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!!!!

SOWER's

 

Starr & I have joined a missionary organization called "SOWER" which is an acronym for "Servants On Wheels Ever Ready". It's a Christian couples RV work ministry. We can signup to work anywhere in the United States wherever there is a need! They all start on the first Monday of the month. Majority of the work is Monday thru Thursday, six hours a day for three weeks. The fourth week is your own to do what you want. The facility that you are volunteering at are required to furnish you a place to park your RV with full hook up (water, electric sewer). We were approved on Sep11th, 2021 after a hour and a half phone interview! We were chatting with the group at the rally in July and got real excited about it, we suddenly knew what we were going to do with our retirement years! For more information you can visit there website at https://sowerministry.org/

We did our first project in Dec in California and our next one will be at Eloy, AZ about half way between Tucson and Phoenix I will post more on that later!

Rose Parade, Pasadena, CA, Dec 27th 2021 - Jan 03rd 2022

This was the actual float I worked on for the parade. I applied the black seed on the wheelchair tires & center hubs.

Diligently applying black onion seed, about the size of a grain of sand, to the wheelchair wheels. The glue, an industrial form of Elmer's glue, is brushed using a paint brush. The seeds are smattered in some way, shape or form using a 3"x3" piece of 1/4" thick flexible foam. If you look below where I am working it's all black, where as what I am doing is black and white. The glue will eventually dry and turn clear. All the floats are pre-painted the colors you see in the parade, the organics (seeds and such) are adhered to the top of that, sorta a paint by number thing!

Me working on the upper part of the wheel, kind of a great perspective shot of the actual size of these floats!! The wheelchair lady is actually tipped here on her back because to get her, and all the floats under any bridges and overhead wires, the can be no more than 16-1/2 ft. tall. In the warehouse where they are assembled, that is the height that they make the doors, If they fit thru the doors, they will make it to the parade staging area!! Once there, they pivot and move all the pieces in place to their full height!

This shows some of the detail put into the pieces.

More detail.

 

This is the seed trailer where you go and get your supplies!