Week ending Oct 29, 2015 Dubuque to Hannibal

Friday after a Skype visit with John's parents we moved from the Dubuque County Fairgrounds to Miller Riverview park.  It is perfectly situated on the banks of the Mississippi River. 

 

Saturday we did a scenic drive north to the Effigy Mounds.
 

While there we completed a 2 mile hike that included Little Bear Mound Group and Fire Point and Eagle Rock viewpoints. The viewpoints looked out over the river.

We also noticed a CP engine.   CP purchased the DME railroad about 10 years ago, but this is the first actual CP engine we have seen in this area.

Sunday was a beautiful day, we did a walk around the park, watched the river traffic and finally watched the Nascar race.

Monday it was time to head south.   We headed across the river into Illinois, going through the towns of Galena, Hanover, Savanna, Fulton and Port Byron.    Our Great River Road brochure indicated that there was a Welcome Center in Le Claire, back on the Iowa side, with a view 6 miles along the river.  However, we only found a Shell station at the address listed.  Not sure whether this was a GPS mistake, or a listing error, but we were disappointed. 

We had been planning on staying at Nauvoo State Park on the Illinois side of the river,  but we decided to look for something closer to the Toolesboro Mounds site near Wapello.   At our lunch stop we made a call to check about a couple of campgrounds that were listed in an Iowa guide.   They turned out to be County campgrounds along the river south of Muscatine.  One had a steep descent to the river, but the other one would have been okay.  However, the lady also recommended a private campground on the highway near Wapello.   We called Papa's Campground and yes they have space and yes their water is still on. Only the 2nd rv park with the water still on since we left Canada.  We got set up.

Tuesday was our first rainy day of this trip.   We saw on the internet that after Labour Day, the Toolesboro Mounds are only open on Saturday from noon to four.   Coincidentally, the number listed was the same as for the County Campgrounds, so we may have been talking to the same lady as yesterday.   She confirmed the times, but said that although the visitor center would be closed, there were some interpretive signs at the site.

We can't let a bit of rain stop us so we headed to Walmart and Lowes in Burlington to pick up a few supplies and get John's glasses repaired. We then drove to the Toolesboro Mounds.  The burial mounds here are examples of the mounds of the Hopewellian Culture which is a one of the pre-historic mound building groups that inhabited the Mississippi valley.  The people of the Hopewellian culture were known for their artistic achievements and elaborate death ceremonies. These burial mounds date from  the mid-woodland period being 200 B.C. to 400 A.D.  We were surprised to find out that such a highly developed people resided in North America.

After visiting the burial mounds we went back to the trailer and hoped that the rain stops by tomorrow.

Wednesday morning although cloudy was not raining, making packing up much more pleasant. We stopped for fuel and breakfast at Casey's.  We plugged the address of Mark Twain Landing Resort into Greta, looked at the map so we had a reasonably good idea of our route and headed off.  Today we had another example of why you don't follow your GPS blindly. Greta did very well until she instructed us to turn right onto an obscure muddy road, not so likely we figured, since our turn was supposed to be on Landing Lane. A few yards down the road our turn appeared and we shortly arrived at the resort. It seems like an ok place, close to the places we want to go and one of the few rv parks in the area with it water still on and offers wi-fi to its guests. 

Thursday we headed toward Quincy, Illinois, to check about getting our T-Mobile hotspot activated. On our way to Best Buy we made an unexpected stop at a Missouri welcome centre. A real find, the fellow there was not only helpful he had a raft of information about all the states we will be visiting as we head down toward New Orleans.  After chatting with the phone people at Best Buy we decided that waiting another week or so until we get to St. Louis is the best.  In the mean time we are relying on our phone as a hotspot as well as campground wi-fi.

Our next stop was Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum.

 Becky Thatcher's House

It was quite interesting and John discovered there were numerous books written by Mark Twain that he still needs to read.  After doing the museum, we were ready for lunch and luckily for us across the street from the museum was the Mark Twain Brewery.   Joan enjoyed a pint of Riverboat Red beer along with her chicken salad, John enjoyed his Hucks Apricot Habanero Wheat beer with a steak sandwich. It was then back to the trailer to study our travel info and enjoy the sunny day.

