Summer 2022 in Minnesota don't ya know!!!

What a summer! How quickly its flying by! After SD we landed at Piepenburg campground, a McLeod county park near Hutchinson MN. We were there from 6/12 thru 6/27. Fifteen nights to slow down, catch up on rest. While there I "gutted" the fresh water plumbing system and replumbed it using all PEX type tubing and the corresponding tube crimps.

Fun things we did, Drove a tractor in the Glencoe days parade, Started poring the last half of the parade! My son Rob took part in the festivities, he volunteered to be the cow for Coburn grocery store. Gotta admit the boy had nice udders!!

Spent a few days at Wild River State Park near North Branch. My sister Joanne came to visit every day, it was a wonderful memory!

From there we headed to Starr's sister's in Park Rapids to camp out in their driveway for two nights as we waited for our reservation to open up (it was 4 o July weekend) at La Salle S.P. 

From there we went Hayes Lake S.P., NW MN. 

From there we headed up to Beatrice Lake Campground (McCarthy Beach S.P.), north of Hibbing, beautiful park, wonderful sandy bottom beach, however, we decided that it's not conducive to a 35' 5th wheel, did some minor damage, but hey, live and learn! While we were there Starr's sister Colleen and her daughter Jenny and her two kids came to spend the day with us. Her friend Alice also came to visit and spend a couple nights. It was during Alice's stay that we convinced Starr that she should have surgery ...... ran to Grand Rapids for an MRI

Beginning of the parade, Glencoe days

And.... here comes the rain!!

That's my Boy!!!

Add with head attached!!

 

Our camp site at Beatrice Lake, took 30 min to get it in place!

What kind of a bird is this Starr??? @ Wild River!

One of the visitors at Wild River

My sister Joanne, Starr & me!
We had lunch at the Drive Inn, Taylor Falls!
Great Root Beer!!!

 

Location Check-in, SOWER's project: Trout Lake Bible Camp

Flexible, that what we’re doing! 

Our plans have changed, there was an opening for Starr to get her meniscus (knee) repaired on Aug 26th in Maple Grove. So we canceled our September SOWER’s project in NY and found one at Trout Lake Bible camp at Pine River, MN for the month of August. We will be back in the cities on Aug 23rd.

Location Check-in

 We are currently at Beatrice Lake Campground, part of McCarthy State Park. (North of Hibbing, MN).  We will be here until July 30th!

South Dakota Bound, Domicile Change & Sight Seeing

 

We are official South Dakota residents now!!!! For the most part it was pretty painless! It was about an hour wait then we found out we forgot a piece of documentation so we had to run back to the trailer to get it then back in line for another hour, but hey, we're retired what else we got to do? LoL! Now we've been exploring the Rapid City area and trying to catch up on our rest!

We took a day trip to Devil's Tower

Stopped and had lunch at nearby restaurant, had a nice view of the tower!

From Tuesday thru Saturday we have been Boondocking

 on the wall, just south of Wall, SD!

Our RV, taken from the ridge across the way!

We packed a picnic lunch and tailgated watching the residences in Prairie Dog town!

Fluffy Cows... don't pet the fluffy cows!!

Starr is resting, snug as a bug in a rug in her bankie!!

A sunset from our RV window!

Starr is applying for a 5th head on Mount Rushmore!

Rushmore with all the state flags!

We splurged and went to a seafood & prime rib buffet at a Cassino in Deadwood, SD.
I think I had a meat hangover the next day!!!

Tomorrow, Saturday, we start heading back to Minnesota, we are overnighting with a Harvest Host, a farm, just outside of Huron, SD1

"Homeless"

 

Couldn't help myself, had to have our picture taken under a bridge after our closing!
Although, someone from our SOWER's family said we were houseless not homeless,
our home was hitched to the truck!!! I had to agree!

Well, we have put on a lot of miles since I have last posted. We made it to to Mission TX. We saw a lot of interesting birds that are unique to Central America and that little corner of the United States. From there we decided to make a beeline to Maple Grove to prepare for the selling of our townhouse that Starr & I have lived in for 25+ years. The longest place either of us has lived, it's been bitter sweet. We arrived on the Thursday before Good Friday. We were initially planned to arrive on Good Friday with an overnight just north of Des Moines IA, but, waking up Thursday morning in a Kansas City suburb with temps in the lower 40 degree and no heat coming from our furnace (it died), we decided to drive straight thru to Maple Grove. That was the day with 60 mph cross winds, with semis being blown over, it got real interesting a few times! But I digress...

