Running on Fumes

  

     We were blessed just to have made it this far. Our original plans were to head North to North Dakota and the hubby work on the oil rigs; but after talking to the friends in Kansas, we decided to head south and help her out instead. To have made it that many more miles than planned was an absolute blessing after the hubby not getting all he was owed off the previous job. When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. We parked and stayed at their house in the middle of nowhere Kansas. The nearest gas station was 30 minutes away so we had to start planning ahead and keeping the tanks full. It was a whopping 45 minutes to the nearest town with a grocery store.

   

     

     We enjoyed some more fishing and paddling around in their paddleboat on the lake in their backyard. It was a miserably hot July here in the plains, our poor window A/C couldn’t keep up. Our rooftop hadn’t worked since we bought this particular rig. There was immense heat pressing on you as soon as you walked out of the shade, making you want to high tail it back for the cover of the shade.

       

with the heat came the storms

     The hubby began work on their house. Almost halfway thru the job there was an altercation between us and the home owner. Needless to say that with our house on wheels it didn’t take long for us to pack it up and get out of the increasingly bad situation. This is another one of the plusses to fulltiming;                                        if you don’t like your neighbors, you can                                        move.

        

     All we can do is move on and move past the negative. The hubby was blessed with a new job soon enough. We were now proud residents of El Dorado, KS. The RV Park here was suited more for the workers at the oil refinery. There were no perks here; no playground, no pool, small one person bathroom/shower. The best thing was laundry on site, an enclosed dog park and phenomenally nice owners.

     We celebrated the lil one’s birthday party here at the Skate Center. She had just enough friends to make it a nice party but not too big and impersonal. We also experienced the local corn maze and pumpkin patch, their family kid’s day downtown and several other small town festivities that you can only get in those small towns. There were even a few small snowfalls for the lil one to play in.

        

    
     My oldest had come up to work with the hubby; my youngest and oldest were getting along magnificently. Life was good. Until that day our luck changed, as it tends to do from time to time. The hubby and my oldest lost their jobs at the oil refinery right after the Christmas holidays this year. I’m not sure if there is ever a ‘good’ time to lose your job but around the holidays is never a good time, at least we had made it thru them first.

        

     We quickly got online looking for work as our rent was only paid for a few more days here. I got lucky and we got our first camp host jobs just down the road in Wichita. This would open a whole new chapter for us, not to mention keeping our heads above the water. It was time to pack and move on a very cold January day, just a short hop and skip down the road.

Until next time…..

The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go. ~ Steve Maraboli

Thru the Fields of Corn

       We napped most of the day in preparation to the long overnight drive southward, cutting across the state of Nebraska. With the previous problems with Ol’ Blue, we decided to drive at night, all night long.  This should be easier on the truck and tires with the temperatures being much cooler.

       

     The first part of the journey went ok, as it usually does. We had cell service and could communicate for the first few hours, but that was short lived.  Soon we found ourselves surrounded by acres upon acres of corn fields. A few of you remember the old horror flicks of ‘The Children of the Corn’, I happen to be a child of the generation that got the beejeezus scared out of us. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger come to mind; yes I was one of those kids. All of the images I had from ‘The Children of the Corn’, the psycho kids chasing the helpless victims thru the fields just before killing them came rushing back as we passed miles and miles of  corn.

       

Imagine this on both sides for miles and miles but pitch dark on a 2 lane hwy.

   

     What made my uneasiness worse was the fact that it was 2 A.M. on a deserted two lane highway with absolutely no hope in finding a cell phone signal surrounded by rows upon rows of head high corn. Talk about making your skin crawl, if you were one of the lucky ones growing up watching these movies then you can imagine how I felt. I was praying mile after mile that we didn’t have any truck/tire problem. Hoping we didn’t break down out in the middle of nowhere.

        

     The hubby would have to swerve the rig over every so often to make sure we were still behind him. Most trips we have no problem staying in touch by phone but this trip wan different from most, there was no signal for most of the night. You can do a lot of soul searching going down a lonesome highway for hours upon hours with no human interaction. After what seemed like forever the sunbeams started peaking over the horizon, this was an extremely welcome sight after that lonely night on the road.

Soon we found an abandoned building with a big enough spot to part the rig. I have gotten pretty good at whipping up breakfast or lunch with minimal dishes and space. I hate using paper plates due to the ‘Reduce,Reuse,Recycle’ lifestyle we are trying to pass on to the lil one; but on trips like this                                                   they are a must.

