High Life.....

Cozied up in front of the world series game 7 after a day of KC touring. My uncle Wayne took the day off to take us to lunch and show us a few local sights. One stop was the renovated Union Station which is referred to as the "gem" attraction in the city. In addition to the principal purpose of train depot, there is now exclusive restaurants, children's science museum, cinema and shopping inside. A special bug exhibit currently underway.....explaining the below giant bees. Notice the crown.....everything is Royals, even giant bugs.

Union Station

 

                                                             This is a real killer bee



                                                       Wayne and Sue with bee looking on



Me with bee and.........Sue B

 

 

After a couple of KC days, will be back on the road tomorrow. Appr 650 miles from Hemphill Texas which will be our hangout locations for a few months.

Coach has been resupplied....ready to roll.

 

Thank you to Wayne and Pat for being such gracious hosts. From smoked ribs and game 6 on Tuesday night, to the city tour today which included exclusive banjo playing courtesy of my uncle.

 

Road Rash......

 

Yesterday was spent doing some further maintenance. This time not to the motorhome, but to our tow vehicle. Sue and I had been noticing a loud rumble from the rear during our Little Big Horn visit. My suspicion of a rear bearing was confirmed. Replaced and all is quiet again. Sure did not want a bad bearing seizing up while in tow. Probably would not have known there was a problem until we saw the smoke rolling from burning tire rubber.  

Current (Sunday Oct 26) Endeavor docking location..........Tea, South Dakota (Red Barn RV park)

High Life......

Things just keep rolling. I might be getting my confidence back in this whole scheme of ours. Did our first night at a "Flying "J"" last night in Rapid City, South Dakota, this is important because if this plan is to be affordable meaning more long term than short, the free nights of sleep overs will be most important. Will not be able to afford every night costing $30 to $40. There will need to be some Walmart, Flying J or I understand Cracker Barrel allows over nighters in their parking lot. This be the course as we relocate adventures. Once we get located we will be surviving off the grid ("boon" or "dry" docking as it is referred to). Our chosen locations will be the various national/state parks or historical monuments. We have become email friends with a couple that are of similar age with the same type of setup (34 ft motorhome with tow). They have been touring the US for the past five years and only spend a few days a month in a paid RV park. Sherry maintains a log and it is kept with stories and pictures of their many adventures (hiking, biking and kayaking).
The important part of the Flying J stay was not that it was cost free, but we found that we could spend a night utilizing minimal battery power. The most important part of boondocking (in my opinion) is keeping the fridge going so that perishables can be kept with out continually buying expensive (and sometimes hard to get) ice. When we are not plugged into a paid power source that runs the fridge, it runs on propane but the electronics of the system obviously needs some voltage source. Either AC or DC (battery) when on the road (unplugged). If your battery power is depleted your fridge will shut down. What I am hoping to do is use minimal power at night and then rig up a solar panel that will recharge the system through the day. If that can become a reoccurring cycle we will have AC Independence, but most of all maintain our food source for minimal cost. The Endeavor has a huge 7500 watt generator built in and it works great but it is obnoxiously noisy and eats up 1 gal of diesel fuel every hour. Great if needed but would rather not.So the experiment last night has proven that we can get through an evening and wake up with 3/4 of power still in the batteries. Very nice.
But enough of that....as I noted in the early stages of this wind storm, we are located for tonight and all is going great. As noticed in the below pix, we are enjoying the farm setting this evening, but the leaves are mostly off the trees. 70's today and 40's tonight....but we need to get out of here. We have adjusted our course to a direct southern route....Texas here we come.

 

 

Road Rash.......

 

None 

The Endeavor crew is currently docked in Hardin, Montana (appr 40 miles se of Billings). We pulled in here yesterday coming in from Missoula, Montana. A very pleasurable drive, actually put in almost 400 miles (the most that I will want to do) but as we were leaving Missoula there was a rain storm coming for the day so got ourselves rousted and on the road by 8 am (yawn) to avoid the bad weather. Was some talk of snow in the passes, did not want to encounter these conditions and were successful in staying ahead of the storm. Some drizzle but pretty much clear roads.

High Life......

Decided to stay over a day to take in the Little Bighorn Battlefield experience (what the hey, we can do that if we wish.....but am watching the weather).
I really enjoy American history and to be able to look over the same grounds that this famous battle of June 25, 1876 actually happened on was incredible. Let your imagination take you back and you can almost hear the gun blasts, Calvary bugles and primal Indian screams coming from the hills. Kind of spooky.
I debate in my mind the right and wrong of this historical event and which side to feel sad or happy for. I tend to side with the native Indians because I have always felt that the white man and US government bullied these people out of their homes and ways of life. No matter what considerations they were granted through treaty signings, the soldiers eventually made an appearance in which they were to run the Indian off what they thought was theirs simply because of the government reacting to American greed. It was always that the Indian reservation was continually containing what was wanted so they had to go. This was the one victory that the Indians had in all of the years of fighting the white aggressors and it would seem that Custer came in a little cocky in thinking it would be an easy battle. I always tend to root for the underdog in sporting events, so this is right up  my alley in cheering........go braves!!!! 

Oil Painting Depicting the Battle

 

 

Memorial with a Listing of the Casualties

 

 

Road Rash.......

NONE

We are on the road as of yesterday morning. Was tough leaving Jamie, Brian and the boys behind. Even after almost 6 weeks you would expect that it would be time to leave but many tears fell to the ground as we said good bye for now.

High Life......

Had a last outing  with the Hebert family. One of the local farms had a very nice pumpkin patch for the kids. But not just pumpkins of course.....petting farm, pony rides, corn maze, tractors and wagon rides to where you could each pick your favorite pumpkin to take home and turn into your favorite jack-o-lantern.

