A Weekend in Mt Horeb, Wisconsin

Parked in Scott's driveway - see shady setting at rear

Ross, Bev, Scott & Murray: TBones smokin' on the grill

All present & accounted for - Tina & Mike facing camera

Off to lunch - led by Tina

Not too hungry to take a photo before lunch at The Grumpy Troll

Scott shoots for the Kangaroo Pouch

Cheese & Beer tasting - thanks Bev & Ross

Iowa: corn field at the back and soya beans in front

Catching up with a cup of tea & iPhone word games

We had never heard of Mt Horeb, Wisconsin until our friend Scott bought a house in the main street there about a year ago. He had gone to school & uni nearby and this was like coming home for him. He was a US Army exchange officer who replaced another Army environmental health officer (Mike) back in my Canberra Air Force days. They each worked in Canberra for 3 years, their office only a few desks from mine. Also working with us in Canberra was Beverley, who was the Colonel in charge of all Australian Defence Force nurses at the time. Surprisingly, it didn't take too much planning for me to arrange for us all to meet at Scott's and check out his new abode. Military planning was familiar to us all! The fact that Murray & I drove over from North Dakota, Mike & Tina up from St Louis, and Bev & Ross up from Texas did not pose any problems. Well none that couldn't be rectified! Mike was obviously sooo excited about catching up with us all that he got the dates wrong and had booked their motel, and Tina had booked two days off work for the next weekend. As it turned out, as soon as he realised his error, he & Tina hit the road when she got off work on Friday, and although they missed the Friday evening get together, they made it for the 10am start on Saturday. Nothing like flexibility in planning & execution of the task!

Scott's two storey home had ample room in the driveway for our RV, and his backyard was the perfect venue to enjoy the stunning weather. Although he had come up with several options for what we could do during our group visit, we all chose to simply stay at his place and catch up on each others' news. Well, we didn't simply stay at his place: we ate, drank, chatted, and played a backyard game called Corn in the Hole. Aptly renamed by Tina to Kangaroo Pouch, as the Aussies outnumbered the Americans - well, 4-3 ain't bad!

We had only just got the RV parked in Scott's driveway and had the top off the first cold beer when Bev & Ross arrived. Scott was the perfect host and had several different beers chilling in the esky, and a selection of wines to choose from. Later he heated up the grill and cooked some massive Tbone steaks (which smoked up the BBQ) and accompanied them with baked potatoes and salad. Just what the doctor ordered. Murray & I didn't have far to roll to our RV to go to bed at the end of a delightful evening.

The next day was Saturday and we agreed to meet in Scott's back yard at 10am. Bev, Ross, Mike & Tina were staying at hotels up the road. Mike & Tina's arrival was heralded by our cheers. It was great to see them again. It was another beautiful day so we sat on the back patio and chatted over cups of coffee before deciding to simply walk 1/4 mile uptown to The Grumpy Troll for lunch. Then we wandered back to Scott's, but not before I did a detour into a Christmas Shop. No, I didn't buy anything - I already knew our suitcases would be bursting for the trip home.

We had to move the outdoor setting from the full sun on the patio to the shade under big trees out in the back yard. It was such a tranquil setting. Scott pulled out his backyard game and it kept the men occupied for quite awhile - meanwhile, us 3 gals slipped into the kitchen and whipped up a storm. Bev showed us her recipe of slitting a chicken breast, stuffing it with camembert cheese and prunes (marinated in tawny port), and then wrapping each one with prosciutto. She also rubbed a pork loin with mustard ready to put in the oven. While the meats were cooking we went back outside and took a turn at the game, with Bev scoring the most hole-in-one's, and Tina running a close second! That worked up an appetite and a thirst, so Bev & Ross bought out a selection of local Wisconsin cheeses that had been paired with specially selected & chilled local beers that they had picked up from a speciality market in the area. There were 5 of each and we had to taste each one and give a verdict. It was fun, although the majority said the last beer tasted like cough medicine. Hmmm. It was time to switch over to cab savs & merlots for the rest of the evening by then anyway!

Sunday morning we arranged to meet up at Scott's at 10am once again, but this time we planned to walk up to a cafe for our farewell brunch. The cafe was full when we entered, but while we sat sipping coffees at the counter, the staff deftly arranged 2 tables together and we each ordered a delicious breakfast. Before we knew it, we were back at Scott's hugging each other goodbye. What a lovely reunion.