After breakfast we stretched our legs and walked for a few, enjoying the views before our eyes. We were on an old two lane road with abandoned buildings dotting the rolling hillsides and prairies surrounding us, we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere. This was going to be a good day, I knew this because we just happened to park at a crossroads and one of the roads was ours, Miller Rd.  Yep, the Millers have their own road in KS. We had taken enough time filling the belly and joking about our own road that it was time to load up and move farther down the road.

We landed just outside of our destination, I only say this as we ran out of fuel before making it all the way there; only 45 more minutes and we would have made it. After borrowing gas $$$$ from the friends we were going to work for we were able to pull into their yard and hook up.  We were running on fumes in the trucks and our bodies after the all night long push to get to Atlanta, KS with what we had, no extra money on this trip. I had only planned on going a couple of hours north of our location in SD, to have pulled an all night run on the change we had in our pockets was amazing. After 38 hours awake it was time to wish the friends a goodnight and let our eyes close, we laid our weary heads down and slept for what felt like eternity.

Until next time…..

"Outlander! Outlander! We have your woman"  ~ Malachai

The Simple Things are Free

      We were getting very familiar with packing up and unpacking the rig by now. I was slowly learning how to spread out the stuff in the pantry to minimize shifting as we flew down the highway. We had begun to try not to be the first one who needed anything in the cabinets. I had secretly been making bets on how many items would hit your toes upon the first opening after a move. It was really unfair my being the mom in this situation as I was the one having to go into the cabinets for dinner components, but this was just part of life on the road; one of the negatives to compare to the long list of positives.

     This being the third time we had trekked across the state of South Dakota on I 90, we knew what to expect and how long this journey would take. It was still grueling pushing Ol’ Blue up those rolling hills at a measly 35mph. The lil one and I had taken all the pictures you could take on this stretch of open highway. We had played our ABC road sign game until all the letters were running together before our eyes.

     We had decided to stay in a smaller town this time; Belle Fourche, about 1hr north of Rapid City, closer to the job. Wyatt’s Hideaway Campground was the one we decided on, mainly because they had a creek running through it. It was still a few weeks before Sturgis hit town so the rent was still reasonably cheap.

                               

                

   

Always a school lesson at our fingertips 

  This just happened to be the geographical center of the USA, including Hawaii and Alaska. The story goes that the center is actually located 30 miles north of the monument on a farmer’s land. He got tired of tourist coming by and disturbing his sheep so they voted and decided to move the landmark to town to visit and view; the sheep and farmer lived happily ever after in history and peace                                  and quiet.

  

   

One of my favorite past times here was fishing in the creek for trout. Sadly, I only caught a few fingerlings that weren’t big enough to eat. We let them live another day to grow bigger for the next fisherman. The lil one and lab had a ton of fun playing in the knee deep creek on those hot summer days. There was no fear of gators in these fresh waters, it was bone chilling cold.

     We had made very good friends while here previously, they too became adopted family. We celebrated one of their girl’s birthdays during these few short weeks. While having issues collecting our pay from the job, we all bonded together over simple things like how to feed our family with no money. We had found ourselves in the same boat as all of our husbands had worked for the same guy who refused to pay them. The owners of the RV Park worked with us on the rent and understood our situation. One evening the husband brought over a bag of frozen chicken and fresh veggies from their garden; we ate like kings that night.

     Eventually everything worked itself out, like it usually does. The guy finally paid us most of what he owed, I think us harassing him had something to do with it too. A friend’s mom wanted us to come down to KS and do some work on her house. After a few phone calls and counting our pennies, we decided to head that way. We would put off ND for a while longer. Our choices here were to head south and do residential work or to head north to the oil rigs; we decided the oil rigs would still be there, besides she couldn’t find anybody else to do the work. Winter was coming on soon and she needed it done before then. The decision was made and away we went on the next leg of this journey we call life, to Atlanta, KS.


Until next time......


The best things in life are not only free, but the line is shorter. ~Robert Brault

Small Town Mentality

      We landed late in the evening in a small one horse town called Tea, the sites were small compared to some we had been in, but the family owned RV Park made up for that with the atmosphere. They had a pool, laundry, a trail around a soy bean field, lots of shade and wonderful friendly neighbors. Some of these make the trek from Arizona in the winter to Tea, SD in the summer, true snowbirds; a dream we were waiting patiently on ourselves.

