First day of last trip

Today started as most of my days do–with me dawdling in bed until my body finally said, “Enough is enough. Get up already!” Soon I was settled into my recliner with my iPad doing my morning weather check which said today’s forecast was sunny with light breezes but tomorrow’s forecast was for thunderstorms with winds gusting to 25 mph. So, I said to Dave that the weather seem to be saying we should go today instead of tomorrow. He said, “Probably,” then added a comment about it being rather late in the day to start since we hadn’t finished the prep work yet.

So, I ate breakfast. He went out and got the car’s hitch from the basement bay where we store it while parked longterm and put it back on the car. Then I did a few things to prepare for moving. And Dave did a few more things to prepare for moving.

Finally, I asked, “Are we going today anyway?” Dave replied, “Probably.” Don’t you love how firmly we make decisions? 🙂

So, Dave called the people who needed to figure out our final electric bill and got that process started and I went on preparing to move. We left the park about 1:45 p.m. Which is not a typical departure time. Most of our RVing friends consider that a typical arrival time. But, we are definitely not typical.

We only made it as far south as Lakeville, Minnesota, which has now become a bedroom community for the Twin Cities, before making our first stop. There’s a Cracker Barrel there and we were ready for lunch. Then we headed on south. 

As we traveled down the road I saw a billboard for the Diamond Jo Casino saying it was 60 miles away. I read that as 60 miles to the Iowa Welcome Center. Have we driven this road a few times? Yes, we have. Enough to know for a fact that the Diamond Jo is right next door to the Welcome Center where there is good parking, free wifi, and a dump we didn’t need today. But we did stop there for a move-your-body break.

Our first, at least, overnight will be at the Winnebago factory for one last repair. “Wait,” you say. “Didn’t you stop there last spring on you way to Minneapolis?” “Yes, we did.” “Didn’t they fix everything while you were there?” “Yes, they did.” ” So why are you going there now? You’ve been parked all summer. Surely you did’t break anything while parked?” “Yes, we did.”

Here’s the story. First, some background. Our bedroom slide is on the patio side of the RV at my head height. It has corners that can do some nasty damage to heads if the owners of those heads aren’t paying enough attention when walking by. We hosted two picnics at our RV this summer with several of the guests being about my height. So we took a tip from other RVers and cut a swim noodle to make bumpers to wrap around those corners. So far, so good.

Then one night we were awakened during the night by a severe storm with lots of wind. Enough wind to make the bedroom slide bounce. So, still half-asleep, we decided we should pull that slide in. You got it! We forgot about the bumpers. So that slide needs readjusting. Which we feel a need to have done before selling the RV. So off to the factory’s service center we go. It sure has been nice having them so conveniently located for us.

We pulled in just in time to get parked and hook up our power to their 30 amp outlet before it got dark. 

Thus, ends the first day of our last trip as full timers.

TTYL,

Linda