Part 2, May 15, 2024

Picking up from first post, we are now at April 15, 2 days after the Decker Alumni.  I think we went to Jayden's baseball game on Monday, but I started not feeling well.  We had lunch with Stacey on Tuesday, and saw her new apartment, but I still wasn't feeling good.  We cancelled Wednesday and Thursday events, which included dinner with Mike and Rachelle.  By Friday, I decided to go to Urgent Care for medication because I had a slight fever, felt crummy and was coughing constantly.  So I found out I had COVID.  We went back the next day because my coughing was just awful, and Joe tested and found out he, too, had COVID.  So that really put a damper on our activities.  We hung out at the RV or drove around in the Jeep for the next few days, wondering who we had already infected and trying not to infect anyone else.  We heard one other couple who had attended the Alumni came down with COVID about the same time.  But we had to miss the Decker Chapel Alumni, which was the 20th.  And it was the main reason I had wanted to come home at this time.  So that sucked!!

Once we felt like we were ok to go out in public (with masks), we finally got to visit with Tommy and Katie and get acquainted with Grady and Henley.  That was a fun evening.  Mike and Clayton joined us at Tommy's and we had a good visit.  We even saw wildlife.  Joe drove down the old "lovers lane" to Tommy's and a turkey wandered across the road in front of us.  We saw something else, maybe a ground hog, but it was too dark to identify.

On Sunday, we got to go to Maura's First Communion and the party Jaclyn had afterwards.  I forgot to take any pictures of beautiful Maura in her Communion dress, but I did get a picture of the cake.  And on Monday, we had dinner with Mike and Donna Carter (our final Bobe's Pizza).

Tuesday, our last night, we finally got to join up with Mike and Rachell and their family.  Karson happened to call from Ft. Carson, Colorado, during dinner, so we got to chat with him too.

During all this time, our brother-in-law, Jim Croxton, has been declining in health and we were anxious to leave Vincennes and get to Fort Wayne.  COVID delayed us some, but we were still waiting for our new air conditioner.  Finally on Monday, May 8, the new air conditioner was installed.  So Tuesday we did our final chores in Vincennes, and on Wednesday, we headed to Fort Wayne.  Unfortunately, Jim passed away Tuesday night shortly before midnight, so we did not get to see him before he passed.

Meanwhile, in Florida, things are happening there too.  Our Grandson Andrew was selected from his 5th graded class to represent his school in a Ted Pod Cast, based on a paper he submitted.  John said he was so nervous the night before his presentation that he cried and cried, but after it was over, he told his dad he wouldn't be nervous next time.  I don't know if it will ever be broadcast, but it was a big deal to all of us, and he did a great job.

Driving around Vincennes and Fort Wayne, we bumped across lots of potholes, but I saw this sign and thought it was worth a picture.   

So we got to Fort Wayne several days in advance of the funeral and got to visit lots of family, those who live in Fort Wayne and those from out of town and state, coming in for the funeral.  The visitation and funeral were both well attended, and the funeral itself was perfect.  The pastor knew Jim very well, and his message was very personal.  And we had a lovely day weather-wise.

The church provided a dinner after the gravesite service.  Henley and Grady were on good behavior.

Fort Wayne has one campground in the city, and we have stayed there a few times.   It opened May 1, and we arrived on opening day.  It is a nice campground, right on the river, and we had a nice campsite. 

Apparently, mastodon bones have been discovered here, so that this their "statue.

Fort Wayne has 3 rivers, and lots of lakes and ponds.  Geese are everywhere, as they are also in Vincennes.  Coming out of our campground one morning, we spotted this little family.

I picked up a terrible cold while here, or it is the continuation of the COVID cough. After coughing my way through the funeral, I finally went to Urgent Care (I guess I am on a mission to check out Urgent Cares in every town we visit).  Dixie had tested positive for COVID while we were there, but I was just diagnosed with Upper Respiratory Infection (or a cold).  I am still coughing, so I don't know what I have.  No other symptoms.  