      

     Work had landed us back in this area, the hubby had a few weeks’ worth ahead of him and after that we were on our own. The owners of this park were very friendly; they worked with us on the rent and let us pay it as we got it. We have to always be sure to not burn any bridges with any of the parks we stay in as we never know when we may be back in the area in the future. The owners had their son, daughter-n-law and grandchild that lived on site too; there’s and ours were just the right age to play and swim together. They hit it off nicely, like two kindred spirits that had known each other for years; but then again children seem to do this.

      

My view on my morning walk on the outskirts of the Red Barn RV Park, Tea, SD

     Our days were spent in the park mostly because we had visited the zoo a month ago while in Sioux Falls. The daily routine quickly became breakfast, a quick play with her friend, watching some TV and then a dip in the pool before dinner. You would think this in itself would get monotonous and boring but it was actually very relaxing, knowing what would come next. The only worry we had was to find the work to pay the bills; this task was helped by with the boss we had followed back to his home city of Sioux Falls.

      

     The hubby had a job working on the boss’s family’s house, then a few days off, before starting a framing job. This was not one of his favorite jobs as the supervisor here would gripe about the workers stopping work only to take a drink of water, in 90+ degree heat! This job didn’t last but a few days, by the hubby’s decision. The next position we found was interesting, it was bee keeping on Mormon land. It was interesting in the fact that the hubby wasn’t sure if he was allergic to the bees or not; turned out the allergies had been outgrown, but I was one worried wife during the days he was gone. He learned new trades in this position too, something we’re always looking forward to; you can never have too many trades under your belt.

      

     Just before we left this beautiful family run RV Park, he got a position working with geo-thermal heating/cooling. Another great trade to have, I only wish time had permitted us to stay longer and learn more on this one. Imaging heating and cooling your home with only air flowing through pipes placed deep into the ground, your house would stay a comfortable 68˚ year round. The only electricity used was to pump the air through these pipes, not to power the compressor for an A/C or heat up the coils on a heater. I was very interested in learning this one as I would love to install in our future home to cut electricity costs tremendously.

      

     We had stayed in touch with the co-workers from Rapid City, one being very determined to have the hubby trek back across the state and work for him. After some convincing from him, we decided to take another ride back West across the great state of South Dakota. If you’re keeping counting that would be a total of 3 trips across this state on I90 in a matter of a couple of months. After staying in Tea for a month we had really gotten to know the owners and neighbors here, I will miss them terribly but it is also on my list of ‘stop again’ areas in my travel book. 

     

not one of my favs, but then again I'm still a work in progress too

     The lil one had gotten to go to a carnival with her friend before we left, compliments of the owners; they knew we were struggling to find work and thought she needed a good time before we left. This park really defines ‘family run’ and they truly made us feel like family while here; so much so that I painted a canvas of the badlands for her as a gift. It was time to take that leap of faith again and go back West.

Until next time…..

Learn to smile at every situation.  See it as an opportunity to prove your strength and ability.  ~Joe Brown

Backtracking East on I90

      We woke up on a beautiful June morning overlooking Rapid City for what was to be the last time on this very steep hillside that had been carved out for the RV Park. I wasn’t going to miss the steep climb to the laundry or to walk the dog but I was going to miss this wonderful city with all of its history. After a hot cup of coffee overlooking the hills and ravine surrounding us, it was time to get to work sliding in and hooking up the rig.

     

last time to have a hot cup of joe overlooking this scenery

     We are slowly getting better with getting everything ready to go; instead of three days, we’ve gotten it down to two. I know to some of you this may not seem like a very big accomplishment but to us it is.  Can you imagine packing up a two bedroom house with all of your belongings and getting it loaded on the truck in a matter of only two days? I can’t either, that is why I am happy about our being able to do this in our rig, much faster than a year ago when we started full timing.

      

     One very important lesson we learned at this park; bed rails on your tow vehicle are NOT a good idea. They look good when the truck is unhooked and riding alone but when you get it in a pinch they will do some damage to the underside of your fifth wheel rig. Yep, you guessed it! While pulling out we put a small hole in the underside of the rig that has treated us so good on this journey. The hole was smaller than my hand and we were out of time at this park meaning there was no time to call the insurance company and wait for repairs. It was time, for better or worse, to hit the road again.

      

     
     Seeing as we had already traveled this same exact path only a month before, I didn’t bother with dragging out the camera for pictures. There wasn’t much that had changed in the scenery in these past few weeks. The lil one settled down with a movie and we got ready for a long, boring, monotonous 6 hr. ride across the state of South Dakota again. We were heading from the very west side of the state back to the very east side, back tracking like this is not the norm for us; but work required it.

