Dancing, Dancing, Dancing!

We danced our feet off today. The schedule includes two hours of workshop 10:00 to noon, three hours of workshop 2:00 to 5:00, and three hours of dance 8:00 to 11:00. We chose to sit out some of that and to leave a bit early, but were still pretty darned tired by the time we finished.

We ate dinner at the Charcoal Grill in Racine with Pottingers and Walenters. We all had the special: rotisserie chicken with mashed potatoes and coleslaw, which was quite good, especially for the price. Plus we had really good company. We're not getting to see our friends at the dance, since they are dancing in the C2 hall and we're in C1, so it was good to get a chance to visit and compare notes about the callers.

On the way home, H & J and J & S said they were going to Woodman's, which they described as a large warehouse style grocery store. We decided to stop there too, since we had a few things to pick up. Wow! We have never seen a store like this. They have everything you could think of, and lots you never imagined. The bakery area alone is the size of a regular supermarket.

We found a good selection of organic foods. I finally found the Rubbermaid dishpans I've been searching for. They're white and fit our sinks perfectly, and just in time too, because the ones we had been using were developing cracks.
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Moving and Dancing

This morning we packed up to leave and then took our morning walk. We saw more geese, including this pair with their goslings:

By 9:00 a.m. we were on the road towards the Milwaukee area for the Academy for Advanced and Challenge Enthusiasts (AACE), which is a square dance convention. Again we ran into a closed road. We were planning to take US 43 to I 94, but 43 was closed, so we had to take a detour. We don't like detours. Towing Venture means that we can't change lanes very quickly, but we did find our way to Cliffside (a Racine County park south of Milwaukee).

This is where we started out this morning:

Here's where we're camped tonight through Sunday:

After getting set up, we ate a late lunch and gathered up our laundry. We'll be very busy dancing the next few days, so this was our last opportunity. We went to a laundromat in Racine.

When we returned to our campsite, our friends John and Sandy Walenter greeted us. They are camped in a nearby site. So are Hardy and Judy, but we didn't really have time to visit. We had to fix dinner, eat, and change for the dance in double quick time. The dance didn't start until 8:00 p.m., but I had to be there at 7:00 p.m. for training in how to use the computer program that assigns dancers to squares. I've signed up to be responsible for operating the computer in the C1 hall for several hours during the weekend.

We were very happy to see many people we know at the dance, including some LA folks that we danced with at Trailblazers and some we met at Romney's weekend. Several couples from the Rio Grande Valley were there also. However, we didn't get a chance to socialize much, partly because of all the dancing and partly because some of our friends dance C2, while we dance only C1.

We're dancing to some great callers this weekend, all nationally known. It's a bit of a stretch for us, because we're pretty new at C1 and because we're used to dancing to only our three caller teachers (Randy Dougherty, Darryl Lipscomb, and Joe Saltel). Every caller puts a different twist on the choreography, and we're unused to these new voices. Bottom line is that we didn't dance as well as we'd like to. We expect that getting more floor time is the solution.
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Happy Sixteenth Birthday, Molly!

Today is my granddaughter Molly's sixteenth birthday. I remember the first time I held her, and it certainly doesn't seem that long ago! It's also my Aunt Iris's birthday (somewhat more than sixteenth....). I called and wished both of them happy birthdays.

The thunderstorms continued all through the night last night, so we wondered if we'd be afloat when we woke up. It rained the entire time we were packing up to leave. Fortunately, we have really good rain jackets just for this contingency, and the area around the rig was hard packed gravel. As we drove out of the park, we noticed that the sites we had first looked at were pretty much underwater.

We left the Warsaw City Park on the banks of the Mississippi and headed north, only to be stopped in our tracks by a "road closed" sign. Fortunately, a friendly local man in a pickup offered to lead us on an alternate route, so we followed him. We made a stop in Macomb, IL, where we took our morning walk. It turns out that Macomb is a university town, so we saw lots of student rental housing.

