The trip told in pictures...

Why is this darn blog always lagging behind?
Because I am always busy taking and developing pictures. Most of the levity photos are quick iPhone snaps. Actually, I have been trying hard to take careless snaps for this blog. I have been taking carefully studied photographs for so long now, that I wanted to see if I am still capable to take a crappy photo. Apparently, I still got it!

Take a peak at the other side of the coin: This trip in photographs

Masonic Taco Night...

Around Fargo...

The first order of business in Fargo ND was to do laundry.
I really need to start taking photographs of the adds and messages on the message boards of launder-mats around the country. The one that caught my eye in Fargo:

Masonic Taco Night: $6 all you can eat and meet your local masons.

Some other odd signs and things:

Is this how kids call it these days?

Minnesota state bird:






Vincent Van Bison:



Immature local Bison that does not want to work in the family farm, subscribes to Guitar Magazine and plays in a garage band.



Too Big to Fail?...Oh! this will fail sooner rather than later.
While looking for these RV parts we came across this....remarkable (polite for odd) travel trailer. Is literally a rolling house.

Top 10 tips from newbies...

So, slowly but surely we have been learning the ways of life on the road. Mainly by sheer screw-ups and naivete.

So here are our top 10 tips from newbies:

10.- Develop a sign language to hitch and un-hitch. Shouting does not seem to work and after a while just raises the tempers: "You are too far!....closer! more!...my left? or your left?

You need to move this much....

...in this direction.

9.- When getting microscopically close to hitching and it is not happening because the moon is not aligned properly, use the jack-slider to zero-in. This may be relevant to Hensley hitch users only.

8.- After getting a couple pants christened with hitch grease stains, we develop this idea: The Hitch Bra! (a plastic groceries bag)




7.- Do not leave the water pump "on" while traveling....the sink faucet turns into a water sprinkler after the first railroad crossing or big bump.




6.- Buy a pair of "Mop Slippers" to mop after leaving the water pump on.




5.- Get an elbow for your city water inlet.



4.- Get one of those mesh filters to catch the gravel and dirt before it goes into the trailer plumbing. I have been amazed after I unhook and see this mesh full of gravel!



3.- You may think that gray water is not that bad. At least not as nasty as black water. Well...we started to notice that out gray water was getting -extra- smelly, rotten smelly. After close examination, we realized that small food solids were making it into the gray water tank. We found these sink strainers in a 99 cent store. We put strainers in the kitchen and bathroom sinks, and in the shower sink. This last one catches all the hair.




2.- Now, you may ask...how did you "closely" inspected the contents of your gray tank?
Well, enter the "Flush King" clear elbow adapter. I saved the yuckiest tip for last.
We bought this accessory by mistake, the Airstream has its own integrated black water flush system. But we found that this clear elbow has 3 advantages and uses:

- It lets you see when the tanks are "done" emptying, and how good or bad the flow is going.

- The angled elbow puts less stress in the pipe fittings.

- Once you are done dumping, you can close the black and gray valves, connect a water hose to the Flush King elbow and run water through to clean the mouth of the gray/black water outlet, and let water run to clean the sewer hose. The Flush King has a check valve that does not let the dirty water go into the water hose.



1.- Well, at the insistence of my wife...one more tip:
"Do not sweat the small stuff"

The early bird gets the worm...

2010-04-21:

The early bird gets the worm...in a cold early morning while other lazy birds get up at 10AM and get a worm covered in organic honey and walnuts with a cappuccino on the side.

Today we drove just a couple of hours form Itasca State Park to the outskirts of Fargo, North Dakota. We are stopping here to visit relatives from out dear former neighbors, Curt and Helen.

By the way, during this drive we came across two interesting town names...

Nimrod MN

and

Downer MN

We had a very hard time finding RV parks in Fargo, North Dakota. As a matter of fact, since we left St. Louis, we started to come across “closed for the season” private parks, and State Parks with all services turned off for the season. It seems that up north central USA, camping season starts May 1st, so we have been “winter boondocking.” We got suckered in and fooled by a very unusual early and warm spring. We have been told that, normally, April is usually pretty cold, with some snow.

