Monday, September 24, through Monday, October 1, 2012:  Almost to Austin:
Heading into Texas on Monday, we got an early start since we had to get both the truck and the trailer inspected.  We hadn’t been in Texas for a couple of years, so our inspection stickers were quite out of date.  We stopped at CBJ Tire & Alignment in Gainesville, the first available place on I-35 according to the state’s internet site.  They were very efficient, and friendly, and we were quickly on our way.

Our destination was The Vineyards Campground in Grapevine, Texas, just 69 miles from Thackerville (and very near the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport).  It’s just beautiful---and expensive.  Our site is right on Lake Grapevine.  We plan to spend three days here.

The name Grapevine suggests the presence of vineyards, so it should be no surprise that there is a wine presence here.  Immediately, we just had to visit the Delaney Winery, one of four wineries located in the area, and the only one with an actual local vineyard.  It was fun, but we didn’t buy anything.  Amazing!

Monday night, I watched the most bizarre ending to an NFL football game.  The officials, being replacements---since there is a labor dispute going on---couldn’t have been more incompetent.  I didn’t really care who won, but I must say in fairness that the Packers won the game.  But, in the end, the officials simply gave the game to the Seahawks with two wholly unsupportable calls at the end of the game.



On Tuesday, Becky got her hair done, then we set out to get some sushi.  Our timing was not good, and the rush hour traffic was daunting.  After several attempts to get to our destination by various routes, we gave up and had Mexican food instead.  We ate at Esparza's Restaurante Mexicano.  It was delicious, and our waiter, Angel, was delightful.

While Becky was getting her hair done, I finally got to work on assembling our materials for our 2011 federal income tax return.  (Being residents of Texas, where there is no income tax, we don't have a state tax return.)  We always file in October, so I submit the information to our accountant (located in Longmont, Colorado) by the end of September.  I completed the submission, but the same traffic that prevented us from having sushi prevented us from getting the materials to FedEx on Tuesday.  We'll handle that on Wednesday.   

We realized late Tuesday that Ramsey's anxiety on Monday and Tuesday nights had been caused by the roar of the jets at DFW.  He apparently thought it was thunder, since he acts the same way when we have thunderstorms.  There was little we could do but comfort him.
  

On Wednesday, Becky got a pedicure, filled the truck with fuel, and then we headed to nearby Plano---and the nearest Trader Joe's.  We needed to pick up goodies for The Austin Ebberts, who will not have a TJ in Austin until 2014.  There are certain TJ products they became hooked on during their southern California days.

Thursday, we moved 92 easy miles to Whitney, Texas, an out-of-the-way place on Lake Whitney.  There are several RV parks in the area.  We have usually stayed at the Thousand Trails preserve there, but this time we opted for the Sun Country RV Resort, which is next door to the TT place, just to guarantee access to 50-amp electrical service since it will undoubtedly be hot.  The word "resort" is a bit misplaced; this joint needs a lot of TLC.  But it will be fine for the 5 days we plan to be here---doing little but relaxing.

On Friday, Becky went into the town of Whitney to buy some groceries.  Otherwise, we didn't accomplish much.  On Saturday, the heat broke for a while because it rained all day---holding the temperature down to 63 degrees.  That freed me to watch a lot of football.   Ramsey was walked with his rain gear.

         
Late on sunday, the rain went away, and we spent the next day and a half just hanging out and celebrating the sun.

Tuesday, September 18, through Sunday, September 23, 2012: Heading South:
On Tuesday, we traveled the 180 miles to Doniphan, Nebraska (all on I-80), which is adjacent to Grand Island, where my son’s in-laws live.

We are staying at the Grand Island KOA Kampground, a typically-nice KOA park.  We have a nice site.  It’s a little windy here, but we’ll survive.

We haven’t seen Ron and Una Von Behren in nine years. 

They are fun and very interesting, and we spent a great two days mostly partying with them.  Tuesday night, their granddaughter, Kaylyna,

joined the four of us for dinner at the Von Behrens’ home.  On Wednesday, Becky and Una took a ten-mile bike ride around Grand Island,

then Ron and Una visited us at our RV and stayed for dinner---surprisingly good pizza made at the RV park by the managers.

While Becky was on her bike ride, I tackled the problem of installing the new electrical converter that waiting for us when we arrived.  It turned out to be a lot easier to install than I had thought, once I had emptied our largest storage space to get access to its location.  And it worked!

