The Struggles of Life

When you become of a certain age your days revolve around one or two things. Important things. Things that if they do not go right can ruin your entire day. Funny, when we were both working, we were juggling a handful of stressful things with ease and invariably one or two did not go right and we took them in stride. Not anymore.

What these things are vary from person to person or in our case couple to couple. Maybe you don't get a good night's sleep. Maybe you wake up with an ache or pain. Or heaven forbid your favorite player does not do well on Jeopardy or The Wheel of Fortune!

We have a routine in the morning when we are in the camper, Barb gets up first, gets ready and takes the dogs out for their morning walk. This is my signal to get up and get ready. Much easier to move around and get ready with them all gone. But I have yet to know if we are going to have a good day or not. I will not find that out until she returns. Actually, it is only the first of a two-step process that will tell us if our day will be a good one or one filled with tension and stress. 

After getting ready, I get back up in bed and start reading blogs or looking on The Facebook. When Barb returns, I put everything down and look at her expectantly. "Well?", I ask. Here is it the moment that will tell me if we will have a good day. I look at Barb's face with hope. "She went boom-boom", she replies and a wave a relief washes over me. Step one down, now for step two....

Barb starts warming up the water for her coffee and picks up both dog dishes and fills them up; two scoops of dry for Dakota and a scoop for Zoey. Each with a dollop of canned dogfood on top. Dakota gets out from under the dinette and immediately starts eating hers. Zoey will slowly walk up to hers like she is expecting brussel sprouts or something and starts nosing it. This is the other moment of truth, we have to ignore her, if we stare at her she will not eat, so Barb starts making her coffee while watching Zoey out of the corner of her eye; "Come on girl, you can do it, make it a good day", I silently pray. 

Yes, that is what our lives have evolved to, from stressful careers managing dozens of people, handling projects and troubleshooting issues to having a good day hinge on whether or not your dog goes boom-boom and eats her breakfast. If either go wrong, and they do, there will be worry until both of these tasks are complete. Not by me mind you, by the other one. That, my friends is our life. I know you dog owners out there can relate. 

By now many of you have figured out that I did not end up in an urn this past week. Either that risk has past or the appointment she set up is for when we return home. The next question is whether or not we are now pulling a boat?!?!? As you may recall, there were two that we (I) were interested in; one in Lee's Summit Missouri and one in Eau Claire Wisconsin and now a third that showed up last week in Hutchinson Minnesota. 

We left the Camping World in Calera, Alabama and continued to make our way northwest to Memphis Tennessee. A first for us and maybe a last. We have been in some dirty cities in our years, but this one might take the top spot. Maybe it was just the area we were in, but trash and garbage everywhere. I have no idea how this city could ever get clean again, there was litter everywhere! Where we did spend the night was pretty cool though, the Bass Pro Shop. Their premiere pyramid location. 

I loved this mount of three varieties of teal on one display. You birders out there will know what each of them are. 

What I really like though were the vintage decoys. Oh, to own some of these.....

While it is a free spot to stay in their parking lot, it was pretty noisy as there is an interstate bridge right above us.  The next day was another first for us. The first time in 12 years of traveling that we have ever set a foot (or wheel) in Arkansas!

Our next stop was one that we had been looking forward to for a while and happened to be right on our way. Mansfield Missouri, which happens to be the home of Shawn and Kim, an RV couple we met in Arizona many years ago. You may also remember them from a post when we had supper on their sailboat in Big Pine Keys Florida about this same time last year. 

We spent the afternoon on their side by side touring their ranch. What an interesting piece of property! Of course, I only got one picture of them as they were walking downhill after showing us a natural spring. 

After that we headed into town for supper at a new Mexican place followed by happy hour at the clubhouse at the ranch. So good to catch up with them again. 

The next morning, we were off to see our first boat!

We arrived at the owners address in Lee's Summit just after 12:00 noon and there in the driveway was the boat. Better in person than it looked in the pictures. Shinier, cleaner, more features and accessories that we had anticipated. Over the next 60 minutes we went over everything. I asked questions, tested each of the electronics. Laid on my back and inspected the hull, ran the motor. Everything checked out. After a quick conference with Barb, I started talking price with the guy. We settled on a number that we were both happy with, shook hands and the deal was done! Well, not quite, I had to go to the bank and get some money. I had transferred some from one account to another and it was not going to be available until that morning. One of the things you deal with when you travel is banking. About the only bank we have found readily available across the country is Wells Fargo. We use that account as our traveling account and it did not have enough money in it, thus the transfer. Off to the bank we went. Not a huge deal, but more of a deal than usual. Getting out that much money in cash required the managers involvement, but I was in and out of there in 30 minutes.

After hooking up the boat we headed down the road with no destination in mind. We had no idea where we were going after this if we weren't going to Wisconsin. I was driving, Barb was hovering over the atlas and her phone trying to see where we should go. I was asking her where we were going, she was stressed... Finally, I just said "I am going to pull over until we figure this out". I see a huge empty parking lot and pull in. It was a closed business plenty of room for us to park and figure things out. We noticed that the adjacent building however was open with cars in front of it. I look to see what kind of business it was and started laughing. Barb, not yet seeing the humor, looks up from her atlas and says, "What's so funny?". "Look where we parked", I replied. She looks up, grabs all her computer, phone, atlas, gets out of the truck and heads straight for the business. What is the business you ask? A brewery of course! Transparent Brewing Company to be exact. What are the odds that we randomly pull over and it just happens to be in a brewery parking lot?!?!? 

I took this picture in the parking lot. Doesn't look like this boat was specifically designed to be behind this truck/camper combo?!?!

One hour and one beer later we had a plan. 45 minutes later we were pulling into a Bass Pro Shop outside of Kansas City. If you are ever in the area and looking for a free place to stay. DO NOT pick here. Not that there is anything wrong with the business, it is just that 200' away is a fire hall and rescue station. Sirens all night long!

The next morning, we drove west two hours arriving at Milford State Park right around 1:00pm. A beautiful state park on Milford Lake. The day we arrived it was 75, the next day 81. Talk about two beautiful days! $21/night off season, we were the only two in the campground. But that is not the best part, the best part is the lake! 

We spent two days on the water testing out the new boat, no fishing, just puttering around, reading and enjoying the days. Just what we needed! 

Dakota just chilled on the deck and slept. Zoey was interested in everything that was going on around her. 

After two days, we packed up and continued out way west towards home. Two 5-hour days if we hurried, which would bring us home Saturday, but there was a weather event heading our way; high winds; 30mph sustained, gusts over 50mph. We found refuge in North Platte Nebraska at a Harvest Host in the form of Pals Brewing Company. We pointed the rig into the wind to minimize the rocking from the wind, went inside for a couple of beers and a pizza before tucking in for the night. 

Barb got an interesting flight!

The following morning the wind was still at about 20mph, but very managable. We drove the remaining 5 hours, arriving home around 2:00pm. Forrest, Somer and Lily greeted us, yup, they are still holding down the fort! 

After 11 weeks of adventures, we made it home! We unloaded the truck of all the bottles we had acquired. Anyone care to take a guess how many bottles? I will give you a little help, below is a picture of some, but not all the bottles we got.  

I will reveal the answer in our next post, until then, I will leave you with this video. Since Harry (the now dog lover) said that he would rather have dog videos over people videos on the beach, here is a video of Zoey on one of our drives. I thought about putting this on a loop and telling Harry to watch it to the end. Who knows how long he would have watched it for!