VACATION - Dreary morning in the rain

Yup, the rains and storms moved in as promised overnight...  We had a few boomers and flashes, but not any downpours or hail, which is good. The motorhome and Tracker only got halfway rinsed off.  Guess we gotta do a better job ourselves with the hose later.  This is our view out the windshield this morning:

I woke up early about 5:30 and left Steveio snoozing longer.  I wrote up the blog and got it posted, and started catching up on other blog reading.  Good to know all my bloggy friends are doing well...

Al and Kelly are making plans to hit the road in Oct.,
Dee and Jim got their fridge fixed,
Sam and Donna are letting Riggs play with ducks, and Sam is gonna help a sister in need
Karen and Al are getting the house ready to sell
Sandy and John are visiting WI folks yet before they head out
Judy is sharing her gorgeous pics,
Mike and Janna visited with Odel and Laurie,
Gypsy is trying out new recipes,
Margie and Bruce are saying farewell after babysitting the grands
Paul and Marti are getting exercise on folding bikes
Penny is soring out the keys and working on the RV things
HeyDuke is looking at toads
and Howard and Linda are setting up the next RV Dreams rally!

and THAT is as far as I got in reading blogs.... working on catch-up reading on each one too, going back a few days worth to see what I missed!

(click on the links on the right side of my blog to see all of their blogs and more if you wish)

It was a little chilly when we woke up this morning, so Steveio brought in the Easy Bake Oven (we crack a window to use it inside) and I made up a tube of cinnamon rolls.  We stretch them out into long cinnamon twists instead.   I also did up 2 pans of cookies from the pre-made dough for snacks later.

Since I snapped a pic of the cinnamon twists, I also saw Steve's popcorn popper on the counter....

This is what he uses when he gets the urge for snacking popcorn on the road.  We don't want to carry a hot air machine and crank up the generator at 9pm, like when he got the urge last night.  So he has one of these for just the occasion!

As I got up and at em, Steve took the dogs for a long walk around the campgrounds while I finished up a few things in the motorhome.  Then I unwound the second bobbin of yarn off the spinning wheel and put that away for travelling.    Now I have enough spun up for another pair of socks

When they are done being knit up, they will look like this:

We made ourselves road-worthy and hit the road before it got windier or rainy-er.  We wanted to get off of the gravel roads in case there was heavy rains, washouts or mud holes.  Within 10 miles we were back on blacktopped roads and heading south along the St. Croix river on a scenic highway.  We just crossed into the Wisconsin side before noon.

We drove on down to St. Croix Falls, a small town by the Interstate State Park (half is in Wisconsin and half is in Minnesota)    We stopped first at the Walmart in town and stocked up on things, then meandered on into the park.  It's a huge park and the campgrounds are a couple miles in from the main gate.  There are only 3 other campers here besides us.  We chose a lovely site, number 64 in the southern campground loop, far away from the other camper here.  The Northern campground has the other 2 campers located up there.   Talk about nice and quiet!

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/specific/interstate/

After settling into our campsite, and taking a nap, we drove around the park a little.  There are many hiking trails and such lovely rocky outcroppings along the St. Croix river.   I snapped a few from one stop, but will do more tomorrow when it's nicer out.  We are due for clear skies and sunshine tomorrow!

Over on the Minnesota side of the park, we saw these canoe and kayak rentals... and their campground was smaller and more compact and less space.  I am glad we chose the Wisconsin side to stay in.  $12 a night and we already have our seasonal pass too.

I forgot to take a good pic of our campsite, will do so tomorrow.... 

We drove our filthy dirty Tracker into town.  Steve found a car wash with a handwash bay, and soaped us up.  Strange, they had PINK FOAMING SOAP?   Ducky thought it was strange too.

But at least the poor little Tracker is clean..... 

While driving through the town, I found a wool shop in town called In The Wool, but they had just closed up for the season.  On the Minnesota side in the quaint little town of Taylors Falls, I saw a yarn shop that might look interesting too.  

We drove around the area and stopped at Dairy Queen.... I asked for a small vanilla cone dipped in chocolate and Steve asked for a cherry Dilly Bar (his favorite!)   the gal gave me the cone accidentally dipped in cherry!  So as a *I'm Sorry* gesture, she gave Steve an extra cherry Dilly Bar... how does that work?   It was my order she goofed up?     The other problem was that now we had to drive right back to the motorhome to get his extra Dilly Bar into the freezer!  haha

We got back, turned in and got cozy for the night... Steveio is in the shower and I am finishing the blog post, and soon we will both be snoozing away in the quiet country of the St. Croix....