      

     We had run through all our saved funds for this particular trip in these quickly passing four weeks, but we did get to see and do all the great things Rapid City offered us as tourists. On the lil one’s list of accomplishments was getting to see buffalo at Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore Monument and the most impressive site being Crazy Horse, as her bloodline ties her to this site. She did learn the faces on top of Mount Rushmore and to this day can still tell you the first President of the United States. If we can experience it firsthand the knowledge sticks in the ever growing brain we are feeding.

           

miles upon miles of this

     

     After a very long day traveling up and down the rolling hills of I90, sometimes not even making it up to 45mph going uphill, we landed in a small town outside of Sioux Falls. I had researched the area previously and quickly found that they didn’t have very many RV Parks to suit our needs. This time we decided to stay just outside of the city in a small town called Tea, this ended up being one of the best parks we had been in to date.

Until next time…..

And that's the wonderful thing about family travel:  it provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind.  ~Dave Barry

It is Never 'Goodbye'

     It was nearing our time to leave Rapid City, SD and the very special friends we had made; vowing to always keep in touch. Facebook seemed to make this a much easier job than it would have been years ago. While here we had met a special couple, Lakota Rick (the nickname we gave him only to remember exactly who they were, I’m terrible with names) and his wife Kathy. They quickly became family to us if only in our hearts, they followed the Native ways as closely as possible; something we try to do.

     

     They were two of the few people we got to say goodbye to before hitting the road. There was but one more place the hubby needed to see before heading out, Bear Butte; it was an honor to have Lakota Rick and his wife go with us. We had to make a pit stop and buy tobacco as an offering for our prayers, one of the many traditions still followed by the Natives. We made a detour and zoomed through Sturgis; after hearing I hadn’t been there yet, they felt I had to at least see the town before heading out.

                   

     

     It was nothing that I had imagined, considering all the activity and visitors this small sleepy prairie town had all of one week a year. The most notable site were the huge white letters perched on the side of a mountain to let tourists know they were in Sturgis, a good photo op but nothing to really write home about. Our next stop was the one we were really looking forward, Bear Butte. It was hard for the lil one to contain the energy and curiosity from learning about another piece of the Sioux heritage.  While traveling down the highway it didn’t take long for this magnificent mountain to appear, you could see it across the barren plains for miles before actually reaching the winding road up to the base of this mountain.

     

Following Lakota Rick and Kathy to Bear Butte

     
     We pulled in to what is now Bear Butte State Park and explored the visitor center.  The hubby and the lil one, both of whom have Sioux blood running through their veins, went up the trail for a bit to place their offering and pray.  I stayed with the puppy in the only shade possible as I felt this was something the two of them needed to share without mommy interfering.  It was a hot day in the middle of the summer in the most pristine landscape of prairie lands.  I sat and imagined the pioneers coming across this rugged landscape all those years ago with only the mountain as a guide to the gold rich Black Hills. There have been artifacts found on the mountain that date back 10,000 years; amazing when you stop and think about that little tidbit of knowledge.

      

     
     The Cheyenne and Lakota people have had a spiritual interest in Bear Butte that goes back as far as their earliest recorded history.  Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull traveled to this majestic mountain, they are the two most famous visitors I can remember from the learning lesson in the visitor center.  Many Indian nations gathered at Bear Butte in 1857 to discuss the white settlers that were invading their homelands. There is way too much history at this particular site to even begin to touch it in such a short blog as this one is.

      

     With the offering and prayers finished, a short history lesson about the lil one’s heritage; the theme of this whole summer, it was time to say goodbye to our friends and go further on our journey. We promised to keep in touch, and to let them know how the buffalo liver turned; this they had blessed us with, 100% all organic buffalo liver (it was delicious by the way).  It is never ‘goodbye’ in this lifestyle as we never really know when our paths may cross again; we have learned to say…..

‘Until next time’

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.  ~Johann Schiller

Gold Fever

        A few days after getting settled in at the Lazy J RV Park in Rapid City, SD perched high upon a hill the manager suggested we move spots.  If you’ve ever traveled with a fifth wheel you know that this is not always a quick and easy feat to accomplish.  He wanted us to be farther away from the traffic at the office, because of the lil one and the dog, and also to give us more privacy; not to mention we’d now be on the bottom end of the row with the better view.  We were getting quicker with each move we made in the rig, all of our belongings were beginning to live in their travel spots, there was no need for me to keep adjusting things right before/after a move. 

