bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday-  We did some tasks around the MH and left at about 10 to go to the Minneapolis Downtown Farmers Market. We parked on the street at a meter which was $1 for an hour. We wandered through the large Farmers Market. It was mostly veggies, honey, breads, and meats. We did not purchase anything. The picture below only shows 1/3 of the market!

We left and went to the Downtown Global Market. This was an interesting place with lots of different food, clothing, and jewelry stands. We ate lunch there and purchased a a piece of the world famous Surly Chocolate Cake. It is made with IPA beer and was okay, but in the reviews it is listed as the #2 best chocolate cake in the country.

We left and went to the famous Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. When we arrived the bells started ringing at the St, Mary’s Cathedral. It cost us $4 to park for all day, the only option.

The bell above swings all the time without any assistance. Below, we thought this was interesting. Mobile Baptisms???

We continued down the road about 2 miles to the Mary Tyler Moore house. It is for sale and has a contract on it for 1.6 million. I have not been able to find anything else about this house. It is in a beautiful neighborhood, near a nice large lake.

   

We returned to the MH and had a quiet evening at home.

Sunday- We did our usual Sunday morning tasks. We went to lunch at a soup, salad and sandwich shop close by. Then we went grocery shopping. The weather was nice, so we sat outside to enjoy the weather. Another Alfa pulled in across from us, so we went to visit. The folks are from Switzerland and have had their Alfa since 2007. They fly in and spend 6 months traveling the states.

Monday– We went to Walmart and stopped in at the Casino, just to wander around. They allow smoking so it was not pleasant. We stopped by the restaurants to check on the menu’s. I asked what the incentives were for their card, and they had none. So we left. We returned to the MH and sat out for while, before it became too cold.

Tuesday- We left around 11:30 and went to Jordan, a town about 7 miles away for lunch at a nice little restaurant, located right on a creek. We had a nice lunch, then went to Walmart to pick up a couple of items we had forgotten. We returned home and sat outside until dinner time.

Wednesday- We decided since the weather was nice, we should run downtown to the Wells Fargo Museum. We stopped on the way at The Joint for me to have a chiropractor appointment. Since I had the problem two weeks ago with the sciatic pain, I wanted to keep from having the pain again.

We stopped at Costco for gas, then went to downtown. The streets are a mess, as they are torn up for repairs. We found parking in a parking garage. Wow, $7 for 20 minutes and $9 for 40 minutes. We moved quickly, and walked to the Wells Fargo building. They had no public restrooms, and the security guard sent us through the Skywalk to the Walgreens.

We returned to the museum on the second floor, and visited the nifty little free museum.

The Telegraph below worked and sent a message across the room…

Here is where the message landed.

There are other Wells Fargo free museums, and here are where they are located.

  

If you traveled on the stage, you could only bring 20 lbs. with you. This is what they carried.

We walked back across the Sky Walk to the parking garage and made it within the 40 minutes. We left town and went to the suburbs. It was National Bratwurst Day, so we went in search of a brat for Bob at New Bohemia. He had a chicken brat and I had a cheeseburger with coleslaw. We walked next door to the meat market, but Bob did not see any brats that he wanted to take home.

We returned to the MH. After dinner,the weather had started to change. Storms were coming. The weather radio went off saying that there were tornados southwest of us. At around 7:30, the weather radio, the alert app on Bob’s phone when off, and three seconds later the siren went off.

I grabbed my shoes and put them on. Bob grabbed his rain jacket, and I picked up my purse and phone. Bob grabbed the leashes and attached the dogs, I grabbed an umbrella, as it was pouring rain. We ran to the bathrooms behind us. There is a storm shelter, but it was on the other side of the park and we would not have made it there, running.

We got to the bathrooms and the doors were locked. You need a key. We had turned ours back in after we had done the laundry, not realizing it was also for the bathrooms. A lady with her dog arrived with her key; the key did not work. At this point, the wind really picked up. We hid in the corner, under  the entranceway near the men’s room door.  Bob put the dogs behind the trash can to protect them. I huddled with the woman using the umbrella to protect us as best we could. The winds were really bad.

Another lady showed up and her key worked, so we went into the ladies room. More people and their pets showed up. We were all drenched. In all, there were 10 people and 6 dogs in the ladies room.

Here is Bob with the soaking dogs in the shower area.

Eventually, the siren stopped. Since we were soaked anyway, we started back to the MH. We were almost there when the siren started up again, so we returned to the bathroom. The door was locked again, but the lady with the working key showed up. We all went back into the bathroom.

