Well, we thought we had evaded the dreaded heat wave…but alas, it is not to be. I’m beginning to think we are bringing it with us. Every place we go, with the exception of the few cool days with the woodstove, we find out they are having a heat wave.
A melted northern girl trying to cool down.
Happily, we have found a small city park where we can camp cheaply near a nice cool stream. So, we are hanging here for a few days before we continue north into SD and hopefully, some cooler weather and a bison or two.
Happy Memorial Day.
A big thank you to all the Veterans for their service.
In today’s world, it is sometimes easy to loose faith in ones fellow man, woman, child, etc. And to be honest, I was starting to wonder if our idea of traveling so we could meet all kinds of different people was only a pipe dream. At campgrounds, we have met a few nice people, but the majority of people have been very stand-off’ish. We have been stared at, had our picture taken by people doing ‘drive-bys’ and sometimes totally ignored (Darrin, the optimist says they must not want to intrude).
Then we stumbled into, completely on a fluke, a small state park in northern Nebraska. We were making a quick exit, well as quick as our little Rover can go, from predicted storms in Iowa, tornadoes are not on our “must experience list”.
We looked at weather forecasts and the area we had thought to go in northern Iowa was under flood alerts, so Darrin suggested Nebraska, not a state we had intended to enter. I pulled out our 20 year old atlas and there in the very northwest corner was Ponca State Park.
We checked their weather forecast and it looked much better, so we packed our stuff and headed out. What a great decision!
We met the nicest people! Our campground host, the park staff and our fellow campers were all amazingly friendly and helpful.
Bob road his bike by every day to visit. We also met his wife Marlene who told great stories.Sherl and John, our campgound neighbors, shared their fire and stories with us. Thanks!They also shared their dog, Sophie. Hi Sophie!Steve an Kris shared their company and great knowledge of the area. Steve even went out of his way to find us a NE map. Thanks! And Cookie, their dog.And the best for last. The person who made Ponca SP a really welcoming place, Tony, our camp host. He helped us find a site, drove us around the campground and even took us downtown to the grocery store! Thanks Tony! We really enjoyed sharing a meal and Oreos with you. Hi to Asta…give her a scratch for us.
These are just a few of the many people we met during our 5 day stay. Many other people stopped by to visit. We enjoyed meeting each and everyone.
Remember how we said we wanted to get north out of the heat? Nebraska decided to help us out. 50s during the day and 40s at night, with a little rain, okay it poured, thrown in for good measure. No, this isn’t normal Nebraska weather…they ordered it just for us!
To show we are true northerners, and know just what to do in chilly weather, we fired-up the woodstove!
Only a northerner would travel with a wood stove attachment!Darrin tending the fire.And me slaving over the hot stove preparing dinner. Check out my pretty purple curtains!
Those of you who grew up camping in state parks, know what we mean when we say we did the “Sunday wood clean-up after all the weekenders left”, so the heat from the woodstove was 100% free.
The west has really big mountains, New England has smaller mountains, and Missouri has rolling hills, very much like a kiddie rollercoaster. Up and down…up and down.
Up an down, up and down, with a few “thank yo ma’ams” to boot.
Missouri and Iowa also have water towers. Every town, and sometimes every corner, has their own water tower with their name printed on it in huge letters, and sometimes the mascot of their school team. All of the water towers we have seen look freshly painted and full of town pride.
And last, but not least is the huge crop of windmills they are growing in western Iowa!
There were a ton of these everywhere we looked for a while. The funny thing was out here they didn’t seem like a scar as they do at home when they put them on the mountain ridges. I can’t say why.
Well, it was bound to happen. Not knowing my own strength, I twisted the lock on my door right out of its little Rover pin. Luckily, I travel with my mechanic😊. He rigged it to make it work, sort of.
We contacted Trevor at Rovah Farm outside Little Rock who was more than happy to help us get the parts we needed. The hard part was mailing them to us somewhere along the way, no easy feat when you don’t actually know where you are going.
Finally, we were able to find a future destination, Lake of the Ozarks State Park in MO. Trevor got the parts in the mail, even figured out the cheapest shipping rate. We let the park know they were coming (the staff was super about it, keeping the parts locked in the office until we got there), Trevor put tracking on them so we would know when they arrived and voila, 3 weeks later my mechanic picked them up and we have new door locks!
The new door lock!
Thanks Trevor! I’m sure we will be in touch again soon!
Oh, and my mechanic fixed the leak over my door….with Gorilla Tape!
The Land Rover is finally back from the shop with new Alcan springs. We were quite anxious having it away since Darrin has always done all the work on the vehicle. Without a lift and winter in full swing, we turned to Performance Unlimited in Bridgewater, VT to do the work. After a few scheduling hiccups and miscommunications, they did great work and we are very pleased.
With our vehicle fully loaded with 2 fuel tanks, extra fuel cans, water tank, extra water cans, the homemade roof top tent and us, the Land Rover’s full weight came in at 5,000 pounds. Standard Land Rover specs say 4,250 is the max load on their standard springs. Since we were over, we turned to Alcan for custom springs designed to carry the increased weight.
We never thought leaf springs could provide such a pleasant ride for a Land Rover…even on our frost heave roads!
