Come Heck or High Water

So the good news is we did not end up needing an amphibious RV. When we last left you, we were parked in an over-sized van 'down by the river' in Iowa, surfing the web for flood watch info. Normally I am not one to sweat the small stuff, but the fact is that walking around the campground, it was obvious it had flooded there recently (lots of dried mud). So we decided a 3:30 am wake up to check things was in order. Alarm set, I am off for a few hours of Z's. Jen of course does not really sleep, but then again being superhuman she really doesn't need any. 3:30 comes all too soon as it tends to during late nights of fun and/or early morning rising. Up and at 'em and no changes in weather alert status. As we are awake we decide to wrap things up and hit the road.

Katie in the garden at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum

We have a camp site reservation for Saturday, our only reservation for the trip, so we feel compelled to make it. An early start will put us that much closer as we cross the rest of Iowa, Minnesota and parts of South Dakota. Jen had requested a stop in Walnut Grove, Minnesota home of the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum a few miles north of the interstate we would be traveling on. A great plan, semi-well executed.

Our early AM departure was accompanied by lighting so I was feeling semi-smug in our decision. The fact that we didn't really see any rain until the next state is beside the point, and only counts for you Monday morning quarterbacks out there. We hit the highway and headed north, well north, west, north, turn a little west over there... You see in this part of the country we are off of the major highways (as we in the west like to call them Freeways but being as they charge tolls in these states - Free - not so much). We are on highways but ones with two lanes and going through instead of around the small towns. Little did I know we would shortly find ourselves on smaller roads as we navigated up through Minnesota.

We are cruising along enjoying the pre-dawn electric light show. Lightening so big Jen can see it with her eyes closed. My noble navigator is enjoying a few more minutes of beauty rest while I crack into my second Redbull (woot! let's make this RV fly). Making good time as we cross into MN and hit a little rain. Good news for you readers following our travel tale, the fix I had applied to the wipers has yet to be fully operationally tested. I find as long as the wipers don't go into high speed they seem to operate per the original design rather than the new improved wiper all-the-time-always mode. So slow speed works for me, preferring to leave my fixes untested, thus not requiring adjustment before I have had breakfast.

Walnut Grove here we come. Dawn strikes like the sun coming up over the horizon (damn personal metaphor engine has not kicked in yet folks, bear with me). Take that road over there, now turn right in 2 miles. My navigator fires off instructions while telling the youngest about the Ingalls crew. My take away on her take away, they are all dead and had horses which they had to get rid of before they died. Don't ask, some days her logic eludes me but I know she is a girl so I must be wrong and she right - at least that's how it works with women so we'll go with that.

I knew something was different when the instruction set began to be peppered with streets and roads rather than highways. Take road 930 for 2 miles then turn on 8th street, etc. Basically we are winding our way through mile long blocks of corn in a zig-zag pattern to get to where we are going. No worry up until we find the bridge out sign. Fiddlesticks (family blog here folks) we are going to have to detour. No problem, we have technology. I know of at least 2 dedicated GPS devices, 2 GPS enabled phones and 3 laptops with wireless access all within arms reach of my crack navigator. We pause and she sets to it. Now if you ever want to bug Jen you will just move too slow around her and what she found was that in the part of the country where we were, things don't move quickly. Not hating on the mid-west, I've lived there and love it, but when the GPS phone can't download the maps quickly enough to scroll to find a new route, you might understand how that could be frustrating. So we wait and eventually find the means to reroute to arrive at our target museum. Nice stop, I liked the
sod house the best. Jack sadly did not enjoy it. We had let him sleep in for the whole morning while we drove so he woke up only a bit before we arrived had his meds and just was not on his normal game. I had Jen sneak us out the back gate and he and I went to test the tan bark at the local park. It just wasn't doing it for him. We threw in the proverbial towel and he and I went back to the RV to sit in the AC. It seems to do the trick and he was shortly back to his normal self. Katie and Jen got back a little while later and Katie and I hit the park for our daily park visit. Sometimes Katie, like any good four year old, has trouble leaving a park but I have found a trick. Thunder. She's not scared of it, but it does give you a logic basis for convincing someone that it's time to go.

From Walnut Grove, MN we set a course to Mitchell, SD, home of the Corn Palace. Now when my parents took me and my sisters across the U.S. as kids, the corn palace did leave an impression. I mean it's a freakin' palace-o-corn. OK, as a grownup it's really a basketball stadium which they have covered the outside of with a corn mural. Still cool and we had a fun short visit.

We made it to our stop for the evening in Kennebec, SD where we settled in for a good night's sleep prior to the next day's assault on the Badlands and Mount Rushmore. More to come.

Coasting

This is turning into somewhat of a disaster blog. But then again, disaster makes for the best comedy and creative writing. Raise hands anyone who has read a story of the Lusitania that went along the lines - boat left dock...floated along...we landed and departed. Nope, disaster is a better story but I digress.

