Back in Iowa City

Yesterday we drove back from Keokuk to the West Overlook campground, a day earlier than we had originally planned, so we can help Chris get his house ready for going on the real estate market tomorrow. We thought it would be relatively easy to find a first come-first served campsite. It would have been--except for problems with the camp office internet connection, and problems the attendant had with their new booking program. It took several hours before it was finally worked out.

We had set up on a nice campsite (at the advice of the attendant that it was available throughout our planned stay). Now we'll be able to stay here until 7/8, when we'll move over a couple of spaces for the remaining 3 nights. We're now going to try to conserve tank space so we can dump when we make the move. Eight nights is more than we would usually go, but we expect to spend a fair amount of time at Chris's, and we've learned some techniques to avoid filling the wastewater tank. We'll see what happens.

We set up our tv and internet dishes yesterday. The DirecTV dish was as usual a cinch. We are working to streamline our process on setting up and pointing the internet dish, but that's still a time-consuming process. It took us all afternoon yesterday, but we've drawn up a personal flow chart to make the setup and pointing more efficient. Finding the satellite is more difficult than the tv satellite. The space we're aiming at is much tinier, and the precision required is much greater, since communication goes both ways. Once we've found the satellite and "peaked" the signal (maximized signal strength), then we have to pass the cross-pol test. The Hughesnet National Operations Center has to verify that the dish is carefully skewed to avoid interfering with other users on the same transponder. That is a tough test to pass. There are a multitude of things that can go wrong with the process. It's not exactly user friendly, but Hughes is not officially supporting mobile use of the dishes, so they expect that a professional installer will put the dish up and point it one time--on the roof of a fixed building.
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Nauvoo, IL, with friends

Today we drove to Nauvoo with Dennis and Linda and Linda's mom, Lillian. The Mormon church has restored much of the historic town from which the Saints began their journey to Utah. Visiting has some of the flavor and appeal of learning about life in a bygone time, with the addition of a clear agenda to promote admiration of the Mormon pioneers and acceptance of the Mormon faith. One of the highlights of the visit was a presentation at the blacksmith/farrier's shop, where we learned that blacksmithing got its name from the practice of plunging the completed steel item into manure to carbonize it, thus inhibiting rust. The modern day re-creation involved plunging the hot item into used motor oil, a plentiful source of carbon, and not so odiferous as manure 8-) Everyone got a ring made from a blacksmith created nail.

Another interesting site in Nauvoo was the home of Jonathan Browning--who is the source of the Browning dynasty of gun making.



Along the way to Nauvoo we paralleled the Mississippi River, which is still at flood stage and an impressive sight.

Dennis and Linda took us to dinner at Fiesta Jalisco (www.fiestajalisco.net), a wonderful little Mexican restaurant. Linda recommended the Pescado Yukatan, a wonderful marinated white fish with rice, served with grilled veggies and shredded lettuce with sour cream and guacamole. Ken had the Arroz con Mariscos, a delightful shrimp and scallop medley with grilled veggies. We were joined by Joyce, Dennis's sister-in-law, and a great time was had by all (aided, no doubt, by the pitchers of margaritas). Thanks, Dennis and Linda!

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Mark Twain's Hannibal, Missouri

We went to Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain lived as a boy. We paid $3 each to tour the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum, plus the Mark Twain Museum Gallery. It felt good to get some background on his growing up, his travels, his family.

A statue to Twain has been placed in Riverview Park, north of town, on a site overlooking the Mississippi. The park has 465 acres of forested land located on the limestone bluffs above the river.


Water in Mississippi River is still high from recent flooding, but not threatening the city.



We had lunch at the Mark Twain Cafe. One of their specialties is serving onion rings by the foot. They serve them on a 12" spindle mounted vertically on a block of wood. If you order half a foot of onion rings, they drop rings onto the spindle until they are stacked 6 inches high. If you order a foot of rings, they keep piling them on all the way to the top of the spindle. We settled for a smaller standard order of rings, plus chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and Southern-style green beans. Yum!