We stopped for the night at a Walmart in Rockford, IL, about seven and a half hours after we left Warsaw. That's a pretty long travel day for us, but we wanted to have a shorter drive tomorrow. We went from camping at Goose Landing this morning to camping near these geese tonight. When Ken was taking pictures of them, one lady rolled down her window and said, "There are more of them all the time!" I guess the area must be overrun with geese. This group had a bunch of half grown goslings.

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More Friends and a Lovely Home

Our first task this morning was to go to City Hall to pay for our campsite. I had spoken by phone with the County Clerk, Kathy, earlier and was happy to meet her. She was very helpful and friendly.

Afterwards, we decided to take our morning walk around the city and explore a bit. We found a sign pointing to Fort Edwards State Memorial. The fort was located on a promontory with a commanding view of the river. Well restored historic homes surround the site.

In the afternoon, we visited Dennis and Linda's lovely home, which is a work in progress. We last saw it on our visit three years ago in June of 2008. It has been marvelously transformed through the devoted and creative work of our friends. Every project has been considered and executed with care and art, down to the most minute detail. We admired the craftsmanship and artistry and personality that was evident in every room.

Dennis and Linda had planned a barbecue and invited Dennis's brother, Frank, along with Joyce and Duane and someone (?) and us, so we were nine at table with Linda's mom Peach. Despite the pouring rain most of the day, Dennis was able to grill the chicken to perfection (he says the secret is to bring it to room temperature before grilling). We ate inside at the magic expanding table that Linda refinished beautifully.

Linda, Joyce, Lee, Dennis, Frank, Duane, ?, and Peach

The company sparkled. We laughed a lot and enjoyed ourselves immensely. It's just great to have such friends.
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Late Start but Great Ending

We decided to sleep in some to catch up from a very active day and late night last night, so we got a late start today. Our friends Hardy and Judy got out early to find an EarthCache (a kind of geocache that is a natural feature, in this case a spring with a small cave). An EarthCache is designed to "share information about a particular geological feature of our planet Earth, and the object is to learn something about it." The Pottingers pulled their Casita out, and we said goodbye until Wednesday, when we will meet at the campground near our next square dance weekend.

After we packed up and hitched up, we took our morning walk along a hike and bike trail which starts in the campground. We walked only 30 minutes total, but really enjoyed the hardpack trail through the woods. We heard lots of birds and saw a multitude of butterflies. Ken spotted this milkweek plant whose flowers attracted four different types of butterflies while we watched them sipping nectar. I thanked Ken for spotting the butterflies, and he said it was easy--they were waving at us. Four fritillaries opening and closing their wings do attract attention!

By the time we had packed up and dumped, it was almost noon when we headed out. We stopped in Bowling Green to pick up some groceries and eat lunch. We headed north on Highway 61 and crossed the Mississippi into Illinois at Hannibal.  It was 4:00 p.m. by the time we pulled in to Warsaw, Illinois.

We had called City Hall a few weeks ago to check on camping in the city park, which is located on the Mississippi River. It was flooded the last time we were here, but the person I spoke with said that the park was not flooded and that it was being expanded. We drove down a steep hill onto a narrow road called Water Street. We were uncertain about exactly where the park was located. When we came to it, we were surprised to find no one camped. We got out and began to inspect the sites, which had short concrete pads, but the ground around them was pretty soft and muddy. Just then, a white pickup truck drove up to us, and a man said, "You don't want to camp here. It's going to flood. The river is expected to rise two feet." Discouraging news, but then he pointed out some new campsites that had recently been added on higher ground.

Great! But when we tested the electric outlet, no power. Then Ken found the main breakers and turned on the power to our site and an adjacent site. The multimeter still wasn't showing good current to the 50 amp outlet, but it's sometimes hard to get the multimeter probes to hit the contact points. We decided to set up and hook up the power cord to see what happened. If necessary, we can get by without shore power and just use our inverter. When we plugged in, we had power!

