St. Peter Visit

We're back in Minnesota for about a month and a half. We arrived the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend and parked initially at the business of Mark's daughter and son-in-law, APT Machining & Fab.

Initially we expected to have our last leveling jack rebuilt, but to everyone's relief, the only problems with it were a loose-fitted hydraulic hose and a missing foot. The foot we had ordered in advance and had ready for installation, and in less than an hour the jack was back in working order. Praise God for small blessings!

While Mark was waiting for our jack repair, he took advantage of the time to install new lighting in the coach. Boy, does it make a difference! He took out all the old dim fluorescent lights, several of which were flickering like strobe lighting, and replaced them with bright LEDs. Now I can see to crochet after the sun goes down.

This week we are parked in the church parking lot at Sunrise Assembly of God in Saint Peter, MN. We've discovered that churches are often an underused resource for short-term dry camping, especially if you're visiting someone in the congregation and the usual RV parking options are limited. A call to the church office for permission is certainly necessary but, especially if your stay is only during the week and doesn't impact Sunday service parking, we've discovered churches to be mostly agreeable. In our case, due to the Minnesota governor's shutdown of all the county parks, we were left without any options at all. Sunrise Assembly was the church where Mark's youngest daughter attended when they lived here. Another church, Bethany Alliance, where his oldest daughter is currently a member, also gave us permission to park in their lot. So we had a choice. Mark chose Sunrise because the lot was bigger, and also because it had fewer trees to interfere with satellite reception.

We're here through Thursday, and then we'll head back to the APT Machining parking lot for the weekend to finish out the month. On Friday, our granddaughter, Heidi, has her virtual graduation, and we hope to be able to share in that event.

Until next time, safe travels, and may you always find a suitable place to put down your jacks!

God bless!

Hanging out in Branson

At Treasure Lake RV Resort in Branson, MO (an RPI park)

We hope everyone is well during these crazy times. We are writing from Branson, MO, where we are camped until Monday, the 18th. We're at the Treasure Lake RV Resort, which we were able to book for less than $20 a night with our RPI membership.

It's a very large and beautiful park, and currently at about 30% occupancy. The outside pool is closed, but they have an inside heated pool that we've been to once so far.

It's been a strange sojourn over the past month or two, as many of our fellow campers can attest to. All our sight-seeing has been put on hold and we, like everyone else, are confined to sitting around in our home waiting for life in America to resume.

We've been to the grocery store twice since we've been here, passing dozens of amusement areas and event locations on our way to and fro-- all closed. The only thing we can say is, "We'll have to come back some day."

WonderWorks -- the upside-down house!

Speaking of grocery shopping... I don't know about you, but we've been noticing more and more empty meat counters like this one, which is packaged beef.

There was plenty of pork and chicken, but the only beef at this store, Price Chopper, was at the butcher counter, with prices about twice what they were last month. We did manage to find a couple packages of ribeye steaks at the Walmart for about $10 a pound, half the cost of Price Chopper's. And here's something else I found-- "Boston Beef." Ever heard of that? I haven't until yesterday. It's 60% beef and 40% pork. We found pork sirloin at less than $4 a pound, but this stuff is $6 a pound, which tells you how much the price of beef has skyrocketed.

Looks like we'll be eating a lot more chicken and pork for a while. 😒

If you live in an RV, then you know about the limitations of the tiny stovetop. This past week I found a stove-top grill that allows me to cook more than one or two small steaks at a time--even on my tiny stove. It fits perfectly on the two back burners. I put the burners on high and heat the pan up for about ten minutes (after Mark disconnects the smoke alarm). It's made from carbon steel, so it's about half the weight of cast iron. Once it's preheated, it cooks pretty evenly. AND, it's made in America. Win-win!

Back to the travels...

Branson is opening up by degrees. We were able to go out and actually dine in a restaurant on Mother's Day.  We celebrated both Mother's Day and our anniversary (May 3) at a place on the notorious "Landing" called Garfield's. Dinner was steak (of course), and we even indulged in dessert-- cake and ice cream. Mark ate the cake, I ate the ice cream.

It's been rainy most of the last week and is forecasted to rain most of the rest of the time we're here. In a way, it makes staying home easier because we can blame it on the weather, not the pandemic.

Somewhere between RV Fog Dr. and Branson, we lost the pad off one of our rear leveling jacks. (I hope it didn't fall off on the road and cause harm to anyone!) This is the only jack we haven't rebuilt since owning the RV. So we are headed back to Kasota, MN, where our beloved children and grandchildren have once again agreed to give us some help rebuilding a jack. We'll arrive there just before the Memorial Day weekend.

