Wednesday Morning Musings:
OMGoodness! Does every small town test its emergency
siren at 10 a.m. every Wednesday or is it just Marion, MN? That sound was absolutely ear piercing…which
is what you’d want in a real emergency but it’s a rather lengthy 2 minutes of
testing when you’re sitting 100 ft. from the siren. I had read about it upon checking in to the
campground last night but didn’t pay much attention…until it sounded off this
morning, then I took notice.
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It’s Wednesday morning and
I’m still at the campsite while Kim is heading to a local metal fabrication shop. He has concerns about the trailer top. You know, it worked fine when it was sitting
in the garage J
but road travel is a whole different ballgame, so he’s checking into the
advisability of aluminum sheeting for the top of it. I just hope Rapunzel gets him there and back
again because I sure don’t know where he is…😏
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When Kim asked if I wanted to
hang around the campground or come with him, it didn’t take me long to decide.
I’d much rather sit here in the warm sunshine than in a machine shop that’s for
sure. I’ve already scoped out Roadside
America to see what fun oddities are around here or along today’s route. We’d talked about the route we would be
taking so I looked at the KOA map and then made reservations for tonight and
tomorrow night. Making about a 300 mile
jump each day seems like good progress on a trip of this nature. We really have no time commitment except to
be home by the 21st.
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 |
| Some of 'my rock tribe' |
Last spring someone left painted rocks
around the campground we were staying at and it was fun finding them. I thought it was a great idea, so I decided to
paint rocks and leave them in various places hoping they would be found and
brighten someone’s day. Shoot, if
nothing else, I knew I’d have fun doing it.
It didn’t take me long to decide
upon what to paint on the rocks...a smiley face. It's been a favorite of mine
for about 50 years now. Yes, I know
there’s someone else in Charlevoix who does the same thing but I figured the
world can’t have enough smiley faces, can it?
Anyway, I started with painting a smiley face on the front with a
message on the back. I amassed quite a
few, putting them on the wooden arm of the couch…Kim called all those little
smiley faces ‘my tribe’. Then one day
Isla wanted to paint a rock, so in helping her I branched out into painting
other designs. And when all the
WonderKids were gathered at our house this summer, they painted rocks also…and
I got a lesson from five 3 to 9 year old kids on the beauty of an imperfectly
painted rock. (Some of their rocks were
taken home and some are in a place of honor out in the front of our house.) So I thought this trip would be a perfect
opportunity to spread my rock messages around.
It makes me smile to do it and I can only hope someone who needs a smile
finds them. 😊
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The weather was again warm
and sunny upon waking up. It’s
definitely NOT a 3 layer day…might not even be a 2 layer day. J I hope this weather holds throughout our
trip. ***Update: It hit 82⁰ and was definitely just a one layer day. 👍
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Kim called with the cost of putting an
aluminum top on the trailer…if it keeps the top of the trailer from peeling or
cracking apart as we roll down the highway leaving the contents to spill out, I
will consider it money well spent. Oh,
and I told him it'll cost him a Roadside America stop, too. 😉
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The Rochester/Marion KOA in
Minnesota is a mom and pop campground.
It’s on the small side in comparison to some KOAs we’ve stayed at and
most of those have had ‘camper workers’ on duty which gives the owners some
relief time. Not here…the same couple
has owned it for 30 years and run it by themselves. But it’s a nice quiet, off the main highway
campground…I highly recommend it if you’re passing through and need a place to
camp. 😎
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The Evening Update:
**Kim pulled back into the campground noon with the trailer sporting a
shiny new top. We packed up and left,
having a 300 mile ride to the Yankton KOA ahead of us. But we weren’t concerned…there was plenty of
day left to do that.
**The Ear of Corn Water Tower was about 12 miles from the
campground. We rode over there for my
enjoyment because we still have plenty of time left to get to Yankton.
**About 30 miles down the road I got a message saying we had forgotten
something back at the campground…so we turned around to go get it, knowing the
extra miles would make it tight. But
with no extra stops we should still make the campground during daylight hours.
