My has it been a long time since my last post!

 I think I should update my site. I see it's been a few years since my last entry. Well, time has brought huge changes to me. Too much to list all here. I think I'll try to get some of the highlights. You might know that I was a St. Paul cop for almost 30 years. I retired in 2014. Paula retired from running the office at "Cafe Latte" for 38 years a few years later. We were both born and raised and lived our whole lives in St. Paul. We sure did enjoy living in our house for 36 years. We've made great friends in that neighborhood. We've had a motorhome for almost 20 years and stored it in Hastings, 45 minutes away. I've always dreamed of having a home that I could store the motorhome in the back yard. St. Paul has become overun by cop haters with megaphones. The mayor is a cop hater. Most of the city council is cop haters. The county attorney is a huge cop hater. The media is full of cop haters. The police department has become extremely understaffed. The pay is much lower than many surrounding departments. Crime is out of control. Back in early 2022 my mom had been living alone in her Inver Grove Heights home for about 4 years and fallen a few times. One of those falls resulted in a broken leg. Our son, Jeff, has been working as a union journeyman electrician and had moved back home with us for various reasons. All of this convinced me that it was time to consider moving out to the country. If we were still working in the city I don't think we would have considered moving. We have ridden our bikes to work and wouldn't want to have a long auto commute. My mom would not consider moving into a senior building. Paula suggested we see if she would move in with us if we found a house with a 1st floor master suite for her. She being 91 years old and we knew stairs would be a bad idea. We also wanted to find a place out near my brother and his wife in Afton. Well, mom loved the idea. So, the hunt was on. No home owner's association and enough room to build a storage building for the motorhome. Pretty simple requirements, hahahaha. We actually managed to find the almost perfect property in West Lakeland Township. I know, you've never heard of it. Well, that's the way we want it. WLT is located very close to the I-94 bridge over the St. Croix  near Hudson, WI. I contacted the building inspector before purchase to make sure I could build the building of my dreams. The sellers had built this house in '92 and we are only the second owners. It's 5600 s/f, 5 bedrooms, 4 bath, on 3 acres. Very quiet street and neighborhood. About 1-2 miles to I-94. 8 minutes to tons of shops/stores in Hudson. We sold our St. Paul house to Jeff and his then fiance (now wife). We moved mom into her suite. We did all of our own moving using our enclosed trailers. It was great having plenty of time to move things since Jeff & Karissa let us get out on our own time. Mom really liked living here, especially having Buck (our 9 lb poodle) on her lap most of the time. We started prepping and planning for the motorhome building. We had to cut down several trees to make a new driveway in. I spent lots of time planning the building. We hired an excavator to work the land into a driveway and level pad. Found a company to supply the materials for the building. Couldn't find a company to come out and build it for us. At the same time Jeff & Karissa were planning a wedding. We suggested they get married in our yard and have the reception in our new building. That was back in 2022. We were planning everything for a June, 2023, building delivery. The company assured us we would be able to assemble it ourselves. The building is a 100% steel building, not a pole building with wooden framing as is much more common. Since we moved out here we have met several neighbors and forged new friendships. Our new neighbor directly across the street happens to be an expert excavator and a pretty darn good builder. So, he agreed to work with me for a very reasonable rate. We started working like crazy. Got a bit behind schedule because we couldn't get the foundation in until early July. Then the building company couldn't get us the materials until Aug. 30. My brother,  a couple of old good friends, Paula's two brothers, our sons, a nephew, all worked tirelessly all day every day. It took us about 3 weeks to erect the building! I hired a roofing company to screw down the steel roof sheeting. Well, they screwed it up. Damaged a bunch of the sheeting. Oh well. I'm quite sure nobody that came to the wedding noticed anything out of place. I'm so incredibly grateful to all of the people that spent so much of their summer nice weather hours working on this building. Everything came together just in the nick of time. Every night when I'd collapse into bed I would reflect on how amazing it is to have great friends and relatives helping me build my dream. This building is absolutely awesome! It cost quite a bit more than I originally thought it would. But, worth it. The wedding was amazing! The reception exceeded all expectations. After all the wedding events we hosted the neighbors for a chile party in the new building. Then we started filling it up with all the stuff from our storage unit in Hastings. A few weeks of that and we've got a great storage building filled with all my cherished junk. Gonna finish this entry up now but I promise I'll try to post another update soon. Because I've got lots more news to share. We have a Google Photos album documenting the building assembly. Check it out:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/nTABzXikYSNGw1V89

My history of car ownership.

