Into New Mexico

 

Our ambition is to collect 7 more Elks pins along the way to take our collection to 200.

We’ll see how that pans out.

Not my picture, but this is the Texas Eifel Tower

Paris Texas is a quirky place famous for it’s Eiffel Tower with a Stetson Hat on top! Naturally we stayed at the Elks Lodge but unfortunately they don’t have pins and neither did the two other lodges that were in the area. We had wised up enough to call before we decided to drive only to be disappointed.

We’ve been to Paris several times as well as the other stops along the way and it’s like returning home somehow.

Rt 82 is 4 lanes most of the way but occasionally narrows down to 2 thru the few towns along the way. Speed limits are 75 thru most of Texas but watch out for the 25mph limits or even 20mph in some of the smaller towns.

We like to drive backroads and limit our daily drives to 200 miles or less and Rt 82 is laid out perfectly. Shreveport to Paris 160 miles, Paris to Wichita Falls 190 miles, Wichita Falls to Lubbock 220 miles.

Carlsbad or Alamogordo NM would normally be our next stop but we remembered that our friends Matt and Carol spend their winters in an Escapees RV Park in Artesia New Mexico. They had posted that they were back there already and so we diverted a little to go see them at the Escapees Original Ranch. We explored their park and went out for dinner in Artesia, great catfish!

Always fun when Matt and Carol are around!

Artesia may replace Carlsbad as a routine stop on this route as it stays within our 200 miles a day routine and lets us cut out a stop at Alamogordo because it puts Las Cruces Elks in that 200 mile bracket.

Thanks for a fun time Matt and Carol see you next time!

Kansas

 

Obviously we collected a Kentucky Lodge pin and our next stop was going to be Kansas!

A stopover at a Walmart, then on to Topeka to a KOA campground with full hookups.

In case you haven’t seen our previous posts about KOA’s lets just say we aren’t fans!

We had our coach and car washed just before we drove over to this park but their website didn’t mention the ¼ of a mile of dirt road to get to it. Our $80 was wasted as everything was covered in fine gray dust by the time we got to the office. For $50 a night it was not good value, gravel roads that were more like dirt bike trails and very close to the highway.

Anyway it was about all we could find so we stayed a few days and explored Topeka.

Pioneer Town Soda Fountain and Candy Store.
Great ice cream!

Unfortunately it seems that Topeka’s attractions are mostly closed on Mondays and Tuesdays so we had to cram everything in to Wednesday. Still there were some nice places like the Pioneer Town and I dragged Barbara around another Airplane museum with some interesting WW1 replicas.

WW1 replica aircraft

Several brew pubs were tried but unfortunately there are no Elks Lodges nearby and in a desperate attempt to get a pin we drove 120 miles round trip to Overland Park just to ensure we did get one.

My favorite kind of beer.

We have friends who now live in Kansas so our next stop was their house in Wichita.

We abandoned the RV life for several days and stayed in Marty and Peggy’s guest bedroom while they fed us and showed us the sights around Wichita.

With Peggy and Marty
Thanks for the hospitality!

Meanwhile the temperatures were climbing into the 90’s.

Guardian of the West statue along the river.

Reluctantly we said so long to Marty and Peggy with a tangled semi plan(!) of a side trip to Louisiana on the way to Texas just so we could cross off another state from our Elks pin list!!

Tulsa was a convenient stop along the way and we pulled into the Elks lodge there as they have 50 amp power.

Now the temperatures were reaching the 100’s and wouldn’t you know it our last AC unit expired in a series of loud noises followed by a bang and finally total silence.

We visited another lodge in Broken Arrow not far away and discovered a great big friendly lodge that was open every day and had camping too. The Tulsa lodge was only open at weekends.

We moved to Broken Arrow and were looking around for a company that could replace the AC unit when totally by coincidence we were talking with our neighbor in the camping area and she mentioned that she had a company coming to replace HER AC unit the following day.