** We jumped on I-90 to make up some time. When we stopped for a very late lunch (2:30
p.m.) we both agreed that we’d had enough interstate driving, so we consulted
both our Rapunzels and decided on a southern route that paralleled I-90…it was rated
as quicker than the northern route of Hwy 30.
Game on!
**We should have enlarged the little phone maps because what looked
like a relatively straight line was actually a line with a lot of little jogs in it. Might
not have picked the southern route had we known that…all the stopping and
jogging slowed us down…and now maybe we’re getting concerned about making that
300 mile ride during daylight hours.
**We really should have
enlarged the little phone maps so the little dotted line would have been
visible. It just would have been nice to
know exactly where we were. At one point Kim came on the radio and said that
Rapunzel had just welcomed him to Minnesota.
His comment was “Aren’t we in Minnesota?” Then I said “Well, I saw a sign back about a
mile for State Line Road so maybe we’re in…what’s below Minnesota? Iowa?”
The final confirmation was a big ornate sign several miles down the road
that said “Velkommen to Rake, Iowa” with an arrow pointing right. So our non-straight line southern route took
us into Iowa…but we were still heading west and I told myself that’s what really
mattered.
**The non-straight southern route took us through some beautiful
countryside but there were no gas stations to be seen. In fact there were very few little towns to
be seen. When Flame’s low fuel light
came on, I had to consult Biker Girl for the nearest gas station which thankfully
was just a couple of miles off our route.
All this took time.
**It was becoming obvious that we would be setting up camp in Yankton
in the dark. Oh, well, just part of the adventure, right?
**As we approached an intersection where we were going straight
through, meaning we had the right of way, a young girl coming toward us got in
the left turn lane. Instead of waiting
for us to get through the intersection, without hesitation she turned left
right in front of us…I mean, right..in..front..of..us!! I’ve replayed the scene over in my head many
times: my brain registering that the car
was actually turning in front of us, seeing Kim’s brake lights and watching him avoid
impact by swerving to the left and cutting behind her. I was back farther than Kim; I hit my brakes
but came close enough to the car to see that the girl didn’t even look our way...she
just kept her eyes straight forward. She
didn’t look surprised or dismayed at what her actions had almost caused…honestly,
she just looked determined to make that turn. Idiot Girl Driver!! Kim wanted to know how close I came to her
and I couldn’t tell him because it happened so fast I didn’t have time to judge
distances. The semi driver waiting at
the stop sign to the right of us would have had the best view of
everything.
**We continued on down the road without stopping…making radio contact
instead because we were okay and had another 150 miles to go. The sun was on its downward slide.
**We stopped to put on jackets. The near miss with Idiot Girl Driver had
shaken me up and the ‘what if’ and ‘could have’ thoughts were setting in. Contemplating another 2 ½ hours of riding in
the dark was wearing on me. So I
suggested that we eat the cost of the campground and find a hotel room.
**All of that explains why we're sitting in a hotel room that smells
slightly like Fruit Loops in Sibley, Iowa, at 9 p.m., waiting for pizza to be delivered
instead of setting up a tent in the dark in Yankton, South Dakota.
All part of the adventure, right?
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Small Town of the Day: Emmons, MN…population 391
While we didn’t see a lot of towns on our route today, we did ride
through a couple that appeared smaller than Emmons but there were no population
signs, only name signs. Seems that
northern Iowa isn’t all that preoccupied with population numbers.
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After leaving the Ear of Corn
Water Tower, we headed west on Hwy 30. It
wasn’t too far down the road when Flame’s low fuel light came on. I used Biker Girl to find the nearest gas
station…5.7 miles straight ahead.
However, 2 miles down the road, we saw a Sinclair; Kim turned in and rolled
over a hose that dinged his presence as he pulled to the pump. Just as he was realizing it didn’t offer
premium, an elderly gentleman ambled out of the station to pump the gas. It seems we found an old time full service
gas station/garage. 😊
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Wednesday miles: 280 miles
Total miles: 931 miles
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