Excursion to the Mill City Museum

It was a beautiful weekend in Minneapolis; a perfect place to be... in the summertime. Living in a hotel makes "getting out of the house" on a weekend more important than ever. Mark suggested the Mill City Museum. It was a great suggestion since neither of us had ever been there. We learned a lot about the city, and more than I care to know about the flour industry.

There's no argument that Minneapolis holds a place among the most beautiful cities in the country. The River Walk was picturesque, and people were out in abundance, walking and biking. We even passed a tour of fifteen or so people on Segues.

Flour mill ruins

After our walk, we headed up to the Farmer's Market, strolled around a bit and then had a delicious lunch of locally grown bison and pork. Then we walked the short distance to the museum.

The "Flour Tower" exhibit took us up and down eight levels of the building, while giving a little history lesson of the mill, ending at the top for a panoramic view of the city.


The museum gallery had many exhibits describing the history of flour-making. One of the things that was strikingly missing, however, was anything connecting the over-consumption of flour to poor health. But why clog up a good story with rain clouds? Any perceived evils of the flour industry were lightly dealt with and mostly covered over with a dose of humor...like the 20-year life span of mill workers (from the time they entered the mill until they exited the world of the living), and the child labor used to keep rats, bats, and snakes out of the grain chutes (most of the time, anyway)...etc.

View of the city from the top of the mill

All in all, it was a great excursion and I would recommend it to everyone. There are some hands-on activities for the kids and even a baking lab where you can taste free samples. Needless to say, I skipped over that part.

Coming back to reality...we're still waiting for news on our motorhome. Hopefully we'll have something more to say about it in the next post.

Have a fabulous week! Now...back to my crocheting.

Waiting Waiting Waiting

To paraphrase Dory, the bluefish's famous mantra..."swimming swimming swimming." It's day 12 in hotels. Trying very hard to put on Dory's happy accepting face. (Sorry, copyrights won't let me use her picture, so you get generic bluefish. Use your imagination.)

Still no definitive completion date on the motorhome repairs. My dad used to say, "Patience is a virtue." In this case, it's turning into a somewhat expensive virtue, since everyday that we can't live in our motorhome, we are forced to pay the price of a hotel "home." That said, I'm duly grateful that we're not checking out today. We're on the third floor and the elevator is out! Since yesterday. Hopefully it will be working by next week.

We made another trip to Whole Foods yesterday and brought home some canned soup, which we'll have to add butter to because for some reason nearly all organic canned soup is vegetarian and fat
free. Entrenched ideas take decades to reverse, it seems. I also found bone broth in single serving containers. Gold! Sadly, it's also fat free...but I have butter. Some full-fat yogurt (impossible to find in conventional stores), lunchmeat, and a few other items that can be consumed cold for breakfast and lunch rounded out our in-room food supply and we're good to go for another few days. Thank goodness the room has a fridge.

In other news...

Sweetie, who never eats anything exept Wellness "Complete Health" Salmon and Whitefish Recipe cat food, has suddenly decided she must share my oatmeal with me. Perhaps it's her way of showing solidarity in our plight.

Earlier this week, Mark and I took a walk in Purgatory Park and saw a bald eagle and a large owl of indiscernible variety perched on top of nearby buildings -- smackdab in the middle of Eden Prairie. "That bird up there is bigger than your dog," I commented to a passing lady who was walking her tiny little miniature dogette. She hadn't seen the eagle, which had that very moment flown away. Maybe she'll keep a closer eye on her surroundings from now on. But probably not.

Well, that's all our fascinating news for now.

Have a wonderful weekend! It promises to be absolutely perfect weather in the Twin Cities.

Holding Pattern

The results of the inspection on our motorhome came back with a few problems. It does indeed pay to inspect! There were problems with the refrigerator, the air conditioner, and the generator.

Now the dealer must go back to the seller and work with them on getting the repairs done. In the meantime, we're "no go" for bringing the home back this week. That means another week at La Quinta, with microwaved or restaurant meals (oh my) ... and sitting in that familiar holding pattern.

My very good friend, JoAnn, and her husband offered to store our bikes and bike rack for us until we get back from Texas, which is a great help to us and much appreciated. Now we can get in and out of the trunk without going through physical contortions. And we were finally able to wash the travel muck off the car.

Sadly, we must cancel yet another week of RV parking that we had prearranged more than a month ago. But such is life. Our sights are set on next Thursday evening to fly to Texas. Our wonderful cat-sitter, Sadie Mae, will be babysitting Sweetie for us while we're gone. It's comforting to know the kitty won't have to endure the grueling experience of airline travel, and she'll be with someone she knows. You can see by the picture how thrilled she is about the news.

Please keep us in your prayers.

This evening we're going to find a nice park, have a good long walk, and reflect on all our many blessings...especially the one where we get to retire and travel this amazing country in a beautiful (somewhat gently used) motorhome.

P.S. Red Roof Inn did refund our seven unused days. (Thank you, Lord!) One less problem to deal with.

The Great Transition

Our dream since about two years ago has been to sell our home when we retire, buy an RV, and live in it full time while we travel around the country connecting with all our many friends and loved ones.

Now the dream is becoming a reality.

So for the last many months, Mark has been researching everything there is to know about buying and living in an RV. We've looked at blogs of others who have done and are doing the same thing, and read about their adventures. We've read articles about how to manage residency. We've looked at the buying process. No one could be more prepared than we are.

But, as it turns out, reality and dreams are two very different animals.

So here's where we are so far.

We sold our house on July 17, 2017. On that day, all our worldly goods having been packed into a smallish storage unit, we loaded up our suitcases and the cat, and headed north to Two Harbors, MN,  to look at what seemed to be (from pictures) a really good potential motorhome.

It was not meant to be. I'll leave it at that. Tired and disappointed, we checked into our hotel in Duluth and regrouped.

The next morning we got up early and headed south to Texas, which was our original plan. And on Wednesday, we arrived at PPL Motorhomes in Dallas to look at a few motorhomes there before driving to the company's main location in Houston. By Thursday morning we had found the home we wanted and began the purchase process.

Like buying a house, a motorhome should go through an inspection to make sure everything works the way it's supposed to. So, we ordered the inspection (like smart people) and then headed to Livingston where we joined the Escapee's RV Club for full-time RVers. This gave us a Texas address for residency purposes - taxes, voting, etc. - and a mail forwarding service. Then we headed back to Minneapolis to wait.


Unfortunately, Mark is still tied to a job, so he had to be back to work on Monday, the 24th.

Now we're in a holding pattern, making La Quinta Hotel Corporation richer while we wait for the inspection to clear and our new home to be ready to bring back to the Cities, where we will be until Mark retires at the end of August.

On a side note, we recommend that you never, never, EVER, book a room at the Waconia Inn & Suites or the Red Roof Inn without first inspecting it with your own eyes. We learned the hard way that pictures on the internet don't always accurately reflect the actual accommodations. We are currently working on getting back seven of nine days at the Red Roof in Plymouth which, after waking up to no hot water for a shower, we decided to vacate early. The old adage, "you get what you pay for," is still as true as it ever was.

So we are still in transition and, technically, still homeless. But God is good, and we are trusting Him to get us through and out the other side in good shape. We are living one day at a time...which really is no different than ever.

I can't wait to finally make this bus our home and hit the road. But for now, God has ordained a period of patient waiting.