Minneapolis

It’s been a busy week for us. On my last blog, I said that we hoped to make it to Sioux Falls that night, which we did. We decided to try boondocking (dry camping) in a Costco parking lot, thinking it would be quieter than a 24 hour Walmart parking lot. We chose an out of the way spot so as to be considerate of the business. Unfortunately, we overthought our consideration, and ended up parking near the loading docks of the warehouse, which began operations in the early hours of the morning, even on a Sunday! We got moving pretty early (around 9 am) , excited that we only had a 4 hour drive ahead of us. I don’t quite know how it happened, but it seems par for the course so far on our road trip that we didn’t pull into the campground outside of Minneapolis until 6:50 pm.

I’ll get on to our week’s adventures in a minute, but I have to start with the campground itself. To be fair, this is only our 3rd campground stay so far this trip. However, the park where we are now is likely to be one of the nicest of our entire trip. It’s a 2700 nature reserve with 6+ miles of paved biking trails, a huge play area, and a lake. We have a spacious RV site, larger than any other we’ve had (except, of course, when we had the Lookout Pass parking lot all to ourselves!). The only drawback is that they only have electric hookups, not full hookups with water & sewer too, so we have to move the RV every 2-3 days to empty our tanks and refill the fresh water. Fortunately, they have very nice bathrooms with individual shower stalls.

We are located about 30 minutes from downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. We have driven into the Twin Cities everyday except for today. On Monday, we went to the Mall of America. The huge attraction there was the Lego Store. They had quite a variety of lego sets which attracted Blake's interest, but Erika really like the pink foam sword and was willing to take on anyone that walked by, whether they wanted to duke it out or not!

Tuesday we went to the Science Museum of Minnesota. It was an okay science center, but the kids were most attracted to the putt putt golf course out back, and of course the gift shop.

Wednesday we were back downtown to go to the zoo. When we brought the kids to Minneapolis a few years ago, we went to the Minnesota Zoo, which is a huge zoo. This time, our co-worker, Jenn, suggested the Como Park Zoo which we tried instead. It is a little more run down and smaller, on par with the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma before they made all their improvements about 10 years ago. That said, we enjoyed it, primarily because the price was right - free or a modest donation (suggested $2/adult & $1/child). So for only $5, we got to see tigers, lions, some varieties of primates, giraffes, zebras & more.

Thursday we went to the opening day of the Minnesota State Fair. I'm not sure whether it has a smaller footprint or a larger attendance, but it was more crowded than I have ever seen the Washington State Fair in Puyallup. There were a couple of cool attractions that we enjoyed. One was the Miracle of Birth exhibit, where they housed expectant and newly birthed babies & their mamas.

Before we left for the fair, I told Kyle about this exhibit and he said "That's wierd." I said, "Why?" He said, " Well do they get paid or something?" I replied, "With what, some extra hay or something? What would animals want with money?" He laughed "Oh, I thought you were talking about humans giving birth." We got a good laugh out of that, and I agreed with him that it would indeed be odd to have pregnants moms sitting around waiting to give birth, and allowing anyone to watch them.

We didn't see any actual births, but they did have a video replay of a cow giving birth to a calf earlier that morning. The kids were kind of grossed out at viewing the deliveries but they did enjoy seeing the cute little babies.

The other exhibit that the kids enjoyed the most was a mini farm experience. It was really geared for preschoolers, but they allowed all the kids through once (they kicked Kyle out when he tried to go a second time). The kids went through a series of activities where they play-acted the necessary farm activities. At the end, they sold their harvest of vegetables, eggs, and wool at the mock farmer's market and received play money which they could spend at a modestly stocked store. This is what really intrigued the kids, because they got to walk away with a serving size box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal!

Mark has been busy all week with customer meetings and work, so he was only able to join us around 5 at the fair. Writing it all now, it doesn't seem so much, but the reality is that we have been slow to adjust to Central time. I don't think we've gotten the kids to bed before 10 all week, and with all the activities, neither of the girls have had much in the way of naps. So today, Friday, we stayed at the campground while Mark went into Minneapolis for a meeting. Today also happens to be my birthday. So for my birthday dinner, we went to Costco to pick up a chocolate cake as that was my request. We ate dinner at the Costco foodcourt, and then ate the cake with an ice cream bar from the foodcourt right there. The best treat of all was to not have to clean the kitchen or do dishes!

