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!!

Post cruise blues?

 

A mountain of laundry, doctors for Barbara, inches of dust around the house from a sand storm when we were away and restocking the empty fridge took up the rest of the week.

You only have to be home for a week before the memories of the last trip start to fade! We got back into our “Winter Season” here in Casa Grande with meals out with our friends and the warm friendly atmosphere soon had us enveloped.

3 weeks on the ship hadn’t really messed me up with my vertigo but strangely once on dry land it started bothering me again! Barbara meanwhile had borrowed a cane to help her try and walk.

For a short while poor Barb was using a walker

She called the doctor and made an appointment to get the knee X-Ray’d but by the time she got to see the specialist the knee was getting better on it’s own! They told her it was arthritis and eventually she may need a knee replacement. How long that might take is apparently in the lap of the gods!

Just to settle down for the rest of the winter we went on a trip!

Who would have thunk it!

The RV park was running a bus trip to Verde Canyon near Sedonna AZ to ride the train. Being suckers for a train ride we jumped in with both feet.

Somewhere between the cruise and the train ride we got together with the people selling the new “Park Model” we are buying and organized things a little more formally. Seems we will be moving in after our next little trip (Yes another one!) to Tucson for our old favorite Escapees Rally.

Up at O Dark 30 for the bus.
Great sunrise though!

The train ride was excellent, great scenery, a bar on board that served dark beer and Denis and RuthAnne for company. Unfortunately StarAnne and Ed couldn’t make it so we all had to have twice as much fun to make up for it.

Dennis and RuthAnn 

Pre boarding bird show

Scary owl!

Barb and RuthAnne

Lots of pictures there!

The bird theme included the locomotive

Great train pictures

The Verde River that created the canyon

The rest of the train

Stunning desert scenery

Panaroamic open air car

I had hoped that the fates would leave us alone after the last year of woes, but shortly after we got back I started sneezing. That developed into a chest cold, and what a nasty one too. Almost like Bronchitis. Shortly after Barbara came down with the same thing so misery had company for a couple of weeks.

The Motorhome meanwhile had been at the RV dealer since October!! I made the mistake of telling them there was no hurry and apparently they took me at my word! It was the end of January when they called me to pick it up!!

Then when I got there (Luckily its just around the corner) they realized that they forgot to fix the rear AC unit we had asked them to do, so that added another couple of weeks.

Finally we went to pick it up.

I wasn’t happy. They had left all the trash in the vehicle, it was coated inside with dust, they left off a cover plate in one of the basement storage areas, the drivers power seat didn’t work and neither did the turn signals!

This shop is usually pretty good, I guess they have had some staff turn over as there were several new faces. That happens with RV shops.

After I read the riot act they were extremely apologetic and promised to get on it right away, which they did. A day later everything was working again and clean.

We needed to get it sorted out for the Rally.

A trip to Panama

 

Christmas was coming soon, then New Years. The cruise was booked for Jan 6^th.

It suddenly became the week before we were due to leave. In the meantime we had discussed making changes at No 2 such as adding an “Arizona room”, walk in shower and new furniture.

We walked most mornings to help control my vertigo and one morning we passed a house that some friends had owned and saw it was for sale. It had everything we were talking of adding and it occurred to us that it might be cheaper to buy a place with all the changes made than to do them ourselves. At the same time we wouldn’t have to live with all the chaos during the construction.

We went by the park sales office and noted that there were several places that met our requirements. We made an appointment to see them.

Our next door neighbors mentioned that they had sold their place and we mentioned we were looking. They said the people buying their place were selling their existing place and that they had the key.

We went around and it was beautiful. Spacious, excellent furniture, step in shower and newly repainted.

We looked at several more places but none of them came close. We bought a new place! But we don’t close until March.

All very exciting but we also needed to get packing for the cruise so a great deal of sorting clothes, pre packing and laundry was combined with borrowing suit cases, returning those cases after we discovered that our existing suitcase was big enough, cancelling newspapers, sorting out spending money, tickets, airfares etc etc.

Then bang! We were on the flight to LA. We spent a night in a hotel not far from the cruise terminal and were rewarded for me being a member of the Holiday Day Inn club by being upgraded to a very nice suite!

Suite at the hotel.

While walking around the block we conveniently found a brew pub and while sampling their products met 2 Canadian couples who were on the same cruise as us!

Dark beer OOOHHH!

Next morning a short Uber ride took us to the pier in San Pedro where the Norwegian Joy was waiting for us.

Norwegian Joy

A huge ship with around 4000 passengers, it took some time to load everyone onboard and get the luggage delivered to the stateroom. The stateroom was a balcony one and quite nice. While we waited for the bags to get delivered we explored the many bars and restaurants on board.

We pre-purchased the beverage, premium dining and gratuities packages as I don’t like getting to the last day of the cruise and having to sort out all the extras on the bill. We booked a few shore excursions too but not too many as we prefer to go our own way when we get places.

