Zumbrotaville

So we are here in Zumbrota, MN.  We've been catching up with our friends Bob and Virgina Schmidt.  They were neighbors and friends in Thousand Oaks, CA when we were first married.  Bob has been with IBM since then (that would be just about 40 years) and is considering retiring soon.  They moved here in the mid 70's and have a great house next to a corn field (but everything is next to a corn field here), complete with wood working shop and tree house.  What more could you ask for.

Virgina works at the local newspaper and Bob writes a column when he is not playing the bagpipes in two local bands.

We started the day here.

Then moved 11 miles to this park in The city of Zumbrota. It has nice bike trails and the covered bridges.  Hence the name, Covered Bridge Park

 The view from one of the windows in the bridge.  The City moved it when a new bridge was built to preserve it.  We were appreciative. 

 
  Another covered bridge, this a steel trestle 2 miles up the super bike path.

We plan to spend tomorrow planning the next few days travels and then head out Thursday.  Supposed to rain tomorrow anyway.  We've got to start planning ahead as we are finding that a lot of the parks are closed for the season.

Stay dry.

Dodged Another One

I guess if you keep at it, you eventually get a few things right.  This trip the trailer mods we did in Portland turned out to work very well and yesterday I think we dodged a major bullet.

While sitting around in Estes Park comparing notes with the Hatch’s methods of RVing, I decided to add a safety hold down for the awning.  We bought it at the Camping World north of Denver and I installed it while we were in Hill City with the DeJeans.

 Here is the extra hold down strap in the middle of the awning.

Yesterday we left Hill City right behind the front that passed through the night before.  On the road out of Rapid City We noticed that the shadows of the clouds were going faster than we were.  After we left the city of Wall, SD and drove through the badlands (they really are BAD), the wind really hit. 

Some of the less badlands.  The colors are so subtle and change with the angle of the light.

It was the worst case scenario; over 60 MPH from about the 4 o'clock position.  Just right for opening up your awning and ripping it off.  We passed a Scamp trailer that was limping along at a crawl with its awning torn off its supports and blowing over the top of the trailer out into traffic.

Later, at a rest stop we met another large fifth wheel that had just installed a similar device.  Their awning came through fine but the wind had bent their roof top TV antenna.

Our undamaged awning.

After we got to Mitchell, SD (home of the Corn Palace sorry, no pictures, check it out on Google) and settled in for the night we got pounded by thunder storms.  Seems there was huge high pressures systems, one on each coast.  The one one the East coast was pumping gulf air up the middle of the country to meet the cold Canadian air the one on the West coast was bringing down.  The result was huge thunder storms from Texas to Wisconsin that parked over us all night.  No tornadoes, but lots of moisture.

So we have rain for a few days.  Tomorrow we head out for Zumbrota, MN to see some friends we haven’t seen in 30 years.  30 years, how could that be!  I’m not old enough for that yet.  Anyway, forecast is good for a few days there.

Stay dry.