Chaos Leaves Town

Hanging around Wendell has it’s advantages. With the amply stocked grocery store, the RV park with a RV repair business right there, the auto repair shops, tire shops, a couple excellent restaurants, etc., etc.. However, there’s not much to do in town. No theater, no golf course nearby, no night life to speak of. The town is pretty small with just a couple places to hang out, nondescript bars that could even be called dull. Tried to pry some history of the area from locals but nobody really knew much other than the story of how Wendell got its name. Well, whatever, while I’m here waiting for RV and car parts to arrive it was an opportunity to drive around the area and check it out. Going east and south of Wendell driving along the farm bordered roads you run into a larger town…Jerome. Jerome has a theater, a WalMart, and several businesses that cater to the RV crowd as far as repairs go. Interesting as I drove around the populated areas close to Jerome how I’d spot many RV type businesses. Diesel repair, body shops, etc.. Most all situated right alongside the freeway.

But today was a day to explore so I drove due west and south of Wendell towards the Snake River. And soon bumped into the Hagerman Wildlife area and Fish Hatchery. Big hatchery place. Larger than the hatcheries I’m use to in the Columbia River Gorge area.

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Last time, I was complaining about the Tree Town Festival, and I’m done with that but I will mention one thing that happened as I was preparing to leave the following Monday. Most of the RVs had pulled out so there were only a few of us scattered here and there on the big grassy field. While I was in no hurry, I did notice that there was a honey truck roaming around and emptying holding tanks for RV’ers. So when the truck got to hooking up to the RV next to me, I went out and asked them how much they were charging, because ‘convenient’. Had to laugh when the guy told me they were asking $125. Literally, I laughed at the guy. He wasn’t surprised at that reaction however, had a bit of a crooked smile. Why was that funny? Because he and I both knew that less then 1/2 mile away were 4 dump stations that were free provided by Winnebago since we are on their property. And then 2 miles away in the town are free dump sites, at least 6 of them all in a row, all easy to get to, all free. So, yeah, wow, $125. Going to the dump sites might have cost some delay time due to lines, but from what I saw, not long at all. Well, it was only money. I really didn’t need mine dumped for that amount so I waited.

And then I had to decide whether I wanted to stay in town and gripe at Winnebago service for screwing up and charging me all that money ($1700 or so) and only sort of fixing my problems. I was pissed. But on the other hand, I’d only seen the rear slide pooch out once so far, maybe it’ll get better? I didn’t realize they didn’t fix the dash heat at this point. Too hot to need it anyway. Plus the heat pump A/C was working sooooo good, very quiet, smooth air flow, that I felt I might give them a little slack. Judgement call.

It’s the afternoon the day after the Festival, and I decided to stay in town and stay at the town’s RV park, spent the night just to check it out. Stayed two nights while I roamed the countryside and took pictures, all the while repeatedly checking on the bedroom slide. Which behaved.

Here’s a shot of the small town of Lake Mills, IA. Another small town in the mid-west that’s gotten to be over the top nationalistic. There’s nothing to indicate this is anything other than a flag display. I did tour around and there isn’t much here. There is another Winnebago factory but that’s about it. I had planned on visiting a cafe that had been recommended but didn’t find it.

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Last time, I mentioned that I’d bought tickets for the Tree Town Music Festival, and that I was disappointed that I’d paid $525 for the RV parking space I’d chosen. The map was slick and professionally done, except they manipulated it in  such a way it seemed like I was just steps from the front gate for the venue. They kind of took liberties with the drawing of their RV parking areas. Turned out that I was like 1/4 mile from the venues main (and only entrance) gate. Which was not in the same location as the map showed it.

But that wasn’t the only disappointment. This festival is in the middle of the country and the excessive nationalism was on full display, which included a truckload of good ‘ol boys standing up in the bed of their pickup truck cruising around the parking grounds, swilling their Bud light beer, waving their oversized southern surrender flags, the bars and stars. In addition the overt religion on display was rather off putting too, but that was nearly all by the stage announcers and many of the acts. The jumbo trons meanwhile, kept up displaying support for war and guns nearly non-stop between promoting up coming acts and local businesses. Several concert goers had the surrender hats or shirts on. I saw ONE person of color at this concert, a black guy who was working on one of the big generators. That’s not exactly the kind of ‘inclusion’ I like to see at concerts.

But I’d chosen to buy the ticket and be here so tried to make the most of it. After leaving the Winnebago customer service park, it’s a 1 mile drive to the entrance gate of the venue. I had planned on waiting a day before coming over but there was already a line of RVs entering the grounds when I drove over to check it out in the car, so I went back to the Winnie lot, hurriedly packed up, attached the car to the RV and headed over to the entrance to get in the RV que.

Two hours earlier when I’d been here in the car scoping it out, there was only one of these lines filled up with RVs. Now there’s 3 of them. And the lines are moving, though slowly. All three of these lanes get necked down into one lane. There’s a forth lane being filled up too as more RVs showed up. This area is just behind Heritage Park. One of those parks where they’ve bought and moved entire houses here to display how life use to be in these parts. I wanted to visit but it never opened the week I was in the area. Seems they missed a golden opportunity with all the people nearby as it’s a paid style museum. I would have visited for sure.

