Hidden Valley RV Resort, Milton, WI

We have been here over a week now and I do like this campground. I don’t care what they call it this is still a campground. I guess resort in the name comes from the fact they have a pool, Frisbee golf, baseball field, skateboard area and a couple of volleyball courts along with a nice play area for the kids, and they can charge a higher price for the sites. All in all even though we don’t use all the amenities I still enjoy the park. The people are friendly, they have seasonal units here, and we just plain enjoy it.

Last Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday we got to see Mason play baseball. It was great, he reminds me of his dad when he first started playing organized ball. Mason has some talent and if he applies himself will be better than Robert was. He is already hitting as well as or better than his dad did at this age. It will be fun to see him play next year and see the improvement he makes.

Tonight we get to see Madyson dance. She has dance and gymnastics on Tuesday night, I am looking forward to this.

Last Wednesday I cleaned my brother Larry’s Ford Ranger, he is letting us use it until September, we are very thankful for that. The truck was dirty, but we managed to get it looking respectable. Thursday I cleaned the front of the camper and after letting it sit all of the week before in the 100 degree heat in Burlington, the bugs were baked on but my DWG Dri Wash n’ Guard made short work of them. Then on Thursday I tackled the front of the F550, talk about a challenge, I hadn’t cleaned it since April, something I will not do again. It took me several hours to get it back to the way I wanted it. Now everything looks good and we are relaxing.

We are here until the ninth then it is off to the CORE park at Coralville, IA. We will be there about a week, then on to Crossroads RV Park, Mt. Pleasant, IA to visit with Dave & Shari Frantz good friends we have know for quite some time and finally to Griff’s RV Park in Altoona, IA, a favorite park, to stay until Oct 1. We will do our doctor appts etc. before heading south to Mesa, AZ for the winter.

So for now that is it remember, Dreams Do Come True.

Leaving Sheridan Lake

With my mother in the hospital we left Sheridan Lake on Sunday the 15th and headed for Honey Creek State Park at Lake Rathbun, IA, with a stop at Mitchell, SD to visit with Clancy & Amy and the kids. I had hoped to make it to Centerville to see mom again but it wasn’t to be, she passed away about an hour before we arrived at the campground. She wasn’t in any pain and died peacefully, I know she is with dad now and has completed her journey. We will all miss her but the memories are there to sustain us.
We stayed with my brother Larry and his wife Kathy, THANK YOU, for putting up with me for such a long time, we were there six days, I can be a difficult person at times, so again thank you. The visitation and funeral were well attended, I saw a lot of people I haven’t see for forty years or more. It is interesting how this seems to be the norm for weddings and funerals. You see people you haven’t seen for a lot of years and you catch up but at the same time you know you most likely won’t see them again for years. Life is that way, we meet someone who we enjoy visiting with over a day or years and then we are pulled apart by any number of circumstances and we go for years without seeing them and a situation arises which allows us to renew our friendship. So it was this time for me, a sad occasion brought on the joy of seeing long ago friends.
Burlington HS administration was very gracious in letting us park the camper and truck in one of their parking lots for our stay in Burlington. It worked our great because my brother lives a half a block from the HS so I was able to check on the camper daily.
We headed out last Monday, the 23rd, for Hidden Valley RV Resort in Milton, WI. This is a nice campground, more money than what we want to spend, but it is the best in the area. There was one closer to the kids but they were more expensive and not as accommodating and as nice. So we are here until August 9, then to Mt. Pleasant, IA, Coralville, IA, ending on August 19th at Griff’s RV Park for a month or more.
So the circle of life ends for mom and continues for the rest of us. We will continue on this journey through life with the knowledge that our time will come to a full circle also at some future point in time.

Sadness

Last week my mother went to the hospital, she was 88. We drove to Des Moines last Tuesday and visited with her. My sister Colleen and brother Larry were there also. We visited with the doctors and asked that mom be transferred back to Centerville, IA, where she was living in a facility managed by our sister Tara. Bottom line she went back to Centerville and enjoyed seeing her friends for a couple days. We left South Dakota to be close to her but mom passed away yesterday at 3:04 pm while we were on the road.
Her funeral will be Friday at 10 am.
We will miss her but with her medical issues we know she isn't going to suffer anymore and she is with our dad.
Sarah and I will spend the rest of the summer in WI, IA and NE. before heading to AZ for the winter.

