Turnkey Camping

  We met our first airstream friends with kids in Door County in July 2018.  We’ve gotten together just about every year since then and it was finally time for us to come to their home turf!  We spent two nights in La Cross, WI.   Stu worked and my friend and I took the kids blueberry picking and then to an old drive in restaurant.  Next stop was a paddle wheel boat on the Mississippi!  Our hosts made some amazing bbq for dinner and we played an x box game called Jackbox.  It was a great visit!

We had dinner with a college friend and her mom and kids last night!  We credit this friend with lots of things.  Her dad ran the Thailand program that Stu went on to study abroad.  That caused him to lead a group of students the following summer.  Stu and I met on that trip!  And we adopted two kids from there - so we have a lot to thank her for!  She and her husband run a bakery and so her husband couldn’t make it to dinner.  He was busy making scones and quiche crust for the next morning.  We had so much fun laughing and recounting old stories.  

  My parents were gracious enough to chase Charlie around  the campground water park while I went to Aldi to restock on groceries.  I was proud of myself because I drove the dually to the grocery store and parked it on the first try! Back at the campground, I joined the boys and my parents at the pool until dinner time.  When Stu got off work. We realized that our bedroom a/c had broken.  We grilled steak and chatted with my parents for the evening - we’ll call Brinkley in the morning about the a/c.  Always an adventure!  

Stu has work in Minnesota so we’re camping in Warertown.  It’s a great campground with pools and water slides and sports activities so the next few days should be really fun for the kids!  It was a long drive today - 7 hours - but the best part is we met my parents at the park and made some pizza for dinner.  My favorite part of the evening after seeing my parents was giving Charlie a bucket bath outside and fireflies were out!  It was magical!

  We read about a hitch issue with the Anderson hitch on Facebook - apparently the whole ball can shear off in an extreme braking situation.  We have been looking for a reason to upgrade and this morning our pin wouldn’t engage.  We got it halfway in and drove two hours to Bismarck.  There was a hitch shop that closed within 10 minutes of our arrival.  The people we have met along this trip have been so kind.  The shop gave us his personal cell number because they were closing and wanted us to have a way to reach him if we encountered issues installing the hitch.  We got back to the campground and worked on the hitch.  After a bit of adjusting we took a break to go have dinner with Stu’s cousin.  We had a great time with her family - they foster kitties and Charlie was obsessed with all of the cat toys and cat trees.  It was so funny.  After dinner, we headed back and got the hitch finished up.  Off for a long drive day tomorro...

We drove from Billings, MT to Medora, ND.  After today, we’ve camped in 35 states!  13 in Continental US to go!  We drove around Teddy Roosevelt park and went to the visitor’s center.  The landscape was so beautiful!  We loved the prairie dog town the best.  At this point, we were getting hungry, so we had dinner in town.  P and I ventured out to look for the petrified loop trail - but it led to an off road trail and I wasn’t comfortable taking the dually off road just yet.  It’s super smoky out - the campground said it was from Canadian wildfires. Tomorrow we’re off to Bismarck to see Stu’s cousin!

We made a quick decision to split a 9 hour day into two 4 1/2 days, so we winded up in Billings, MT.   The road thru Montana was gorgeous!  I ended up remembering that a college friend lived in Billings.  She was a communications major and business and Spanish minor, so we had a fair amount of classes together! The last time we saw each other was at a mutual friend’s wedding in 2005.  Prior to that, we did a college summer together in Russia and Japan.  She came out to the campground and we caught up for quite a while.  It was so fun!