You Can't Get Lost

 I'm home.  Tanks dumped, gas filled, mail inside but not sorted yet, grocery store and shot run coming up fast, but wanted to report in.   BTW, just for fun, I-25 was closed for high and light vehicles from Cheyenne to Douglas.  I drove straighter into the wind and though buffeted, safe and sound.  However, the dump station at the Territorial Park is next to I-80, and all traffic was parked on the east bound lane.  I'm glad I got home when I did.   Just a few updates.  The total cost of the trip came out to $133 per day.  That includes all the gas (at right under $4.00 a gallon) (at 7.4 mpg), all my food and groceries, tickets, i.e., all my expenses on the trip.  You can hardly find a nice motel at $133 a night (including taxes.)   But, something I felt starting last year after Sally died.  The motorhome is too big and, for me, too cumbersome.  I need something smaller and more convenient to drive.  ("Forshadowing, a sign of good cartooning....", Calvin and Hobbes, I

 Arrived in Big Spring.  It should have been named Big Wind. More Later.

 I have an app that is an "RV Friendly" GPS.   It has two parts, the planning feature on your computer and the GPS/Map feature on your phone. It makes sense, kind of.  You use the computer to lay out your trip.  It has a cool feature that shows you driving distances from a place.  For example: The green is 100 miles, the gold is 200 miles and the red is 300 miles.  So you select your distance and then select campgrounds out around that circle.  I'm trying to stay at two hundred miles a day, so I search around the gold circle.  Pick the campground from their database or from several others like Harvest Host.  Do that around where you want to go and you have your trip set up. Then when you travel, you use the app on your phone and it gives you the segment of the trip appropriate for that day at your starting and end point.  And that is the problem.  Where I stayed last night didn't have enough signal to download the segment map for the day.  So I used Google Maps to dri

Misquoting Stanley Kowalski,  " Arghhhh, and again I say  Arghhhh!!!! " I planned the end of my trip to go to the National Music Instrument Museum.  It was formerly known as the Shrine to Music.  The museum was founded in 1977 by Arne B. Larson.  A band director in Brookings, SD, he was a huge musical instrument collector, who had 2,500 instruments to his name, paid for by himself over 50 years of collecting.  He chose to give his collection to the University of South Dakota.   His son, Andre Larson, earned a degree in musicology and became a collector as well.   He founded the museum and collected over 10,000 instruments on his own.  In 1984, a couple purchased a collection of string instruments, including three instruments by Andrea Amati, a violin, a viola and a cello.  A fourth Amati violin was later purchased to make one of the worlds unique quartets, by Amati.  The cello is thought to be the oldest bass instrument of the violin family in the world.  Amati's student,

 It rained, heavy, last night.  The flow of water into the basement increased a lot over last night .  Joel had stayed the night, but had to leave before I got to Bob's house after staying in the motorhome last night.   Bob and I had a little chance to do some computer work, specifically getting him back into the Norwegian Digital Archives.  This is a huge depository of information about Norway, including all existent church records up to 100 years ago.  Bob is computer adverse and has never had a good experience with Windows 10.  I wrote down keystep by keystep how to get into his email, use the contact list, save pictures, etc.   But by then, it was after 1:00 and I had wanted to leave by noon.  So I had to go.  It was tough leaving him.  At 91, he is hurting and this flooding has really gotten to him.  It is possible he won't be here long.  Sometimes Bob drives me crazy.  He is impatient and is demanding, especially in computer work, which I need to help him with.  But he ha

  Happy Mother's Day to All of you of the female persuasion.   It's the first time Sally hasn't gotten a card and/or flowers from me in 40 years (at least I like to think so, since Erik was born), and the second time my mom hasn't received something from us for years before that.  Mom lived to be 101-1/2 and was (almost) always positive and loved to talk to people, even when it was difficult for her to talk. Grandma, mom and siblings. Agnes Viken Ostgarden, George Viken, Rosa Eline Morvig Viken, Albert Viken, Otis Viken, Orpha Anna Sylvia Viken Edgar.  Looking at mom and Otis, the photo was probably taken in 1958-1960.  Missing sisters Dora and Olga.  Grandpa Otto Joel Viken died in 1943. I don't have a picture on this computer right now of dad's mother.  The one I'm thinking of was probably taken in 1964 or 65.  It is of Grandma Thea Emelia Bungum Edgar Kyllo playing the piano, my dad Sanford Palmer Edgar playing the fiddle and dad's brother Maurice Alf