Starr and I have fallen in love with the nomadic life style and during our time away this past winter and doing two SOWER's projects, we decided that this is the path that God is leading us down at this time, our townhouse was a huge burden for us, sooo, a decision was made to sell it, asking God that if it not be his will to close the doors that need closing, open the doors that need opening. We asked a gal (a realtor) in our Bible study if she would be interested in listing it, she was, needless to say, a few days later she got ahold of us and said her and her husband were interested in buying it as investment property. Didn't see that coming! We agreed on a price, we didn't have to paint, didn't have to keep things picked up everyday for showings, we just had to clear everything out! We had 6 weeks till we closed on May 25th, no problem I thought, 2 weeks, 3 max, we'll have 3 weeks to visit with friends before we hit the road! Ha, was I wrong, and humbled! This moving and packing up is a young persons sport! I would say we rehomed thru Facebook Marketplace or dispensed over a 2/3rds of our belongings that a year ago we couldn't part with! The other third, our bedroom set with bed and dressers, other miscellaneous keepsakes went into into a 10 x 15 storage locker, with the help from our former ,youthful Bible study group we got involved in. 

Another item we no longer needed was our 2018 Santa Fe, it sat in the garage all winter, we put less than 6000 miles in the year we owned it, we did a quick oil change, and sold it to a dealer in St Paul for $500 more than we paid for it! With those proceeds, and our 2017 F250 as a trade, we upgraded to a 2020 F350 with a Lariat package, a little more comfort for the days on the road and a lot more power for pulling! Not to mention, Starr is able to drive this one like pro!

Bessy II & Boo

Dust Storm in Route to South Padre Island TX

Dairy building with "Boo" the trailer in parking lot!

We over nighted (3/29) in San Elizario TX just south of El Paso. We stayed at a place we found with our Harvest Host App called Licon's Dairy. Getting here however proved to be quite interesting, we encountered our first dust storm with an occasional rain shower. I had just hand washed the truck on the eve of our departure from Tucson AZ, after yesterday, it looks worse than before LoL!!! One advantage of of the winds as high as they were (30mph w/ gust of 60mph) it was a tail wind so I was able to get 11-12 mpg pulling the trailer! We got there to late last night to check out there choices so we will be doing that this morning! Can't wait to see what yummy things we can find before we make our exit! There is also a petting zoo here we will check out before we depart. Well, we checked, all the cheese products we sold in to big a packaging to fit into our RV fridge. So I settled for a cookies and cream ice cream bar, needless to say it was very tasty! Checked out the petting zoo, had quite the variety of animals!

Dust storm while driving thru El Paso

Dust storm while driving thru El Paso,
It was worse than this out in the open freeway

Donkeys having breakfast

Lammas, Sheep & Goats, off screen Ostriches, cows & others.
Basically, was to cold and windy to wander from the trailer.

SOWER's Project: Youth Haven, Eloy, AZ - 2021 March (I will probably be adding more pictures to this)

 

I was reminded, AGAIN, that I was not up to date on my blog! LoL, You know who you are, and thank you for the gentle reminder!!

We signed up for a project in the small town of Eloy, AZ, about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson at a place called Youth Haven, a Bible Camp for disadvantaged children. If interested, their web page is: https://www.youthhaven.org/ 

Our duties here, for me, has been helping remodel a home for the newly hired maintenance person and his family. Because a laminate floor was installed all the toilets and doors were removed and I got to reinstall them. Also helped assemble the knobs and handles on the new cabinets and becoming proficient at installing bathroom sinks! Today I was repairing bicycles!

Toilet install, reminded me almost of the old days

Door Doors Doors and more Doors

Posing on one of the kids bike I worked on.

Starr has been working on picking up after the construction crew and doing trimming on bushes, I have determined that if something is growing out of the ground in Arizona, there are nasty thorns on it!!!!