Back at our campsite in Keokuk we got to work setting up our antenna dishes. We got the TV dish set up and working just fine. We got the internet dish hardware set up, but we'll have to finish getting it working in the morning.
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Visiting Dennis and Linda Apple

We had a delightful time today visiting with Dennis and Linda at their Illinois home in Warsaw. We drove down from Iowa City to a campground in Keokuk, just across the Mississippi from Warsaw. We visited Dennis and Linda in the cozy residence they've built over their garage/workshop. And they gave us a tour of the home they have under construction just a few feet away.




The new house is two stories tall, not counting the full basement and nearly full attic. There are very attractive views of woods and countryside from many of the windows. After our tour of the house we had dinner with Dennis's sister-in-law Joyce in her home next door. Read more!

Iowa City

We arrived in Iowa City yesterday, in time to see some of the flood waters that are now receding in the city. Fortunately, Chris, Edie, and Annie's house is on relatively high ground, but many people who have lost their homes, and the university has suffered unbelievable damage.

Saturday, June 21, is the Summer Solstice, our 11th wedding anniversary, and the final big game day hosted by Chris and Edie. Many people showed up to enjoy the gaming, the food, and the company. See for details:

http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/32513
(games played, people)

http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/32464
(tributes to Chris and Edie, memories of past game days)

We are camped at the West Overlook campground on Coralville Lake, and parts of that campground are under water still. When we arrived and filled up on fresh water, people were looking at the water flowing over the dam spillway, something that would never happen in more normal times.

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Birthplace of our Excel

Today we drove from Lake Milford (near Junction City, KS) to Smith Center, Kansas--home of Peterson Industries, manufacturer of Excel fifth wheels. Venture had come full circle: the rig was born here in 2006, sent to the dealer in Eugene, OR, from which we bought it, then delivered to us in Long Beach, and now our travels have brought the rig back to its birthplace. Tomorrow we will tour the plant, but today we stopped to meet the folks we've been communicating with by phone and email: Donna Eckhardt in the parts department and Jack Yenne, customer service manager. We've made arrangements to swap out our unsatisfactory folding chairs for regular chairs, which we will finally pick up tomorrow.

We've been traveling through the heartland, and Smith Center is the quintessence of small town America--one single screen theater showing Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for the special Tuesday rate of $3. The showing is at 7:30 p.m., so we'll go join the crowds 8-)

We've had some poor weather lately. A storm here produced a beautiful double rainbow. The Excel in the picture isn't ours--just another rig come home for a visit.
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New Horizons Tour

This morning we toured the factory that makes New Horizons fifth-wheel trailers. We got to see trailers at various stages of construction.















The quality of these trailers is impressive. The cabinets are made entirely of wood, without the pressed wood that's common in most trailers. The plumbing uses better quality material that our trailer has. We we noticed that plumbing lines and electrical wiring running through cabinets and storage compartments is fastened more solidly than what we're used to. We'll definitely consider New Horizons if we ever replace our trailer.

Today we finished some maintenance we started yesterday. We washed the trailer roof and awning. And we cleaned up the hitch--got rid of some rust and touched up the paint. Read more!

Camping Excitement in Kansas

We arrived in Junction City, Kansas, on June 11 planning to stay a week. On the way we arranged a tour of Peterson Industries in Smith Center, Kansas, for next week. Looking ahead, we reserved a campsite near Madison, Wisconsin, for 11 nights starting 7/11. We'll be there to visit relatives.

We're in Junction City to at the New Horizons factory to check out the factory that builds New Horizons fifth-wheel trailers. New Horizons gets the best ratings of all the fifth-wheel brands rated by the RV Consumer Group. If we ever buy another fifth-wheel, New Horizons is one of the brand we would consider. On our first stop at the factory, we took a look at some tables that come with certain New Horizons models. These are tables that look good to us in pictures we've seen. At the factory, though, it was clear that all the tables are too large and heavy for our trailer. So we won't be buying any tables here. We'll go back to the factory on Monday for a tour of the production facility.

We set up camp in West Rolling Hills campground, a Corps of Engineers campground on Lake Milford north of Junction City. When we arrived at the camp we found a sign at the office telling new arrivals to pick a campsite, settle in, and come back to the office after 5pm to register. We set up our trailer in site 36, on a point of land jutting out into the lake. When we went to the office at five o'clock, the manager would only rent a site to us for 1 night because of the possibility of flooding. Rising water could cover the road into the part of the campground we're in. He might have to move us to another site if there rain, and thundershowers were forecast for that night.