We left San Pedro with a couple of days at sea before our first stop in Cabo San Lucas Mexico.

Leaving San Pedro

I was a little concerned about how my normal seasickness would affect my vertigo but a calm sea didn’t trouble me at all. In fact I didn’t feel queezy the whole trip!

We have been to Cabo before and weren’t impressed, so we stayed on board and enjoyed a quite day wandering around the ship. By this time we had experienced a few of the restaurants and although most were fairly good we learned not to get scrambled eggs as they were made with powdered eggs, and to stay away from the “American Diner” which was cold and draughty and the food not very good.

Next day we were in Mazatlan where we took an Uber along the seafront road (Promenade in UK) but even after nearly 20 miles we didn’t see much worth stopping for. We got another Uber to the Central Cathedral before going back to the ship.

Nothing special in Mazatlan

A quaint Cathedral

Puerto Vallerta was far better and we enjoyed lunch on the beach followed by a walk along the Malecon where troupes of acrobats were performing around a huge pole that must have been 75’ high. Barb’s knee had started to hurt and she limped along with an elastic bandage wrapped around it.

Lunch with the pelicans in Puerta Vallarta

Amazing acrobats

Having paid in advance for our booze we decided we had to drink a minimum of 4 drinks to draw even. We were well in pocket and sampled lots of cocktails, had Mimosas with breakfast, tried all the single malt scotches and took a few cans of beer back to the cabin each night too!

Day 6 was another at sea day and we had reservations for the Tepenyaki restaurant which was like a Beni Hanna chinese “Show” restaurant. Our UK readers might not know what that is but usually they involve some funny chefs cooking the meal at a big grill while juggling eggs and knives, throwing shrimp for people to catch in their mouths and producing sheets of flame from volcanoes made from sliced onions! You have to experience it for yourself, but its very entertaining, although because of shipboard fire regulations they couldn’t do the flaming volcano!

We went from there to a feature of this ship that reminded us of our Liverpool area roots, “The Cavern” which is a small bar dressed to very loosely resemble the real Cavern. There was a Beatles tribute band who played there a couple of times during the cruise and who played in the large theater several times too. They were very good and it was standing room only whenever they were performing.

The shipboard "Cavern Club"

Another day at sea then we landed in Antigua. Not the one in the Caribbean as we were still on the Pacific side. This one was in Guatemala and we took a bus trip to the “Jade Factory” to learn all about Guatemalan Jade from a lady who turned out to be from Yorkshire England where Barbara has many relatives!

The Jade Museum (and sale room)

Another day at sea and we discovered the “Brewhouse” bar where they had 50 draft beers but no dark beers except canned Guinness or Shiner Bock from Texas. I walked out of a weird magic/dancing show in the theater later that evening as it was poorly presented and quite boring.

Puerto Caldera in Costa Rica was OK with a trip to a small town with little kids dancing and a nice church.

Cute local kids dancing

Another day at sea and I was getting bored. A talk about the history of the Panama Canal in the evening helped take up some time. Unfortunately we went to another premium restaurant that evening. It was called the Q Smokehouse and the barbequed ribs were awful. There was no manager around and the waiter offered us another meal but we didn’t want another bad experience. We complained bitterly over the next 3 days but got nowhere with customer service and despite promises that the manager would contact us he never did.

Barbara resting up her knee

Next morning and we were at the entrance to the Panama Canal. Unfortunately Barbara’s knee was so bad that she could barely walk and I brought her breakfast to the cabin for several days. Fortunately we had the balcony and could sit out and watch the scenery drift by!

Pacific side of the Panama Canal

Thru the locks

These basins hold water for the locks to conserve the fresh water.

I have designed ships that had to meet the special Panama Rules. I was looking forward to the transit. I had the original canal in mind when I booked the trip but the Joy was so big she went thru the new canal. There isn’t much difference really just the three locks at each end, the rest is still the original route. It was a little disappointing but it was a great experience.

Beautiful statuary in the cathedral

Colon on the Atlantic side of the canal then Cartagena were not very interesting in our opinion and an 8 hour bus trip to take a 45 minute walk around the old city of Panama didn’t help. Barbara stayed on the bus because her knee hurt so badly. She was alternating cold and hot packs on it to try to ease the pain.

The only thing to watch in Cartegena

                                                                       was the pelicans

During the final 2 days at sea we hooked up with our Canadian friends from LA, ate at a couple more premium restaurants before arriving in Miami on day 17.

Norwegian's dock in Miami

Barbara and I decided to ask for a wheelchair to get her off the ship and we were whisked to the front of the disembarkation line, then to the front of the customs and immigration line and were in an Uber headed for the hotel we had reserved before we could blink!

After getting the same preferential treatment at the Miami and Phoenix airports we were on our way back to Casa Grande courtesy of our friend Ed who both dropped us at the airport on the way out and picked us up on the way back. Thanks Ed!

A mountain of laundry, doctors for Barbara, inches of dust around the house from a sand storm when we were away and restocking the empty fridge took up the rest of the week.