Life's Little Reminders

We all need little reminders once in a while and life has a way of bringing them up in the most humous ways. My most recent one went something like this....

“Never Again!” Barb said after an intense 8 hour drive on slick and slippery roads on our way south from Douglas to Sioux Falls. Multiple cars in the ditch, our own rig slipping about a foot sideways on more than one bridge and everything in the rig was frozen up. I was trying to make things better, in hindsight I should have maybe said something other than what I did but the words that came out of my mouth were “Calm down”…. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe something like this????

Words to live by? Not so much!

 What I got was more like this.....

Lesson learned (again, as I am sometimes a slow learner!) 

The next day did not start out much better as we traveled through Sioux City and east across Iowa where the weather cleared and the roads got better. The temps stayed in the teens and 20’s so we did not thaw out but at least we did not have a death grip on the steering wheel. That night we decided to stay at a campground where we could at least plug into electric. We chose the only Passport America park in the Davenport Iowa area. Actually it was in Orion Illinois. At $15/night it was worth it for the electricity but that was about it. The Hillcrest Event Center/Golf Course/Campground looks like it has been shut down for over a year. The golf course was overgrown, the event center looked abandoned and the campground in ruins. But we were committed. There were a handful of long-term residents there but could not find anyone who was in charge so we called the number on the internet and he said just park anywhere….so we did. No water, no sewer but at least we have electricity!

Another 6 hours to Groshen Indiana where we spent two nights at the Elkhart County 4-H Campground. They have 20 sites that are open year round. Most were full but luckily there was 3 for us to choose from. We were still froze up so we were thankful for the bathroom and shower facilities right next to the campground.  Our reason for spending two days here is that we arrived on a weekend and we had an appointment at MORryde bright and early Monday morning. We had a new Independent Suspension System and disk brakes installed on our rig in March of '15 and  other than changing the brake pads and greasing the bearings we had not done anything to it. So we set up an appointment to have it inspected on our way through. 

They start at 6:00am so we arrived bright and early Monday morning. After about an hour wait a gentleman came out with a car creeper, scooted under the rig, came out 15 minutes later and said everything looked great and we were free to go, no charge. Happy to have the peace of mind that everything was still good, we headed on down the road.  

We tried to stay at the Walmart in Wooster Ohio the next night but when we asked they did not allow overnight RV parking so we carried on another 30 miles to the town of New Philadelphia where they said we were welcome to stay.

The final leg our brought us through 4 states in a matter of a couple of hours. Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland before returning to Pennsylvania. It was a long 5 full days of driving but we took it slow, took some scenic routes and avoided every toll. We went through some very beautiful country in each of these states. 

One of the many foggy hills of West Virginia

The leaves were gone for the most part, only a few hardy oaks still hanging on to what was a memory of warmer times. The section of West Virginia we went through was especially beautiful with all the hills and valleys.

We added 3 new states to our "Where we have visited" map on the sidebar. Two pink (West Virginia and Maryland) and one green (Pennsylvania). We use a site called Gas Food No Lodging for our North American map. I have looked at others but I like the way this one allows you to color code states and the way it combines the U.S. with Canada. The thing I don't like about it is that you have to create the entire map every time you add a new state. 

Our color coding goes something like this;

• red for states where you've not spent much time or seen very much.
• amber for states where you've at least slept and seen some sights.
• blue for states you've spent a lot of time in or seen a fair amount of.
• green for states you've spent a great deal of time in on multiple visits.

By the end of this winter we hope to have more of the east coast colored in but since we have no definitive plans, only time will tell.

After arriving in Greencastle, we backed into Jessica and Shane's driveway and after getting all set up, we went to dinner at one of their favorite Mexican restaurants.

It is great to see Jess, Shane, Dylan and Kendall, we will have lots of time as we are all settled into our new spot for the next 4 weeks. We are all thawed out and everything is working. Well kinda thawed out as the day after we got there they were hit with a big snowstorm, Jess seems to think we brought the cold and snow with us!

Daisy and Dakota are tired of the snow and have decided to hibernate the rest of the winter....

Other than the snow, the 10 day weather forecast looks variable with highs in the mid 40's and lows in the 30's. The kids are in school all day, Jessica and Shane are at work so we will have lots of time for exploring. The only thing on our list so far is a couple of breweries and Gettysburg so if you have any suggestions of things we should see within a couple hours of here let us know!

Oh, by the way, I found a few mantra to live by which is now the home page on my iPad…..