So, we have been the “early birds” getting the worm. The metaphoric worm being empty parks with hassle free staying. No crowds, no reservations....no water, no services... discounted rates. Great!



The upside to this, has been that we have had entire campgrounds and parks for ourselves, peace and quiet. The downside has been hustling for water and getting our extended share of 35F nights.





So, in Fargo we stayed at the city campground of Barnesville ND, abut 20 miles south of Fargo. It is a really nice campground with full hookups, off season only electricity is available.

Foiled by love...again.

2010-04-19

Today I got up at 5:30 am to photograph the sunrise at the Itasca lake. I arrived at the shore and immediately saw the beautiful reflections of the treeline and sky in the mirror like surface of the placid waters of the lake. Hot dog!

Bad time to get a morning shot.

Anxiously, I started setting up my tripod and filters and mounting the camera. Then, while aiming and composing, I noticed that mirror like effect was gone, the water surface was rippled. What? Wind? I can not feel any wind. I waited a few minutes, and the mirror effect came back. I hunched over the camera to compose again and....more ripples. This time I started to scan the surface and I zeroed in on two geese doing what I suspect was a mating ritual that involved chasing each other across the lake walking and flapping on the water. I waited and waited, but the love dance went long, until the good light was gone.
I thought about getting my telephoto to get some shots of the lover birds, but they were just far enough to ruin the scene, and to be out of the telephoto reach.

Better luck this time

Later in the day we hiked the Deer Lake trail and had lunch at the Deer Lake Campground.
There we found the first signs of ticks in the area. Let me rephrase that: The signs of a mother !#~*^ tick infested area. With just moments of sitting near a grassy area we found 15 ticks! Some on our pants, some on our backpacks, some on the truck seats, some on the trailer floor...and the cake: One in Vicky's hair....yewww gross!

Tick!

We took full advantage of the fact that our campground was absolutely deserted, and stripped out of our clothes and started to pick each other like monkeys. Ah! The wonders of winter camping.

Here we are posing inside a cabin not knowing that we are getting loaded with ticks

Wayside trap...

Wayside trap

2010-04-18
Today we drove from Minneapolis to Itasca State Park. The drive was very scenic and beautiful. In these areas, they call “Rest Stops”, “Wayside Rests”. Around lunch time, we decided to use one of these “Wayside Rest” to have a quick lunch. We pulled into the designated area, just to find out that the area was painfully small for the truck and trailer, and worse, there was no way to get out, but to back up the way we came in. Resigned to a trailer-backup dessert. We had a nice lunch, then proceeded to painfully get out to the Wayside.

Itasca campground

We made it to Itasca State Park and, the park was still in “winter season”. This meant no services, and only electricity and access to a dump station. The campground was nice and best of all...we had it all to ourselves. We only saw a handful of visitors on the days that we enjoyed Itasca.

Intriguing...

Milwaukee Art Museum

2010-04-13
Today we drove form Wakegan, IL to Milwaukee, WI and then walked around downtown and some parks in the lake front. Another fine city with way over its fair share of architecture, art, and history. As I get to know more of the mid-northern-east of the USA, I am starting to realize that the south is culture starved. Why is that? You would think that here up north, with only a few months of the year available for hassle free work weather wise, they would be behind the south since it has year round good weather. Intriguing...

Minneapolis Opera

2010-04-14
Today we drove form Milwaukee to Mystic Lake in Minnesota. Here we found a campground/casino/Indian reservation. What a concept. And guess what, it was the best campground so far on this trip. Clean, super well planned, nice facilities, diesel pump, and LP refills on the premises! We had to double check that we were not actually in Canada with all this thoughtfull, good planning. Leave it to the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux to come up with a 1st rate RV campground.



2010-04-15
Today we drove around Minneapolis river front and down town. The evidence for unbalanced distribution of art and culture keeps piling up. The north has its unfair lion's share.

Minneapolis Stone Bridge Historic area

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

Then we drove to St. Paul and visited the cathedral, a ritzy neighborhood and the capitol building, then....

