YCGL - Minnesota - Day 20 - Friday , May 6 - Fertile - 72 miles

 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 to his computer/genealogy room, not there.  I finally walked down into the basement, and he and my other cousin Joel were vacuuming up the floor with the carpet rolled up.   

Bob has had so much flooding in his basement for a week that they had two shopvacs sucking up water and a dehumidifier running.  Joel has been staying there to work on the night shift and help Bob with the day shift.  Finally, that day, it had started to seep in a little less.  

Minnesota has had a lot of late, wet snow and then warm temperatures to melt it quickly.  Bob's house sits a little low and the whole house acts like a sump.  It was like this the time before last when I visited.  I think we are finally emptying the bowl....if it doesn't rain too much the next couple of days.  

Joel told us to go out and eat, which we did.  I stopped by the motorhome to get some supplies, but learned while I checked in that I didn't have the password for the WiFi.  When we got back, we were going through the vacuuming process about every 15 to 20 minutes.  I finally convinced Joel to go home and get some real sleep, which he did reluctantly.  Doing the midnight to 8:00 shift didn't bother me too much.  The interval got to 30 minutes and finally 45 minutes.

We haven't yet even mentioned genealogy...umph..