June 20, 2013

still in Custer, SD
Beaver Lake Campground

So I've had a request to explain why and how we are full-time RVing for a year. Those who have heard the story, may skip this blog.

It began a couple of summers ago, when I turned 50.  I was really o.k. with it, and felt pretty good about myself...even ran the Peachtree Road Race (10k) the day after my birthday in 1 hour, 33 seconds.  I'm probably in the best shape of my life.  Not all was perfect, though.  The previous April, my otherwise healthy, robust father was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer, in spite of never having smoked.  So my mind was already stirred up with "life" questions.  Thankfully he is doing great now.

Then, later in my birthday week we were driving to Florida to visit, Uncle Steve and Aunt Renee (Gordon's brother and his wife).  I noticed many RVs on the trip and all of a sudden, I became overwhelmed with the desire to join them.  The thought of living with very-scaled-down necessities, experiencing different places and really getting to know them, and not being tied down to any routines, was irresistible.  I am certain I was having a mid-life crisis, but didn't care.  It was better than running away to join the circus.  So, after thinking about it for a couple of days, I proposed the idea to Gordon.  He of course laughed.  I had to laugh too, but I kept refining the details and asked him to really consider it.  Understand that we had never had an RV before and only gone "car camping" a few times.  I had to find a hook.  He is really committed to the karate organization we belong to.  They have schools scattered over the country, and even a couple in other countries.  I told him that we could visit every school in the lower 48 and that got his attention.  Then my in-laws had a couple over for dinner, and it turns out that they had traveled in an RV quite a bit.  They had much to add to the conversation.  By the end of the evening, it was becoming more than a passing thought.  By the end of the week, G finally said, "I'll give you a year."  woo hoo!  I'll take it.

(Side note:  We are not trust-fund babies so don't have the money to just "take off" a year.  Gordon is a software developer and can work anywhere he has wifi, so he will be working the whole time we're on the road.  And the kids are signed up with an online public school and I will be "coaching" them.  We'll see how that works out.)

So life went on pretty much unchanged, except for talking about the trip for the next several months.  Everyone we told said , "Wow, that sounds great".  Quickly followed with, "Are you crazy?"  We felt good about our decision.

It soon became clear that we would not make a June 2012 start day.  Since we wanted to start in June to take advantage of good weather and school calendars, we put it off a year to June 2013.  That would give us plenty of time to get ready.  We rented out the house so had to vacate by June 1.  There's no turning back now.  But, for those who know me well, I am organizationally challenged.   Gordon nailed it when he told me that I ignore the important to take care of the urgent.  So I was really skilled in putting off the inevitable "big clear-out and clean-up".  It was very much a chaotic "bug out" from last March to June 1.  And, damn, I have a lot of STUFF!  Many things got tossed or given away that I would have liked to have sold on e-bay, or even a yard sale.  What wasn't disposed of had to go into storage, and we still filled a 10' x 40' room--top to bottom. 

And guess what else?  After living in a house for 18 years, it's a wreck when you take a close look at it.  So now we were scrambling with "home improvement" also, to make it livable for other people.  At this point, no one was having fun. I was so stressed that I cried if I burned toast, and I was seriously doubting the feasibility of our plan. I couldn't sleep, or breathe sometimes.  There was no choice but to keep going.  The days before June 1, we were dragging items to the curb, or taking vanloads to Goodwill, or truckloads to the storage room.  All the while, painters, movers and repairmen were swarming the house as well.  The night before June 1, Gordon and I literally stayed up all night packing, cleaning, and painting, while the kids and dog were sleeping on the den floor. The morning of June 1, we were still taking stuff out as the renters were bringing stuff in.  I was exhausted, excited, sad, relieved, confused, and just a total mess in general.  But it was done and we loaded the kids and dog into the truck and went to our first campground at Stone Mountain Park, near Atlanta.  We could not have made it the last couple of days without the generous, and unexpected, help of neighbors.  Thank you, thank you, thank you all.

There it is.  Not easy, but not impossible.  Emotional, stressful, empowering, elating, and ultimately life-changing.  It could not have happened without approval and sacrifice by each one of us (G, Anna, Alex and me).  By the end of the year, hopefully the positive points will far exceed the negative.  So far, so good.  Either way, we'll have stories to tell.

Finally ready to hit the road, almost.  A little sleep first would be a good idea.

 

June 15, 2013

Custer, South Dakota
Beaver Lake Campground


With storm warnings swirling all around us, we take off while a light rain falls.  Again, with the little amount of traffic, my nerves are much calmer, even in the rain.  We looked it up, SD has about 814K people in 77K sq. miles.  Metro Atlanta has 5 million people in 8,480 sq. miles!  No wonder I feel suffocated there.  It's so nice to have room to breathe...

But the rain cleared quickly and blue skies took over.  We drove down a big hill to the Missouri River, crossed the bridge and suddenly we were in hill country again.

 

Weeeeeeeeee!