Our next challenge was hooking up the water. Ken was having trouble making the connections tight enough not to leak. When he turned on the water, I filled a pan to make iced tea. The water poured out with MUCH higher pressure than we're used to. I ran out and found the pressure regulator showing 80 psi, which might be enough to cause leaks in an RV plumbing system, which is made of Pex (plastic piping). I had tried to adjust the water pressure upwards in our previous park, but got only 30 psi. Turns out I had opened the regulator quite far without meaning to.

I had to reduce the pressure, but we couldn't remember which way to turn the valve on the pressure regulator, so inside to check Google. I found the information that clockwise would increase pressure, so I turned the valve counterclockwise and got it adjusted down to 50 psi, which works well for us. Ken got the leak stopped in the water fittings.

Finally,just before 5:00 p.m., we were finally all set up, so I called Dennis and Linda. Linda suggested that we go out to dinner at Fiesta Jalisco, a Mexican restaurant in Keokuk. Dennis's sister, Joyce, her husband, Duane, and Linda's mom, Peaches, had plans to join us. The reservation was for 7:00 p.m., so we had time to decompress a bit and stroll along the water. The Mississippi is rather narrow at this point, and the surface seemed very calm. We had ducks and lots of geese for neighbors.

Dinner at Fiesta Jalisco was delicious (just as we remembered it from our last visit there with Dennis and Linda and Joyce in 2008). We shared the Pescado Yukatan at Joyce's suggestion. Even better was the company. Both margaritas and conversation flowed, and there was lots of laughter. Tomorrow we'll get to see the progress on the house.
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Eight Hours of Romney!

We danced advanced this morning 10:00 a.m. to noon. After lunch we started again 1:30-3:30 advanced and 3:30 to 4:30 C-1. After dinner we picked up again with C-1 from 7:O0 to 8:00 p.m. and advanced from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. By the end of the dance, even I had had enough square dancing for one day!

It was great to have the chance to dance to Romney again--still as challenging and sarcastic as ever. We even went out to dinner with him. Hal and Dorothy and Hardy and Judy filled him in on all the Missouri doings, and we all gave him the scoop on the Valley dancing.

Tonight we came home and opened a bottle of the St. James Vinoles and shared it with Hardy and Judy as we mellowed out after our challenging day.
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On to Babler

We moved to Babler State Park just outside of St. Louis today. We played hopscotch with Hardy and Judy's Casita on the way and ended up arriving at nearly the same time.

Waving at the Casita from a rest area...

The first thing we had to do was hook up all our hoses plus one of Hardy's to reach the water faucet to fill our fresh water tank and then theirs. When we got set up, I went to the campground office and bought some ice--it was another sweltering day.

Lovely adjacent sites--big rig and little rig side by side.

On the way we stopped at a community bank to pick up a savings bond for Molly's sixteenth birthday. When I walked into the bank, a customer appreciation day celebration was in full swing, with kiddie games and hot dogs and bingo. Now that's what I call a friendly bank.

I fixed Gina's Skinny Recipes chicken cordon bleu for supper. Hardy and Judy came over with a nice salad. Everyone enjoyed the meal and the company. Then I had to quickly shower and dress for the dance.

We rode with Hardy and Judy, who have been here many times and are familiar with the route. When we got to the dance, it was great to see some old friends, especially Romney.  Several couples we dance with in the Rio Grande Valley during the winter are here, including Harlan and Jean and Marion and Velma. We had originally met both of these couples at Romney weekends in Southern California. Hugh and G.W. and David are here, and Hugh is dancing with Louise. Curt and Jean and Marty and Kit are here too. It was like old home week. We also met some new folks, including one couple who lived for seven years in their sailboat and then ten years in their motorhome before buying a house in Florida. They still travel during the summer to visit family.