St. Paul Cathedral

Check it out! Garrison Keillor....we are heading for the prairie!

There we encountered a Tea Party protest...Jackpot! Sure enough, it was April 15th, tax deadline. My saliva glands started to secrete copiously and I had to work hard at retracting my fangs.

Will Fox make this protest look like 10,000 attended?

I decided to get my camera and mid-range zoom and bag me some “Tea Baggers in the mist”. What a hearty bunch of crackpots. I estimated that half of the crowd were Tea Baggers, and the other half were people like me gawking at them.

Few, but madder than many...

In general, they seem to have some coherent “who could possibly disagree with that” type of notions. Like “democracy is cool,” “the constitution is A-OK,” “freedom and lollipops for everybody.”

OK, so I could not find a single "sane" sign...

But whatever they have to say or complain about comes crashing down when one of the sponsors of the protest is a Dry Foods company that sells this type of bunker food for when the time comes we all have to go down into bunkers because the system finally turned so oppressive that going underground is the only recourse to avoid being taken by human flesh eating progressive heathens...

Food for "uncertain times"....right.

I was surprised at the the level of drawing skill on this one. Kudos!

This guy must have access to the real Kenyan birth certificate.

Ayn Rand represented. Atlas is shrugging...me to!

That and “They want to tax my underwear” signs.



Interestingly enough, there were some people with signs opposing the Tea Party, but somehow, I think they were not allowed to “mix” with the Baggers, to avoid animosities I guess. These anti-tea-baggers were about 2 blocks away and there was a truck driving around the Capitol building reminding everybody of the purpose of taxes.

2010-04-16
Today we visited the Mall of America. It has an amusement park in the middle of a shopping mall. The perfect followup for the Tea Party protest. The other side of the coin? Imbecilic levels of consumerism and entrainment?





Besides the Nickelodeon rides, aquariums and other do-das, the cake was taken by these 2 stores:

-American Girl

-MagiQuest

I will let the web sites do the "moment of Zen" thing. No need to poke extra fun.

After this overload of “true americana” we went for an oil change for the truck...cj-4 Shell Rotella please.

We finished the day by decompressing in some nice local nature parks near Lake Mystic.



2010-04-17
Today we took it easy and stayed in the Airstream for most of the day. In the afternoon we went for a mountain-bike ride to the Murphy-Hanrehan mountain bike trail. The trail is a single track that reminded me of Walnut Creek back in Austin, TX. Both trails are “tricked-out” for mountain bikers. Banked turns, obstacles, and such.

Chicago area....

We spent about three days in Waukegan, IL visiting my cousin Alma. I have not seen her in years, and this was a nice opportunity to visit and catch up. Alma and her husband Juan have made an epic journey and job establishing new congregations for the Free Methodist Church. We got to visit and experience first hand all their accomplishments and got to know and share time with some members of their community.



2010-04-09
Today we spent the day with my cousin Alma, talking and catching up.

2010-04-10
Today we helped Alma with some church chores. We got to know the big church that functions more like a community center and helped moving a big crane to fix some air vent trimming in the gym area.



Then we had lunch at a Mexican “Marketa.” We has some authentic street style tacos. For dessert, I got to indulge in eating some very nasty Mexican candy “delicacy” called “Chamoy.” That completed the street food experience.



In the evening, we went to take some pictures at the lake front in the town of Kenosha in Wisconsin.
To finish the day, we went to see Juan & Alma's son Levi play live at a local hangout. His band is called “3 Seconds Late” and they rocked the house.



2010-04-11
Today we attended Sunday mass at Alma's church. When I was a kid, parents (not mine, thank God) would quiz kids about the mass sermon to verify that they attended mass and paid attention. So, to prove that I was paying attention, and not daydreaming about RV'ing, the sermon was about the claim that the “true riches” are in awaiting in heaven, and not here in “this life.”




2010-04-12
Today we took the train into Chicago and walked all day around the lake front and downtown. What a beautiful downtown. Lots and lots of parks, museums, art and architecture to look at.




To finish our day and visit, we had a nice dinner out with Alma, Juan, and Levi.