I've been watching some Jay Leno's Garage tv. Lots of old neat cars. Made me start remembering some of the cars I've owned over the years. Figured maybe I should write a blog post with those memories so my great grandchildren can read about those. When I was in 10th grade I started dating a girl that lived in South St. Paul. I lived at 645 Goodrich Ave. in St. Paul. Too far to ride my bke. Mom and Dad would only let us kids use the family car once a week for personal use. I was crazy in love and once a week was just NOT enough. I had been working in bike shops since I was 12 but I wasn't great about saving my money. I had a great teacher named Ben James. He ran the "Performing Arts Learning Center" for the St. Paul Schools. The school district had established learning centers to address racial integration. Anyhow, Ben had a 1968 Volkswagen Bus that he agreed to sell me for $500. Blue with a white roof. I gave him $250 and he kept the bus in a garage until I could come up with the other $250. I sure loved that bus. I fixed up the inside building a nice bed in the back. I learned a bit about mechanics. The bus actually had very little trouble. I had a great CB radio setup in it. 8' antenna in the middle of the roof. Illegal amplifier in the glove box. Mirrored all the side and back windows. The sliding door was rusted away so only the two front doors or the rear hatch worked. We used to go to the Corral Drive-In quite often. I'd face the bus backwards and open the hatch. When I started going to Inver Hills Community College I decided to sell the bus and got a 1972 VW Squareback (wagon). Light blue. Nice car but no heater. I bought a kerosene space heater and disabled the emergency shut off device and set it up in the back. Probably not the safest but it sure threw out the heat. That's the car I owned when I met Paula, the most wonderful woman I could possibly imagine. The car was getting pretty rusty and the lack of heat forced me to upgrade. I bought a real nice 1973 Ford Pinto wagon. Pea green. Had a great heater. Hardly had any mechanical problems (all 3 of these cars were very reliable). We put a nice bike rack on the roof and got into bicycle racing heavily. The car started rusting pretty bad, passenger seat started caving through the floor. Paula didn't like that too much. Upgraded to a 1982 or 1984 Ford Escort wagon, dark green. It was also a pretty good car. I decided I needed a van again though. Bought a nice 1978 Chevrolet van. This was a rare factory authorized Bostrom conversion. Nice captains chairs. Sofa in back. Great for taking to the bike races. Somewhere along this timeline Paula had owned (in order) a 1975 Saab 95. Transmission failed on that so we got it fixed for a huge cost and sold it. She got a nice 1969 Buick Skylark for $350. It was smashed up and rusty but trusty. I think we sold the Buick when I got the '78 van and she kept driving the Escort. We also upgraded from the '78 van to a brand new 1987 Chevrolet van with a Waldoch conversion. Very nice Flexsteel captains chairs and sofa/bed. Rear heat and a/c. 5.7l throttle body injected. We got that in September of 1987 because we were planning to drive to Calgary for the 1988 Olympics that Katie, Paula's sister, would be speedskating in. Almost no problems with that van. Lots of road trips. Paula wasn't fond of driving the big vans though. I bought a 1992 Chevrolet Astro conversion van off a lot in about 1998. It was real nice, easier to drive than the big one, and got better mileage. For the time being we kept them both. The Escort was replaced by a 1986 or '87 Chevrolet Sprint 4dr. We bought it brand new at Midway Chevrolet, $6800. It was a manual transmission with the 1.0 liter Suzuki engine. Got 55 mpg. Great car but not very safe. When the kids were little we decided to get something safer so we got a used 1987 Volvo 740 turbo wagon. That was the most expensive vehicle we'd gotten up to that point. Manual transmission 4 speed with the electronic pushbutton overdrive. Great car. But the sunroof started leaking and I never did get that to stop. The engine had a massive failure and we had to get it rebuilt. Very expensive. And it only had rear wheel drive. We bought a used 1997 Toyota Rav4 all wheel drive and sold the Volvo. The '87 van was getting a bit rusty by 2004 so we sold it to another cop and bought a brand new 2004 GMC Savanah conversion van. This is one of my favorites. I found it on a lot. It was built on a 3500 (1 ton) chassis with the 6.0 liter engine and 4L80E transmission. Super heavy duty. Very very rare. Nobody wants a conversion van on a 3500 because they ride like a rock and get terrible mileage. Apparently somebody had this one built to order and then the buyer backed out leaving it stuck with the dealer. They were very glad to get rid of it and gave me a great price. 16 years later I've still got that van. With only 65k miles on the clock. It's a great tow vehicle. And great on road trips. But it still rides like a rock and gets terrible gas mileage. About 10 years ago my dad quit driving due to his Parkinson's. Jeff had kind of taken over the Rav4 so we bought dad's 1998 Audi A4 quatro wagon. It has the 2.8v6 30 valve and tiptronic transmission. A real sports wagon. About 3 years ago Helen (Paula's mom) quit driving when she turned 90. They (Bob, her dad, was still alive but had quit driving several years prior) gave us the 2001 Buick LeSabre as long as we would keep it and drive them to their appts. and errands. So, we had the van, the Buick, and the Audi. A few months ago I decided I didn't like maintaining both the Audi and the Buick. We needed something with all wheel drive that we could also get Helen in and out of. The Audi wouldn't work, too hard to get her in/out of. The LeSabre was only front wheel drive and not a lot of cargo room. I traded them both off on a 2010 Chevrolet Equinox, awd, 2.4 liter with 87k miles on it. It rides real nice, gets about the same mpg as the Buick and Audi did, has much more space inside, and Helen (Bob passed away a couple years ago) can get in/out. I put in a nice Alpine touch screen stereo with Android Auto. I had a Viper alarm/remote start put in. I installed a new front wheel bearing, not a terribly difficult job for a crack mechanic like me. I like this car. We still have the van too, gotta have a big heavy duty van for pulling heavy stuff.