After Kasota/St. Peter, we're headed north to Isanti where we have reservations at a campground for the month of June... that is, if the governor of Minnesota doesn't put the kibosh on things. We have already lost our reservation at Lake Washington, in the St. Peter area, because of governor-mandated campground closures. We're still having trouble understanding the "science" behind closing campgrounds-- especially campgrounds where rigs are twenty to thirty feet apart. But I'm beginning to doubt that science has very much to do with it.

For the full-time RVer, campground closures are forcing us to wander much more than we otherwise would if we could put down our jacks for a while somewhere. But there are so few of us in the country that our needs and circumstances are not considered. We really are nomads, now, with nowhere to go-- at least in many states. We're hoping and praying that Minnesota will open up soon so we can stay for the duration of our original plans (through the first week of July.) But, as with everything, time will tell.

God has promised to supply our daily needs, and now more than ever, we can do nothing but trust Him with that promise.

Wishing you all the best of health, patience, and wisdom as we navigate through our "new reality."

God bless, and safe travels to all!

Welcome, May!

Valdosta Oaks RV Park in Georgia

April for us was rather boring...as it probably was for you.

We spent the month in Valdosta, Georgia, in relative lock-down. I say "relative" because we still made our regular trips to see the Hoffmans (Mark more often than I), and we still made our regular trips to the grocery store. Other than that, we sat at home trying to find something interesting to watch on TV, or watching one of our movies we've seen a hundred times, or reading, or (in my case) crocheting.

Consequently, I didn't take very many pictures.

But, the day before we left Valdosta, we helped our grandson, Asher, celebrate his tenth birthday. The original plan was to go up to one of Georgia's beautiful parks (which were open by then) for a cook-out and cake. But to our disappointment, a giant thunderstorm came through just about that time, bringing with it tornado warnings. We opted to celebrate at home instead.

Asher and his cake

Happy Birthday to YOU

The next day, we pulled up the jacks and headed for Ronnie Wolfe's Alfa shop in Choudrant, LA, with an overnight stop at my sister's in Lake Mississippi.

Ronnie and Dick Albritton diagnosed and repaired our generator for us and cleaned and serviced our AC/Heat pump, which hadn't been serviced since it was installed sixteen years ago. Yikes! was it ever a dirty rotten mess! They had to replace one of the two condensers, and in the process discovered that the unit was miss-wired from the factory! There was a lot wrong with that thing, but now everything is running like a charm. Super kudos to Ronnie and Dick! They are a super-hero team. Professional, knowledgeable, and reasonably priced-- and their work is always of the highest excellence. We've been here at least three times now, and always plan them into our travels when we need something done, and done right.

They had to cut the AC out of the coach--it seems the siding

was put in after the AC!

After all the work was done, we headed to our favorite campground ever-- Lincoln Parish Park, in Ruston, LA. We were planning to stay five days, but they could only accommodate us for two. Apparently, all the locals are camping out to help stave off the boredom of being stuck at home. We did get in a good walk around the pond, at least.

Our spot at Lincoln Parish Park

View from the "back yard"

From there we headed north to Arkansas to get some windows defogged by Fog Doctor in Searcy. That was Thursday. Since our appointment at Fog Doctor wasn't until the following Monday, we found a little RV park along the way and booked three nights.

We parked, paid, set up our coach and started to settle in for the duration when I noticed that the coach power switch was off, and I was unable to turn it on at all. Mark started poking around to find out what the problem was, and eventually discovered that our coach batteries were dead. On a whim, he decided to give Ronnie a call and see if he might be able to provide some insight as to what the problem might be.

Ronnie suggested it might be the Transfer Switch, and told us he had one and was willing to squeeze us into his schedule if we wanted to return. Since we were only about ninety miles away, we decided it would be wise to at least have him check it out. If it turned out to be bad, we could get it fixed right away by someone we trusted. (We've had some sour experiences with mobile repair services over the years.)

So the next morning, we set out early and headed back to Ronnie's establishment. That was today. Ronnie pulled everything apart and inspected the transfer switch. Surprisingly, it was in great shape! That means the problem we were having was likely connected to the shore power at our previous campground in Arkansas. We had a similar issue on our first coach at an RV park in Washington state a couple years ago. Anyway, Ronnie checked out our surge protector while he was at it and finished up after about an hour. We love that guy! He is a gift from God and an answer to prayer.

Now we're ready to head north again. We will still make our appointment at Fog Doctor on Monday, even after the extra repair scare.

As always, safe travels--whether you're RVers on the road or just driving around your neighborhood.

And also we wish you all good health in these uncertain times.

God bless!