Black Hills, South Dakota

Needles Highway:



Mt. Rushmore:

Saturday Night, August 22nd

We are driving across South Dakota on I-90 right now. Time jumped ahead to central time, so it is now 9:50 pm. It's dark outside and quiet in the cabin. Kenna is sleeping on the dinette-turned-bed and Erika is laid out on the sofa. I don't think either one of them is asleep, but after failing to get them to nap today, I am relieved to have them both quiet.

We have been visiting the Black Hills area of South Dakota the past couple of days. Thursday we stopped at Devil's Tower on the east side of Wyoming, as we drove from BIllings, Montana to Custer, South Dakota. Mark really wanted to see Devil's Tower as it was featured in the Steven Spielberg film, "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind"; I had never heard of it before. We learned that it was the first place to be deemed a National Monument and that it was known by Native Americans as Bear Lodge, but was documented on a map of one of the first explorers as Devil's Tower and that was the name that stuck.

We got settled into the RV park in Custer a little after 9 pm Thursday night. The next morning we woke to find the 32 oz honey container had fallen out of the top cupboard and broke open on the floor. So Mark & I spent the first 20 minutes of the day trying to coax all the honey off of the floor. Afterwards, Mark logged into work while I played Supermom, getting the kids breakfast and cleaning up after them. Fortunately, the RV park was really nice and the kids happily played outside. I am struggling to find time to get my work done, so am brainstorming ways to get a jumpstart on the day before everyone wakes up. The main challenge with this idea, which I didn't realize before we owned an RV, is that even with 4 jacks on the ground to make it level, the RV bounces with every move made, whether walking or turning over in the bed, giving away my early rising.

Friday afternoon we drove through the tourist-oriented town of Custer on our way to Mt. Rushmore via the "Needles Highway." The "Needles Highway" is a twisty, turvy road that is really narrow. The huge boulders on it were amazing, and even moer amaziing was the tunnels built into them, some as narrow as 8 feet wide by 12 feet high! Thank goodness we made the drive in our pickup instead of the RV. While we wouldn't have attempted it in our RV, were were surprised to see a full size tour bus coming through from the other direction - we noticed that the mirrors on both sides were all scratched up, indicating just how tight the tunnels are!

Along the way to Mt. Rushmore, we saw many different animals including burros (donkeys), wild turkeys, bison, deer and mountain goats, making the long drive a little more interesting. Mt. Rushmore was striking as I had only seen it in postcards, and so didn't realize how far up the mountain it was. We attempted to go to Crazy Horse for their laser light show, but after going to the RV to get warmed clothes and jackets, as the temperature had dropped with the sun going down, we were a few minutes too late to get in.

So we went to Crazy Horse today on our way out of town. Unfortunately, the visit did not go too well. To begin with, Erika refused to sit correctly in her car seat, and after Mark corrected her, she carried on crying and pouting for about 45 minutes. I went in to the exhibit hall with the other kids while Mark waited outside with Erika for her tantrum to pass. Just after the kids & I went inside, they had a movie showing how Crazy Horse was built. Unfortunately, our cell phones didn't work so I had no way to tell Mark where we were, and he ended up missing the movie. And last but not least, we had planned to take the Mickelson Trail, a rails-to-trails bike trail, the 5 miles back from Crazy Horse to Custer. Unfortunately, it got too hot for our comfort so we chose not to do it. All in all, Crazy Horse was interesting & I could have spent a lot more time seeing all the exhibits, but I was disappointed that the majority of the focus was on the sculptor and his family instead of the Native Americans and Crazy Horse in particular.

We left Custer around 2:30 pm, and hit Wall Drug in Wall, SD around 4:30 pm. I had never heard of it before, but they have quite a history and I got to read up on it while we were driving. Seems there was a young pharmacist who moved to Wall with his young wife and child just after the depression. They tried to make a living for nearly 5 years, but were on the brink of calling it quits when the wife hit upon the idea to advertise free water to the tourists travelling to the newly opened Mt. Rushmore exhibit. That moment of inspiration led to a $5M year business in the middle of absolutely nowhere! The kids enjoyed it; Mark & I tolerated it.

We plan to dry camp (not hookup to an RV site) in or close to Sioux Falls, South Dakota tonight and continue on towards Minneapolis tomorrow.

