A Pleasant Time in Sioux Falls

We have spent a whole week seeing the sights of Sioux Falls, beginning with the river and waterfalls that give the town its name.

           

We have also wandered around downtown and tried a couple of local restaurants, including Bob’s BBQ which was a really good little hole in the wall.

 

Normally, our mail is collected here and forwarded to us twice per month, but this week we picked it up in person at Dakota Post’s new offices.

We have also seen a number of current movies, one in a sit-down theater (Beauty and the Beast) and two others on our home theater (Sully and La La Land).

It was a relaxing week there and now the relaxation continues as we move east.  We have plenty of time to take state highways slow and easy.  We are now in Iowa’s “Great Lakes” area, a major tourist area in the summer near Spirit Lake and Lake Okoboji.  It is not crowded at this time of year, but we can see how it will be busy later.  We took a ride around the lake and saw some huge, beautiful homes.  It was a real surprise to see how popular this area is.

We are heading slowly toward the Winnebago plant in Forest City IA for a quick fix or two next week.  When done there, we will continue north to see the kids and grandkids in the Minneapolis area for a few days, and try to get to Joyce’s place in Duluth before the opening of fishing season on May 13.

The local weather forecasts are now including some frost warnings.  Are we coming north too soon?

In Sioux Falls for Awhile

After a week volunteering at Oak Park Retreat Center we continued our trip north, following the pollen and dandelions as spring led the way.  From Perkins, Oklahoma to Bob’s sister’s farm in southern Nebraska, it is an easy 2-day drive.  Friday, the 14^th, we had a very strong tailwind that blew us north into Kansas.  We stopped for the night at a Corps of Engineers park on the Marion Reservoir near Marion, Kansas.  The only problem is that the wind didn’t stop, but kept on blowing at 30 to 40 mph all night long; so intense that we kept our living room slides in all night.

Saturday the wind was not as strong, but continued from the south and helped us roll into Nebraska.  When we stopped here last year the weather was very stormy, but this year was quite nice.  We attended Easter services with Bill and Mary and had Sunday dinner with them as well. 

After a pleasant Monday of laundry and shopping with Mary, we hit the road again, this time to Sioux Falls.  This city is officially our legal home, so we plan to spend some time here and get to know it better.

Art Deco

Our wandering around northern Oklahoma brought us to Tulsa where the tourism brochure suggested seeing a church on South Boston Avenue near downtown.  The Methodist church here was built in 1929 in the Art Deco style and is quite unique.  So much so that has also been designated to be a National Historic Landmark.

Some details can be found at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Avenue_Methodist_Church

We found it on Saturday and chose to attend services there on Sunday.  It is quite a building, but a choir of about 50 youth was even more impressive.

          

Now, after a whole week off, we found the possibility of boredom setting in, so we have gone back to work.  The Oak Park Retreat center in Perkins Oklahoma had been slowly going to pieces for many years, until a new owner (a local Methodist Church) bought it about this time last year.  They had a group of Nomads work here last fall, and some of them told us that Oak Park will have lots of work available for quite some time.  We contacted the minister and asked if they could use some help for 4 days this week.  He was very excited to have the offer of help.  We are doing our first “Drop In” project here this week. 

We met with Larry, who is our contact at the retreat center, on Sunday.  He asked us to unpack 250 new folding chairs and paint some of the rooms at the center during our 4 days here.  Their rooms look a lot like hotel rooms with a bedroom and bathroom/shower.  We’ve been able to do one room & bath per day with a goal of getting 4 rooms done. 

They are very grateful and we’re so grateful we can help out.  Pastor Max had us over for dinner on Monday night and then took us out for lunch on Wednesday.  We’ll be able to attend his church for Maunday Thursday services which we’re looking forward to.

Getting our Kicks on Route 66

We are taking that time off mentioned a couple of days ago, just not where we had in mind.  The first Corps of Engineers campground that we had planned didn’t work out.  It was too remote and provided neither TV nor cell phone/internet service so we didn’t check in.  Instead we took a round-about route to stop for 3 nights in Eufaula.  Tuesday we moved again, a little farther north, to Big Cabin which is a small town near what was Route 66.

Although old US Route 66 went from Chicago to Los Angeles, it seems that Arizona and Oklahoma do the most for tourists to help remember it.  We have toured parts of it in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the past.  Today we went to Miami Oklahoma, in the very corner of the state, to see Waylan’s Ku-Ku Burger shop.

This was part of a fast-food chain in the 1960’s and is still operating today.  While in town we also spent some time at a couple of other tourist places: the Coleman Theater and the Vintage Iron Motorcycle Museum.

On our way back to Big Cabin we also saw the restored 1930’s vintage DX service station in Afton.

Later this week we will see a few other tourist attractions near here before doing some shopping in Tulsa. 

In the meantime we are now watching CBS for the FIRST time all year!  We have been in a number of small towns in both Texas and Oklahoma where there were either NO or very limited TV signals.

Done at Elmore City

Oklahoma is a tough place to live.  We know it is located in “Tornado Alley” but they also have floods, ice storms, and wildfires that can all do a lot of damage.  They have so many of these natural disasters, and so frequently, that the residents have created a lot of helpful organizations to assist their neighbors. 

