Well the season is basically over for this year here in Bemidji. This weekend was the last hoorahhh. We cooked our last pancake breakfast raising a total of over $2200 for Care Camps which is kids with cancer to be able to go to summer camp with their parents. That makes up for all the early morning sleep ins missed on sundays. Saturday I cooked 64 steaks for their annual steak fry. That was delicious eating again. Steak, baked potato, cole slaw and ice-cream, mmmmmmm. I have one more steak fry to do next weekend for a group coming in but other than that all the summer activities have come to an end. No more stew, hot-dog roasts, pancake breakfasts. One more week of pool maintenance and that comes to an end. The reduced office hours now of 9-10 am and 5-8 pm allow us more time to try to explore the local area. We are hoping the leaves will begin changing in the next two weeks so we can experience that in the state park and maybe go to the top of the fire tower again to get some pictures. With only about 7 campers in this evening it was quiet until a storm rolled in bearing thunder and lightning and heavy rains at times.
We got another chance to see the northern lights Saturday night. It was really cool. Mostly blues and grays from where we were but still neat. Some of the would shine like a spot light thru clouds to light the sky. Then fading away only for another batch to light up. I tried to get a copal of pics by my camera would not work well enough to get anything worth seeing. Still we enjoyed the show and is only the second time having ever seen them. Both times being here in Bemidji.
We will be leaving here on the 19th of September heading for the Escapde Rally in DuQuoin Il. We will meet up with new found friends of our group of full timers. The rally runs from the 25th - 30th and is basically a school for fulltimers. After leaving the Escapde we will stop in Terre Haute at Keith and Mary's other KOA. We will be there till probably the 5th of October. While there we will make it a point to travel over to Crawsfordsville Indiana where our rv was built so we can take a tour of the factory and see how our unit was put together. On our way home we will stop back at the dealer where we bought our unit and have them look at some items we need get taken care of. Then a stop at the old house for a month or so. Molly (Bill's wife) is due with her first baby in the middle of October and we want to be there. While there we will take the grand kids camping. I have been longing to go fishing and that is something I did not get a chance to do here because we were so busy. But that's ok there is still plenty of time in the future. Our plans after we leave St. Paris has changed pretty drastically. We originally planned on making New Orleans for the month of December, well obviously that won't be happening now with hurricane Katrina and with the price of fuel we made a better plan. After leaving Oklahoma for thanksgiving we have chosen Tombstone Az as our December destination. Lots of things to do there plus it will be on our way to Quartzsite for our January -February stay in the Desert. On the way we will stop and visit my Uncle Dave in Mesa AZ. Probably departing the desert in early March we will have to decide where we are going to spend the summer. That is a ways off and plans change all the time so we will ponder that when it arrives. We are both anxious to get moving again though. Will be interesting to see what the house looks like when we get back.
We have made a couple of new friends while here. Bob Riddle, who started out by spending a couple of nights here liked it so well he decided to stay a little longer. When Bob got here he was towing a tent camper. Well soon he traded that off for a 21' travel trailer of 1980's vintage. Today I went with Bob to pick up his 1997 30' travel trailer. Now he seems to be really happy. Bob was disabled by a near electrocution. Now unable to work a regular job he has learned to enjoy just how precious life can be and how quickly it can change. He went from being a perfectly normal healthy life to taking over 36 meds a day and 1 lung for breathing and terrible spasms at unknown times. Bob's a great guy and fun to be around. He cooked us a walleye dinner with corn on the cob and potato's last week. All cooked over an open fire. Bob will be a lifelong friend that we hope to meet up with out in the desert. The other guy was David Michael Kennedy, a photographer traveling full time now just taking pictures and enjoying life. David is a pretty well known artist having done celebrities and musicians portraits in the past. Greats like Charlie Daniels, Bruce Springstien, Bob Dylan and others. Dave took some great pics of our steak fry. He printed and signed them for all of us here at the campground. Dave is also going to try to meet up with us at the Quartzsite rally. You can check out his site at David Michael Kennedy . If you go to his 'come along for the ride by visiting my journal' link you can see a picture of him and Bob on the August 30th entry. Him and his girlfriend Heather and dog Henry were great company. We look forward to meeting back up with all of them early next year.
One of the latest things I have been working on is putting together having a friend do a yearbook for our Rally in January. Just kind of going along with the theme of graduating. Malia Lane does such a great job of writing and taking pictures it was a natural choice to ask her to do it. She loves these types of projects and is really good at it. I have asked all of the 149 teams of rv'ers in our group to send Bio's to have added to the book. Malia will be there talking to everyone about different subjects of living on the road. She has been doing it for 5 years now and uses her talent of writing to support herself. She has had a couple of her articles picked up by magazines and printed. She has just finished a little article about our class that will be in the December issue of the Escapees magazine. Once it comes out I will copy and post here. A link to her site is Malia's Miles and also Inspirations Journey. Stop by her site to read some of her articles. Our class has gained such popularity that it has been mentioned on several websites of various people and is setting standards for others to follow. The class of 2006 is just getting started and is already up to 16 members. Will be interesting to see if they can out run our group. Be we still set the guidelines by having Birds of a Feather group set up with the Escapees organization which makes us the Charter members. We hold our first meeting at the Escapade rally.
Well enough rambling for now its 10:45 pm. Hate to say but I will probably have to sleep in tomorrow......I know you all feel sorry for us! Hopefully will get some more pics to post this week. Time to let the night slip by and ease into morning. See ya!