Oh wait, I've forgotten one of the most important cars! In 1999 the police department organized a running team and we went to Las Vegas to compete in the "Baker to Vegas" relay race. Just down the block from the hotel was an exotic car rental place. We rented a Dodge Viper and took a road trip out to the Hoover Dam. It was great fun. When we got home I started looking for a sports car. I found a 1986 Corvette Z51 coupe, (red of course) that needed a lot of work. I bought that and sold the Astro van. I had that Vette for 14 years and did TONS of modifications to it. Some highlights:  383 cubic inch forged assembly, Trick Flow heads, TPIS Miniram intake, 9 quart road race oil pan, aluminum radiator and oil cooler, TH400 manual valve body trans with Gear Vendors overdrive, D44 rear end, Grand Sport brakes, TPIS roll bar, 5 point harnesses, 315/35/17 rear tires, 275/40/17 front, Doug Rippie camber rod brackets and hd camber rods, Doug Rippie trailing arm brackets, all urethane bushings. That car ruled my life. I had pretty much given up bike racing and got into autocross as well as high speed track days at Brainerd International Raceway. I had lots of fun with that car. It was terribly fast. Not especially trouble free (I had to pull the engine 3 times, and the trans about 3 times). When I retired in 2014 at age 53 I decided I had had enough of that car. I sold it to a friend for fractions of pennies on what I had put into it. I had made lots of great friends in the Corvette world though. And I would love to buy a newer Corvette someday. I don't think I'll modify another one though. And I might not even buy another again. I've gotten back into cycling much more and prefer that.

So, that's my vehicle ownership story. Thanks for reading. It's been real fun remembering all these automobiles and the great times I've had in each one. 

Almost a year has gone by.

I've been very bad about keeping up with this blog thing. Let's see if I can make an update. It might be a long one but there's a whole year to catch up on. The biggest news is Paula's retirement. After 38 years working for Haagen Daz/Bread & Chocolate/Cafe Latte she said goodbye. I know she really loved her job and did it extremely well. They hired a very young woman to fill her seat. Let's hope she can continue to operate the business office as well as Paula had. I still want to get my sourdough bread there. She left at the end of May. We had a great summer! We went on a road trip July 26th. Headed over to Wisconsin where we stopped at good friend Sheila Ochowicz summer lake home. Really nice dinner and wonderful conversations. Swimming in great water. Wish we could have stayed longer than one night.





Made it to Cleveland on the 27th. I got to crew on Denny & Katie's sailboat for the regatta. We won mostly because of my work on the jib and spinnaker. I wore my high visibility shirt in case I went overboard.  That's downtown Cleveland in the background. 



Had a very nice, too short, visit with Katie, Denny, and Abbie (my favorite niece).

Does Buck look comfortable?


Headed over to Niagara Falls on the 29th. Rode the "Maid of the Mist" boat up to the base of the falls. It was cool to see. Very wet too.