The St. Louis dancers sponsor the weekend, and they provided a goody table and lots of coffee and ice water. Their hospitality was much appreciated. Dancers make a special trip to be at this weekend each year and come from far away. Romney called out "Miss San Diego" (Carol Heins). She and Les may have come the furthest. Many go on to Wilwaukee for AACE.

The dancing started with two hours of A-2, Romney style--full tilt, no holds barred! It was really great to dance to one of our very favorite callers with lots of friends. The final hour was C-1. Although Ken and I have been reviewing the definitions, our two month break from dancing has definitely left us a bit rusty, but we managed with a little help from our friends.
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Laundry and Lions

This morning we headed over to Hardy and Judy's with our laundry and plans to take a hike at Lane Spring Recreation Area. The laundry was done, but the hike is on hold until our next visit to Rolla. It was just too darned hot to get out and hike. We did get out for our morning walk along the private road that leads to their house. Judy lets the wildflowers grow along the road until they finish blooming.

Hardy and Judy were working to get their Casita cleaned up and packed. Unfortunately, Judy discovered that the mice had moved back in, and one had died in the closet, most odiferously. When Lysol and such failed to deal with the odor, Ken drove back to Venture and got our Odor Eliminator spray (made by Glade). It works really well for us to neutralize odors, and it worked quite well for Judy.

We had lunch at the house and then Judy drove to St. James to her old workplace to pick up a final check. Next she drove to the university in Rolla for Hardy to return a book to the library and then on to Walgreens to pick up a prescription.

On the way home, she spotted the Lions Club Park, and we stopped to walk around the small lake there. The park has more and more varied colorful children's playground equipment than we've ever seen in one park. The trail around the lake is .6 mile, and we walked around it twice. Ken took lots of photos of the large fountains and the rainbow the sun was making in the spray.

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Civil War Battlefield

Today we joined with Hardy and Judy and headed south towards Springfield, MO. Our friends had visited the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield before and wanted to introduce us to it. We've visited battlefields in the east but really hadn't considered Missouri as the location of many battles of the Civil War.

We started our visit by watching the introductory film, produced by Wide Awake Films, which was very well done. It used re-enactors to bring the battle to life, and lots of maps and diagrams to explain the complex action. I liked the opening section, which placed the battle in the context of national events and concerns, including slavery, and the divided sentiments of the citizens of Missouri. By the end of the film, which kept my attention throughout, I felt that I had a good sense of the significance of this battle in the polarization of Missourians and in reinforcing the cause of unity.

We then took an auto tour of the battlefield, stopping at key points to view the structures that still remain and to get a better sense of the terrain. The Ray House, with its commanding view of Bloody Hill, is well preserved and reconstructed, and a Park Service interpreter was there to tell us about the battle and answer questions.

I was quite moved to think that we were standing on the very ground where so many gave their lives.

When we left the park, we headed for Rosie Jo's Cafe in Ozark for supper. We all had the grilled chicken salad and relaxed in the air conditioning. Then we drove over to the square dance at the Ozark Senior Center. We could literally have thrown a stone at it from the restaurant parking lot.

The caller was Jerry Ellis, and when we arrived, a square of new dancers was reviewing some advanced calls. We jumped into the next tip, which again was new dancer review. After the review tips, Jerry started calling A-2 for the experienced dancers.

We were very happy to see some of our friends from the Valley: Louise and Curt and Jean, and we had a great time dancing with them and Hardy and Judy. We also met some nice folks, most of whose names are a bit blurry now. After the dance, a group headed over to Braum's for ice cream and more chatting. There was a table of men and one of women. Ken and I hadn't anticipated that. We had to sit together for a while because we were sharing a brownie fudge sundae.

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More Adventures

It seems to me this evening, looking back on the day, like we've had enough adventures for at least three days. This morning Hardy and Judy picked us up at 8:30 a.m. to visit the Richard Clement Memorial Forest and Wildlife Area, where Hardy was going to place his first geocache. We picked up a map at the trailhead and hiked in. Hardy and Judy had been here earlier with a ranger and had picked out a spot by a wildlife pond to place the cache, a small camouflaged film canister.