Another week at Sheridan Lakes

All we do up here is work, well at least that’s all Sarah does. I don’t know if I really explained our duties here. Sarah is on the janitorial staff, well there are two of them on the staff, this is Sharon and Sarah. As you can see they are prepared to clean 68 outhouses in the various locations around the forest. These ladies work hard and deserve all the compliments they get on the cleanliness of the outhouses.

Now I work as a camp host while it isn’t a very demanding job from a physical labor stand point it is demanding from a time stand point. I have to be in the campground seven days a week except for Tues & Thurs from 8 am to 8 pm. This is bad but then add to that no internet access and I thought I would go nuts the first couple of weeks. Now I do get into town on Thursday and get on the internet, the Slate Creek Café has free Wi-Fi and I go there for breakfast and do my internet access. We have a beautiful view of the lake and our camp loop is generally one of the quietest loops in the park.

Ok, so what have we been up to.

Tuesday, June 18, 2012

We left the campground early and headed for Wind Cave National Park to tour the Wind Cave. I am writing this at the camper so I have no internet but you can Google Wind Cave National Park and read all about it. This cave has more than ten miles of passages explored and most of that was done by a young man named Alvin McDonald, he was sixteen when he started his explorations and spent the next four years of his young life exploring the cave. He died of the  plague, I believe, at the age of twenty. In the thirties the Conservation Core came in and put in lighting and cement paths and stairs so ordinary folks could see this fantastic cave. This formation is called the box something because it resembles the way a cardboard box is made, the honey comb type of structure. Ninety-five percent of this type of formation in the world in found in this cave, five percent is found in England and no other cave in the world has this particular formation. Here are a few other pictures from the cave.

As you can see some of the passages were rather narrow. The guide kept saying don’t touch the walls. I hate say this but it didn’t matter if I went straight at it or turned sideways, I TOUCHED THE WALLS. There were a total of 450 steps we had to navigate. I asked the guide if they were all up and he said no. Boy was I relieved, I didn’t know how they would extricate me from the tunnels.

The pictures don’t do justice to the color of the walls and ceiling, it was a great trip.

The rest of the week was work. We did go out to eat on the 21st with Mark & Sharon. We went to the Alpine Inn in Hill City. You have your choice of steak or steak, it was good. We ate there the first time we came up to see Mark & Sharon.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

We headed for the South Dakota Air & Space Museum located at commercial entrance to Ellsworth AFB. I was disappointed in that they didn’t have very many displays but what they had were interesting. We took a tour of the airbase and the missile site that was used for training purposes. At the height of the cold war, for you young folds that is the period of time when the American and Russia were nuclear powers, there were fifty minuteman missiles sites in South Dakota. These were unmanned sites and were controlled by a central command center. Each center controlled ten missiles, these centers were strategically located throughout the area. When the cold war ended and the nuclear treaties signed the US was allowed to keep two missile sites, that I know of, one of them being here in SD out by the Badlands, the other by Tucson, AZ.

Human’s are interesting beings. Last Saturday night the campground was filling up and we were down to one camp site left. A car pulls up and asks if we have any camp sites left and we say we have one. We show them the location of the site on the map, knowing it is the last available site in the campground and they want to go look at the site, knowing if someone comes in while they are “looking” at the site we will be obligated to rent the site to the requestor. It is interesting how people react to situations and what is available to them.

As you know if you saw my previous post, we have a forest fire going on across the lake. Sheridan Lake has group camping, a marina and a beach on the north side of the lake. Unfortunately these are located on the north side of the lake and this is where the fire is raging. As of today they are saying it is contained to about 350 acres so it isn’t a big fire but it has closed the lake to boating of any kind and we’ll see what it will do to the camping reservations we have for this weekend. Here are a few pictures I took today of the fire.

The helicopter dropping the bucket for more water.

We are safe on the south side of the lake, this fire would have to escalate substantially to get to us, so we aren’t worry about it.

Friday, June 29, 2012

The Forest Service opened the north side of our campground and opened the lake to boating again. We have had a few cancellations, I don’t believe they were due to the fire though. I did have a couple of campers leave today who were booked through till Monday, their reason was they couldn’t get out on the lake. They left before we found out the lake was open again.

July 4th week should be interesting, we are preparing for a busy week, no one has a day off, we are on call to help where ever needed.

 

Almost half way through our gig here.

Dreams Do Come True