 It started so nice.  It was a beautiful morning in very quiet campground.  The wireless was probably the best I've had on the trip, I slept in but not too late, I caught up on the previous two blogs, I had a leisurely lunch, kind of cleaned a little bit, I stayed two hours after checkout, and gave the owner a little thanks for letting me stay.  The drive was short and, while there was one "stand on the brakes" incident caused by cars turning out of my lane in front of me, went smoothly.  I had called the city of Fertile and verified that they have a campground on the north side of the fairground and that there was only one other vehicle there.  There was electricity and sewer but they hadn't hooked up the water yet.  And they had WiFi, apparently with a strong signal.   What could go wrong??? I parked the motorhome and car in front of Bob's house, rang the bell, opened the door and called in. I walked into the kitchen, his bedroom, the living room, up the stairs

 Happy Cinco de Mayo!   The weather for the last two days have been what I've been hoping for the last two weeks.  Highs in the mid 60s and lows in the mid 40s.  Wind was down to a reasonable level and driving has been all about the road and traffic and not the weather.  This is fun! And what a great day!  I had a chance to visit with two of my Windom classmates that I have been in contact with over the past couple of months.  Both have lost spouses recently and we've been able to support each other through it. Kathy was head of oncology nursing at a regional hospital in central Minnesota.  Wayne was a contractor and they both dairy farmed.  Sadly, they had a son who died of pancreatic cancer in 2017 and Wayne died of a heart attack in 2019.  I called Kathy several times during Sally's illness and she was a wealth of information that we used to help Sally feel more comfortable and help during the last weeks.   We talked about the house and all the additions and remodels tha

Let me be the last to wish "May the fourth be with you!"  I'm the last because I am actually writing this on Cinco de Mayo. And to mess things up more, I had Mexican food on the 4th instead of on the fifth, when I could have gotten cheap margaritas.   A couple of weeks ago, I got a email from a person who said he was the grandson of Esten Moen.  Esten is a younger brother of Kirsti Moen, Sally's grandmother.  I got really excited because Esten was one of the siblings I knew the least about.  Jeff is a dentist in Brainerd, MN.  He got on to genealogy to help his son get eligible for a scholarship.  This is the reason I adjusted my schedule so I could meet him. Brainerd is due north of St. Cloud.  Sally and I and two of her high school girlfriends have gotten together in Baxter, MN for a number of years, not knowing he was there.  I drove up and had a really good time going through the Moen relationships and farm history, even bringing out my pictures from the cruise th

It's worked out.   1)  Sally's "new" cousin in Brainerd will be able to meet with me on Wednesday. 2)  I was able make a reservation at the RV park in St. Cloud to come a day early. 3)  I am meeting Merle and Tom around 4:00 and I would buy them dinner. 4)  And, I can get out of Minneapolis/St Paul before rush hour. So I did. I left the RV park about 2:30, stopped at the desk to say I was leaving a night early and that their internet was awful.  They said, "Yeah, we're going to try to work on that, maybe this summer, maybe next..." The drive went mostly well.  Some lane changes were off until I got almost to the point where I couldn't  change.  Luckily, the traffic had enough holes that I could switch lanes.  It's a little more of a problem when you are 50 feet long, but it worked.  Merle and Tom's beautiful house on the Mississippi River burned about three years ago.  It was a heart breaker, Tom had designed it down to the furniture and Merl

 I have been trying to get in contact with a friend for a long time.  She and Sally were long term friends, but she has not responded to either emails or phone calls from me for a while.  I had planned Monday for her if she got back with me.  I left the afternoon and evening open for her but as of last night, I hadn't heard a thing.   So, I took an entirely lazy morning, as I was planning to stay here for two more nights.  The internet connection was pure crap. If I got on to their network, it would drop in two or three minutes, so pretty much everything I did here was hotspotted off my phone.  Same as on Southwest trip earlier this year.  Its almost like RV park operators don't realize that we use the connection the same as they do.  I can't transfer pictures from my phone to my laptop without the net.  I can't open my blog engine without the internet.  It's the primary reason I get behind, because when it takes two or three hours to connect and reconnect and recon

 I had gotten a phone call from Michael saying that he would be gone, but to call his mom.  I called her yesterday and we talked for a bit and I said I would visit her today.  I thought about it for a bit, knowing that today is Sunday, so I called her back and told her I would meet her at church.   Herm had invited me to pancakes for breakfast and I called and arranged to come a little earlier (I mean, we're talking 8:15 earlier!) and that worked fine for him.  So, I woke up at 7:30(!)  and got there AT 8:15.  We had a good talk but I left just in time to make it to American Lutheran Church.   Romelle was sitting in the fourth pew back, about where Sally and I would normally sit at Trinity.  Strange, for all the years I've been in Windom, it was the first time I've ever been here.  Sally was Methodist, so we always went there instead.  It is a pretty light wood interior, there had been a fire maybe 15 years ago with the entire interior burnt out, so it was a fairly modern i