Tractor Buddies

 Those boys.....it is so hard to get a picture that one of them is not clowning around. Some times you are lucky and get dual clowns.

What a Nice Family

 Gma in the pumpkin patch

The Beautiful Corn Maiden

 

 

 

Our efforts of pumpkins turned jack-o-lanterns

Presently setting with my MotorHomie (Sue of course) at "Jim and Mary's RV Park" in Missoula Montana. Not missing the drama of the World Series though....kind of cozy. Yea rough camping but it is actually pretty chilly outside low 40's. Low tonight is to be just above freezing. I do not...repeat do not want to attempt scraping frost, snow or whatever from the huge glass shield that adorns the front of our coach. Gotta get out of here...almost waited to long.
Made it to Spokane Washington after the sad good bye last night. So tough to leave that we did not get on the road as early as hoping for. Was waaaaaay dark as we cruised into town (getting dark at 6 pm so sucks). If not for the GPS we would have never found the RV park. Not only did the darkness make getting around in an unknown suburban terrain a real challenge, the park was buried deep in the bowels of a neighborhood. Finally got to sleep.....woke up in a dump. Another lesson learned (not to say I have not had this lesson previously, but a great memory stimulator) never drive past sundown to arrive in an unknown city and an unknown over nighter.

Lots of rain and.....yes did see some snow flakes in the mountain passes. More passes tomorrow, hope it warms a little. Have not determined our destination for tomorrow as of yet. Thinking Billings Montana but still have to pull the maps (computer and paper....still like the feel of an atlas). Can't beat determining times and mileage with the electronics though.

Montana Mountain Pass. Some breathtaking scenery.

High Life......

Things are finally getting back to where we were expecting to be a couple of weeks ago (we fully expected to be on the road heading east exactly two weeks ago).
We got the Endeavor back this past Wednesday complete with a shiny new drive shaft. After a quick over nighter a few miles west of Pendleton and very pleasurable drive, we arrived in Jamie's driveway......only about 5 weeks late. Have spent the days since on simple maintenance items that we had uncovered during the drive here and wanted to complete while we had a port that allowed us the luxury of a garage and tooling. Things like.....a sticky bay door hatch, TV cable routing / hookups for DVD player and satellite dish, some drawer latches that were not holding securely, loose door handle, check of items like belts and hoses....those types of things. Hoping to get in a wash and polish before heading out next Monday but incoming rains could put a kibosh to that plan.
Our exit route is a little up in the air. With it being later into October and the northern temps maybe heading to winter levels a couple of weeks early, there is a chance we may head south down the coast from here instead of staying north and heading east. Having done a lot of California in the past that isn't as appealing to us as the route east into areas that we have never ventured into. Will monitor the weather and if it looks like it will still be fall warm and none of the winter air, we will trip as previously planned with a slight shortening of the journey. Head south from around the Chicago region, through Tennessee and eventually into Hemphill Texas where we have a Nov 1 date with a resort that we plan on wintering in. It is appr 250 miles northeast of Houston.
So......in a few days this BLOG will contain the things that were intended and make for some livelier reading.

Road Rash.......

Again...nothing to report.  Yaaaaaaay!!!!!!!


 

High Life.......

Lots to catch up on and all under "High Life".
Motor Home..actually visited our tranny since it was being serviced a few short miles from where we set. It turns out that the servicing center (Pacific Power Services) is located in Ridgefield Washington, just up I5 a few miles. So I made a personal appearance to check out the situation. The service manager (Brad) was really great in humoring my request to visit my transmission. It had just been reassembled and was waiting to be attached to the dyno for functional testing. This was all this past Tuesday, Brad was pretty sure that the timeline would be testing complete and shipped back to Woodpecker by Thursday. Since that time I have found that all came together as planned, testing was fully successful and the unit was in transit as of my call to them yesterday (Thursday) morning. In turn called Woodpecker and they were expecting the tranny this morn (Friday) with assembly back into the motor home by this afternoon. Excited to pick it up but did not want to push them to hard so at this time the plan is to leave here mid day Monday, make a pickup that afternoon and head back this way. Do not really want to do a turn around trip all in one day so planning to do an RV over nighter and then come back here on Tuesday.  Yeeeeeees!!!!

Sue and I used yesterday to do a little road trip. Mt St Helens is a few miles north of here so we took a back road through the hills to the Johnston Observatory. Quite a bit of driving (a couple of hundred miles each way) so did not get much hiking in, but a very enjoyable trip. The observatory was built in honor of a scientist (David Johnston) that lost his life the morning of the eruption (May 18, 1980...seems like yesterday). He was monitoring the volcano from where the observatory is located when it blew. Not sure what he was thinking, the location is 6 miles from the mountain but as you can see by the below pictures, seems obvious that you would be in harms way in the event of the eruption that was sure to come. I guess he loved volcanoes so much that he was willing to sacrifice himself for the opportunity that was presented to him.
Pretty incredible to think about what came at him that morning. The films that we viewed have footage capturing the blow out along with the flow of destruction that was carried 14 miles down the valley. Plus for those that might recall, the ash cloud actually circled the globe. I remember in Nebraska, the ash particles that we found on our cars wind shields.

6 miles away....but much too close to watch an eruption!!!

.
Can't complete a BLOG entry with out a grandson picture. Gpa and Gma found some slick looking knight out fits that we knew they would love. Nice.....

 

Looks like they might be ready for Halloween....Knight!!!

 

 

Road Rash.....

 

Nothing to report