Griff’s RV Park, Altoona, IA

It has been awhile since I last posted so I have a bit of catching up to do.

We had a great time in WI, I was able to watch Mason play baseball, he reminds me a lot of Robert at that age. Mason is doing good for a seven year old, he is still learning the basics. He went to a baseball camp put on by the Snappers, a minor league team playing in Beloit, it was fun to watch Mason and see how his level of play compares to others. I think he is a bit above average, especially in hitting, he will get the rest as time goes on. Then there is Madyson, she amazed me at her dance/gymnastics class. She is an enthusiastic dancer and I believe someday she will rival her aunt Catherine in dancing. In gymnastics I was amazed at the things she does, she does things I would never have tried and she is good. The kids came out to the campground one night so we could build a fire and have S’mores, I am not much for campfires but we had a great time that night. Mason made me a S’more and it was delicious.It was great to see her and Mason and of course their mom and dad.

On the 9th we headed for Coralville lake and the CORE park there. Now I am somewhat of an optimist, I guess you have to be to live this lifestyle, so we left WI with a half tank of fresh water because I thought we would be able to get into one of the FHU walk in sites at the park. Well, I was wrong and actually I am glad I was wrong because I didn’t like the area the FHU sites were located. So we parked in the West Overlook site 67, we were backed up to the lake and had a great view.

We came to Coralville because Carl & Merilee live in North Liberty, five miles down the road, and Sarah’s brother, sister, nephews and nieces were all going to be at Carl & Merilee’s over the weekend, Aug 11th. We had a great time. As I stated before I didn’t fill the fresh water tank and so I was worried we wouldn’t have enough water on board but it worked out well, I didn’t shower for eight days. That isn’t true, it was seven days. Actually, we showered at the house and in fact we stayed Monday night at Carl & Merilee’s, so as it turned out we had plenty of water in the camper. Monday we went and saw the Bourne Legacy, good movie, I ordered the original three and I will get the Legacy when the price comes down on it. Merilee made t-shirts with CAIN 2012 on them for everyone. We are going to try to get together the first weekend in August each year.

Like in years past when we would all get together at Carl & Merilee’s in Galesburg, we ate too much. Merilee is a great cook, she didn’t cook as much this time but what she did make was great. I gained at least five pounds. We had a great time and thank Carl & Merilee for their hospitality.

Wednesday saw us hooking up and heading south fifty miles to Crossroads RV Park, Mt. Pleasant, IA to see friends Dave & Shari Frantz. They had been at Amana Campground, Amana, IA but things didn’t work out there so they were able to get on at Crossroads, they hosted there in years past.

Thursday I went with Dave on a road trip to Cedar Rapids so he could take care of a few things, Sarah stayed at the camper and beaded. She is finally making some bracelets she can sell, so we will see how that goes.

Friday morning Sarah and I left on the cemetery tour. Both of our parents are buried in the area plus Sarah’s sister and my daughter, so we headed out to visit the grave sites and put some flowers on them. On our way from one cemetery to another in Burlington we went by Mark and Beth Steingraber’s house, actually I took a chance on finding it and knew I did when I saw their camper in the driveway. They have a very nice home. It is a townhouse with three bedrooms and two car garage, big kitchen and living room, very nice home. We told them we were at Crossroads and they know Dave & Shari so Beth was going to call and invite themselves out for dinner, we were cooking hamburgers at Dave & Shari’s. So that evening we had a great time. I addition to Mark & Beth, Ron & Vi Powell came out with Mark & Beth. Sarah and I had never met them before, they are a delightful couple, they own the Collision Center in Burlington. We had a great time and the libations flowed freely. L to R, Shari Frantz, Mark Steingraber, Beth Steingraber, Ron Powell, Vi Powell, Dave Frantz and Moe, Sarah and me.

Saturday found us on the road again meandering our way to Griff’s RV Park, Altoona, IA. We love this park it is quiet and sits out in the country so if you don’t know where to look you wouldn’t find it, http://griffieon.home.mchsi.com/. We are in site E8, never been in this circle before but I like it. This park is full most of the summer, you need to get reservations sometimes you may get lucky and there will be available sites. We have seen and visited with friends, John & Kathy and Dick & Judi, others are here but we haven’t seen them yet. I am a bit concerned though we have had the units on both sides of us leave, I wonder if it is because the camper is dirty. I will have to get that taken care of sometime next week.

