of each other with the dogs and she offered her services. She took some nice pictures for us.

The next day we saw some beautiful scenery as we drove through the rest of Utah.

There was one spot where we saw smoke coming out of the crevices in a hillside and during those first few days the air was never clean sparkling blue When we hit Wyoming we realized that the fires were more widespread than we had known. What we had speculated might be clouds in the sky was mostly smoke.

We spent that night at Rock Springs/Green River KOA in Wyoming (9/18).
You can see how windy it was.

The next day we continued through Wyoming and saw highway signs warning of high fire danger.

The next KOA we stayed at was in Laramie, WY., which we remembered from our first RV trip when we visited Sammy at school. This picture that I took of the sign pointing the way from the highway shows the smoky color of the sky.

From Laramie, Wyoming we headed for South Dakota on 9/20.

I frequently cite South Dakota as one of our favorite places from our first trip. We saw the Crazy Horse Monument from the Highway on the way to our campground. The area around Mt. Rushmore is beautiful.

We stayed at Rushmore Shadows RV resort for a second time and it was lovely. We spent a couple of days there because the campground is part of our membership (so we camp for free) and we needed a break from the road. It made the dogs happy.

I took these pictures through the screen door of the RV. Roscoe loves to wrap his paw around a hand that’s petting him. And Zuli was always happy to lay down on solid ground after riding in the RV for hours at a time.

When we got back on the road again, we were fascinated by the wide openness of South and North Dakota.



In California, I’m used to seeing hay baled in rectangular cubes, but everywhere else they seemed to be rolled like carpets made of shredded wheat and stacked by the hundreds ((you can see the stacks on the right in the picture above,) or laying spaced apart in just-mowed fields. I wanted to see how they did it but I never caught sight of the work actually being done.

September 22nd, 2020

After our 2 night stay at Rushmore Shadows Resort, we left there this morning with the hope of getting to our next campground in less than four hours. We left at approximately 9:15 and drove through many, many miles of South Dakota.

I was not expecting it to be quite so empty. It consists of rolling grasslands as far as the eye can see and after we left the area of Rapid City we saw very, very few people. The roads were empty and although there was evidence of people such as a few buildings, farm machinery, and beautifully groomed vast fields of hay dotted with rolled up bundles (someone had to have done it!), we didn’t see any actual people.

There were miles and miles of dry cornstalks and sunflowers and thousands of cows dotting the hundreds of miles of prairie land. It was beautiful and gave me a renewed appreciation of farming and farmers.

Once we hit North Dakota it didn't look much different.
There were no road signs or indications of how far one place was from another, so we flew by the sign that said “Welcome to North Dakota” before I had a chance to take a picture of it. I had to settle for a picture of a highway marker.

After so many miles of being alone or accompanied by one or two cars on the road we encountered some signs warning of Road Work Ahead. We had noticed that we were traveling on what seemed to be a very smooth new road, but we got to the place where it was being worked on.

And once we got there, we got stuck. There was one travel trailer that had been in front of us for quite a few miles and they had come to a stop where a tough- looking woman road crew member in fluorescent road crew garb held up a stop sign. We didn't think it would take long but the minutes stretched into half an hour as she directed huge trucks hauling materials for the road work first in one direction, then in the other direction, and then again in one direction and then the other. We couldn't believe how long we had to sit there and wait, with the temperature outside almost 90 degrees (but then again the road crew were doing their job in that heat.) It did give us time to observe the woman with the stop sign. I was surprised to see her smoking.

But later, when we got to our campground, I saw evidence that smoking was very common in North Dakota, as if they haven’t yet gotten the memo that it’s bad for your health. We were told that because there are only 700,000 people in the whole state, they haven’t had much problem with Covid, so they were pretty lax with enforcing masks. (Weeks later there was news that most of the states that we travelled through had spikes in their cases.)

When we finally got moving, we had to follow a truck on the very rough side of the road that will probably be done next. And this went on for miles. Once we got past where they were working, we were on the part of the road that they probably have to do next., and it was terrible. Our poor little RV got shaken to within an inch of its life today.

We finally reached our campground after a 5-hour drive and the office was closed. Apparently, the guy that manages the place is only here three evenings a week for three hours. The place is next to a nice little slow-moving river but the area where a sign directed us to park has no trees. It wasn't what we were expecting for our two-night stay.


  
(This is the women’s restroom in our ND campground. This bucket of butts is there by the door.)

But we want to mark North Dakota off our map of the States and see the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

This place was one of the highlights of our whole trip. We were so glad that we made the effort to see it. We’ve never been disappointed by any of our National Parks. They are treasures that must be preserved. Not only is the wildlife spectacular, but the topography is breathtaking. I had to choose pictures from the many that we took, that best showed the many special things about this place.

The first sighting of bison is awe-inspiring. The shaggy beasts seem unconcerned about the vehicles moving through their territory. It’s always fun to see the mamas and babies.
And some of them look at the people in the cars with the same curiosity with which we are looking at them.

Other friendly travelers are happy to exchange picture-taking opportunities.

The bison sometimes mosey down the middle of the road with no regard for the vehicles.

The wild horses are beautiful, too.

Cool looking rock formations.



Spectacular vistas

After exploring the park, we headed into the town of Medora to find some lunch and possibly souvenirs.

We stopped at a place called Iron Horse Saloon, named for the train that passes close by.
    
Next to it was Boots Bar and Grille, where we found some good eats.

We started with a delicious homemade soup (Vladi’s favorite thing—no matter what flavor.)

I got a quesadilla as my entrée and was very happy with it.

Our dessert didn’t last long enough for me to get a picture of it. (hee-hee).

After lunch we walked around the town and came across a statue of Teddy Roosevelt.

We explored the shops and found some souvenirs and generally had a lovely day. Then we headed back to our campground.

The next morning we continued on to our next destination. (see Part 7)