We joined a program called "Harvest Hosts." Members are able to stay at host locations for free in their campers. There are about 1000 locations now. Wineries, golf courses, museums, farms. We stayed at the first one near Niagara Falls. A great farm. Paula bought a ton of stuff in the farm store so it really wasn't a "free" spot. Buck had lots of fun running through the orchard.



We decided not to bring the car trailer on this trip. Most of our stops were going to be visiting friends and relatives so we figured our bikes would be fine. Next stop was our friends Amy (Peterson) and Bill Peck. They have a huge dairy farm in the Finger Lakes Saratoga area of New York. Their son was showing a heifer so that was fun to watch. They have a beautiful house with a swimming pool.



I think she really liked me:



Cows as far as you can see. And this is only one of their several barns.



This baby liked me too:



The milking parlor has 40 stations. They milk 1000 cows. Each cow gets milked 3 times a day. A tanker truck full of milk about every day.



The kids (4 boys ages 4-11) really liked Buck. They tried to trade their labs for Buck.



Again, too short of a visit. Very fun time though. Probably best to leave before wearing out our welcome.

We found the dump station in Albany, NY.



Made it to Rick & Laurie's (Velleu/Gage) country home on July 31st. It's a wonderful relaxing place about a couple hours north of Manhattan. Hudson River Valley. Laurie's daughter is getting married on August 10. Paula wanted to get there early to help with the preparations. The wedding is taking place at the country house.



Our campsite for the next couple weeks out behind the barn. Wonderful site, very quiet.



This is Buck and I helping with the prep.



Managed to get in a few bike rides too.



Buck really loved roaming and protecting the grounds.



I guess I didn't get any pictures of the four of us. I do like this shot I got of Rick finally relaxing after the wedding. There was almost no time for relaxing before the wedding, at least for Rick. That's Laurie's granddaughter. Paula had the best time doing all sorts of crafting things getting ready. I liked being able to help too. Even though I much prefer to relax in my old age. Their country house is such a great venue for relaxing.



We went into the City (Manhattan) for a day of visit with George. Also caught a big band show at "The Iridium." Why do people wait for hours to walk up and down stairs that go nowhere?





Paula's sister is Connie and she is very missed. We go visit her bench whenever we get to the City. Central Park. (I wore my high vis shirt again, in case I got lost in the crowds)



We left New York with lots of crying on August 13. Slept in a truck stop in Maryland that night. Made it to Williamsburg, VA, on the 14th.



We stayed here for 5 days, visiting great friends Jeff & Cindy Brett. Got some nice runs and bike rides in. Saw some historic areas. Learned a lot about the early years of our country. We rented that car for our visit. Buck even got a good history lesson. Here we are at Fort Monroe inspecting the moat.




From there we went to my favorite nephew's (and niece-in-law's) home. Nick & Jessica. We managed to get a great campsite real close to their place.



They're both officers in the army assigned to Fort Bragg. Got a nice tour of the fort and met several of their co-workers. It's fun to see how great these kids have turned into adults.



From Fayetteville we went to Charleston, SC. We met up with Pam Cadden, she used to work with Paula and has lived in Charleston for many years. It was nice to have dinner with her and catch up. Then we went to a Harvest Host farm. They had lots of animals to interest Buck. Then we went to visit our favorite niece-in-law, Erin (Bartlett) Blumel. Her husband, our favorite nephew Mike Blumel, is an Army Ranger assigned to secret missions so he was not in country. Had lots of fun touring Savannah, GA. Getting to know Erin better and spend some nice time with her was great.



We scored a great campsite, real close to their house.



Had a nice visit and dinner at Paula's cousin Gerry and Ann's house too.



I think Mike & Erin's dog likes me.



We left Savannah and went to a Harvest Host farm/zoo in northern Georgia. Lots of cool animals that we could feed treats to. This is my buddy George:



Hey Mike, what day is it?





On the road again. My happy place.



From Georgia, to Tennessee, and back to Georgia. The highway winds a bit in this area.



Back to Tennessee





This is a normal fuel stop. I usually get about 9-10 mpg and go about 700 miles on a filling.



We use "Carmin the Garmin" for navigation. Apparently she has confusion about how to spell Memphis.



Stayed at a great Harvest Host location near Cobdin, Illinois. A winery called "Star View Winery." Beautiful location. Found a super nice deserted hard pack gravel road to run on.

The only complaints on the Harvest Host web site were about the lack of a large level area in the lot. I agree. But I didn't complain because the rest was so nice. Young couple that own it were super nice too.