The wait was long enough that my engine was off most of the wait, and some folks got out and wandered around, beers in hand. A couple drunk guys spent 20 minutes just in front of me trying to talk up a couple gurls in their car. They resisted so the guys eventually wandered off. Continue reading →

It only took 3 hours or so to travel from Savage, MN to Forest City, IA but since I had an appointment for service with a place to park the RV with all the services, I wasn’t too worried about what time I arrived. One thing that was a bit strange was that at the Savage RV park I couldn’t find my umbilical electrical cord connecting the RV to the car as I was preparing to leave. Hmmm, where did I put that? I just couldn’t find it, and I couldn’t remember from the previous week whether I’d unhooked it and put it away, or where I might have put it. Usually I just toss it into the car’s trunk, but nope, not there. I wasn’t even sure if I’d put it away when I’d detached the car or just left it dangling there on the RV plugged in. Or put it on top of the electrical power tower next to my RV.

Ok, so I’ll just drive for 3 hours without brake lights on my towed car. Not too worried about it as I felt I’d just stowed the umbilical somewhere strange in the RV and that I’d find it later. And also, my RV has the brake lights up high on the back of the RV, so people following me would see them even if the car didn’t have any brake lights. Well, anyway, off I went heading due south.

Most of the countryside along the route looked liked this. At least until I turned off the freeway and onto a 2 lane road heading to Forest City.

One of several small towns the road passes through after I left the freeway. Or it may be Forest City. Not sure. Continue reading →

After a couple weeks in Sioux Falls, I had all my chores done and it was time to move on to Minneapolis to visit with my daughter and her SO. She’s been living there for several years and it was about time to pay her a visit. First though, here’s a look at the entrance to where I stayed. Tower Campground. It was a challenge to find how to get into the park when I exited the freeway just a block from their entrance for my first visit. Have to pass the place, in order to get past the barrier in the middle of the street that prevents turns, than make a 180 at the next light to head back. Or do what I did and turn left as soon as I could onto a nice wide street (and there’s a place to do that just a block on), go a block or two on that street, take another left, and so on. That way worked my way back to the main road so I could approach the parks entrance from a westerly direction.

Well, anyway, it’s a nice park and I’ll be staying here whenever I visit Sioux Falls as it’s the only economical RV park in the area. Here’s a shot of my RV space…

And a shot of some of the rest of the park.

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Occasionally I’ll publish a new repair page and let everyone know here in the general posting thread, and that’s what’s happening now. Here’s the links to some new repair pages or folders for those that like reading about my adventures fixing things on this giant RV.

Added new info about having to replace some Eternabond roofing tape that had peeled off: Roof End Caps…

Added a section that explains how I added a preventative fix for Winnie’s poor excuse for attachment points on the front end cap: Body Work…Front

Added a thread about replacing the old, worn out: Windshield Washer Tank

Several months ago I spent some time learning about the J1587 protocol we have on this era of Winnies and published what I learned here: J1587 Port – Serial Communication

Last time, as you remember, I arrived at Sioux Falls and visited downtown.

So now it was time to visit the falls themselves. This was almost a week after I’d arrived in town and I’d pretty much taken care of all my chores so time to do some sightseeing. And as I promised last time, here’s my visit to Sioux Falls!

First, I parked in the restaurants parking lot. This is the Sioux River as it exits the falls.

This old building was something once, power house maybe? I don’t remember. It’s a restaurant now. Continue reading →

Spent the night in Burwell, NE, without Wifi except those times I tethered the phone to the computer to check email. Was running out of data on my phone plan for the month though. Wasn’t much to warrant staying in Burwell another night anyway, so off I headed to Sioux Falls.

Pretty neat picture of the road. Much of the trip was through countryside like this.

And here’s the Missouri River. I dropped the camera and wasn’t going to dive for it while driving so this is the only shot I got. Didn’t see an appropriate place to pull over either. Continue reading →

I spent two days at Sleepy Sunflower RV Park in Ogallala, NE, mostly because I felt like taking a day off from travel, and there was a big storm rolling down into South Dakota north of Ogallala a hundred miles or so, but covering the area where I’d be traveling. The days when I’d make a dash somewhere, traveling day after day, for up to 7 days, are gone. I’m just not going to do that anymore, preferring to do a leisurely trip and stop for a couple days in one place before driving on. I don’t miss driving every day either. That was caused by not having a car mostly, but I’ve always packed a bicycle and tried to choose places to stay that had interesting places I could access nearby. Now that I have a towed car, I can stay practically anywhere and not have to worry about getting around easily over longer distances. Makes for easier grocery shopping for one thing. Or checking out auto repair shops, local points of interest, museums, or getting something for the RV at a hardware store.

When planning this days travel, I found that Burwell, Nebraska has a city park with RV spaces. Though it’s in the middle of nowhere, it’s about halfway between Ogallala and Sioux Falls, SD which was my destination this portion of the trip.

Here’s a look at the countryside around here as I headed north, leaving I-80 behind. Nice comfortable drive on a nice warm day.

And boom…there’s this snow! WTH?  And then I remembered why I’d stayed in Ogallala for an extra night. To let this storm pass over the areas I planned on driving. My planning saw that I missed this storm by one day, and it had passed to the north of Ogallala so I’d not noticed any poor weather from it. There was snow on the crest of nearly every hill I drove over in the drainage ditches and alongside the road but always on the north slopes except one spot where it was so thick, there was still snow on both sides of the road. And these aren’t mountains by any stretch of the imagination. Here’s the outside temp as I passed one of the snow piles. The storm was the last gasp of winter in this area.

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