        

     Traveling the way we do, we have to keep our eyes to the skies and stay alert and up to date with the weather.  We pay attention to wind speeds/direction while pulling the rig; staying a few extra days if necessary to catch a good tail wind.  Also the rain and thunderstorms are major factors in some of our decisions while on the road, you don’t want to get caught downstream on a peaceful creek with a raging storm and flash flooding a few counties north; you know it all rolls downhill, I just don’t want to be in the way when it does. With the weather becoming more and more extreme, I feel we have become even more vigilant in watching and learning Mother Natures’ rhythm in the skies.

       

     It wasn’t but a few days before she provided a spectacle for the lil one to view for the first time, an annular solar eclipse.  All day long the lil one watched the clock and the sun to see when it would begin.  We had gathered a TON of tinted safety glasses, wishing we had brought the welding hoods with us but knowing this would be the only purpose to have them.  Finally the time had come, it was beginning.  We loaded up in the truck and went to the top of the hill, as steep as this hill was; yes, I drove up it every chance I got instead of hiking.  The lil one quickly got out and sat on the roof top with the favorite stuffed animals that got to witness the eclipse too.  We all took turns holding 4-5 pairs of glasses up to our eyes to view the eclipse.  It turned out to not be that big of a deal for us, but for the lil one; it was amazing that something could block out part of the sun’s rays.  Just as quickly as the excitement grew it also depleted after trying to look through all those glasses just to catch a glimpse of the moon blocking part of the huge ball of blazing gases we call our Sun.

        

     We were back in our rig watching a movie and planning the next adventure before the eclipse was officially over.  Gold fever was taking hold of me and my little family.  A dear friend from Texas, who just so happened to be a rock hound himself; passed on to us a gold pan, just in case we ever found ourselves in gold country.  We gathered maps, searched online for information and started getting the tools we would need together.  An acquaintance we had met there took us to one of his hiking spots overlooking what seemed to be a peaceful winding creek in the valley between some very steep and high mountains. 

       

     We were HOOKED!! It took us a few days of watching videos, reading maps and gathering tools and such before we could strike out.  Our first stop was a small stream on the side of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the Black Hills.  We thought we’d try it out to get the feel for working the pan, this is a learned technique that none of us had acquired as of yet.  One of the very first huge lessons we learned, the water here is extremely bone chilling cold.  I only thought our spring fed creeks in Alabama were cold, the water running through the Black Hills in spring is like the Arctic ocean in January.  I quickly made a mental note to go shopping for insulated waders for the whole family.

       

     After getting over the shock of the frigid water we started looking for a good place to pan.  We had watched numerous videos on where the gold naturally settled at along the creek beds.  The hubby started working on turning over large rocks, or gold catchers, and looking underneath.  We dug around and panned in the black sands for a while; only finding flour gold, little tiny flecks skimming along the tops of the black sands.  It was very interesting to look at the different rocks from this part of the world, they had a shimmer and shine to them like none other I had seen before, not to mention the crystals.  The lil one fell in love immediately with all the quartz crystals that littered the stream, just right for picking. 

     

  

     

     We dug for what seemed like eternity to our numb feet and legs but in reality was only a short 30 minutes or so.  Soon it was time for a picnic of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we had prepared, the simplest were always better for me.  It is really hard to let your guard down and just enjoy the great outdoors when you know you are not on top of the food chain in this wilderness.  We were forever on the lookout for the ever elusive mountain lions that call these parts home; knowing they were more active at dawn and dusk we had chosen lunch time to be in their backyard, but still ever vigilant watching out for them none the less.

      

     With our bellies full and the feeling back in our toes and feet, we jumped back into the freezing waters to dig around some more.  Never letting our spirits drop when we came up with empty pan after empty pan, as it was the memories and experiences together as a family that we were aiming for; not gold.  Some of the best times of our lives cannot be bought and paid for by any amount of money, they are memories of experiences we have with loved ones while actually living life; this is one of the very important lessons we are trying to instill in the lil brain we are in charge of educating.

        

     Hours later as the sun began its descent in the sky, our very blue and frozen feet told us it was time to head home for the day; also the hungry mountain lions were ever present in our minds.  Our plan was to return to the creek in the valley, off of Falling Rock Rd, climb down the mountain and pan in an area that wasn’t on the beaten path and less known to man.  The sun slowly set over this beautiful and rugged landscape as the city lights twinkled on below us, it felt as though we were on top of the world, our own personal slice of heaven.

Until next time……

       

I don't care how poor a man is; if he has family, he's rich.  ~Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford, "Identity Crisis," M*A*S*H