Week ending Oct 22, 2015 North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa

Thursday morning we left Regina early, stopping for our final Tim Hortons treat at Weyburn before  crossing the border. We carried on to Lewis and Clark State Park on the shore of Lake Sakakawea.. After setting up we went for a walk on the great trails in the park.

The Bakkan oil field is located partly down the Western edge of  both North and South Dakota, so we saw what an economic boom this field is to the Dakota's. We were very thankful for the website rvpark reviews because through it we discovered most of the private parks were full of oilfield workers. The state park does not allow full time trailers therefore was very quiet. In fact other than a tent in the tent area we were the only people in the park. 

Friday morning we hit the road early, by 7:00 A.M. The drive was quite scenic, including the Missouri river, the Little Missouri River,

and White Butte the highest point in South Dakota

which looks down on the town of Amidon, the smallest county seat in the USA. We also stopped at the geographic center of the  USA,  but the drive to the marker was closed, with a very nasty looking barbed wire fence.  We couldn't even cross it to walk up to the monument.  We were curious about how a location this far north could be the center of the USA.  This spot is based on balancing out the mass of Alaska and Hawaii, which makes it significantly north of the center of the 48 states, which is in Kansas.  We crossed  the Redwater River just out of Belle Fourche.  Our campground stop was Three Flags Campground in Black Hawk, South Dakota.  Despite the fact that the railroad ran just between the campground and the freeway, we did get a good sleep.

Saturday, our first stop was our primary reason for staying here; Mount Rushmore. While waiting in the line-up to pay our entrance fee we saw a couple of mountain  goats having a mid-morning snack on the grass by the entrance.

After walking through Borglum court, down the Avenue of Flags we arrived at the grand viewing viewing terrace, the second best place to get pictures of the the faces carved in the mountain. The first place is a viewpoint on the highway before you get to the national monument.

We then walked the presidents; trail, a nice trail through a ponderosa pine forest.  The next stop was Crazy Horse Memorial. It is less than half completed and has been a work in progress for over 50 years. 

The original sculptor has passed away and his kids (now in their 30 - 50 have taken over the project.
He created a model that is 1/34 actual size, that is the basis for the work.

See  the Crazy Horse Memorial website for details. We spent quite a while viewing the museum, watching the info video and enjoying the really nice day. We had a picnic lunch with a view of the monument. Enough education for one day so off to get groceries. We needed veg's, fruit and meat, since this was our first shopping trip since crossing the border. The battery on Joan's tablet had died before leaving Canada and after trying to get a new one we discovered it was both cheaper and faster to replace it. Joan now has a new tablet, hopefully it works as well as her old one, well better because the battery only lasted a bit more than a year. Back to the trailer to watch the Blue Jays sadly lose to Kansas City Royals.

Sunday morning we headed to the Sidehack Bar and Grille in Sturgis for what had been promised by the various reviews as the best breakfast in town. It was ok and by the time it was served we were hungry so fussy we weren't.  After breakfast we  headed to Deadwood of Wild Bill Hickok fame.

 It was an interesting town. We wandered down the historic main street, admiring the architecture. Check out www.deadwoodhistorylink.com. The drive back to the campground was along another scenic state highway. We can see why this area of South Dakota is so well liked by hikers, bikers and campers.

Monday  morning we left early for Famil-E-Fun campground a couple of miles outside of Mitchell South Dakota. On the route we stopped at 1880 Town, note the proliferation of the rabbit population.

Along the freeway, we were quite surprised to see many hunters in the fields hunting for pheasants. After setting up we went to the the Prehistoric Indian Village. We had a guided tour of the site which  was very interesting. The Prehistoric Indian Village is a 1,000 year-old Native American village being excavated by students from the University of Exeter and Augustana College.

 These people were farmers, not hunters, and had permanent buildings.

Mike Marshall is a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and a well-known Lakota artist and historian.  See more information at www.mitchellindianvillage.com. On the way back to the trailer, we saw the corn palace

and picked up a few groceries. The evening was spent watching the election results.

Tuesday morning our departure was a bit late because we have not adjusted to yesterday's time zone change. We think this is the only one until we start heading home in the spring. Mid-afternoon we arrived at Oakwood RV in Clear Lake, Iowa, got set up and then spent some time perusing the travel information we gathered at the Iowa Welcome Center. This fall is quite challenging as we are finding most RV parks are closed, but there are a few open without water or sewer, just electricity.  We have discovered that the state parks are open with electricity only.