So there you have it. We were on the road for 33 days and covered 4,000 miles. Not a single problem with the motorhome. I just love having a "Truck Conversion." 12 liter Caterpillar motor and 10 speed transmission hauls the mail. We had the most wonderful time made even better by Paula not having to worry about work.

Abi Nadeau Winsor's Celebration of Life

(Click the title above)


University of North Dakota article about Abi

My Dad ended his fight with Parkinson's.

My dad, Frank, had been fighting Parkinson's for 13 years. He did a great job holding it off. He was committed to his participation in a study at the Mayo Clinic for PD sufferers. He tried so hard. Mom was a fierce fighter with him. She worked incredibly hard keeping dad on schedule with his meds, exercise, appts., etc.... Summer, 2017, his delusions started taking over his brain. He thought people were fighting with him, trying to steal his money, saw fires, etc.... It was just so sad to watch. Mom tried to keep him at home but he was just way too hard to deal with. He would get up at night and do very odd things. One time mom found dad in the van in the garage with a duffle bag packed, at 0300 hrs. He said he was waiting for me to pick him up. Other times he would get outside and wander. Sometimes he fell down outside and couldn't get up. And mom couldn't get him up when he would fall. We moved them into Lilydale Senior Living memory care unit. It was the best care we could possible give him. But he still was very active and delusional at night. The stress was just too much for mom. She moved back home and we kept dad at Lilydale. This tore him up. He thought mom had left him for another man, and taken all his money. Very sad times. Christmas was going to be at Jim & Anne's new Afton house. Knowing this would likely be dad's last Christmas with us we wanted to make it as special as possible. We hired a great music duo, husband and wife Andy and Catherine. They let me play drums with them too! She plays piano, and he plays guitar. They often perform at Cafe Latte. They were the greatest. And dad loved it! Paula got him up dancing. No easy feat for dad, he struggled just to walk by this time. He even managed to keep his hallucinations in check. I think he was really having a great time. Unfortunately, this was the last time he seemed to be somewhat in touch with reality. January was the worst. He almost never was with us in the moment. It was constant delusions and hallucinations. His food intake almost completely stopped. He was checking out, so to speak. By mid January he was pretty much catatonic. We all kept vigil with him. Taking turns sleeping next to him. And spending our days with him, trying to keep upbeat, yet knowing the end was near. On January 24th Jim, Anne, Paula, and I were with him in the evening. Mom and Linda had been with him all day and went home around dinner time. We had music playing and we kept talking to dad. Anne had a stethoscope so she could give us a report on his heartbeat and breathing. She said his heartbeat had started changing dramatically and she knew he would die soon. I'll let you watch Paula's eulogy for the rest. Partly because I'm crying too much to type right now. And partly because she did such a fabulous job with it.  Frank Winsor Eulogies

Linda, Evan, and Steph did great jobs with their eulogies too. Please click on them and watch.

Another long overdue post.

I've been pretty bad about keeping up with my blog. Oh well. I just need to try harder. I see the last entry I made was about our trip to Idaho. Well, last summer (2017) was a good one. The World Police & Fire Games were supposed to be in Montreal so I had been doing a fair amount of cycling to be ready. Montreal didn't work out so they moved the games to Los Angeles. That's good because then we could see old friends there. I decided to get a smaller trailer for putting the bicycles in and then rent a car when we got to LA. I've often wanted a smaller enclosed trailer than our car hauler. So it worked great. I ordered a Legends aluminum trailer. I spec'd everything and had it built just the way I wanted. 10' long, 3k axle, bigger tires, roof vent, no side door, ramp rear door, stainless hardware, etc.... I put Yakima brackets on the floor so I could put my racks inside for the bikes. I also wired it into the alarm system of the motorhome. Worked really nice for the bikes. I also set it up as a spare bedroom in case we need it.

We visited our friend, Susan Craven, outside Denver. Her husband, Mike, passed away around Christmas last year. Very sad deal. We had a really nice visit with Susan. We cried a lot. It was so good to spend some time with her though. We also got to visit Susie and Marshall Steel at Grand Junction, CO. Always good to stay in touch with them.

We stayed in the Moab KOA on the way out west. Had a great visit to Moab. Did some off road riding but Paula didn't have her fat tire bike so her hybrid wasn't the best. We went on an off road adventure in a Hummer H1. That was great! Very scary. Those H1's are very competent off road. It was a sunset cruise so we got way up in the hills and had a nice snack and beverage while watching the sun set.

