Goodbye, Missouri, hello & goodbye, Kansas, hello Colorado

We left Missouri and its ATVers, and critters that visited our campsite and headed west. 

Beetles - more scared of us than we were of them

Tortoises wandered through the campground

 Gradually, the lush farmland and rolling hills of western Missouri gave way to large ranches, gullies, tumbleweed and yucca plants of Kansas.  You can see forever! 

I could see both the engine and the caboose of this train across the Kansas ranchland.
 

 There is a lot of farming in both Kansas and eastern Colorado, but it requires huge irrigation systems.  Seeing the vastness of our country by traveling across it makes me understand how important the U.S. is in feeding the world.  But it also makes me apprehensive about water.  It may be our greatest resource.

Guido is taking to traveling just fine.  He was a very nervous traveler at home, but his ThunderShirt helped at first, and as you can see, he is quite relaxed in my lap now.

 

Tuesday & Wednesday nights were spent in a funny, little campground in a funny, little town called Seibert, CO.  The ad for the campground listed a pool and a spa, shaded campsights, WiFi & Cable.  Well, I guess my Good Sam book was a little old.  A lot of the trees had been cut down, the pool was gone, but it had personality. 

This is one side of Main Street, the other side had a Post Office and a "Sooper Mart".

 

And this is the liquor store!  It was the size of a one car garage; the owner lives out back with her 2 German Shepherds and just hikes up to the store, dogs in tow,  when the bell tells her a customer has arrived.

 

Leaving Missouri

Our peaceful campground in Missouri woke up a bit when the Memorial Day weekend hit.  It advertises that it is ATV friendly - so I guess that means that every one of its 300+ residents has to have at least one. I have to say they make it a family affair. We saw little kids who couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 driving in front of dad!

Our walks took us away from the hubbub and gave us laughs when Guido flushed out a mama turkey who got very large and loud trying to lead us away from her babies. Guido wanted to chase her, I wanted to look at the babies and Ron wanted to get the hell out of there! We also took a walk to the Callaway Nuclear Plant, about 2 miles south of us. It was a pretty humbling sight -bringing up thoughts of nuclear disasters in other parts of the world. I was also reminded of the Cold War and our emergency disaster drills in grade school.

Off the Grid

Ron & I left Goshen just as it began to rain (again) and drove south to visit our friends, Mike & Sharon Kvistad in Advance, IN.  They have a beautiful farm with 3 thoroughbreds (hunter/jumper) and 6 (!) dogs.  Mike & Sharon are softies when a dog needs a home, so they have 3 Rottweilers, a German Shepherd, a Bearded Collie and a Beagle.  All are very well behaved - Guido could take some cues.  After Mike & Sharon's, we headed across Illinois to Missouri and had our first Walmart overnight.

In our Escapees info, we found a campground in Steedman, MO that sounded interesting.  It is just SE of Columbia - and when we got there it is beautiful!  Forested, hilly (tough running!) and not many in our campground.  The only real downfall is no WiFi, poor phone reception, so we are off the grid until Monday, 5/26.

Last Day at Escapade 2014

We've been out of our "sticks & bricks" house now for a little over two weeks.  Little by little we are making our trailer more homey and easier to find things in.

 

Besides the seminars at Escapade, which have kept us very busy, we've made two trips to Walmart and took a tour of the Keystone Montana Fifth Wheel factory.  It was really interesting to see how they put one of these things together.  They make 18 per day.  The workers can choose to work fast or slow, but they have to finish the 18 before they can go home.  Most of them are Amish, so they come into work early, work fast and finish early, then go home and work the farm.  I can't quite get used to seeing the Amish buggies going down the road or parked at the Walmart!

Everyone here at the Escapade is very friendly and very helpful.  We met a great couple from Pennsylvania, Ken & Bonnie Hosler, and enjoyed cocktails with them in their beautiful motorhome.  Tomorrow, when we leave, we plan to drive south to Jamestown/Advance and see our old friends, Mike & Sharon Kvistad.

I'm Finally Blogging!

Here we are in Goshen, Indiana at the Escapade!   Hard to believe it was only two weeks ago that we were madly trying to pack up and clean our house and barn on top of trying to pack the 5th wheel with everything we would possibly need traveling fulltime on the road.  At the end, I think we were just throwing everything either in the truck, in the trailer or in the garbage.  Closing on the house went smoothly, and soon we were in our little home parked at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.  We were working the Sahara Sands Arabian Horse Show for the weekend.  It was nice to have it as a buffer before we actually started traveling.  We left for Indiana on Monday, May 5th, and made our overnight stops at Wisconsin Dells, WI (it was 42 degrees that morning), El Paso, IL (there was a shooting range next door), Monticello, IN (huge campground affiliated with NASCAR), Warsaw, IN and then arriving at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds for Escapade.  Escapade is put on by the Escapees RV Club.  The first three days were RV Boot Camp - which scared the beejeebers out of us.  They covered the workings of RVs, areas that can cause problems, fire safety, personal safety, etc.  Despite being a bit overwhelmed, we felt we learned a lot.  Monday, May 12th, was the start of the Escapade.  It was also our 35th wedding anniversary!!  What a way to celebrate.  The Escapade offers seminars on many topics of interest to Fulltimers, such as, Frugal RVing, Making the Most of Your Storage, Selecting a Domicile (homebase) and BLOGGING!  There are also socials, entertainment, a market and daily drawings for prizes.  We've met lots of people and are having a great time.  Good news - Tomorrow I'm taking a class that will teach me how to upload photos to my blog!