Our first campsite was right next to the lake.

Our first priority the next morning was check out other campsites. We found a nice spot on the other side of the campground and moved the trailer. Later in the day we found the road to our first campsite barricaded to keep everyone out. We got some pictures that explain why that was necessary.


































Our second campsite was high enough to stay dry. It gave us some great views of Kansas sunsets.
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On to Oklahoma

We’re on our way from Dallas to Kansas, where we plan to visit a couple of RV factories. We decided our first stop on the way north would be Lake Murray State Park, near Ardmore, OK. In addition to camping, the park offers fishing, boating, scuba diving, golf, picnics, horseback riding, hayrides, hiking, biking, roller blading, swimming, miniature golf, paddle boating, tennis, softball fields, baseball diamond, horseshoe pits, badminton and volleyball nets, an ATV area, an airstrip, bait and tackle shop, marina with rentals and enclosed fishing dock, swimming pool, swimming beach, riding stable, remote control air field, and miniature golf. This is the largest state park in Oklahoma. We've set up camp in a campground called Elephant Rock, one of eight campgrounds in the state park. The best sites are wooded and more secluded than others, but are on the lake with excellent views.














Lake Murray is the focal point of the state park.















Some parts of the park are more wooded than others.

Once we set up camp at Lake Murray yesterday, we got to work setting up our two satellite dishes for the first time. We have a Winegard tripod to hold the 18” dish antenna that we got from DirecTV. We bought a larger oval dish antenna for HughesNet internet service. This dish and its mount weigh enough that they came with a construction-grade tripod. We got both dishes just before we left the Dallas area, and we didn’t have a chance to set them up and point them at the satellites until we got here. We set up the TV dish yesterday so soon as we the trailer unhitched and set up. It was a cinch. We put the dish on the tripod, took a crack at pointing it, and went inside to see if there was anything on our TV. We had a beautiful picture! Must be beginners luck.

Unfortunately, our luck ran out when we moved on to the internet dish. We started on that this morning. We loaded the antenna management and pointing software first, then went outside and set up the hardware. Getting all the pieces put together was easy enough, but pointing the dish was not. We spent most of the day trying one thing after another without getting any action on the signal strength meter. We finally figured out what we were doing wrong and got a good signal late in the afternoon. Then we went back into the trailer to make the last adjustments needed on the software. We didn’t get that right until we called technical support for help. By the time we were done with the whole process, the day was pretty much over. It will go quicker next time. We hope.














Our campsite is decorated by the two satellite dishes.

This morning we checked out Tucker Tower. This is a rock structure built on a bluff next to the lake in Oklahoma’s Lake Murray State Park. The top of the tower provides great views of the lake, but there are good views even from the walk up to the tower from the parking lot. The tower was built in the 1930s by the Work Progress Administration--the WPA. When federal funds were made available to Oklahoma, state Senator Fred Tucker wanted a lake created in a particular spot. He promised to do two things for Governor Murray if the governor would allocate some of the funds to build the lake. He promised to name the lake after the governor. And he promised to build a retreat home for the governor—the structure that came to be known as Tucker Tower. The tower was never used by the governor, and years later it was turned into a nature center. It houses fossils, skeletons, and examples of the types of rock found in the area.















Lee paused on the walk up to Tucker Tower to check out the view of the lake. Read more!

Dallas Visits

We got to Dallas from Tyler the day before Mother's Day. We had reserved a campsite at the city of Lewisville's Lake Park. Lewisville is a suburb near Flower Mound, where Lee's son Edward lives. We had moved on to Dallas earlier than planned so that we could spend Mother's Day with Lee's granddaughter Kelley. Kelley was catching a plane to Italy the day after Mother's Day. Her dad is a naval officer stationed in Naples.















Lewisville has put together a very nice campground in its city park. We have a lake in our front yard.

By the end of May we'd been able to spend a lot of quality time with Edward and his family, including granddaughter Cate. Here are Ed and Cate at a company party at a local ball park.

We also saw some interesting sights at the Dallas art museum and aquarium. The museum's sculpture garden was a surprise. We expected statues of people or other recognizable objects. What we found was a collection of novel pieces.

The aquarium was the most unusual aquarium we've seen. Some of the creatures on display are unusual too. Take this Leafy Sea Dragon for example.

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