The pond is home to an assortment of frogs, fish, dragonflies, butterflies, and other creatures. Some of the dragonflies looked as if their wings were jeweled. The cache will certainly be a challenging one to find, but the effort will be well rewarded by the opportunity to visit this little island of life. After a while we walked out to an open meadow designated as a food plot, full of wildflowers and butterflies. We saw fritillaries and swallowtails, among others. Hardy encouraged me to log my visit to the cache so I would be FTF (first to find). By the time I logged it this evening, someone else had already found it!

Hardy had a root canal scheduled for 1:00 p.m., so they dropped us off at home at 11:00 a.m. We scrubbed off to try to remove any unwelcome hitchhikers--like the tick I found clinging to the washcloth or the invisible chiggers that live in the grasses. After lunch, we drove into Rolla to meet our friends at the dentist's office. While waiting, we browsed a nearby bookstore, always a fun diversion.

Then we headed to St. James, a small town northeast of Rolla along I-44 to visit the St. James Winery. Hardy and Judy have visited this award-winning winery before and had some good suggestions of wines to try. We ended up buying both the Riesling and the Vignoles that they recommended. The friendly folks, free tasting, and wide selection of accessories made this a memorable winery to visit.

Next we drove to Maramec Spring park. The spring provided water power for iron works in the eighteen hundreds. The visitor center has lots of exhibits and working scale models showing the history. We walked around the spring and the adjacent trout raising pools. The spring has an average daily flow of around 100 million gallons and provides lots of water at 56 degrees, just right for raising fingerling trout to stock the state's lakes. We put our quarters in the dispenser and got fish food to feed the hungry fish, which flashed in the sunlight as they rose to take the food.

After walking around the self-guided trail, we were ready for dinner, so we drove to Sybill's in St. James. It's a 5 star restaurant in a Victorian style house, and definitely a dress up place, but they were very gracious in welcoming us despite our very casual dress. The food and service were spectacular. Ken and I shared the chicken caprese, described as "Grilled and topped with fresh tomato, caramelized red onion, homemade mozzarella and basil, drizzled with reduced balsamic vinegar." The house salad had blue cheese crumbles and bacon. The kitchen split the dish, which also came with green beans and garlic mashed potatoes. The only thing that was really split was the chicken, and the split charge was only $2. We were wowed.
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Missouri Skies

We left Joplin this morning and headed north to Rolla, Missouri, to visit our friends Hardy and Judy. It was another hot sunny day as we headed northeast on I-44, and the trip was uneventful. As we got nearer to Rolla, I started to hear the loud buzzing of cicadas, but could hardly believe my ears, since the windows were closed, the a/c was on, and we were speeding up the interstate. When we stopped, it was clear that the cicadas were indeed out in force.

It was late afternoon when we pulled into Three Springs RV Campground south of Rolla and got set up.

Then we changed out of our sweaty clothing and headed to Pottingers' house. They have their own little bit of paradise far from any highways and out of sight of any neighbors except for the bunnies and deer who visit. We had a great reunion--it's been two months since we saw them last--and caught up on their adventures. Yesterday they attended Hardy's 49th high school reunion. Eight of the ten members of his class were present.

We talked about the cicadas, which have evidently been around for three weeks already. Hardy had printed out information about the nutritional qualities of the bugs and suggestions for how to serve them.

Judy served a real feast (no cicadas!), including pork ribs almost caramelized from long, slow cooking (yum!) and some delicious Key lime pie. We ate on the back deck, cooled by a fan and by the surrounding trees. It was a wonderful dinner with great friends.