Thursday, we trekked to Wichita, Kansas, a long but easy 260 miles.  We are staying at the USI RV Park, a nice place just east of town.

On Friday, Becky found a dog park so Ramsey could run a bit.  It was huge and very nice---and empty.  Almost immediately, another dog arrived (a beautiful Alaskan Husky), so we kept Ramsey on leash.  After a while, it seemed that he was OK with the new dog, so we took him off leash (with another dog present) or the first time in two years.  They played very well together.  It was great fun to see Ramsey playing with another dog.

Saturday involved an easy 139-mile trek to Guthrie, Oklahoma, about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City.  (Guthrie was the first capital of Oklahoma, by the way, giving way to Oklahoma City in 1910).  The first football game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, then known as Oklahoma A&M, took place in Guthrie in 1904.  Obviously, this place is full of fascinating history.  (A city has to be proud of something, after all.)  There are a number of beautiful old buildings here, said to have the country's largest collection of historic buildings in a downtown area.    

We are staying at the Cedar Valley RV Park & Resort (the "resort" is a 3-Par Golf Course).  It's very new, very nice, and quite compact.  There are 71 RV sites, all pull-thru.   

One reason for stopping here was to have dinner with our niece Lauren Carroll, who goes to school in nearby Stillwater. 

Saturday night, we met her and her friend Cheyenne at the Stables Cafe.  The food was good, seeing Lauren was fun, and meeting Cheyenne was interesting.  She's quite the independent, self-starter.

Sunday, we made the 139-mile trip down I-35 to Thackerville, Oklahoma, which was just a one-day stopover on our way south.  Thackerville is the quarter horse Capital of the World.  Yippee!  We are staying at the Red River Ranch RV Resort.  We were here nearly two years ago.  That time, Ramsey got stuck under the building housing the office.  It took us a couple of hours to coax him out.  We were very careful this time to keep him on a tight leash.  It’s not a great RV park, but it does the job.

Being off-season and Sunday, there were few people there and the office was closed.  So we just picked a spot, put some money in the drop box, and left the next morning---never having seen any of the park staff.

The new, big attraction in Thackerville is the Winstar Casino, a Chickasaw Indian project that is amazing. It is located just four miles from our RV park, and one mile from the Texas border.  At more than 500,000 square feet, the casino is said to be the second largest in the world.  (Nobody seemed to know where the biggest one is.)  The casino is astounding.

In spite of its being very new and very high tech, it still smells of cigarette smoke, though, like every other casino.  We went there primarily to see it, and secondarily to pick up dinner at the Panda Express, which is one of the many restaurants housed there.

It was a Sunday afternoon and the place was mobbed.  We were told that most of the customers were from Texas, and the license plates in the parking lot supported that.

Wednesday, September 12, through Monday, September 17, 2012:  Six Days in Iowa:
The trip to Davenport, Iowa, was an easy 141 miles.  We are staying in the RV section of the West Lake Park, huge, beautiful park run by the Scott County Conservation Board.

I made contact again with the people from whom I'm trying to get the electrical part.  They had never returned my calls, of course.  They agreed to a simple way to solve my problem, and they convinced me it would easy for me to install it.  We should receive the new part in a few days.  We'll see how that works out.

Davenport is one of the five cities comprising "The Quad [sic] Cities" of Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline, Illinois.  They straddle the Mississippi River.  Naturally, it's a very industrial area.   

Shortly after we arrived in Davenport, we had a small ceremony attaching the state of Iowa to our RV map.  It is the final state of the contiguous 48 states that we have visited in our RV.  (We have also now visited 6 of the 10 Canadian provinces in our RV.)

On Thursday, we met with Dan Portes, a retained head hunter whose office is in Davenport.  Becky had hired Dan in 1999 to find someone to fill a key spot in her Wealth Management Division when she was an EVP at Sanwa Bank.  They had fun catching up.

We then went to nearby Le Claire, Iowa, to have lunch at a restaurant with a reputation for serving a special wine-based lunch every Thursday.  It turned out that they stopped that program after Labor Day and are now closed on Thursday.  Thus dejected, we walked to the Sneaky Pete's Saloon a block away and had a nice lunch, anyway.  I had a hamburger steak.  The building Pete's occupies is the oldest commercial building in Le Claire, and was originally a hotel.