A few minutes later, the siren stopped and the rain slowed down. We heard later that a tornado had touched down in Pinon Lake, where we are located, but not that near to us. We just had the heavy winds. There were trees down in the park. The one was just up 2 sites from us. There were more down on the other side of the park.

The people in the 5th wheel next to us lost their roof vent. Bob grabbed one of our tarps and gave it to the guy to put on his roof to cover the hole. We, luckily, had no damage. As you can see above, the fire department came through to check on everyone.

The rest of the evening was quiet, although we had to strip down and put everything into the dryer, including the dogs harnesses.

Thursday- At exactly 7 AM, there was the sound of chainsaws cutting up the fallen trees. In the afternoon, a street sweeper came through to clean up all the leaves on the roads. The RV park has a chain link fence around it and they had material up on the fence, blocking the view into the park. They lost a lot of this material.

There is also a stage on the other side of the road, that had a very long curtain around it. The curtain was destroyed!

It was a cold and rainy day. So we went back to the Café Cana for soup for lunch. It was very good. Then we dropped some items off at Goodwill. We returned to the MH and had a quiet afternoon. The weather cleared right before dinner. After dinner, we walked over to another Alfa. These folks, Mark and Cathy, had purchased their Alfa a week ago. So they were in the process of doing a lot of repairs to the RV.

We gave them a Roadrunners application and toured their Alfa, then they came and toured ours. They were having a problem with their big slide, so we returned to their MH and Bob helped with getting the big slide in, as it was going in to be fixed early in the morning. It was nice meeting new Alfa family members!

Friday, the day from HELL! There was a knock on the door and the guy next door delivered a new tarp to us. I felt guilty, as the tarp Bob had given to him cost us a $1 in a special at Menards a few years ago. And we had used it in Quartzsite. Oh well, it meant a lot to him to have it!

We packed up and left around 11 AM. We could not stay as the Native Americans who own the casino and RV park are having a Pow Wow this weekend.  It was cold and rainy this morning and as we passed an elementary school, we saw the kids out in their bathing suits, using a slip and slide down a hill. The temp was 63 degrees! Hardy Minnesotans!

We could not find another place to stay, so our destination was the Dakota County Fairgrounds. We arrived around 12. We went to the office and the gal said to check in with the camp hosts. Neither one of them were home. She said if they were not, to just pick a site.

Because of all the rain, we looked very carefully and tested several sites. Bob walked them and finally decided on one. We back in and ate lunch. The phone rang and it was a guy from one of the campgrounds calling us back. He had a site. We decided we did not like this fairgrounds, and we would leave.

NOPE, we were stuck in the mud!

We called Good Sam, our auto plan and they said they would send out a tow truck. The guy arrived in about 1.5 hours. He was very nice, and tried to move us, but it was no go.His truck was not heavy enough. What he and Bob discovered, was that the two rear tires on the passenger side had no tread. THEY WERE BALD! What?? We purchased new truck tires in 2010, just before we went fulltime. They have a 7 year, 700K mile warranty. Of course, the 7 years was up in May! All of the other tires are perfect. Bob checks the air pressure in them regularly. We have no idea why this has occurred or that it had occurred.

The nice guy called back Good Sam and said that we needed a larger truck to get us out of the mud, as his was not strong enough. He negotiated with them and called another company who were just 10 miles away, and that guy arrived. The first guy would accept the insurance, but the second would not. Good Sam said they would pay $250 for the tow/ two hours.

So he worked with the second guy to help us out. When the second guy arrived, in a bigger truck, he decided to call for another truck. If the third truck got stuck, truck #2 could pull it out.

So we waited for truck #3 to arrive. Meanwhile, the guy with truck #1 left. Truck #2 attached straps to the MH. I left, I just could not watch this. So we have no pictures of the actual event, as Bob had to drive the MH out.

So I had the dogs in the car with me and I went behind one of the fair buildings and read my book. Bob texted me when the MH was out. It cost us $100, but that was after Good Sam decided to only pay $175 to guy #1. They had a big fight on the phone with Good Sam and finally they agreed to the $250 with guy #1 who was going to pay Guy #2. We had paid the $100 to guy #2.

It was now almost 8:30. We were exhausted. We left and traveled 30 miles south to Camp Faribo in Faribalt MN. We arrived at about 9, and signed in. The owner escorted us to our site. We barely set up, ate some dinner, and went to bed, a little concerned as this place is very muddy also!

Filed under: Uncategorized |