Our route took us out of Wisconsin and very soon we were in Iowa - how did we know - because all you could see in every direction were corn fields, soya bean fields, and the occasional dairy. The countryside looked so rich and fertile. We pulled into an RV park, once again finding a lovely shady site - our airconditioner isn't booked in for replacement until 8 Sep, so we are managing to keep cool during the day - night times are nice & cool, so no problems there. Murray set our chairs up outside, and in no time I had made us a cup of tea, and while he watched the golf on TV, I caught up with the 'Words with Friends' game on my iPhone. We enjoyed every military posting we had, but retirement suits us just fine. I am sure Bev & Ross's blog will have some extra photos of the gathering in due course. Feel free to check it out. Just click on the 'blog' link in previous sentence.

Farewell North Dakota

Rainbow - our RV is in the background

Early evening campfire with friends

The corn is much taller than Murray

Murray, Avalyn & Wes at Garrison Dam

Checking out the wildlife refuge

Tiny hummingbird egg is bottom right

At Frieda & Lenny's in Garrison

Broken copper tubing in aircon system

Friction caused hole in water pipe

See the hole? This part cost $6, the job cost $400!

Aussie rancher Amanda (married to an American)

Feet up, Map in place, Garmin on the job - Fargo here we come

Lunching with Betty at Chipotle Mexican Grill

When we drive out of North Dakota we know our time in the USA is drawing to a close for another year. We only had 2 weeks in ND this year compared to our usual 4 weeks, but our Alaska trip was so fabulous that we extended it a tad, and we also have a reunion with 3 other couples in Wisconsin that we are excited to fit into our schedule (more on that in the next blog!), hence the shorter stay.

Summer finally arrived while we were at Audubon Lake - how appropriate. However, after a few 'Goldilocks' days in a row, and without any shade, our RV was starting to heat up inside with the constant sunshine & heat, so we figured we would get to use our airconditioner instead of our heater, for the first time all trip. To our dismay, no cold air was coming through. Murray got on the roof, took the cover off the roof airconditioner system, and discovered the copper hose that delivers the coolant to the system had snapped right through. Those rough Alaskan roads took their toll! The earliest we can get the parts in and book it in for repair is the 8th Sep. We will be in Omaha then, so we have gone ahead and arranged the booking there. Our other Alaska rough road result was a tiny hole in a water hose causing a leak. The location of the hose near some metal caused friction over time and it was gradually wearing away the hard polyplastic (??) hose. Alaska's rough roads just bought on the subsequent hole a bit quicker. Since then we have made sure that our campsite bookings get us a shady spot. When I ring up and ask, if they don't have shade, we don't book in. Too easy. So far we have found 3 campgrounds in a row with very tranquil, shady sites.

Getting back to Audubon, it was great catching up with our friends there including Avalyn & Wes, Kathy & Milt and Frieda & Lenny. We shared several meals together either in each others RV's or downtown. One night we were sitting having a delicious rib feast in Wes & Avalyn's camper and looked out the window to a beautiful rainbow over the camper next door, and back to our RV beyond. Next day we had a pleasant day trip to check out the flood gates in the Missouri River - a few weeks ago they had all 26 gates open - I think the day we were there, only 5 were open. Usually there is only one! On the way home we stopped off at a cornfield to confirm it was indeed higher than 6'2'- the corn stalks were definitely taller than Murray. We also visited the Audubon Wildlife Refuge - they had a display of eggs from all different American birds - the one I loved was the tiniest one - from a hummingbird. The largest one was from a Whooping Crane. If anyone wants to see the whole egg display, just let me know. I have only shown half of it.

After we left Audubon we had a few days in Bismarck (capital of North Dakota) itself - and had the chance to catch up with friends Irene and Amanda (from the ranch). We love calling out to the ranch and spending time with the family (they have 4 delightful daughters - the youngest Macey started school this year), but just couldn't fit it in this year. The day we caught up with Amanda, her husband Clint and all 4 girls had driven to Nashville to deliver a horse to Tania Tucker's (country singer) sister. At least we got a chance to say hi to Clint - he rang while we were having lunch with Amanda.

On a fine, sunny day we headed East from Bismarck to Fargo, admiring the healthy corn & wheat fields en route. We looked at our itinerary and arranged to meet our friend Betty from our Canberra days - she lives near Minneapolis/St Paul in Minnesota. Murray used to sing in the church choir with Betty - she is an American who was married to an aussie. They used to do what we do, spend 6 months in Australia and 6 months in USA. When he died 4 years ago, she moved back home to America full time, but flies to Australia each year to keep in touch with family & friends. So we met and had lunch at a Chipotle Mexican Grill. They can't see too many aussies there, because the server asked me where my accent was from, and as soon as I said Australia, she told the cashier to give us a 'comp' - ie a complimentary meal, including our drinks! How nice was that! In return I always carry a gold kangaroo pin with a stud back, to put on caps or collars, and I gave it to her as a momento. She was thrilled, but not as thrilled as we were with her attitude & generosity.