Le Claire is "picturesque," which means it has a bunch of old buildings, and not much else, but it is the ancestral home of Buffalo Bill Cody, and houses the Buffalo Bill Museum, located between Sneaky Pete's and the Mississippi River.

After lunch, we ventured a little farther up the Mississippi to Clinton, Iowa, where my mother's relatives had a farm many years ago.  We stopped at WalMart there to pick up some supplies.   

It was at least drizzling most of Thursday, so after visiting Clinton, we headed back to Davenport and hid under the bed (figuratively).  Tomorrow, it's on to Grimes, Iowa.

Grimes, just outside of Des Moines, the state capital, is 170 miles from Davenport---all of it on I-80.  We are staying at Cutty's Des Moines Camping Club, a huge (500 RV sites) place with lots of grass and trees.  It's very pretty.  We are in a nice end-of-the-row site with a large side yard.

This is also the second RV park in a row that doesn't take reservations.  In the case of the park in Davenport, I was told it's because they would be completely booked up all year the minute they opened reservations, and they want to give people a real chance to stay there.  In the case of the park here in Grimes, I believe it's because they have so many sites no one is ever turned away and there is no point in gumming up the works with reservations.

Since today (Friday) is a travel day, we pretty much relaxed once we got here.

Saturday, we hit the trifecta---Costco, WalMart, and Trader Joe's. 

What a day!  Otherwise, we just relaxed and walked Ramsey.  And, Saturday night, I certainly enjoyed watching Stanford beat the Trojans.

It was 142 miles from Grimes to Little Sioux, Iowa, and the weirdest RV park we’ve ever stayed in.  The Woodland Campground has 1,000 sites, 986 of which are owned and used by members who live here permanently---in RVs of various ages, but mostly old and with varying degrees of decrepitude (as are also the members).

That is to say, of the 1,000 sites there are only 14 sites available to the public.  (You might ask, “Why even bother, then, dealing with the public?”)  They have assigned us to a terrific site, with easy entry and exit, with no trees to block our satellite reception, and with good water and electric facilities.  There is no sewer connection, but that’s OK since we will be here only two days.  The park is almost 40 years old, and it shows.

Sunday afternoon, we headed to Omaha (30+ miles away) just to take a look, neither of us having been there before.  We scoped out the downtown area, which, being Sunday, was largely empty.  It’s a nice-looking area, with a lot of apparent redevelopment.  That is, there are few old buildings.  There is an interesting park development---covering three separate sites, which are thematically related to the pioneer spirit that developed the area.  There are beautiful sculptures of the pioneers, their wagons,

and the bison that once roamed there, and of the Canadian geese that soared there.

Omaha is on the Missouri River, across the river from Council Bluffs, Iowa.  But driving from one part of Omaha to another, we passed a sign that said, “Welcome to Iowa.”  It turns out that there was a flood more than a century ago that changed the course of the Missouri River such that the tiny city of Carter Lake, Iowa, was suddenly isolated on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River.  Both states then claimed “ownership” of Carter Lake.  The U.S. Supreme Court decided that it still belonged to Iowa, making it the only part of Iowa that lies west of the Missouri River.  How's that for an interesting factoid?

Being on the Missouri River, we are again in Lewis & Clark country.  We stopped at the local regional office of the National Park Service and once again were faced with a pile of L & C history and memorabilia.  Fascinating.  They really did courageous and amazing things in their exploration.

We also went to Rick’s Boatyard Café for a quick drink overlooking the Missori River.  It was very serene.  Then returned to our RV park to while away the rest of the day.

On Monday, we went to Tekemah, Nebraska, to have dinner with Rich and Carol Smiley, who live there.  Rich worked with Becky at Union Bank about 15 years ago.  Tekemah is about five miles from Little Sioux if you're a bird, but about 25 miles away otherwise.  We had to drive north, then cross an old bridge with a measly $1.00 toll, then head back south.  But it was worth it.  The Smileys are fun people, and we enjoyed seeing them and their little town.

That trip to Nebraska ended our six days in Iowa.

                  

Thursday, September 6, through Tuesday, September 11:  The Illinois Adventure: 
We left Marshall early on Thursday morning, headed for LaPorte, Indiana, 130 miles away.  It was an easy trip, and we arrived at the Cassidy Motel & RV Park early. 