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More Than Peanuts

Our adventure today was a visit to the nearby George Washington Carver National Monument, at his birthplace in Diamond, MO. We had noted on the website that a photographic program Who Was George Washington Carver? was scheduled at 1:00 p.m. A guided tour of the 3/4 mile Carver Nature Trail is offered daily at 10 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., so we planned to join it after the 1:00 p.m. program.

We arrived at the visitor center at 12:30 p.m., so we had some time to view the exhibits before the program.

At 1:00 we went to the program location and found ourselves the only attendees, so we had our own private ranger, Tim Van Cleave. The same thing happened at the guided tour.

One of the main impressions we came away with is that George Washington Carver was a much more complex person than we had realized. He was curious about everything and had a drive for learning. He also had musical and artistic talents, including knitting and crocheting as well as painting and drawing. He valued the practical--putting food on the table--and the aesthetic--providing a selection of paint colors from the local clay so that poor farmers could have beauty in their lives.

We were moved by several quotations from Carver's writing and speeches, like these:

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable.

We have so much noise now that we hear nothing but noise. It comes and goes and that’s all of it, just noise.  We can’t think very well now because there are so many noises of different kinds.

Here's Ranger Tim showing us the original monument installed by the National Park Service.

This reconstruction marks the probable location of the 12' x 12' log cabin in which George was born to his mother, Mary, a slave owned by Moses and Susan Carver. He and his mother were kidnapped, and only George was found and returned. The Carvers raised George and his brother Jim.

Moses and Susan Carver are buried in a small cemetery on the grounds of the monument.

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Another Moving Day

We packed up and left Crowder Point at 9:00 a.m., anticipating a reasonably early arrival at our next campsite at Shoal Creek RV Park near Joplin. By the time we made our usual walk-around stops and hit a grocery store, it was after 1 p.m. by the time we pulled into the campground.

Shoal Creek is an Escapees 50% campground, which means we are paying $20 a night instead of the usual charge of almost $40 a night. We drove to our assigned pull-thru and got set up. Then I noticed that we had a problem with the electricity. The only thing with power was the a/c. Strange. Ken remembered that he had seen a way to use our multimeter to test 50 amp power. Only one of the two legs of the 50 amp circuit was working. We decided that we really wanted 50 amps to run the a/c and other stuff, but we plugged into the 30 amp temporarily to eat lunch.

The office assigned us to another site. Evidently they've had electrical problems since the tornadoes and will probably need to replace the circuit breaker for the leg that wasn't working. We folded back up and moved to site #72. It's definitely a hassle to move, but we have learned something new. From now on, we'll test the electricity before setting up in a site. We've always done this with 30 amp connections, since we have an inexpensive tester for 30 amps, but we haven't really known how to test 50 amp connections.

Shoal Creek RV Park and Campground is located on Shoal Creek--and right next to a very busy divided highway. The RV sites have nice long, level cement pads. The layout isn't our favorite. There are no trees, so it's pretty much like a parking lot. However, the sites are large and well angled. There's a fishing lake and a tenting area.

We waited until the sun was nearly down before going for our evening walk.

These geese have half-grown goslings. They have an artificial island on the lake.

The tenting area on the creek is known as "Area 51." We were actually pleased to find birds and frogs and flowers along our walk. This morning we saw the bright orange flash of an oriole. Tonight we saw a killdeer running along near our site.

The owner says that nearly 90% of the folks in RVs here are working on the tornado cleanup. Here's one of our neighbors.

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Heat and Humidity

Our air conditioner is working overtime today, and for part of the day it seemed to be losing the battle. We thought about going grocery shopping just so we could hang around the freezer cases.

The fridge seemed to be struggling too, so I decided to defrost the freezer--the whole routine with taking all the food out and putting pans of hot water in to melt the accumulated ice, etc. I'm hoping that will help.

We took our longer walk this evening when the sun was an orange ball hanging low in the sky. By then it wasn't quite so hot. We walked through a tenting area, by the second of the two boat ramps. It had a playground and lots of kids and lots of boats. It's Friday, and the weekend crowd is arriving.

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