We stayed at the Acton, CA, KOA. It was a great location, very close to the cycling events. But there were commuter rail lines right next to the campgrounds and the rotten train engineers always blasted the horns when passing the campgrounds. I'm convinced they did it to be mean because there was no grade crossing anywhere around. The park electrical was marginal. In the afternoon the voltage would drop on one of the legs so we could only run one a/c unit. Not the best. Especially since it was VERY hot all day every day. The Games were great. L.A.P.D. did a super job putting them on. The crit was FAST! I got dropped handily about 5 laps in. Kept riding hard and catching other dropped riders. The TT was cool. It started up the valley in the canyon. Full road closure. 5 miles downhill and 5 miles uphill. I did fine for me. Middle to nearer the lower end of my age group. There was a crazy hard hill climb TT. I didn't get last. So that's good. The road race was fun. 35 miles, one lap, up in the Soledad Canyon area. I stayed with for the first 7 miles and then it started climbing. BIG climbing! Got dropped but kept riding hard. Didn't get passed by any of the guys that got dropped before me. It was very very hot too. I finished about mid in my age group again. I drank 5 bottles during the 35 miles, and that still wasn't enough. We had a great time meeting cops and their families from all over the world. We got to spend some time with Shawn and MaryAnn Ruda. We got to visit Paula's old friend, Cathy Rafter Huetmaker. Wonderful times, very memorable. After the road race we got on the road to home. We pulled out Wednesday afternoon and made it 500 miles before sleeping somewhere. Then Thursday we did 750 miles. Then Friday another 750 miles and made it to Paula's 40th high school reunion pre-party. At least we got to take our time getting to LA and do a lot of relaxing.

The 2019 Games are supposed to be in China. I don't have any intention of going to China. And it's really hard, but fun, to cycle enough to enjoy the games. 2021 is Denmark. I might be convinced to go there. We'll see. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Here's the pictures I took on the trip:   Photo album from 2017 World Police & Fire Games

RV trip to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Wow, I just realized I haven't updated my blog for a LONG time. Thought I better make an entry. Our good friend, James Dougherty, decided he wanted to do an Ironman Triathlon (2.5 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run). So he entered one in Coeur d'Alene, Idaha. Set for August 21, 2016. They have friends with a lake home about 45 minutes out of CDA that they wanted to stay with. Paula wanted to go and cheer him along on the race. So, I came up with a great idea. Since Annie and the kids were planning on driving there from their lake home in northern Minnesota I figured this would work out. We drove our camper pulling the enclosed trailer and met her in Fargo, ND. We put her Honda Pilot in the trailer and stuffed her 5 kids in the camper. Annie wanted to ride in the Pilot in the trailer. But I decided that was just too much for Paula to take care of all those little rotten Dougherty kids. James had planned to fly to CDA so he wouldn't be worn out from the travel before the big event. We had a great road trip out. We slept in a rest stop in the middle of ND the first night. Next night we slept in the parking lot of a pizza place in Butte, MT. They actually had very good pizza too. And when we got to CDA we had a really nice campsite right there across the Spokane river from downtown. It was about the perfect spot for the triathlon. James met up with us out there and they all went to their friend's place. And Paula and I got some much needed peace and quiet. James did a great job in the tri. We all had a fun time cheering him on from all over the routes. We loaded the Pilot into the trailer and headed back toward MN on Wednesday. James found us a terrible campground outside of Bozeman, MT. But then the next night we had a great site at Mt. Rushmore KOA. We got to see the lighting of the monument. Thomas let out a humongous fart during a quiet time of the ceremony. Pretty audible for about a 20' circle. They got a room in the hotel. The campgrounds was great. Drove through the Black Hills and the Badlands. Really fun to have all the little urchins with us in these great landscapes. Fun to watch them explore such a wild place. I did all the driving so I always had a great seat. Everybody was very helpful keeping me fed and watered. Our last sleep night on the road we found a nice dead end street in Sioux Falls. Quiet and level. So, we covered a bit over 2800 miles. Slept several times with all of us in the rig. Got a bunch of nights in campgrounds. Only big issue was the fridge door coming open and spilling the entire contents onto the floor. Guessing somebody forgot to secure the velcro strap to it before we started down the road.

So, it was a long trip but the time just flew by. So happy to be able to do this with our great friends. I just wish we could have spent more time and relaxed a bit more. Maybe next time.