In our previous posting, we mentioned some of the flooding here last summer.  Some more details can be seen at https://weather.com/news/news/flooding-severe-weather-plains-midwest-mid-june-2016-impacts

The statewide conference of Methodist churches has their own disaster support group (see http://oklahomaunitedmethodistchurchdisasterresponse.org/ ) complete with their own fulltime staff, trucks, and trailers to work with the local area victims and to keep us volunteers supplied with some tools and most materials.  They have been working in a number of towns near here since the flooding happened, and the Nomads have been here since mid-February.  Our team was made up of couples from Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee, as well as Oklahoma, most of whom we had not worked with in the past.  Our family of friends continues to grow.  We completed the last 2 homes in the town of Mayville.  Our team leaders, Dennis and Nancy, have their own blog and posted a lot of pictures of the work we’ve accomplished (see http://dennisandnanccy.blogspot.com/ ).  Beginning next week, the Nomads will be parking at the county fairgrounds in Lawton and continue working there for another 5 weeks.

We will not be going to Lawton.  Instead we are going to take some time off to rest and recuperate.  While on Nomads projects, we work hard.  The last 2 days of this project, both of us spent most of the time on our hands and knees, laying carpeting.  After working projects since November, we welcome some time off!  We have scheduled a couple of weeks at different Corps of Engineers campgrounds, still in Oklahoma.  We will move slowly northward, following the pollen and dandelions.

Happy Pi (3.14….) Day from Oklahoma

Our weekend in Texas’ Hill Country was quite good.  In early January, we had spent a week in the southern part of it and heard of the Frio Canyon Motorcycle Shop and its Bent Rim Grill in Leakey, TX.  We got a souvenir T-shirt there but the grill was closed for remodeling.  The shirt advertised the “Three Twisted Sisters” which are nearby county roads #335, #336, and #337 and are a motorcyclist’s delight.  At that time, we only rode one of them, so Saturday we went back and rode all three, plus had lunch at the re-opened Bent Rim Grill.  It was a cool, cloudy day with a couple of very light showers in the morning, but the weather turned very nice by the time we got back to the RV park.  Good thing we rode Saturday because Sunday was much colder. 

We chose that day to head north.  After spending over 4 months in Texas (except for the week of Christmas) it was time to depart.  We had originally planned to stop in northern Texas but had made good time so we kept going all the way into Oklahoma which is where we will stay for the next 3 weeks.  Four hundred miles is more than I’d like to put on in a day with the motorhome but we did that (and a little more) arriving just before 6:00 PM.

We had thought that our next project would be repairing tornado damage, but instead learned that this area was hit with massive rainstorms in June of last year.  We are parked in a vacant lot between a café and a food store (both very small) because the lot has electricity, water, and sewer hookups for us.  We will be working on a home in the town of Maysville, which is north of us.

According to the National Weather Service, this area was hit with about 8” of rain flooding homes and streets, plus washing out some bridges.  For more details, see

https://weather.com/news/news/flooding-severe-weather-plains-midwest-mid-june-2016-impacts .  Mr. Stevens had bought a home in Maysville some time ago, which his son now lives in.  Mr. Stevens had the garage converted into a small 2-story apartment for his use upon retirement.  We heard that he had about 3 feet of water in his lower level before the rains stopped and the water went down.

Earlier repair teams had completed the demolition, and re-framing, and had hung most of the new drywall.  We will be completing his home with new walls, painting, cabinets and vanities, and a new floor.  Once this home is done, there are more awaiting.  Nomads will be working here through all of April and into the first week of May.

Back to the Hills

We completed our month long volunteer commitment at the Escapees Care Center on 2/28, took a couple days to organize, and then headed out to our next project.  We enjoyed our time at Care and met lots of very interesting senior citizens and staff at the center.  Definitely not the physical work of the Nomads projects.

We have had a good time this past week, helping out a Nomads group at a Methodist Church in Taft TX.  We have known the leaders, Dave and Sally, for over 5 years and have worked together a couple of times.  They had a lot of work to do and a small team so we helped during their third week In Taft.  This is a small town not far from Corpus Christi.  A number of churches in this area work together for the community’s common good.  Nomads teams have been here many times and are well supported.  The local Kiwanis Club has provided lunch for the group every Thursday.  We met some very interesting people at the lunch this Thursday.  We sat by the Justice of the Peace from Taft and learned about her job.  She serves as the local “judge” who sets bail and sentences for traffic violations and petty crimes.  We also met the woman who serves as the Housing Authority.  She told us of her background as a member of a family of migrant workers.  They traveled in a vehicle from Texas north picking crops.  She has fond memories of being in Minnesota (but can’t remember what city) where a group of teenagers worked with the children.  That’s where she learned all about multiplication and the tables.  She also had her parents with her at the Kiwanis lunch.  Her father is a retired fire fighter now.  Her sister just retired from the National Park Service.  Very different than their migrant working days!

The Nomads team had worked on a couple of homes around town as well as 2 churches before we arrived.  We helped with re-glazing some windows and re-painting a fellowship hall at the Methodist church.  A retired vet and his wife hosted a fish fry dinner at their place on the Gulf of Mexico and the Presbyterian pastor and his wife hosted a BBQ at their home.  We were well fed, as usual!

Now that the project is complete we have relocated to the western edge of Texas’ Hill Country for some motorcycling in the hills tomorrow.  We won’t have a long break as there is a Nomads Disaster Recovery Project in Oklahoma that needs help so we’re heading there to start work on Tuesday for 3 weeks.  Tornados damaged many homes there last year and we will help with rebuilding.