Wednesday we left Oakwood RV park at Clear lake by 8:30. Our destination was Dubuque, Iowa. After a fairly uneventful drive for a couple of hour until we arrived at Guttenburg where we got our first view of  the Mississippi River and the colourful trees, which are reminding us of our trip to Nova Scotia in October almost 30 years ago.  We arrived at the Dubuque Fairground where we have an okay site with good satellite reception.  As always we have adventures, we plugged in but had no power. The maintenance man was very accommodating and called in one of the directors of the fairgrounds who called an electric company to fix a "leg" which had been short circuited by a squirrel.

Rather than waste time waiting for electricity to be repaired we headed downtown to visitor information. We  found an exceptionally helpful visitor info staff member, although despite her best effects could not answer our obscure questions. We picked up enough info to keep us occupied for the next day or two and headed back to see if we had electricity. Back at the trailer yes we have electricity, so John aligned the satellite and Joan is happy. 

Thursday morning our first stop was the The National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. It covers the history of the river and describes the varieties of fish, turtles,and snakes that reside in the waters.

After a few hours and information overload we headed to Eagle Point Park. The park is beautiful, trees are an explosion of fall colours. 

We saw a bald eagle, just as someone on TripAdvisor had reported the day before.  We did manage to get a few shots of it soaring along the river.

 Bald Eagle

 We had a picnic lunch on a bench overlooking the river at Dam and Lock #11.  John noticed a barge approaching the lock, so we thought we would watch.  What a procedure. The tug was pushing a series of barges, which were too long for the lock. Interesting we thought what now. Once the tug pushed the barges into the lock, a series of three barges, which fit perfectly into the lock were unhooked.  The tug then backed the two remaining barges out of the lock. The lock was lowered, the front gates opened and the barges were floated out of the lock, using the current of the river for power, as far as we could tell.

Once they floated forward far enough to close the gates, they were tied up awaiting the final two barges and the tug to join them.  This whole procedure took at least an hour.

On our way back to the trailer we checked out an RV park on an island in the river.  The office was closed for a while, so we called them later and arranged to stay for 3 days, since we have to leave the fairgrounds tomorrow to make room for wedding parking on Friday and Saturday.

Week ending Oct 14, 2015 Thanksgiving in Regina

Friday Carol (Joan's sister) and David her husband came in from Assiniboia and treated us to lunch at Browns Social House. We spent the afternoon visiting and late afternoon they headed for home. John picked up Dominique from the University of Regina after her classes. Karen arrived after work and after dinner we completed our plans for Thanksgiving dinner. We discovered there was a Thanksgiving rabbit in the RV park, we will be curious to see if  survives the the weekend.

Saturday Karen and Dominique came by, we did a shopping trip which also included a new TV for Karen. Her TV died Friday night. Our Christmas shopping is now finished.

Sunday we joined the kids at Karen's house. Trev and family had arrived late Saturday night.  Since our  weather had not co-operated, it had turned rainy, windy and cold, we cleaned out Karen's garage set up the picnic table and had Thanksgiving in her garage. We realize that sounds strange, but there are no cats in the garage, so all those with allergies were able to enjoy dinner. After dinner we played a new game Trev and Sue had brought with them called "Cards Against Humanity". We all had many good laughs, even though the game had some inappropriate moments.

Trev, Taylor, John, Anthony, Sue, Dominique, Joan
Jamie, Karen

Monday morning Trev and family arrived for omelets about 9:00 before they headed back to Calgary.

Tuesday was a day to take care of business details and sort through the fridge to decide what food gifts Karen would receive, since there are things we can't take over the border with us. Dominique was working so we just had  Karen over for dinner. We also emailed Lewis and Clark State Park, just outside of Williston North Dakota, to insure they had space for us on Oct 15th. Yes they do.

Wednesday we did a final laundry at Karen's and boiled all our eggs since hard boiled eggs are allowed but uncooked eggs may or may not be refused entry. It is easy being here because anything that we can't take into the states we can leave with Karen.

Tomorrow we head south across the border. 