Sunday September 18th, 2005
Well time has flown by and the need to travel has been peeking over the horizon. Tomorrow we are on our way south. The last 2 weeks we haven't had to really do anything thanks to Mary who told us to enjoy the last couple of weeks here. Unfortunately we have not really gotten out and looked around much as we have been busy eating all the time! Since the campground is so slow Mary can get away. Last week we went to a little bar n grill in Walker on the lake. What a great place to eat. Fantastic food and a wonderful trip getting there. Gunnar and Virginia were our hosts. Gunnar has all the hot spots for eating! :) We did go back to the Itasca State Park as I wanted to climb the tower again and get some pictures in hopes that the leaves were changing. Was a beautiful day to travel and take a nice slow drive around the park. The leaves had not changed to the rainbow colors I had hoped for but there was some noticeable fall arriving. After climbing the tower BY MYSELF we headed for Grand Rapids for some dinner courtesy of Gunnar & Virginia at a Mongolian BarBQ. It was an interesting meal. You grab a plate and pile it up with whatever you want, beef chicken, turkey, vegetables, sauces, noodles etc, then take it to the cook and they throw it on a huge round hot iron stove and fry it up with peanuts and oil, then scrape it back off and hand it to you. Its kind of like stir fried Chinese. Then for dessert they bring you this hunk of triangular bread that is like raw dough with plent of sugar in it. I ate it but wasn't sure about it! Was a great time though just spending time with those guys. Gunnar and Virginia have been great friends and always supprise us all with goodies to eat, sometimes its homemade cinnamon rolls, blueberry fresh pies, Indian Tacos, blueberry turnovers and on and on! Thanks to them this summer has been a great time. The other couple who made it a lot of fun was Bob and Jane! They are soo funny and helpful like the time I stupidly splashed liquid chlorine in my eye ( yeah I know doesn't sound so smart does it?) and they came to the emergency room and set with us for hours while we waited to see the doctor. Then they got up early on Sunday morning to cover for me at the pancake breakfast! To say the least these guys have become lifelong friends that will never be forgotten and it will be great to come back and visit! All of them have been so giving and caring on so many levels. They will be sorely missed and thought of till we see them again. Thanks guys! :) your the greatest! Then there's Mary. What a great boss and friend. We have learned so much about campgrounds and the workings since we got here. She is soooo funny to be around. She works overtime at doing things for us. We sure appreciate all the great stuff she has done for us. Hopefully she will be able to reunite with her family and especially the kids she has missed so much in the last 6 weeks while they were with Keith in Indiana at the other campground. And last but not least we can't forget Alaskan Bob! Bob has been here for a pretty long stay. He stopped in for a couple of days and just never left. Bob is such a great cook and the other day made all of us a sausage and gravy biscuit breakfast, WOW was that delicious. Deanna had fixed everyone Lasagna on Monday and originally Bob was suppose to fix breakfast that same day! Well how we gonna enjoy all that food so close together? So we moved Bob's breakfast to Tuesday. The Lasagna was to die for and everyone was stuffed! Then we piled Bob's breakfast on top of that the next day! WHEW, I had to go take a couple hour nap to disperse that gonna burst feeling! Fortunately Alaskan Bob will be around. He will be in Indiana at the other KOA in our brief visit at the end of the month and then I think he is gonna meet up with us in the desert in January again! Here are a few pics for the month September
So this chapter of our adventure is closing for now and we move on to the next. Thanks to all the people who we have meet and made friends with. Hard to believe that summer has gone by so fast. The next couple of weeks will be pretty busy and internet access will probably be limited so updates may have to wait. See you soon. Here is a picture of one of the last moons we experienced. Minnesota moon saying good bye!
Oh yeah, I have been waiting all summer to see a bear. No I still didn't get to but a bear was spotted just a couple of hundred yard east of here this morning headed this way. Don't know if it ever came near but guess there is still a chance :)
Monday September 19, 2005
We are currently in Clear Lake Iowa at a really nice RV park named Oakwood. Found this site in a book called Big Rigs Best Bets which was given to us by our friends Bill and Helen for an anniversary gift. Thanks Guys! The book was right on. Large pull thru sites 120' long, graveled and level. The grass is well taken care of and it is super clean all over. Would be great to be able to spend a few more night here but we need to press on. The camp host here told us that this was the last place that Buddy Holly performed before being killed in a plane crash north of here. We will certainly be back to spend some time here maybe next year. Tomorrow we should be into Bloomington Illinois, that will leave us about 250 miles to go before reaching DuQuoin for the rally. Unfortunatley there is no wifi here but I thought while I had a chance I would update for the day. We travelled about 330 miles today and had intended to stop in Shakopee MN. to meet Teresa and Alan but our timing was all wrong and they were not home. We can catch up with them at a later date though. We arrived here about 5:30 which gave us time to set up and walk the dogs and then get some supper fixed. We had fried chicken left over from our dinner last night in Bemidji. A quick baked potato and some applesauce and dinner was done. Tasted great! Almost 10:00 now so about time to call it quits for the day. See you when the sun comes up! :)
Wednesday September 21st, 2005
We just arrived here at the Rend Lake Campground and have met several of the 2005 classmates. First thing we saw coming in were 2 baby deer browsing at the entrance. There is a lake at the end of our campground loop that I can check out tomorrow. The trip was uneventful but a nice ride. We traveled about 350 miles a day. Truck averaged a little better than 10 mpg. Not bad but once the fuel prices go to $5 a gallon it's gonna hurt! The campground we stayed in last night was cheap but LOUD! Right on the highway on one side and the other side a train track. They come screaming thru at about 3am with horns blaring! Sleep is over rated anyway! :)