We had a great time in Vincennes and Fort Wayne, despite the challenges and the passing of our beloved Jim.  We celebrated his life, he meant a lot to all of us and will be sorely missed.  We enjoyed playing several games of Hand & Foot (cards) in Fort Wayne, with different partners.  That is always great fun.  Usually kept us up past midnight.  For anyone or any main event I omitted, I apologize.  If I don't have a picture to jog my memory, I forget things.  

We left Fort Wayne on Monday (staying an extra day because of my cold), and FINALLY headed to Michigan.  We have visited family and friends, but now it is time for the real EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, we hope.  We crossed into the Upper Peninsula about 2:20 after paying $14.00 in toll, and arrived at our campground, another one we have stayed at before, about 3:45.  Today we saw 2 deer and 3 sand cranes.  I hope our wildlife numbers improve from now on.

Mackinac Bridge (5 miles long)

Mackinac Island in the distance.

We love the Upper Peninsula.  And it has the most beautiful rocks on Lake Superior.

Our campsite at Soo Locks Campground is right on the water (St. Mary's River) and huge ships pass right by.  It is not very full right now, but we know we are pushing the season a bit.

Besides the tour boat, this is the only kind of ship we have watched so far.  And we have not yet been down to the locks, but we probably will.

As I write this, I am listening to Xaviar Croxton play in the NAIA tournament.  Their placement in the tournament we attended in Fort Wayne got them a place in this tournament, and they are playing hard.  In the tournament, they lost the first game, then won the next 3.  Unfortunately, they lost the last game of the tournament so they won't get to move on to the next level, which is in Idaho.  That would have been a great trip for Xavier.

We have traveled 2,405 miles since we left home.  We don't know how many miles we will travel in Canada, but we know the price of gas will be higher.

Part 1, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

This is my first blog of this 2024 "adventure" so I am not sure how it will go.  I haven't done a blog for about 3 years so I have forgotten a lot.  With my excellent IT crew of Cathy and Paul Croxton, I decided to give it one more try.  Our trip has been fraught with challenges since leaving Arizona on March 30, but we are now right on the Canadian border in Sault St. Marie, Michigan, and ready to explore the North Shore of Lake Superior.  I am not sure how many rocks I will collect since both my knees are giving me trouble, but I think the views alone will be worth the trip.  At least I hope so.

To back up a bit, as we left on Easter Sunday, we had a little rain, which was snow the next morning.  We only went about 60 miles, just to get out of town, to Payson.  However, on Monday, we encountered rain, snow, hail and wind.  We got as far as Albuquerque that day.

We encountered our first "challenge" the first day out, when our house batteries quit charging the refrigerator as we drove.  Fortunately, it was cold enough outside that the food did not warm up, but that was a problem and we ended up calling a mobile service person in Albuquerque, who determined, finally, that it was a fuse hidden behind other fuses.  We had fuses, but just couldn't find that one -- he actually had to call Winnebago to help him diagnose the problem because no one knew about that fuse panel.

Our next problem was the 2 days later, when I ripped the bathroom door off its hinges as I brought a slide in.  Joe was taking a shower (we have a bath and a half in this RV), and I was trying to move us along to get on the road.  The bathroom door was partly open, and when I brought the slide in (by pushing a button), it hit the bathroom door and pushed it off the hinges.  It landed in my arms.  Joe heard the loud noise and yelled "what in the hell was that."  I didn't respond -- I really didn't know how to answer that question.  So he came out of the shower, dripping wet, to make sure I hadn't hurt myself.  There I stood with the bathroom door in my arms.  He was quite mystified as to how I had accomplished that.  He said, for all the things he had worried about breaking on this trip, the bathroom door was pretty far down on the list, maybe hadn't even made the list.  The good news was that he was able to fix it, he pounded out the hinges straight, and the screws still worked.  So no harm, no foul.  This is our repaired door.  

