Mission Accomplished

We moved back into our fifth wheel in late February to hit the road again and to work the Strawberry Festival. With that finished we had planned a slow journey north. We wanted to be in our super secret location up north for the arrival of our first grandbaby due April 4th.

Now for those people that don't know much about Minnesota, it can still be very cold up there in April and it is not uncommon to have an April blizzard or two. So we watched and watched the temps up north. Letting that dictate how far north we where to travel and to kind of give us a date to arrive. I think Lisa was looking at the weather hourly. We went from Florida to Mississippi, to Missouri and then to Illinois.

Another challenge we faced was to travel from the south to the north and dodge potentially hazardous weather along the way. We raced to the Quad Cities to get off of the road because a snow event was on its way. We got set up just before it started to snow. 8 inches of wet heavy snow came down that night and after that the temps dropped.

Rock Island, Ill.

We had some business to take care of in the Quad Cities. With that done we kept watching the temps up north still. At first they were looking mangeable but now they were slowly getting colder. What ever happened to global warming Al Gore? Dumbass. Looking at the calendar, we still had time for the temps to warm, we hoped. Lisa found a state park closer to Minnesota that was open year round. So we hitched up and went farther north. This time to beat a wind event that was crossing the mid section. When we got to Clear Lake Iowa the sun was out and melting the snow that they had received also.

For a campground that is open year round, you would think that they would plow the roads. No. We got stuck looking for a site with not as much snow on it. Even in 4 wheel drive I could not get any traction. So we backed down the road and found some spots at the very beginning. I was going to back into a spot and Lisa is yelling, "STOP, STOP!" I got off of the site just a little because they were very narrow and quickly started sinking.

Oops. My bad.

That rut was about 6-8 inches deep. So instead of backing into that site , we pulled forward into the site in front of it and called it a day. Again looking at the temps up north, they just started to plummet, so we decided to get antifreeze and winterize on Sunday the day we were to leave.

Clear Lake State Park

The weather people got it correct. The winds came. 35mph sustained wind with 45-50mph wind gusts. No way where we going to drive in that. Lisa made my Easter ham early on Saturday and then we watched the temps drop here. We had already planned to winterize in the morning before we left, but mother nature had different plans for us. Around 2 in the morning, Lisa used the bathroom and the water pump kept running. We are frozen, some were between the tank and the pump. Since our pump was still working we decided to hurry and winterize now at 2AM. Dorks on Parade. We pumped our water lines with antifreeze, drained the fresh water tank and the water heater and then went back to bed. One good thing though, with the lower temps, the ground froze and we didn't sink in. We made it to the Iowa welcome center were they have a dump station and dumped before our tanks froze. If we didn't we would have the world's largest poopcicle. 

Still watching the weather, we had just one day to squeeze in between two weather systems.

2 feet of snow still on the ground at our super secret location.

We got to our final destination and parked out front. Jumped into Lisa's mom's car and drove to Fargo for this.

Grandbaby One

What a sweet little gift he is. It was worth all of the trouble we went through and we would do it again if we had to.

The temps are too cold to live in our camper so we have moved out again and into Lisa's mom's basement. Thanks Bev for the room and board. If anyone tells us how pretty the snow looks (Steve and Joan) prepare for a snowball in the face.

Until we thaw out again.