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VACATION - Hitch Itchy Man on Monday

Ahhhh that Steveio, he is all Hitch-Itchy!  From the moment he got up this morning, he was prepping everything to hit the road.  He had agreed to wait till 11 or 12,  but by 8am he was raring to go!   Four days in one spot was too much for him????   I was boiling taters and eggs to make potato salad (gotta use up those $4 eggs ya know)  and I was putzing and catching up on blogs.  He was all over the place, stowing things away that I was still going to use yet, and he is just having the worst case of Hitch Itch!

Granted, the weather reports are not looking favorable for later in the day, so he wants to get going and get settled in at our next camping site before the bad weather starts.  We were going to head near Interstate park on the St. Croix river, about 120 miles SE of here.  But now a change of plans (most RVers have “Plans Made in Jello”)  now has us going to St. Croix State Park instead.  We will dump our tanks there and see if we can leave the motorhome in a day-use parkinglot.  We can unhook the toad to check out a small rustic national forest park north of there called Boulder campground on Rock Lake.  If we like the looks of it, we will go back and get the rig.   If we don’t like the looks, we will just camp at the St. Croix State Park.  It’s a huge park of 215 campsites, in three separate campground loops.  Might be quiet there after the holiday weekend, but might be more people than we are comfortable with.  Guess we will see when we get there, huh?

An observation about Minnesota state roads.  The East/West roads are all bumpy!  They go kathunka kathunka kathunka…. but the North/South roads seem to be all smoothly blacktopped. Go figger?

As we drove through Hinckley, MN we rounded a corner and saw a gas station with an RV dump sign!   Great, we were planning to drive into St. Croix state park to dump, and maneuver through their 215 campsites to find the dump, but now we don’t need to.   Like I said… “Plans Made in Jello”!   The pump cut off at $100 with our American Express, but it let us swipe again for another chance to keep on filling.  At $2.99 a gallon for diesel, it takes more than $100 to fill our 100 gallon tank!  So two swipes, and almost $200 later, and we were filled up again.  Good to go, and we dumped our holding tanks at the same time. 
Now we don’t have to stop at the Croix State Park to dump afterall, and we can just move on to the tiny state forest campground called Boulder Campground at Rock Lake.  Will see if it’s “our kind of place”   haha.  I might want to pick up some veggies, perhaps carrots, celery etc to make up some soup with our leftover turkey.  We are due for rain and thunderstorms later tonight and into tomorrow, so I am thinking a pot of soup would be a good thing.

We passed a HUGE casino near Hinckley, and there was a sardine-can-packed campground alongside of it, plus about another 20-30 motorhomes in the parking lot itself.  Thanks but no thanks, I think we are heading to the woods.

We drove a long way on gravel roads to get here, but we made it!  We are at Boulder Campground on Rock Lake, in the St. Croix state forest.   A rustic campground with primitive camping, no hookups, just tables, fire rings, an outhouse and a lake!
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_forests/facilities/cmp00044/index.html

BOY OH BOY -- DID I SAY GRAVEL ROADS ????

Maybe the rain overnight will wash this all off?

What a lovely place!   It’s quiet, tranquil, scenic and most of all, we are all alone!!! There was one car here at a tenting site, where you have to carry your stuff into the site down a path,  but they packed up and left.  All of the other 21 sites are empty.  We took number 7 that overlooks the lake and *picnic grounds* with the well pitcher pump.

This is the view out of our front windshield...

After a good lunch of leftover turkey sandwiches and some potato salad, I decided to take a peaceful little nap and Steveio went down to see what kind of fish this lake was hiding. 

We made some yummy soup and crackers for supper, we tuned into the tv to check the weather and found six digital stations out of Duluth!  Wheee heeeee   We have the weather radio set to this county, but nice to have a somewhat local weather forecast too on the screen.

Remember when I showed you the *red roads* from the Iron Ore in the area?  

I saw this pretty rock of ore and thought I would snap a pic of it

The doggers had a chance to get out and sniff... 

and check out the lake too.

I thought this was a very artful arrangement of natural growth around this stump.  God's landscaping!  

Seeing as it’s going to be rainy tonight and tomorrow, perhaps a bit of tv will be nice.   Ahhh whoddah thunk we would be sitting here in the middle of the woods, watching Wheel of Fortune?  LOL  Steveio popped some popcorn later and we watched Antiques Roadshow and History Detectives too. 

While watching tv, I was spinning up the rest of my llama/alpaca/sheep wool blend, now I have enough to knit another pair of socks from it.  I had already done three pairs from this batch, and this was the very end.  I was hoping to get two balls of yarn from the final amount of fleece and I did!   For you non-spinners reading this, every inch of yarn must really be spun three times.  Once to make a single strand…. then once again for a second strand of singles.. then you run both strands through the wheel again together, plying them in the opposite direction to make *rope*… or with soft wool into what is known as yarn.  So every inch of that finished yarn has been handled three times  by my fingers.

Yawwwnnnn time for bed, with the rain softly falling on the motorhome roof....


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