We called the company, Precise RV Mobile Repair, and they would come look at it and give us prices and options.

By now it was Tuesday and when we called into the lodge to pay for the camping they told us that they had a massive car show on at the weekend and we would have to leave on Thursday.

We explored our options and looked for places to visit that had AC! Luckily we found several and set off to explore.

Route 66 marker

We didn’t realize that Route 66 the famous “Mother Road” ran through Tulsa. A visit to the Route 66 Historic Village was both interesting and disappointing. A good idea at some point, we found everything closed and a little neglected.

The Route 66 village

Another stop was the Woodie Guthrie Center. Woodie was a famous Folk Singer from the 30’s thru the 60’s and both Barbara and I liked Folk music back in the 60’s and 70’s in UK. Woodies most famous song was probably “This land is my land” and is still sung at major events.

Oklahoma was the center of the “Dust Bowl” in the 1930’s when poor farming practices led to the soil degrading and being blown in the wind. Oklahoman’s faced with the Great Depression, foreclosure on their farms and little hope of finding work, packed their few possessions into and onto their cars or trucks and with their families headed west along Rt 66 for the promised land of California.

Steinbeck’s classic novel “The Grapes of Wrath” told the story of the journey and Woodie Guthrie joined the migrants and sang.

The famous 1930’s American humorist Will Rogers was born not far away too and we visited the very impressive home he had built there.

The Blue Whale is a famous Rt 66 landmark

The RV techs said they could replace the front AC and recommended not going the way the place in Casa Grande went when the replaced the rear AC. We should get a wall mounted thermostat rather than mess with the adapter to get it to work with the existing wireless controller. Because the rear AC would only run for about 30 minutes before stopping we went with his suggestion.

Unfortunately it would be Monday before the unit could be delivered, which left us with the problem of finding a place to stay, preferably with a room that had AC.

The tech recommended Mingo RV not far away and we checked it out online. Sounded ideal, full hookups, laundry, Rec Room (with AC!). We went to Lowes and bought a portable AC unit so we could survive for 4 days and moved to Mingo.

Temperatures hit 100 and, with high humidity too, felt like 105.

The portable AC couldn’t keep up after about 11am and showed a room temp of 95 degrees.

Yep 95 degrees with the portable AC running flat out!

We explored in our air conditioned car looking for air conditioned attractions. We collected some more pins from air conditioned Elks lodges.

Gorgeous mansion now the Elks Lodge in Okmulgee OK

We discovered an air conditioned English Pub he White Lion that had all the atmosphere of a real old English pub. Looking at the memorabilia on the walls we noticed that a lot had to do with our "Home" in Liverpool England.

English pub

Irish beer!

With good cause apparently because the lady who started it, and still owned it in her 90's, was from Liverpool, had married a US Navy officer and set the place up when they retired and moved to Tulsa.

Finally after exhausting all the places we were interested in we drove to a huge shopping mall and walked thru the air conditioned stores and ate lunch in the air conditioned food hall.

Then the AC unit was installed and tested, and IT WORKED!

At last cool air!

Unfortunately we had made a reservation at an RV park near Fort Worth to spend a couple of weeks with our friends Paul and Karen Dean who we knew from Arizona.

https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2024/05/start-of-new-adventure.html

That messed up the complicated plan we had come up with to stay a couple of nights at the Shreveport Louisiana Elks on the way to Fort Worth. Getting the pin, would leave New Jersey as the only continental State we wouldn’t have a pin from. If we drove to Shreveport from Fort Worth and back would add about 500 miles to our trip.

Paul and Karen were in the midst of moving their trailer from the RV park we visited them at last year for the solar eclipse to a new one not far away. It was hotter than heck and they were struggling with all the stuff they had acquired over the years.

Barbara finally got to see a Bucee's Gas Station/Store
A huge place full of junk, enough to please everyone! 

We arrived first but found the site we were on was very slanted front to back. We leveled as best we could but there was still a fair incline inside the rig.