Week ending Oct 8, 2015 Canmore to Regina

Friday Elizabeth came in from Canmore and after a bit of lunch we went over to Glenbow Provincial Park to hike. It was a perfect day, warm and sunny. Since the weather forecast was for freezing temps and snow overnight we figured the beautiful colorful trees would be gone by Saturday,

Saturday morning we woke to a cold windy morning. Good news though, no frost overnight. Too cold to go for a walk so we played Wii.

Sunday we walked up to pick up a few groceries then watched our usual Nascar race.

Monday we headed in to Calgary, our first stop was "CPR", not the railroad, Cell Phone Repair. Joan's tablet will not charge any longer. The diagnosis is a charger connector. It could be repaired if we could leave it for a week or so while they got the part. Since we leave for Regina on Wednesday we will get it repaired somewhere down the line.  After a stop at CIBC to get some US funds in preparation for our winter travels, we visited our financial advisor  to insure all was well. The next stop was Joan's visit to her Oncologist, her final visit since she is now 5 years cancer free. He told her that if there is a future problem all it will take is a phone call and he will see her  right away. Nice to have such good service from these doctors.

Tuesday we went for our flu shots. Thanks to Elizabeth in Canmore we were able to get the shots early this year. As a thank you we took Elizabeth to to a Mexican restaurant in Canmore for lunch.  John had the 'Mexican Bison Burger', not something you would expect as a Mexican dish. It was quite good.  While waiting for the flu clinic to open we had a quick visit with our old realtor turned insurance agent, Terry Reider.  We also encountered a previous B&B operator Jean Samis.  While getting our shots we discovered that the reason no one was offering early shots to snowbirds is due to provincial budget cuts. In Canmore they held a clinic for seniors and folks living in senior homes.  We had to convince the person checking us in that our birth dates did indeed qualify us as seniors.  In addition to the regular flu shot, we also got the pneumonia vaccine, now that we are seniors.  While waiting after our shot we had a short visit with Lester  and Bea  Carney.  Lester was the B & B association president when Joan was past president. We arrived back in Cochrane in time to check our mail for the last time until we return back here next April. Our  plan was to break up our drive to Regina by staying one night at Eagle Valley, but when we called them Tuesday evening, we got a recorded message saying they were closed for the season.   We called the campground in Regina to add Wednesday night to our reservation there. 

Wednesday morning we packed up and left Cochrane by 7:00 AM.  When we drove by Eagle Valley there were trailers in various sites, so maybe we could have stayed.  However on to Regina to honour our reservation.  We arrived at Kings Acres in Regina just after 5:00 P.M. That is a long day for us pulling the trailer. We got setup quickly and thanks to the lack of leaves on the trees, satellite alignment was easy.

Thursday morning the microwave decided it was time to retire.  Always something. 

Joan took advantage of Karen's new washer and drier to catch up on laundry. We then went for groceries in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner.

Week ending Oct 1, 2015 Cochrane

Friday we went out to Bowden to visit John parents and celebrate his Mom's birthday.

Saturday we went up to the elections office and cast our ballot, since we will be leaving before election day. We continued with our preparations for our winter trip, buying Joan a new computer, getting water filters for our water system. The weather continues to hold so we are able to use some of the walking trails we always enjoy in Cochrane.

Sunday was a day off, Nascar race and a bit of walking.

Monday we went to the drug store to and ordered John's pills, another learning experience since Blue Cross limits the number of pills they will pay for at one time.The druggist apparently arranges everything so we left it in his hands. No one at the drug stores here seem to know if there is going to be a early flu clinic for snowbirds, but our friend Elizabeth in Canmore discovered there is an early flu shot clinic for seniors only on Tuesday Oct 6. Very handy because it is the day before we leave for Regina and the day after Joan's final appointment with her Oncologist.

Tuesday we went to Cratex to pick up some desiccant to keep the moisture in the trailer at bay. We have trouble finding this, as the stores carry the containers, with a bit of desiccant in them, but don't carry the refills. After lunch while we waited for windows 10 to download onto Joan's new computer at the library, John picked up his pills at the drugstore.

Wednesday we made a quick trip in to Calgary to pick up Sue's large roast pan. Joan will be roasting a turkey for Thanksgiving  at Karen's and Trev and Sue will be able to take the leftovers home in the roast pan.

Thursday is clean-up day, but we took some time off to go for a walk through an area of Cochrane we hadn't been in before.  We are enjoying the river valley, the fall colours are really vibrant at the moment.