Betty gave us a parting gift - she had baked ginger snaps for us the day before, and even bought a new plastic box for us to keep and store them in. Thanks for your thoughtfulness Betty! We had one each after dinner last night, and again with our kuchen for morning tea today. Although we had a slice of Frieda's famous kuchen while at her house last week, Avalyn bought us a whole kuchen to take on our trip. While we were at the lake Kathy & Milt had to keep going home (not far away) to pick their vegetables, and they kept providing us with zucchini, cucumber and home-made pickles, beetroot and a zucchini jelly. Nothing better than fresh produce straight from the garden. What special friends we have! See you next year North Dakota!

Audubon Lake, North Dakota

Sunrise at Audubon

Sunset at Audubon - Murray & Wes

Malt Shop where us girls had lunch today

Back to square one. Audubon Lake is the favourite campground we discovered on our first RV trip in 2007, and we have returned every year since. It is very basic, just having an electric hookup, but the view and 'aura' make up for having to fill up with water and do a dump every 7 days. See short video below.

The men are not out fishing as I am sure they would prefer to be, but have gone back to the big smoke to do some yard work at Wes's property. He had a nasty fall off his 4 wheeler 2 months ago, and is still recovering, so Murray is giving him a hand with some jobs around the yard. While the cat's away....I was sitting here, sipping on a coffee, and one of my girlfriends rang. Three of us decided to take a spin into town to check out a gift store then have lunch at a local milk bar - like an original Malt Shop from Happy Day's era. This being 'country', there was even an old gent there wearing his suspenders (see last photo). When Kathy rang - her camper is across from ours...I commented on what a glorious day it was, and she said she had heard on the radio that today is known as a 'Goldilocks' day - not too hot, not too cold, but just right. I thought that was worth a blog mention and it describes this day perfectly.

Murray got up early to take a sunrise photo the other day, and I got a nice sunset one as well. We have finally caught up with delightful weather and are loving it.

Floods in North Dakota

Note the brown water stain on the bottom third of the sign

Click on this photo to see where I have marked red arrows of flood level

Businesses empty...

Emergency workers still cleaning up...

Piles of rubble...

Houses gutted....

More debris...

Shocking scenes

Even the trees are water marked

Our North Dakotan friends had mentioned the floods and land falls that had occurred in recent months in this area, but when Murray and I accidentally found ourselves driving through an affected area, we couldn't believe the level of devastation that we saw. We had seen a billboard advertising an RV park to the west of Minot, and as it was late afternoon, we thought we would pull in for the night. As we pulled into the gates of the campground, we didn't get very far before we saw mud and signs of high water level on campsites. We actually reversed out to save getting bogged, and followed the directions on the GPS to get us back to the highway.

Each street we went to turn down (as directed by the GPS) brought us to a 'road closed' sign, so we had to keep going. After this happened several times we started seeing piles of debris on the roadside. We then realised that the homes all seemed to be gutted and the debris was the insulation and internal walls pulled out, leaving the inside of each home just an empty shell. All the home contents had long been removed by the owners/tenants since the floods of June 23rd, and now the huge task of clearing rotting interiors had begun. We could see the water level on the houses above the window level. Even the trees were stained by the flood waters, which makes us wonder how long the water stayed at the high level. The damage to the area was so extensive, yet we have heard from locals that compensation will only top around $3000 per household. A cash- strapped country. Similar to what happened in Brisbane I guess, in that most homeowners either didn't have or couldn't insure for river flooding or water inundation from overflowing dams.

It turns out the area we found ourselves in was Oak Park. It was just one township around the city of Minot that was affected. The only way out was to turn around and go back out the way we had come in - all the other roads were damaged and remain blocked off - almost 7 weeks after the flood. It made us realise how traumatic it would be if the same thing happened to us, and our thoughts went out to those affected. We have heard that the community spirit is strong and many fund raisers are being held to support the displaced people.

When we realised we would need to keep moving to our usual campground about 40 minutes south - and where we would stay put for 2 weeks - we called in to pick up some groceries. We were stunned to see people camping in the parking lot - they had no-where else to go as local campgrounds are either washed out or full. KMart & Walmart are apparently allowing the flood victims to park their campervans there for free. Of course they have no power or water connections, so life can't be easy for them.

Medicine Hat, Alberta

World's Tallest Teepee

Drumheller's wonderful dinosaur museum

Murray is dwarfed by the dinosaur leg

Visitors can see the staff working on specimens

A close-up view of working on a specimen - see TV screen above

Drumheller Hoodoos

Bryce Canyon Hoodoos - Utah 2008

Come back Mama Moose

At 7.30am we pulled out of our north of Calgary campground whispering last goodbyes to our Alaska travelling mates. Our 8 week Alaskan adventure had come to an end. I could go on forever using numerous adjectives to describe the wonderful time we had, but I am sure the blogs along the way have conveyed my feelings adequately.