Moving along, we did see a camel today, behind a fence.  Not much wildlife (alive) otherwise.  

We spent 2 nights at casinos and 2 nights on Walmart parking lots, and arrived in Vincennes on Friday.  Our deadline to get there was Monday for the eclipse.  We had our first (of 5) Bobe's pizza that night, with Dana and Michael.  Driving through town, I spotted this buffalo on the library grounds.  I guess it has been there for a few years.

After it finally quit raining, and warmed up, we ran into our next challenge.  When Joe turned on the front air conditioner, it did not work -- did not put out cool air.  After Joe did his normal investigation, he got the name of a local RV repair guy, in Monroe City, who came out and diagnosed the problem -- we needed a new air conditioner.  It turned out this one it had been replaced once and was still under warranty, so that was the good news.  The bad news was that it had to be ordered and it took over a week to get in. 

And on Saturday, Joe had his first tenderloin.  These tenderloins are so huge we got 4 sandwiches out of one. This is a "large" which is two pieces. The next time we ordered a small, which cut it down to just two large pieces, for 2 sandwiches.

On Sunday, we joined Dana and Michael at Sullivan Lake for a picnic.  On the way, we passed a lilac bush in bloom, so I asked Joe to stop and pick one for me.  This piddly little branch was what he handed me.  Unfortunately, the lilacs were about done there and I never really got a full one.

It was a nice day at Sullivan Lake and most of my family joined us -- Amber and James; Holly, Jake and Jayden and Harper; and Stacey.  We rode around part of the lake in their golf cart.  We spent many weekends there when we lived in Terre Haute, but it has certainly changed a lot.

Monday's event was the eclipse, which Barbara Holscher hosted.  She intended to have a little "eclipse party" at their place in the country, but because of all the hype in Vincennes about the number of expected visitors coming in for the eclipse, everyone was afraid to leave their homes because of traffic.  Well, the traffic, and the crowds did not happen.  Anyway, we ended up in their backyard in town, with 4 couples -- Barbara and Maurice, Ellen and Chuck Street, Sherry and John Hedge, and Joe and me. 

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Tuesday we began making our rounds with our family, and by the time we left, we pretty well saw everyone.  We also began going to family sporting events -- baseball games for Jayden Ray (Jaclyn's son) for Lincoln, and Jayden Hatfield (Dana's grandson) for North Knox.  We went to 5-6 games of Jayden Ray but only one of Jayden Hatfield.  We also got to go to our first tennis match -- Adelyn plays freshman tennis for Lincoln).  Before we left Indiana, we went to 5 of Xavier Croxton's baseball games for St. Francis University in Fort Wayne.  So we saw junior high, high school, and college baseball.

Jayden Ray

Jayden Hatfield

The first few days in Vincennes, it rained.  Luckily, we did get the eclipse in.  But the rivers are flooding so we drove around and checked that out.  We also drove up to the Amish area outside Washington.  We made this drive on Sunday and saw 30-40 horse and buggies coming home from church.  We also saw some families walking home from church. We enjoy seeing this.  We also enjoy seeing the draft horses, one of my favorite things, and they are plentiful in this area.

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On another day, on the way to Jayden Ray's game in Washington, we finally saw some working horses.

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 We had Joe's 60th class reunion at noon on Saturday, followed by the Decker Alumni Saturday night.  Jayden Ray received one of the two Decker scholarships, for which we were very excited.  Everyone forgot to take a picture of the reunion lunch, but we did get a photo of the class at the reunion.  Unfortunately, not everyone at the lunch was at the reunion, but at least we got one.

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We received the award for whoever traveled the farthest.  Right after that announcement, they awarded the scholarships.  The other boy was impressed that Jayden had relatives who traveled all the way from Arizona to see him receive the award, and told him that he would probably have to get his picture taken with them.  Jayden responded, "I expect."

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Well, this blog gets us through the first week.  