Yesterday we went to Matt, Tiffany, Bryon and Alexa’s house so we could go with Alexa to her second grade open house. She is in a small class, nineteen, but I still don’t envy her teacher. Alexa’s desk is in the first row, so she will have to pay attention, I always preferred the last row of desks, out of sight out of mind. The we went to eat at Hickory Park restaurant, http://www.hickoryparkames.com/, we ate there before and it is a very good place to eat. The service was okay, the kitchen forgot Bryon’s meal but he did get it. Then it was off to Wal-Mart because Alexa needed some shoes for school. We got all of that taken care of and headed back home.

Sarah has been bothered with some eye pain and so she made an appointment with an ophthalmologist for this morning. All is good news, she has some eye floaters, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater, I believe most middle age and older people have them, but Sarah also has a fold in the vitreous of the eye, http://www.everydayhealth.com/health-center/posterior-vitreous-detachment-info.aspx. The doctor told her she had nothing to be of concerned with right now, so all is well with her.

Tonight we are meeting long time friends Norma & Orren for dinner at Prairie Meadows Racetrack for dinner, they have great prime rib there. While waiting for our friends I went into the casino and sat down at a penny slot. Most of these machines don’t make sense to me so I just put money in and push a button. I did manage to play for about twenty minutes and left with $5.50. We spent almost three hours visiting with Orren & Norma, we had a great time.

Today I finally got my battery project done and cleaned the truck. Life is good.

Till later – Dreams Do Come True

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

Forest Fire–Black Hills National Forest–Sheridan Lakes

Breaking News:

We have a fire raging on the other side of our lake, it began Thursday with some young people having a fire a popular swimming hole and it got away from them. It has covered 175 acres or more and the fire caused the closure of our north beach area and marina along with the campgrounds on that side of the lake. Here are some pictures of it, mostly smoke but it is my first forest fire.

If this picture could be made bigger you would see flames just above the shoreline.To the far right is the dam and a place called Dakota Point, it is a favorite fishing spot and it has a rocky cliff where the young people like to go and jump from the cliffs into the water. This is where the fire began and it has spread.

These were taken from our south boat ramp, the lake has been closed to boaters so the helicopter can dip the bucket it has beneath it into the water and then dump the water on the fire. I wasn’t able to get pictures of the helicopter because it wasn’t flying when we were taking these pictures.

We are hopeing the fire will be contained and extinguished by this weekend but we don’t know.

More in my next blog, plus I will catch on the other things we have done.

Dreams Do Come True

Sheridan Lake (Cont’d) June 11, 2012

Here are some pictures of the campground and our site:

This our camp site taken from the lake.

Part of the lake from our camp site.

The shore line by our camper.

The road in the camp loop, as you can see we have lots of trees.

You have to look close to see the horns on my buffalo hat.

Custer park buffalo herd with little ones.

More buffalo

Sarah feeding a friend in Custer park. These donkeys will eat right out of your hand and they will eat anything.

Sarah and Sharon feeding the donkeys. The brown one wouldn’t let Sarah out of his sight and he ate a whole bag of carrots.

Suzanne & Brad Abernathy on their visit to our place.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

My day off and the day I go to town to get on the internet. I went to the Slate Café, I can use their free wifi, I also had breakfast. I spent all morning there and left a bit after twelve. I picked up our mail and some groceries and went home. I spent the rest of the day reading. I have read five books since we have been here. I love to read so this is quite a treat for me, but if it wasn’t for the fact I don’t have internet I doubt I would have read that many books.

Friday, June 8, 2012

This is the day I work in the booth with Louie, another camp host, we work two until dark. It never fails though we have several folks come in after we close the booth. I always try to get to the campground before dark, trying to park one this rigs in the dark is no fun.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Worked the morning shift at the booth and didn’t have much to do. It seems to me the number of campers is lite but I have no history to base this on. The paper had an article in it the other day stating how the state campgrounds are having a record year for camping so far, so I don’t understand why we aren’t full on the weekends. Oh well, that is above my pay grade so I am not going to worry about it.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Today was a day of cleaning campsites after the campers left. Mark and Sharon came over for dinner. We fixed some tenderloin tips in the crockpot with onion, carrots, celery and potatoes. It was great, Sarah made brownies and we had those for desert with ice cream.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Today was my turn at the beach, nine to four with time off for lunch. I police up the area first thing when I get there and then sit around waiting for customers. I had two customers all day, it was cloudy, 65 and windy so I didn’t expect much business. This is where I get a lot of reading done.