Setting out

Home Sweet Home:


The Monster Bike:

Kelli writes:

We finally headed out of Sandpoint on Sunday afternoon, August 16th. The last week was pretty challenging as it was tough to gauge how long it would take to get things completed. We were pretty optimistic that we would be done on Thursday, then Saturday, but we ran out of steam around 10 pm Sat night, and went at it again the next day. Even though we likely won't walk away with much money when it sells, it still feels good to leave with the house completed and looking good.

We had several stops on our way through Coeur d' Alene, and made it to Lookout Pass, 113 miles from Sandpoint, some 6 hours later. We parked overnight in the Lookout Pass ski area parking lot, and it proved to be a very quiet night as we were the only ones in the parking lot.

The next morning, after eating breakfast, making a sack lunch, cleaning the kitchen, and pumping up the bike tires with air, (all of which seemed to take forever) we headed 7 miles down the road in the truck to bike the Hiawatha trail. The Hiawatha Trail is a rails-to-trails bike path that travels downhill about 15 miles, through 9 tunnels, the longest of which is about 2 miles - in complete darkness!

Mark, Kenna & I rode in tandem with our trikes attached and Erika pulled behind in the trailer. The boys were riding their own bikes. We did well until just after the halfway point. The gravel road was really bumpy and the vibration seemed to loosen up a lot of things on our bikes. Blake's light that we bought to go through the tunnels kept falling off, and my water bottle came out of it's holder. The second time my water bottle jumped out, it startled me and I yelled out at the same time that I started to brake. Mark reacted to my holler, and also hit his brake at about the same time that he turned a little to the left. It was then that we learned that his tire had worked itself loose, because the braking and turning combined to release his front tire. Since we were all in a chain and travelling about 9 miles an hour downhill, the bikes kept moving even without the front tire. The end result was a bent fork and bent axle. As we were just past the midpoint, it was a really bad time to break down. Fortunately, Mark was able bend the axle and the fork back enough to attach his trike to mine, so I became the lead and we continued on our journey, albeit a little more cautiously.

We spent the next 2 nights in Missoula, and in searching for a bike shop to help repair his bent fork, Mark happened upon Free Cycles, a community organization which recycles unwanted bikes, bike parts, and provides shop space for people to work on their own bicycles. The kids were totally enthralled with the pile of bikes, rims, gears and the like, but especially with the skate bike, which looked a lot like a unicycle except it had 2 little wheels in front to stabalize it, and the green garden bike, a monstrous 3 seater bike-car. In the end, Mark's fork could not be safely repaired, so while we are waiting for a new one to arrive from Australia where they are manufactured, he and the helpful guy Jeff, fashioned a new fork to make due for now. We were all so inspired by this community bike effort that we made a special trip to the hardware store to purchase a few of the tools that seem to walk out more frequently and dropped them off to them before we left town, continuing on our eastward journey.

Kelli writes:

If you would have told me a week ago that we would really be ready to hit the road next week, I don't think I could have believed you. What a week it has been!

We had the good fortune in timing as weeks ago we had coordinated all 4 kids going to Grandma & Grandpa's at the end of July for a week or so. I can't really recall exactly what we have done in the week the kids have been gone as it's all a blur. Mark was able to tackle our last major upgrade on our house: laying travertine tile in the master bath shower & tub surround. We also sorted through all the kids clothes, paring down to just 10 short sleeve shirts, 10 long sleeve shirts, 10 shorts, and 10 pants to take with us in the RV. I had no idea what clothes-hounds we had become, but it felt good as we donated bags and bags of clothing and other household stuff to the thrift store.

Towards the end of last week, we made the flight down to Utah to pick up our selected motorhome. It is quite a story as we had come up with an extensive list of "necessities" to make this year long trek bearable. In reality, we could have lived without any of them, but with 6 of us occupying 1/10th of the space of our home, we wanted to be thorough in our selection. After narrowing it down to a few key features, including at least one set of bunkbeds for the kids, we found exactly 1 motorhome that met our needs and was available for purchase, and were pleased that it was located in the western U.S.

Having never even used a travel trailer before, we were in for quite the learning process in driving this mammoth machine. Mark drove it the majority of the way from Salt Lake City to Sandpoint, but I did spend about 40 miles behind the wheel. What has surprised us both is that there is no special licensing required to drive this 39' long x 8' wide x 12' high box on wheels down the road! As intimidating as it was to drive, I have to admit it was a pleasure to pull off at a truck stop, expand our bedroom, and crash for the night.