 



I wouldn't usually blog about a driving day, but this one was special.  We left early enough to make a couple of stops on the way.   The first one was a Minuteman Missile site. We were too late to get a ticket down into the command center, but the film and displayed items and photos were worth the stop.  We learned that the sites were never secret, they wanted the enemy to know we were armed. Hum.  Anna and Alex took a little quiz and earned their Jr. Ranger badges (it's a national park).  They are Cold War informed now. One of the other visitors made it even more fun, he was Russian!  G used his camera to take his photo in front of the t-shirts displaying a missile blasting through a Soviet flag.  A little fun for his friends back home. 

 

Learning Cold War facts in a 1950s kitchen,

 

The red sites are active.  The black sites are inactive. Yeah, sure.;-)

 

 

Painting on one of the silo blast doors.  There were many different, "fun" designs.

 

They even gave the Russian guy this map!

 

 

The next stop was Badlands National Park.  We could see hints of it from the interstate, but once we got there, wow, just wow.  I took so many pictures that G said we'll need to get an extra hard drive to store them.  I won't post them all, but here are some highlights.

 

Bad dog in the Badlands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like a showdown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It felt like we were inside a giant sand castle.

 

 

He didn't really...just a funny shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's a moon there somewhere.

 

We had a much easier time getting our covered wagon through the Badlands, than the pioneers did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once out of the park, we must stop at Wall Drug.  A little tourist trap in Wall, SD.  We got out only buying 5-cent coffee and pie.  But, oh, there was much to see.

 

 

Yeee haw

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 



June 12, 2013

Mitchell, South Dakota
Camped at Famil-E-Fun Campground

Our first big stop is planned for western SD, around Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument.  But that's a long way from here, so we tried to find a place to spend a couple of days.  Anna had found the Corn Palace in her search for unusual things to do see assignment.  And Mitchell was almost exactly 1/2 way to our goal.  Plus G needs a solid work day, and there weren't too many distractions in Mitchell.

They have a water tower.

 

Corn decorates everything!

 

Even the radio station.  I do give them credit for snagging the KORN call letters.  I would have thought someone in Iowa would have taken them.

Anna has become the RVer.  She has learned how to set up camp from G and takes pride in her work.  You go girl!

 

 

Way to hook up that sewer hose Anna.

Of course Mitchell is home of the world famous Corn Palace.  It isn't built of corn, but the inside and outside walls are covered with huge murals made of corn and other crop products.  And they are beautiful and amazing, or a-maize-ing.:-)  New murals are made every year and you can look them up on Google, I'm sure.  Here are a few of my own.

 

Being "corn country" means having a more conservative position on GMOs.  So there was a couple of 'educational' endorsements of frankenfood.  It's all in how you look at it, or who pays you.

The other major attraction there is really quite cool.  It's the archeodome--a permanently housed archeological dig of a 1000-year-old Native American village.  They have found tons of artifacts and still have 50 years of digging planned.  Really wild stuff to absorb and imagine life back then.  Wow.

 

Bison bones.  Not found at that site, but still cool.

 

In front of the big dig.

 

Assembling pottery shards.

 

Digging for arrowheads.  Notice Anna's casual foot method.

 

Success.

 

Wild mosaic in the restrooms.

 

Local swallows.

 

After a hard day excavating, a real cream soda is needed.

 

As I said earlier, G has started running with me again.  We suit up for a morning run in the SD countryside.  Dirt roads criss-cross the farming area where the campground is, and they are very far apart.  This would be great if we were distance runners, but we are not.  So we're trotting along this road, and it doesn't feel like we're getting anywhere because the scene never changes.  There are fields on both sides, with a barn about a mile, or 5 miles, away, it's hard to tell.  Then we come across this road off to the right.  We can see the interstate near the other end of it.  So G says, let's go this way.  I think there's another dirt road and we can get back to the campground that way.  I had my doubts because the "road" was fairly overgrown with tall grass.  But I wanted adventure. 

 

 

See, it is a road.  There's the road sign.

 

About half way to the "other dirt road" (which he believed was there in spite of the "no outlet" sign), the tracks disappeared completely and we were just running in tall grass.  Poor Zoe was leaping to get out of it, without success.  And when we stop for a minute, we see ticks running up our legs.  Argh, ticks again!  We have to keep going because it's farther to go back.  At the end of the field there is the highway fence and no road.  But there is dirt on the other side...from the interstate construction.  Luckily no one is around, and we scoot under the fence and spend about 10 minutes picking ticks off of us and poor Zoe.  Then take off for our exit up ahead.  We do end up running on the active exit ramp, but make it home safe.  I do spend another 40 minutes or so combing Zoe and removing ticks.  G doesn't get to navigate again soon.

 

The next day Zoe and I run the other way on the dirt road.  A ways down we catch this fellow's attention and he is not too pleased that we were running by.  He stood up and stared at us the whole time we were within his sight.  I was watching him too, and for any break there may be in the fence.

Not a fan of my running.

 

The campground was called Famil  - E - Fun.  And they gave it their best effort.  There was a pool, a homemade, and quite unique, mini-golf, and a coop full of fancy pigeons.  We even had the requisite robin nest outside our window.  Sweet.

Although the water is only 70 degree, Alex insists it's warm.

 

They do know how to deal with bad children.

 

And don't call it soda, unless it's preceded by "cream".

 

We stayed in Mitchell for 3 nights, so that G could get some real work done. By Saturday morning, I'm ready to go.