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Finale of This Year's Blog

9/19/2021 - Sunday

OK, I'm ready to wrap this trip up.

We spent 4 days in Sierra Vista with Mazie, beginning the process of putting David to rest.  Mazie was pretty good when we showed up about 11:30 a.m. on September 7th.  There is a lot of red tape to deal with when someone passes, even though she had most of it pretty well organized.  We did what we could, then decided to head home and unload the RV while we waited for the Death Certificate to come in so we could proceed.  It was pretty warm in Sierra Vista, and about 15 degrees hotter in Mesa, so it was a tough decision to leave, put delaying that ordeal did not seem to be of any benefit to us.

We had a really good trip this year, although we got off to a rough start with our incident in Albuquerque, where we narrowly avoided getting involved in the 3-car collision immediately in front of us, and had to limp onto a parking lot with only the emergence brake to stop us.  But we got through that, although it delayed us 3 days, but continued on with no major problems thereafter, although we did have a few "fix-its" along the way.  That's pretty well just part of RVing.  

We traveled through 19 states -- AZ, NM, CO, NE, SD, ND, MN, WI, MI, IN,OH, KY, TN, GA, FL for the first half of the trip.  Then we retraced some of that on our way back, trying to avoid the hottest weather.  That took us from FL through AL, TN, KY, IN, MI, WI, MN, and SD, where we heard about David's passing and headed straight to Sierra Vista, Arizona -- through NE, KS, OK, TX, NM and AZ.  I actually thought we were going to miss Texas this year, in fact we talked about it when we were crossing the corner of Oklahoma on Hwy 54, then Joe saw a mileage sign to Texhoma ahead, and he said, "isn't Texhoma in Texas?" So I got the map back out, and sure enough, we had about 100 miles of Texas to drive.   We really liked western SD and ND, and always love the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (they have good rocks!)  

We drove 9,137 miles in the RV and 6,763 in the Jeep.  We bought a lot of fuel.  I didn't keep track of the Jeep fuel, but for the RV we bought 1,427.007 gallons, paid a total of $4,244.83 and averaged 6.26 miles per gallon -- not great, but par for the course.   Our fuel for the RV averaged out to $2.9746 per gallon.  We had a lot of nights of free camping -- staying at John's, and Mike's in Tennessee, and Mike's in Vincennes, and a few Walmarts (temperature permitting) and casinos, which was good because most camping fees have gotten higher, like everything else.  So I didn't total that, or average it out.  I'm sure it was too much!  We were gone from May 10 to Sept. 11 -- a total of 123 days.  

The desert has really greened up with all the monsoon rain we missed out on.  And the bugs -- driving on the Arizona freeway -- were awful.  We don't normally have many bugs, but all that rain brought out tons of yellow butterflies and other fairly large varmints which continually hit our windshield.  I don't know if we will ever get it clean.  But our place looked good, our neighbors had taken good care of us.  We didn't have any weeds, just a few tree sprouts which happens any time it rains.  We didn't see any missing shingles or fallen trees, so that was a relief.  It was actually good to be home, even though it was 103 when we pulled in at 1:15, and got up to 108 before the day was over, and for the next couple of days.  That wasn't so great.

We are heading back to Sierra Vista this week to finalize the paperwork with Mazie and finish the funeral arrangements for David, so this concludes this year's travel blog.  We were very fortunate to have stayed healthy for this whole trip -- no COVID, although we are vaccinated, and started masking up again when the numbers started growing again, so we did what we could to remain healthy.

Thanks to all who followed us -- it was an Excellent Adventure.  I welcome any comments.

Last Blog of this Trip

 9-7-2021 - Tuesday

Today we arrived at Mazie's at 11:20, getting on the road at 8:35, so this is the end of our journey for now.  Mazie is looking good, seems to be dealing with everything ok.  We got started on our lists and had a couple of accomplishments, but tomorrow we will try to knock out some of the details she needs to take care of.  