The owner assigned us one site, then changed his mind and, before we separated the truck and trailer, suggested another site---frankly a better one.  Of course, we took it.  (We realized later that the owner is a bit strange, having been here since his grandfather built the place many years ago.)  It's an odd setup, having both a small RV park and a motel.   The motel is the second one built on the property, the first having been torn down due to deterioration.  But it turned out to be just fine.  We're here for only one day, as a stopover on our way to Illinois. 

There is not much in LaPorte, so we headed to nearby Michigan City (named for the lake, not the state) which is on the roughly 50-mile coastline that Indiana has on Lake Michigan.  Becky needed some new workout clothes and there is a huge factory outlet mall in Michigan City, very near the docks.  She hit the jackpot at the Champion store there.

Michigan City is an old, industrial city going through some redevelopment activity, and is, therefore, not too pretty---especially since one of its most visible landmarks is the smokestack on its nuclear powerplant.  (I have nothing against nuclear powerplants, it's just that this smokestack is so prominent.)

Friday morning, we headed for Belvidere, Illinois, near Rockford.  (Why it's spelled Belvidere, not Belvedere is not known to me.)  We are to be here for five days, as a break from our recent hectic schedule (before Marshall) of successive two-day stays.  It was a relatively easy 115 miles, and going through Chicago during rush hour on the "Chicago Skyway" toll road involved only a little bumper-to-bumper traffic. 

In part because we gained an hour when we crossed into Illinois, we got here too early and the site we had been assigned was not yet vacant.  The people who were in the site dragged out their departure until the last minute hoping for a cancellation so they could stay another day.  We cooled our heels for almost two hours waiting for them to leave.  We were happy to oblige, since we had earlier been alerted that, through a computer-system error, the park had overbooked for this weekend and we almost were denied any space at all.



We are staying at the Pine Country RV Park, an Outdoor World place, part of the Thousand Trails system.  It's very large, several hundred acres, and quite nice.  We have one of the very few pull-through, full hookup sites.

Becky unexpectedly ran into a friend, Dennis Bloomingdale.  We originally met Dennis in Harlingen, Texas, during the winter of 2009.  Dennis is a pickleball player.  We also saw him in Southern California, during the winter of 2010.  Dennis and his wife are from this part of Illinois.  They stay at this park during the summer because they have seven children and 18 grandchildren in the area.

Friday night, we took home dinner from the Panda Express, located just a couple of miles away at the nearest rest stop on the Interstate.  It was a bit of a surprise that we had to go through the toll plaza to get back from the restaurant, so it cost us an extra $3.00 to get home.

Saturday morning, we went to the nearest Ace Hardware store in Belvidere to get a new air pump for our bike tires, since the old one died on Friday and Becky planned to hit the local trails---which she did on Saturday afternoon.  It was a nice 16-mile ride on the Belvidere bike route.
  

It's country music weekend here.  Saturday night, there was a concert of sorts at the rec center at the RV park.  A six-member family (called “The Amber Wave Band”) played mostly bluegrass music.  The youngest was about 9.  She just screeched.  But her older brother (Sean, age 12) played the fiddle.  They weren’t the Osmonds, but they were actually pretty good.

Sunday, Becky drove to Crystal Lake, about 23 miles away, to visit Nancy Hardwick, a sorority sister of Becky's at U. C. Santa Barbara many years ago. 

They took a bike ride and then had nachos for dinner at Nancy's house.

Ramsey and I slept.

Monday evening, we drove to Schaumberg (near the O'Hare airport) to meet Don and Lynette Stone for dinner at Seasons 52, a very nice restaurant. 

Don and Becky worked together at first Interstate Bank a long time ago.  He is now the owner of an investment counseling firm in Chicago.  They live in Winnetka; Schaumberg, while an hour away from Belvidere, is about halfway between Winnetka and Belvidere.  It was great fun seeing them again after what was determined to have been 16 years.

I had a wonderful piece of salmon for dinner.

Monday afternoon, a part of our electrical system failed---for the third time.  I knew the symptoms and immediately took corrective action to make the system work, though not ideally.  Tuesday morning, I started the process of trying to get the part manufacturer to replace the part immediately and under warranty.  We'll see how that works out.

Tuesday afternoon, Becky took another bike ride---this time 18 miles to Rockford.  I picked her up there, and we spent the rest of the day picking up a few things and getting ready to leave Illinois on Wednesday morning.