OH JOY! Said Barb, another airplane museum

Apart from discomfort the big danger in having an RV off level is to the refrigerator.

RV refrigerators are completely different than household refrigerators. They work on an absorption principle that lets heat make cold! Honest!

I can explain the way it works if you have a quiet half hour.

No?

Didn’t think so, but take my word for it when I say that being too far out of level can cause the refrigerator catastrophic damage. A new one is over $3000.

Sweetie Pie Steakhouse

With Paul and Karen at Sweetie Pie's

I was pretty stressed out by that but we took a chance and luckily things were fine, but we decided to cut down our planned 2 weeks to 1 week and to go completely crazy and drive to Shreveport.

Yes 500 miles for a little metal pin!

The coveted pin!

Shreveport had full hookups, a nice FLAT concrete pad to park on, a pool, great welcoming Lodge that was open 7 days a week, food, a band on Friday and availability over the coming Labor Day long weekend.

We got the pin!

We explored the area and didn’t find an awful lot that interested us.

We visited a few museums, and a Steam Boat Casino that was awful. Did laundry, shopped and relaxed for a week while sketching out a route back to Casa Grande.

Our favorite road is Hwy 82 and we traveled it last year with the adventures/disasters that followed us. So Paris TX, Wichita Falls, Lubbock, Alamogordo and Las Cruces look like our stops again this year.

Our ambition is to collect 7 more Elks pins along the way to take our collection to 200.

We’ll see how that pans out.

South from the UP

 

We visited the Prisoner of War camp Museum in Algona but I didn’t take any pictures. It was an interesting story, how the camps in Wisconsin and Iowa were built to handle to tens of thousands of German prisoners taken after the victory in Africa.

They worked on farms and in factories, helping replace the men who had gone off to war.

Some funny stories included two prisoners who escaped from the camp but where recaptured later the same day. They had just gone to the local county fair!

At the airplane museum we had visited they had pieces of the plane that Buddy Holly died in. We left West Bend headed East and about 50 miles down the road passed thru Clear Lake Iowa where Buddy played his last ever concert before taking off in that plane. The Surf Ballroom is still there, now with a shrine to Buddy Holly and the others that dies that winter night.

Our next stop was to visit our friends David and Sheri near Janesville Wisconsin. We have stayed there before on their little “Ranch” with the dogs, sheep and horses and immediately felt at home.

Camping by the workshop with David and Sheri

https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2018/06/wisconsin.html

https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2020/08/as-far-east-as-we-will-get-this-year.html

Sunsetting over the barn

We basically just hung out with them for a couple of weeks, eating out, eating in, going to their friends place for a cook out. So yes we ate a lot! We got some small jobs on the RV done – fixing doors, caulking here and there, stuff we’ve meant to do but kept using the excuse of moving on soon to not do them. 

I had a discussion with Sheri’s Mom Kathy about the vertigo we both suffer from and it was interesting to hear her story in detail. She was interested in hearing mine too so that was productive. Sheri’s Mom is an author and has quite a list of books she’s had published. She is a Sci-Fi author.

Then as always it got to be time to move on again. The 2 weeks we had spent with only 15 amp power and access to a hose bibb if we wanted water.

Luckily there is a Camping World about 10 miles away with a free dump station and propane fill station. On the way out of Janesville we would need to dump the tanks and fill the propane before our next stop near Sturgeon Bay WI.

Ritchie and his cool Indian Motorcycle

Sturgeon Bay we picked because a friend from San Diego, Ritchie, is working in nearby Marinette WI at the shipyard there. We haven’t seen him in years either. He was going thru the process of buying a house and the call saying his offer had been accepted came thru as we sat in the RV chatting!

Catching up on the last 10 years!

We were heading South and along the way was the Mackinaw Bridge and Mackinaw Island. Last time we came this way we skipped the island, so this time we spent a few days and explored.