It was 66 degrees this morning, predicted high today in Sierra Vista is 91, and for Mesa, it is 100.  We came home a little sooner than planned, so apparently we are not going to miss out on all the heat.  Today's travel took across I-10, which we have done many times on our way to visit our Florida family, so it's nothing to get excited about.  

Our marathon trip from South Dakota covered 1,392 miles (of which I drove about 60), approximately 25 driving hours, and we made it in 2 1/2 days.  We have been gone since May 10, so at this point 119 days (17 weeks plus one day).  This has been a really great trip for us, we took our time, stayed extra days when we chose, covered some beautiful country and saw fascinating things.  We got to visit a lot of family and friends, meet some new family, and renew old friendships.  The highlight for me, without question, was our airplane ride with Ken Snider over our old stomping grounds.  Thanks again, Ken, what an unexpected delight!

Before we left our campground this morning, I picked up a bag of pine cones.  It's amazing how much less they weigh than a bag of rocks.  I may have to change hobbies. But when we finally get home, I have things to do -- rocks and pinecones.  (Not to mention unloading the RV and Jeep, cleaning, all that other yucky stuff.)

When we were checking out gas stations last night, we found one right down the road from our campground and decided that’s where we would fuel this morning.  It turned out to be a great stop.  It’s a Valero station in Deming at exit 82, for Highway 180. It’s probably less than a mile off of I-10.  It had a fuel island for RVs, it had a restaurant inside, it had a dump station, it has sodas with big starfoam cups and there’s a propane station right across the street from here.  We will have to keep this in mind for future travel through here.

Joe moved the RV around to the back of the parking lot so we could have breakfast here. He parked right beside a truckload of copper —you wouldn’t think a load this small would weigh so much. I got a picture but the truck was pulling out just as I got out there. We actually saw several loads of copper heading east this morning.  We assume they’re coming out of Superior, Arizona.

As we neared the Arizona state line, I got ready with my camera.  Joe saw me poised to take my photo, and made some comment about me being ready.

I was.  And I was happy to see our beautiful state again.

We have been through lots of states this summer, seen lots of beautiful sights, but Arizona is as beautiful as any, and we are glad to be back.  

Keeping up the blog had its issues this trip.  Some of which got corrected, and I learned some new things.  In the northern states, our internet (and phone) signal was often sketchy, so that was a problem.  Loading my pictures took way more time than it should have, but Joe Myers suggested we change the pixels of the photos, and that helped that situation.  Spilling sugar on my keyboard apparently has destroyed my caps key for right hand, and that is still a problem.  My techies (Cathy and Paul) were unable to solve that one, so I am still wrestling with it.  Cathy got me fixed up to be able to write on the blog from my phone as we travel, Barbara introduced me to an external keyboard for my phone which makes it easier to type to my phone, and just yesterday I figured out how to actually dictate into my phone which types it directly to the blog.  Wish I had figured that one out sooner.  But I spent way too many hours blogging, so if I ever do this again, I hope I can reduce my time on it.  I hope my readers/followers have enjoyed following us across the country -- I would love to hear from you, either in the comments section of the blog or on facebook.

I will probably do a summary at some point after we get home, but for all intents and purposes, this is it.

The End.

From Liberal, Kansas to Deming, New Mexico

 9-6-2021 Monday (Labor Day)

Happy Labor Day Everyone.  

Another early start on our marathon trip to Sierra Vista, 7:30 after a breakfast stop ay McDonalds. We got along fine last night without electricity. Joe ran the generator for a while to cool down the RV and our little 12 volt fan kept us comfortable all night. By the time we stopped last night (6:40) it was too late to try to find a campground so we just stayed on the Walmart parking lot.

The largest town we drove through this morning was Guymon, Oklahoma.  We were only about 5 miles from the Oklahoma state line where we camped last night. Every town through here has grain elevators right by the railroad tracks. You can usually see the elevators in the next town as you leave the one you’re in. 