A chap from Quebec who we had met at Dawson City suggested we should visit the town of Drumheller, Alberta about 90 mins NE of Calgary. This is the heart of the Canadian Badlands, and also where there are ongoing numerous dinosaur fossil finds along the Red Deer River where old glacial activity preserved the dinosaurs where they fell. We really enjoy the Badlands scenery in North & South Dakota, so decided we should visit the Canadian version. The drive was very pleasant through miles of agricultural and beef grazing land. The Badlands here didn't seem to have as much of the pink/red scoria layers as do the ones in Dakota, although the Hoodoos (unusual rock formation) gave them an interesting touch. The best Hoodoos we have seen were in Bryce Canyon, Utah – they were amazing as there were so many of them in one place I guess, but these ones have more unusual shapes.

We took the opportunity to spend some time looking at the wonderful exhibits in the Royal Tyrrell Museum a few kms north of the small town of Drumheller. It had an amazing display of fossils, and lots of interesting exhibits for students & kids. They even had large monitors showing the paleontologists at work on various specimens. Such painstaking work to preserve the fossil finds.

We continued on our way to Medicine Hat, Alberta. This is the home of the world’s tallest tepee (stands 20 stories high), which was created for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and re-assembled here in Medicine Hat as a symbol of Canada's native tribes in this area. The city was much bigger than we expected, with a population of around 60,000. Due to the natural gas reservoirs underground, it is also known as Gas City. We called into the visitors’ center and the staff member we encountered was actually an aussie from Melbourne who had been working here for 7 years. He suggested we try the nicest campground in the area, and we were glad we did. Nice shady trees (the warm weather has finally caught up with us), and the fastest wifi of the whole trip. Whoo hoo. As soon as we pulled in, we hooked up, then set up our chairs outside and just sat there enjoying the ‘aura’. We had one last bottle of beer and one last glass of red wine in our stocks, so we combined that with a lovely lime salsa dip and corn chips, and we plotted the next day’s travel. It seemed very lonely without Marie & Eric in the adjoining site…come back Mama Moose & Sharp Shooter!

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Cochrane: Last Campground with Marie & Eric

The Alaskan trip farewell

And they're all made out of ticky tacky

Driving into Calgary

Parking under Calgary Tower

Eric offers to support me on the glass plate

That's the bottom of the tower down there

Saddle-shaped Calgary Stampede Arena in background

Revolving Cafe in Calgary Tower

Marie & Murray in the Mall

View from East to Bow River

View from tower to Bow River

We had a short and very scenic drive from Banff to our next campground at Cochrane, a town about 40 mins drive out in the NW outskirts of Calgary. The last campground we will share with Marie & Eric this trip. We were only going to stay one night, but it was such a nice campground and the wifi was great (which we appreciated after a 4 day lack) and we weren't quite ready to say goodbye, so we signed up for another night. That first night we went out to dinner as a celebration to the end of our great Alaska trip. We found a nice steakhouse and Marie & I shared a delicious steak dinner. The serves were so big that we were each very satisfied with our half, and had no room for dessert.

The extra day stopover also gave us a chance to take a half-day trip into Calgary and check it out. As we drove in we saw rows of houses in a new housing estate up on the hillside and Marie & I broke into a rendition of 'little boxes on the hillside and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same'. If you click on the photo above you will understand why!

Murray insisted we all needed to go up the top of the Calgary Tower and we are so glad we did. It took us $15 each to go up, and then strong intestinal fortitude to actually walk out on the clear glass plate ledge. But we all did it in the end, with a little help from one another. We celebrated our bravery by having a light lunch at the revolving cafe on top. A bird's eye view of the whole city - we could see where the Calgary Stampede is held each year - in fact the arena roof is in the shape of a saddle, so it is hard to miss it. We had a 2 hour park right at the foot of the tower, so in the remaining time, we took a walk up the nearby mall and took in the sights. Bright flowers hanging baskets, music bands playing free music for the crowds, some stalls and a little posse of 3 police officers to keep everyone in line. As we crossed the Bow river on the way home, we decided to pull into the Prince's Island Park, walk up the steps and get a different view of the city.

After a few hours catching up on blogs etc, it was time to think about our stomachs again. None of us were that hungry, but we knew it was our last meal together, so it called for one final celebration of life, food, and good company. Thanks Marie & Eric - our 8 weeks together has been a fantastic adventure.