West again

 David and Sheri had a full calendar for us with trips to a local horse event, dinners and lunches out, a visit to a historic bar/hotel in East Troy (Which was haunted by at least 2 spirits). The planned 2 weeks got extended to 3!

To make sure we weren’t bored David and Sheri also took us to a few “Gigs” that David’s band were playing. David is a very good Country singer with a deep bass voice and very popular in the area.

Atmospheric lighting at one of the gigs

One of the Gigs was at a bar called Ducks Crossing where “Duck” has a great facility with darts, pool, a softball diamond, volleyball courts, horse shoe pits and cornhole. If that’s not enough he had the annual Duck Fest organized for the Labor Day weekend.

David (Left) singing

The town had canceled it’s July 4^th event due to Covid and that meant no fireworks show. They rescheduled it for the Labor Day weekend so Duck got both a band and fireworks, We had a lot of fun.

Next to Ducks place is this beautiful Catholic Church with attached asylum.
Many spooky stories were told about his place.

As all good things must come to an end and we have an appointment in Rapid City so we decided to leave on Labor Day, our thinking was that the campgrounds would be empty.

Then plans changed again as a cold front and severe thunderstorms came rolling in on the Sunday. The forecast even showing snow in Montana and South Dakota! This after it being so hot a week ago that we were running the AC! Now it might get down into the 40’s overnight and we will be running the heater instead.

Sitting looking at the forecast we decided it would be smarter to stay until Wednesday if that was OK with David and Sheri. We would still have 15 days to cover about 900 miles.

We sat tight as wind and rain swept thru the area, and then headed West on a drizzly, miserable day.

Naturally this was the day that the windshield wiper decided that it would pack up! For some reason the driver side wiper arm suddenly shot off to the left and hung itself over the side mirror, a little inconvenient but luckily we were on a smaller road and being high up, the windshield wasn’t collecting a lot of road spray.

Investigation revealed that the arm was held in place by a Nyloc locknut which had somehow loosened up. Tightening it up again let us continue for another hour or so until it happened again.

Fortunately the rain stopped and our planned overnight at the Walmart in Winona MN had us parked right next to not only Walmart but also Minard’s which is a HUGE store that sells literally everything. More fortunately that they have a full aisle of hardware, nuts, bolts, screws in every thread form imaginable because this American built coach had metric threads on the wipers! 90 cents later we were good to go.

Our “Kinda” plan (Because we don’t really plan just Kinda) had us on backroads (Naturally!) thru Minnesota and we had kinda decided to boondock for most of the trip.

Boondocking is where you stay out of campgrounds, staying at opportune free camping spots. Truck stops, Walmarts, Cabella Stores, Cracker Barrel restaurants. They all allow you to stay overnight with permission from the store manager.

To do this you need water, battery power and a generator. All of which we had when we left Sheri and David’s place.

BUT when we arrived at the first Walmart the water pump had stopped working! I investigated but frustratingly the pump was working fine. It took me a second to realize that the tank was empty! There is a drain valve on the tank that is cunningly placed so that if the hoses in the same bay move around they can push the valve slightly open. Hence empty tank.

Hence a change of plan in the middle of nowhere.

Looking into our favorite app “RV Parky” we found a casino with a campground 30 miles north of our next planned stop in New Ulm MN, To our delight we discovered a gem. Beautifully groomed, concrete parking spaces, 50 amp, free cable TV and $30 a night during the week with their Players Club membership that was free to join!

The casino was almost empty on Thursday

We soon discovered that it was a quiet casino and everyone was wearing masks and staying socially distant. Happy hour was 4pm to 7pm and their cocktail special was only $3. A happy hour soon followed!

The $3 happy hour cocktail was pretty but POTENT!

We enjoyed it so much we went back to get another night but it was friday and the whole campground was reserved by the gamblers for the weekend so we rapidly filled the water tank, dumped the other tanks and headed West for South Dakota.