The Turn Toward Home

     We drove south across Minnesota to Lake Superior. After traveling along the lake a while, we discovered an area where many rock hounds came each year to hunt agates on the beach, so we found a park near by and I spent the better part of two days looking for agates. Those I found, along Lake Superior, did not look superior, but I'm sure, cut and polished, they would look much better. I could still do that, I have them in my garage. If I just had the foggiest idea where.

     We went to the Mall of America. It was now Barbara's turn to be excited. We spent the bulk of two days, trying to see it all, and it only takes me one minute to see most stores. But we still failed. In Minneapolis, we went to see the Minnesota State Capital building, or so we thought, but the actual capital building was across the way. That also fooled the movie makers. We saw a movie that night, about the then governor Jesse Ventura, the colorful governor/wrestler of that time period. A scene in that movie supposedly showed him walking into the capitol. But, it was the wrong building, the one we first picked. Made us feel a little better about our little mistake.

     In La Crosse, Wisconsin, we camped along the mighty Mississippi, running bank full, only a foot or so out of our RV. Actually, that spot, still far north, was part of the southern half of that river. The river curves and twists so much near it's source, as we discovered tracing it, more than half the total length is in Minnesota.

     In Iowa, we went to the Field of Dreams and played baseball, as best we could, with no ball. Or bat.

     We moved to Iowa City and set out to find, and photograph, every one of the “Bridges of Madison County.” We succeeded, and I even took my shirt off and washed up at the same water pump Clint Eastwood used to tease Meryl Streep, and Barbara got in the same bathtub Meryl seduced Clint in. It was a little too public now for Barbara to actually seduce me there, But I have to say. I pretty well stay in a state of seduction around Barbara.

     We went to Winterset, and saw the birthplace of John Wayne. It seems the city council once met on a cold day to decide the name of that town. Summerset was suggested, then someone noted, “Feels more like Winterset today!” It stuck.

     Iowa wins the prize for the most deer, and the most corn.

     Our next stop was again in the driveway of our Hannibal friends, Cheryl and Wes. And the price of that park was holding firm. They were both teachers. Wes keeps a loaded gun, in a locked gun safe, in every room of his house. But I have never known him to hurt a fly. And, he is all about mountain man stuff. But it almost made him sick to his stomach when I described trapping and skinning animals in my youth. Mountain man or no, he's a great guy. He once belonged to a motorcycle club, the “Buffet Brothers.” They traveled from one buffet to another, he says.

     We had now completed a full circle. A really big circle. Branson, Missouri beckoned, and we took in a show or two. We found another dirt cheap campground, in Barbara's sister Patsy's driveway. Traveling there from Missouri brought about the only other occasion, after San Diego, where our old RV overheated. We were pulling up the long grade from the Buffalo River to the summit of the mountain. Pretty good, for an old relic from the 80's. But, old RV‘s tend to have few miles on them, for their age. They are bought with big plans that seldom pan out. Our camper, at the beginning of the 18,000 miles we drove it, only had 29,907 miles on it. We put around 20,000 miles on the car. Our final leg brought us back to the Arkadelphia KOA again, where we waited three days for our house to empty up.

     I wish I could tell you about all the really neat things we saw, did, and learned that year, but if I tried to do that, it would fill this book, and grow it into the size of an encyclopedia. Oh, sorry. I forgot. An encyclopedia is an old person thing. I started making a wild animal list, but finally gave it up. It was the most fun, footloose, carefree year of our lives, even considering the mechanical problems. I seldom got the RV hooked up in camp before Barbara had the car off the dolly, saying, “If I'm going to be away from my family, I'm going to be seeing new things, not sitting here in this park.” We loved the old RV, but at 6 MPG, we soon parted with it. We missed home and family. I even missed working in my yard, if you can believe that. I immediately began making our back yard into a showplace, vowing to my family that soon, people from miles around would soon be streaming in to view it. Barbara vowed to be the weed puller. I even put in a sprinkler system. The fervor has waned, though, and now it is but a relic of it's once imagined self. The stream of visitors just never got started.

     To this day, Barbara sometimes rags me some about my long lost dream of a backyard showplace. But when she does, I have only to tell her, “Yeah, that gardener just ran off with the weed puller.” And, they have never returned. I hope they are having a good life, in some real showplace somewhere. They deserve each other. As for Barbara and I, we are back to being our old selves. One never touches a weed, the other hates the sight of a lawnmower.

     We fully intended to become productive citizens again after this trip, but somehow, it just never happened. There's just too much world left to see, still too much excitement to experience, and fun yet to be had. We had seen much of America. At that point, we had saved up enough bonus flyer miles on our credit card to see much of the rest of the world. We couldn’t wait to get started. Australia, here we come!