Dennis and Starr Travel

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Trying to catch up to get current! Plugging away!!! Todays installment is from Sept 02!

We got the RV packed, upgrades done that I had time to do, done! (That's not to say I don't have others planned, more on that in other postings).

We left home on Sept 2nd around 2:30 on a rainy afternoon. In typical Babcock fashion, 2 miles down the road, we went 360 degrees around a roundabout and came back for something we forgot. After that, the first leg our trek to Chicago (Wheaton IL) took us thru Rochester, down to La Crosse and down to the "Last Ride Ranch" on the edge of the small town of Westby, WI. This was on my "Boondockers Welcome" app that I signed up for. It's basically other RV'ers that open an area on their property for other RV'er to send one to two nights then move on. We plan on using this often on our journey! We got there a little late, around 7ish, the owner had gone home and couldn't be reached. In our hurry to get on the road it hadn't occurred to us to let him know what our ETA was. I backed into the spot you'll see below, I was hoping there would be no issue as we were pooped from all our house prep work!

We went to put the slide outs out, and one had NO POWER!! Grrrr! Oh well, deal with it in Wheaton, thank goodness it was wasn't when we were trying to bring it in!!

We woke up, after a peaceful night's sleep, Friday morning watching horses out the back window as we drank our coffee and tea (see below). I had email communication with the owner, turns out he had company over and he turned his phone off, what a concept!

It was still raining when we lifted jacks and got on the road!!

Leaving the house on our adventure! Fully loaded!!

Starr is making sure we remember where we stayed!!

--> More later <--

Sunday, September 5, 2021

Well it I finally did it, as of Friday, Aug 27th 2021 at 4:30pm, I am officially retired! Decided to pull the plug early (by 3 days) and help Starr out in getting ready for our big adventure! As it turned out, I am glad I did! There is a lot of work involved in getting the housed shut down and prepped on the off chance we decide not to return to until next spring! Plus a few thing I had to do to the RV (I think we need a name for the RV).

One of them being a new bathroom sink and vanity top. The one that came with it had the faucet mounted on the vanity top and the water barely made it into the actual sink. When you washed your hands, you were having them pressed up against the back wall of the sink, it was fine for weekend warrior-ing but living for longer periods of time, I don't think so!

(New Sink & Vanity Top)

I also added a drop shelf off the kitchen sink to add additional counter space. Our garbage can and recycling bin will sit under it and later on in our journey, when we settle in Tucson Jan-Mar, Starr is going to make a removable curtain to attach to the bottom and hide them.

(Drop Shelf)

I'll post more later about the first leg of our journey!

Friday, August 20, 2021

Our sites, Lund's on the left, us on the right! Nice common area in-between!

This past weekend (Aug 19-22) found us at the RV park at Mystic Lake casino with friends Michael, Deb & Gunner Lund (Gunner being the cute one, a teddy bear pooch), our friends from our Kentucky run that we did earlier this summer. It's sad, in a way, because with us hitting the road soon (9 days according to my retirement counter) this could be the last time we them for a few months!

Us with Gunner Lund!!!

Anyway, we are here to go out to dinner at Danderfield's in Shakopee, come back to the Mystic Lake event center & see Dwight Yoakam in concert! The concert was absolutely awful! I can testify that loader is not better, it was so loud it was actually hard to breath! Add the bass to the mix, it was a killer. It was so loud we could not hear any of the lyrics which was to bad, as I love his music. The four of us walked out after the 2nd song. Did I mention it was loud???