The Elks Lodge in Gaylord Michigan provided a unique place to stay. Not only were we camped at the Elks but immediately next door to our rig was the City Elks Park.

Elk and Roe Deer

Huge antlers on the Elk

This wasn't a park next to the Elks Lodge but several hundred acres of grassland inhabited by a large herd of real Elks plus Roe Deer and Sika Elks. They spent the days roaming around on the other side of the chain link fence next to our rig. At times there must have been 30 or more of them peacefully grazing.

Ferry to Mackinaw Island

Mackinaw Island is unique in that no motor vehicles are allowed, It is only accessible by ferry. That makes it a very pretty (And expensive) place! We went sight seeing in a horse drawn carriage!

Beautiful horses pulling the carraige tours

Bicycles are everywhere

Downtown

Almost straight south from there brought us to Louisville Kentucky and a great stay at the Elks Lodge enabled us explore a new city. 

Betting slip for the Elks Lodge races

Horses at the gallop

It is the Bourbon capital of the USA and although I didn’t sample any of it we did manage to visit some excellent breweries!

Bourbon display at the Frazier Museum,
Behind one of the cabinets was a hidden Speakeasy

Our collection of Elks Lodge pins has reached 180 and there are only 6 states left that we don’t have a pin from. Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, Alaska and Hawaii. Obviously we collected a Kentucky Lodge pin and our next stop was going to be Kansas!

700 miles of corn

We were comfortably settled in for the winter and it began to dawn on us that we would be moving on before too long!

The winter seems to go on for ever and we love all the things, places and people we enjoy in Arizona but time flies when you are having fun.

We now had TWO park models to pack up and “Summerize”.

The new place in Casa Grande

Most RV’ers talk about “Winterizing” their rigs to prevent the water system freezing up.

We winterize ours by parking in where it doesn’t freeze – Arizona! But we leave the park models empty in the summer where the temperatures can be over 100 degree for 140 days in a row. Some days get over 120 degrees.

Strange things happen at those temperatures. Batteries in clocks and devices can leak and corrode the electronics. Spray cans can burst. Glue joints can come apart and strangely enough wood plank floors can expand and leave large gaps when the weather cools off again.

To stop these happening can involve leaving the ac on low all summer, putting reflective shades in windows and taking all the batteries out of devices so you can put them in the fridge with the spray cans!

We have now been on the road a month and wandered up to South Dakota to renew our drivers licenses.

Riding the 1880's train in South Dakota

I intended this to be a “Went there, Did that” kind of post but I never got into the mood so this might be a little strange one.

We finally got to Monument Valley

Barbara and I have occasionally talked about our future on the road. We have been traveling for 10 years and to be honest we are getting a little jaded.

We just met up with some great friends from 20 years ago back in Maryland. Ray and Cheryl rode Honda Goldwing motorcycles when we did and we had lots of fun.

Now they are fulltime in an RV too.

Having a blast with Ray and Cheryl

We saw on Facebook that they were going to be in Colorado about the same time we were passing thru so we messaged them and arranged a meet up.

It was supposed to be a couple of days but soon became a week as we all explored the area and Ray and I explored the breweries. Turns out we also share a taste for dark beer!

                                                            They like trains too.

It set us thinking.

Ray and Cheryl were out every day going to National Parks, local sights etc.

We kept saying “Thanks but we have been there” or “We don’t do many National Parks anymore, too many people”.

My vertigo and occasional walking problems didn’t help.

We had just a great time with them and it sounds like we will get to hang out with them again this winter as they intend to spend the winter in Phoenix.

All that set us thinking when we got to Rapid City.

We have seen a whole lot of this country and few things excite us anymore, BUT we do have a great time visiting with friends and go out of our way to meet them.

So do we continue to travel in the RV? Would we be better traveling by car and/or air and staying in hotels?

Would we like to have the RV on a semi permanent place up in the mountains around Phoenix or maybe Colorado so we can still get away from the summer heat without driving thousands of miles a year?