So we reworked our feeble pre-planned itinerary to head through Moline IL. Childhood home of Corky - mother of Jen and all around great mother in law (give me a break, Christmas is just around the corner). We had two items on our Moline agenda, Loose Meat Sandwiches at Maid-Rite (and yes for those of you wondering, I too giggle any time I say loose meat sandwich) and ice cream at Whitey's. Both were great, per the recommendation of previously mentioned outstanding mother in law (I have birthdays too you know) I also had a deep fried pork sandwich which was larger than my youngest child's head. Stuffed to the gills with meaty goodness we paused between dining and ice cream for some serious park play. Mind you, it's showing over 100 on the thermometer and the heat index resides somewhere north of there - for the sake of argument let's call it unfreakinbelivably hot. So I after dropping several pounds in water weight we get our ice cream and head back to the RV. Leaving Moline, the plan is to head up through Iowa on our way to South Dakota and Rushmore in a couple days.

We made good progress with the AC on high and the thermometer reading between 93 and 102. Before I continue it probably bears mentioning that the only real issues my parents and owners of the RV had while driving out from west to east was an intermittent issue with the RV just stopping. Sounds bad I know, and not something they were able to fix on the east prior to turning over the keys to us. Oh well, press on regardless I say. So this issue seemed to only occur when it was really hot out and the best guess was the main computer was overheating. Guess what...it's as mentioned, unfreakinbelievably hot and somewhere in the middle of Iowa between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo we hit our first hiccup in RV forward progress.

At first, no real big deal. Heading up a hill I realize we no longer are maintaining the forward progression that my foot is encouraging. My diagnostic skills kick into high gear. Temp seems ok, oil pressure, check, wife...not so much. Houston we have a problem. After turning off the AC and a couple seconds of head scratching, things return to normal and we are not run over by the semi truck bearing down on us. OK, that was interesting. Lacking in any real diagnostic capabilities at 65 mph we continue with a new sense of heightened awareness to the various noises a 20K lbs vehicle makes while running down the road.

Several mile later, you guessed it, it happens again. This time I am more determined to diagnose if it is engine or transmission. My sloth like reflects kick into high gear and I quickly determine that either through some of my switch flipping or gear changing the engine is no longer running. Sweet Baby Jesus in a tiny canoe we're coasting! First slightly up and then slightly down, then up hill again.

Now for those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of playing soap box racer with a 20K lb vehicle let me describe the experience for you. First, you must try to restart it while barreling down the highway after flipping on those hazard lights you really hope are working right about now. Nada - Zip - Zilch, that didn't work. So you note you have a nice wide shoulder and the next exit is in sight - yet somewhat, no really actually uphill from your current location. Next you will note that the steering has become - how to describe..."somewhat heavy". You see apparently power steering was indeed invented for vehicles for whom their steering axle supports not just my own ample girth, but things like refrigerators, microwaves and let's not forget a couch. So yes, somewhat heavy would be accurate. Brakes? Yep still got some. Good news, coasting needs little braking effort. So we now have the beauty of coasting down the side of a rural highway somewhere in central Iowa.

To tell the truth, I would have bet against us making that next exit. But Sir Isaac Newton would have B-slapped me for that one. We were one giant object in motion and in motion we stayed, coasting all the way up off the highway and off the edge of the off ramp. I quickly tried to restart the engine (sloth like reflexes remember?) and with luck it fires. It was at this moment, as I pulled away to move further off the ramp I noticed the state trooper who was riding behind me. As I pulled away I saw him raise his arms in that universal gesture denoting, WTF. We pulled several yards up the off ramp to a wider spot and decided, indeed, this was the perfect spot to stop for a bite to eat. Actually it was my youngest who decided this for us by declaring she would in fact perish at that very moment without some form of sustenance. [editors note: She actually says "This is important. I might expire."] We flipped on the generator and AC and I quickly heated some hot dogs - the requested sustenance of the youngest clan member. Of course the minute the dogs were done, no one wanted to eat them. Being over 100 degrees and humid does things to your metabolic processes, namely makes you want to gain your sustenance via intravenous form factors. Lacking a round of chilled saline solutions, ice pops seemed to be the next best thing. None of those fancy Otter pops for us, these were the best in food colored and artificial flavors water my hard earned dollars could buy. I think Katie downed at least 3, Jack 2 and even mommy and daddy got into the act. Mine was blue and both my wife and daughter informed me I was eating it wrong. Despite my ice pop ineptitude, icy dinner was better than no dinner (those things are nutritious, right?) and everyone felt a little better for their frozen colored water intake.

Several minutes and a couple of shirt changes later we are set to try it again. Everything restarts and we are off in a flash - if a flash is somehow slow, like perhaps a tortoise or turtle names Flash, you know the one. Everything seems to be operational, but we decide that quitting (I mean discretion, of course) is the better part of valor and we would look for some place to spend the nice. Apparently north central Iowa is not chock a block with RV campgrounds with full pull through access and pools (last being youngest child request) so we find and settle on a local park campground and the last pull through site, right next to the lazy river. After settling in for the night which involves pleading for the boy to go to sleep and reading 3 stories for the kids, I decide to check my phone to see what the weather has in store for us. I have the Weatherbug app on my phone and I recommend it, especially for hopefully needless fear mongering. You see dear reader we have set ourselves down in the middle of a flood watch zone on the banks of a lazy river. After many minutes of web searching and Google mapping, Jen and I have a plan. Wake up around 3-4 am to get out of here before the rain hits. Tune in next time to see if we have to swim for it, or if weatherbug was just full of it and we should have listened to bedbug instead (shout out to @bedbug1038).