We drove for an hour in Oklahoma then crossed the Texas state line at 8:35.  And again grain elevators.

 

 I thought we had managed to miss Texas on this trip.  In fact, Joe and I had just talked about how many miles we had made the loop around to avoid Texas, then he mentioned that we were coming up on Texhoma and I looked that up on the map and -- sure enough, we were after all having to go through Texas for about 100 miles. Well, I guess that’s better than 880 miles to cross the whole state.

We started seeing feedlots again today.  We came through Dalhart, Texas and there were two feedlots almost across the road from each other; one of them was huge.  If I researched the right one, their feeding capacity is 74,000 head.

At our lunch break in Vaughan, New Mexico, we pulled in beside a semi hauling a wind turbine body. At the back of the parking lot were more of these truckloads and also some with the blades -- those things are enormous.  

Just outside of Vaughn we saw six semi’s with these wind turbine blades on them -- looks like they might be waiting for a pilot car or clearance to move ahead since they are oversize loads.  This is where we ran into a problem.  Somehow we missed a highway split out of Vaughn and ended up back on I-40 -- probably added about 50 miles to our drive today.  Good thing we gained an hour in time zones today. But all was not for naught -- our little detour took us past a small herd of Belgium belted cattle, one of my favorite things to see.  There's even a brown one in there, which I have never seen before.

We did see a few antelope today crossing New Mexico.  

As we crossed New Mexico, we saw a train loaded with Fedex trucks, at least 50.  We saw lots of trains today, going both ways, some sitting and waiting for another to pass.

We made it back to our route and eventually got on I-25.  We had never driven this I-25 section south from Socorro to Las Cruces, so this was a new road for us, and it was pretty scenic.  We took the exit at Hatch Valley (highway 26) which was a good road and it ended up being a good choice -- it cut off about 50 miles on to Las Cruces on I-25, then back to Deming on I-10.  Hatch seems like an interesting town -- there are hatch chilies all over the place, lots of gift shops with long strings of them hanging down from the rafters.  Here was also a much needed fuel stop -- we were way below a quarter of a tank.  But the pump shut off at $100, which is normal, and Joe couldn’t get it to take it the credit card after that so we didn’t get full. But we were running really low and we’re happy to have had the $100 worth, but that didn't even get it half full.  However, it was our highest price gas on the trip ($3.299) so maybe we can find some a little cheaper in the morning.

The road from Hatch to Deming was a good drive; we saw several solar farms--one with really big panels and two with the normal size. We had never seen these large panels before.  You can see normal size ones on the ground at the left side of the picture, just for perspective.

 We kept looking for  fields of hatch chilis but we never did see any.  Joe googled it, and they should be harvesting them now.  That would have been interesting to see.

We got off of the road at 6:15, staying just right outside of Deming, New Mexico at Desert Vista RV Village.  This is a nice enough park for an overnight, about 4-5 miles out of Deming, just right off Hwy 26.  Joe drove 624 miles today -- a long day, especially with our extra 50 mile detour, and I didn't relieve him any.  My bad.  As soon as Joe got the electricity hooked up, we drove into town to get some dinner and let the RV cool down. After dinner we drove through town looking for a gas station to finish filling our tank in the morning.  We drove all the way to the last street in town, which forced us up onto the interstate and we ended up driving an additional 3 miles before he found a place to cross over (illegally) to come back.  We thought we were going to have to drive 12 miles to get turned around.  So we have an additional 6 miles added to our log driving day, even though this was in the Jeep. We finally got back to the RV and called it a night.  It didn't  take Joe very long before he stretched out in bed.

We traveled today from Kansas, through a corner of Oklahoma Panhandle, through a corner of Texas Panhandle, and across and then down in New Mexico.  When we got up this morning, it was 67 degrees.  When we got off the road, it was 91! Yuk.  We should be at Mazie's around noon tomorrow, and our marathon drive will be over.