We have a list of things/places/people we might like to see if we are in a particular place and it dawned on us that the people are what we look forward to seeing.

Before it was places.

Maybe we just need to change our thinking rather than our methods?

Enough philosophy! Get back to the blog.

Rapid City is a pleasant place and we enjoy getting back there. There are enough places to visit within a reasonable distance and we really enjoy camping at the Elks Lodge.

Antelope

Buffalo in Custer State Park

The lodge owns the golf course and the bar/restaurant overlooks the first tee. Food is good, drink prices excellent, beer selection extensive and the price to camp exceptional!

We had been there a day or so and bumped into a couple who were walking across the campsite. As we chatted we found that they lived locally and were Elks too, we all really got along and we swapped contact information.

We had new friends! Rudi and Cici.

With Rudi and Cici on top of the Hotel Alex Johnson

They kindly invited us over for dinner and we discovered they were motorcyclists, had a camper, had been to many of the places we had been too. It seemed like we had known them for years!

Then we joined them for a music bingo evening at a local bar and later in the week they took us to an exclusive bar up on the roof of the historic Hotel Alex Johnson. Great people.

Our intended week got extended and extended until we were there for 3 weeks. We got a couple of things worked on that were broken on the rig (there is always something broken on an RV).

1880's train Keystone

Eventually we decided to head off to Iowa simply because our collection of Elks Lodge pins is short of pins from there! Really, no other reason.

We have been thru the edges of the state but just passing thru.

Sioux City was our first stop. It sits on the banks of the Missouri River and was on the route of the Lewis and Clarke expedition. There is a river boat there named after Sergeant Floyd a member of the expedition who died in the area. We never really enjoyed the city, it didn’t seem to have a center and although some cities have a “character” we didn’t find it in Sioux City so after 3 days we moved on.

The Sergeant Floyd riverboat

Des Moines was next and we found some really great places around there.

Iowa State Capital

The State Capitol building was beautiful and there was an area downtown with lots of eateries (and bars) we explored.

Salisbury House

There is also a large house called the Salisbury Mansion that was built in the 1920’s at the equivalent cost of 40 million dollars in todays money and furnished with antiques and artwork from all over Europe.

The Great Hall

On a whim I decided to drag Barbara to an airplane museum about 50 miles away. She puts up with my airplane fixation….

Barbara is delighted to see more airplanes!

As so often happens when we wander aimlessly across the country we happened across a little town called Winterset. Just a little place in the middle of farm country famous for one thing. It was the birthplace of John Wayne.

John Wayne Museum

You probably know that I get mistaken for John Wayne all the time, especially if I wear the hat I bought in Ireland that is modelled after the one he wore in the movie “The Quiet Man” or one of my cowboy hats.

The small house John Wayne was born in.

Anyway the museum was very interesting and I managed to avoid the many fans there.

It seems like every town in Iowa has a "Freedom Rock"

While watching PBS TV one evening a documentary came on about German prisoner of war camps in Minnesota. They kept showing clips from a museum in a little town called Algona in Iowa.

A little research showed it was about 150 miles North of where we were so we decided to go there for a few days.

In looking for somewhere to camp we stumbled across a thing called “The Grotto of Redemption” in the little town of West Bend, a fascinating place built over about 60 years by a priest and his helper from all kinds of stone, fossil trees, sea shells and parts of a cave in South Dakota.

Inside the Grotto, all hand made by 2 men.

From the Grotto across the lake is the campground.

Better yet they had a campground with 30 amp power, a dump station, water fill point and shower facilities for $20 a night! They even gave a discount for Passport America members that brought it down to $10 a night.

We explored the area and visited the museum in Algona before heading off again to Wisconsin.

The whole trip from Rapid City east was on backroads, all excellent roads with no traffic and miles and miles of farms growing almost exclusively corn.

700 miles of corn!!