A Busy Week

It's been a whole week since our return to Minnesota.  Unfortunately, the weather hasn't improved!!  Urghhh!  Last night there were even snow flakes seen coming down!!  MeThinks we came back too soon.

Easter was a sunny day thankfully!  We spent a great afternoon at Ty and Jen's home where we got to see Grandma Joyce and Grandpa Cliff from Duluth along with Jeff, Jamie, and Shay who came from Nashville.  We all had a great time and appreciate Ty and Jen's gracious hosting of this event.  They hold a great Easter Egg hunt for the kids also! 

Here are a couple of the mud pie makers at home on their front porch:

This was cleaned up before their parents got home.

Here is an afternoon look across their backyard.  Deer and other animals frequently walk through here in the early evening:

Monday morning Bob took sweets to his former co-workers.  There have been a few changes there in the past few months, but not enough to entice him back into the working life.  Later in the day Bob and Brett went to our former house to help resolve one last "loose end".  It is now the buyer's place (not ours) and we hope this trip is the last.  On Wednesday, we had a local Freightliner dealer inspect and service the motorhome.  We don't want any breakdowns on our trip to Alaska later this year.

We kept the motorhome parked on the street in front of Brett's house for a number of nights, but moved it yesterday to an official campground, where we could level it up and put the slides out.  Now it seems like our house again.

Our daughter-in-law, Jen, has been on a trip to Scotland with her sister for the past week. We spent some time with Brett and the granddaughters during her trip and last night she returned - very late! The girls were sure excited to have her come home! Sounds like she had a great trip!

In spite of the weather, we're enjoying our visit in Minnesota.  We are going to a buffet tomorrow night with Denny and Diane which is being held by Carrie's culinary class - always terrific food!  We also have a lot more visiting with friends and family yet to come.

Back with the Granddaughters

Here they are:

We arrived at Brett's house about 2:30PM as a surprise (they were expecting us tomorrow).  David and Valentina came later in the afternoon, so we're getting our "fix" with the boys and their daughters.  Don't they look happy to see us?

We noticed on this last leg of the trip, that there were very few RV's on the freeway up here.  We're so used to seeing a lot of rigs on the freeways.  Why are there so few up here??

In answer to the above question, could it be the darn cold weather?  Tonight we walked to the park with the granddaughters and Paige had to go back to the house she was so cold.  Has our blood thinned out already??

Still Headed North

We have remarked on seeing Spring in reverse as we have been headed North.  Well, now that we are into Wisconsin, Spring is not yet here:

None of the leaves have started to show any color.  Grass (where it is not snow covered) is the only green in sight.  We stopped near Wisconsin Dells, at Country Roads RV park.  We had heard a number of good things about this park, so we pulled in to find it covered with 4 inches of snow, and not scheduled to open until May 1 this year.  In the past they have opened in mid-April so they took us in.  WOW, talk about being Quiet!!

We have an extra day available before we are expected back in MN.  We don’t need it for weather delays, and Brett says he will have homemade soup waiting, so we will get to his place by mid afternoon tomorrow.  We will stop to pick up pies at the Norske Nook on our way.

Following Spring's Return

The campgrounds provided by the Corps of Engineers have all been very nice.  We mentioned that the one we stayed at Sunday was quiet, so was the one we found near Benton Illinois on Monday.  Here is a photo of our patio, set up for company.

About 2 years ago (when we still had the 5th wheel trailer) we met another couple who have a residence in this area, but live in their motorhome.  We have been following each other's travels since then.  They came out to our place on Monday afternoon for lemonade, then we went to their place for awhile, then we went out to dinner together.  It was great to touch base with them again.

As we travel north, we keep hearing that spring has not yet come to MN and WI.  Two days ago the dandelions were mostly white in TN, yesterday they were a mixture of yellow and white in southern IL, and today's are just getting started.  The leaves on the trees are also getting smaller; they are just now opening here in central Illinois.  Tonight (Tuesday) we stopped at a State Park for a change.  There are others at this park who are also traveling north, but they are traveling slower since it is still snowing in MN and Wisc.  We may spend an extra day here hoping that the weather in MN will become tropical.  Phoenix sure is looking good!

We still plan on getting to Mpls on Friday.  We're so anxious to see family and friends!

Again On the Road

The past week has been fairly busy at the Rally near the Great Smokies.  Three to four seminars were held each day, but Friday was a scheduled "day off" of sightseeing.  Some went golfing, some went "ZipLining", we took a motorcycle ride with no destination or route in mind.  Traffic in the commercial areas of Pigeon Forge was packed.  What a relief to get out of town.  We headed southwest through Wear Valley and Townsend before turning south into the National Park.  We came across Little River Road, and had it almost to ourselves

This pleasant byway took us generally East (but definitely not in a straight fashion) back to US441 and Gatlinburg where the traffic craziness returned.  With some showers and high winds forecast for later in the day, we chose to head back to the RV park.  After dinner, about 100 of us took advantage of a special offer to see our own music show at the Majestic Theater.  It was a very Hi Energy song-and-dance session with music from the 50's-80's - just the thing for a lot of Baby Boomers.

Many blog readers are motorcyclists, so I want to share a photo of a setup here at our park:

This Dyna (Super C Freightliner) was built as one of only 2 prototype Toyhaulers.  The sidecar is used by this couple's dog.  How's that for a way to travel in style?

The Rally ended with breakfast on Sunday morning, so now we have a week to get back to MN for Easter with all the family back there.  We pulled into another Corps of Engineers park just northwest of Nashville for one night.  What a great park; a little hard to find, but very nice and extremely quiet.

RV Rally Time

The reason we came to Eastern Tennessee was to attend the RV Dreams "Smokey Mountain" spring rally.
We are set up at a private RV park in the town of Sevierville which is between Knoxville and the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.  This area really counts on tourism; it is like Wisconsin Dells on STEROIDS: plenty of music shows and restaurants, but also mini-golf, Zip lines, their own Titanic, and Go-Karts.  This weekend the area will also play host to a statewide car club, and many rolling works of art are already here and set up for showing:

As for the rally, there are about 170 or more people registered here and even more parked here.  The focus of this group is information for those who are just beginning to or about to begin spending all of their time in their RV - FullTiming as it is called.  So we are not alone in this endeavor.  There are people here from all over the country and Canada.  Many are already living fulltime on the road, and the others are within 3 years of making the big change.

Tourists in Music City

The Corps of Engineers park were are staying in began to empty late yesterday, and a few more left this morning.  The weekend-people had to get back to w**k (old 4-letter word) and those who are traveling had other places to be.  We stayed in Nashville today to do some minor errands this morning and to wander around the downtown area this noon.  We took some backroads into the city and looked up a Diner/DriveIn/Dive location, although we didn't eat there.

We got a behind-the-scenes tour of a certain cable TV network (click on the photo to enlarge):

This was followed by some other "insider information": where to eat, where to shop, and what to look for while we were downtown.  Here is one local landmark:

The river looks a little higher than normal.  On our way home we took a detour to find the location of another Corps of Engineers facility.  The Seven Points Campground is also east of the city and located on J Percy Priest Lake.  The sites there are more widely separated, and more wooded.

We headed home as the forecasted stores came in right on schedule.  We had quite a lot of rain, but no hail or high winds like elsewhere nearby.  Tomorrow we will pull in the slides, raise the jacks, and connect the car to the rear and head East about 200 miles to Sevierville for week-long rally of other RV people.  There will be a lot of seminars and social activities on the agenda, so our blogs could be a little spotty for awhile.