Last week's highlights - Day 763 (Yr 3, Day 30)

Bismarck, ND

I guess since there hasn't been much to report, I will attempt to post the highlights of the past week.

So last week the highlight was meeting 2 new couples and 2 next door neighbors.

On Thursday, I met Jo and Steve who just started full-timing.  They are from Silicon Valley (CA) and are birding enthusiasts.  Jo pointed out a few birds to me, including a nest of babies, which I never would have seen on my own.  She takes spectacular photos!  I met Jo when she was standing outside my rig taking some photos (I was curious so went outside to find out what she was taking pictures of - birds, of course!)

I also met Barbara & Dan who are from New England, who are fellow "RVillagers" (as a reminder, it's a site - rvillage.com - that, among other things, allows people to find others on a map.  When you input your location, it lets others in the campground know you've arrived, so you can meet.  They just completed a caravan tour in Europe and have been RVing for over 10 years.

As for neighbors, we met Pat & Irvin who are actually just on the other side of Roger & Cathy.  They are from the Bismarck area and have traveled to 48 states over the last 10 years.  Lots of interesting stories.  They arrived about a month ago, and will be staying until the end of August.

I also met Dan, on the other side of me.  He's from MN and works in construction, doing hail damage repairs. He left his wife & kids back home while he works, and will be here until about the same time as us.

There's another RVillager that checked in today (Sarah & Ted) who I hope to meet before they leave in 3 days.

The only other highlight was visiting our first farmers market on Sunday.  They finally started here.  It was in the parking lot of KMart and there was only ONE vendor, who only had a handful of veggies.  They were very nice and fresh - not cheap (we bought one tomato, one giant zucchini and 2 small peppers - $6.50. I grilled the zucchini and peppers along with some salmon for dinner).  They told us there were 3 other vendors there but they left early.  There are 2 other markets that set up in various places during the week, that we hope to visit.  My hunch is, however, that these are local folks who have large gardens - not farms - where they grow a lot of veggies that they can sell during the summer for pocket money.  Although there are a lot of farms here, they are mostly commercial and grow wheat, sunflowers and soybeans, not like NC where there were a lot of veggies.

Last week - Day 759 (Yr 3, Day 26 )

Bismarck, ND

Sorry I'm writing about last week when it's almost the start of a new week!  I can't really blame work, as it's been a very slow week so far.  Perhaps it's because we did a little tour last week with a few photos, which I've been too lazy to download and sort.  But here goes....

All of last week was "same old, same old," -- work.  Weather was wonderful, in the high 70s to mid 80s with a nice breeze and no humidity.  Can't say the same for this week, as yesterday hit 100* with high humidity and a heat index of 107!

The highlight of last week was going to the State Capitol.  They give tours on Sundays, so we decided to attempt that.  It was a nice day, so we took our urb-es to ride around the grounds.  The tours start every hour and we got there a little late (or way too early), so we rode to the other side of the campus to the Heritage Center, where we visited the dinosaur gallery for about 1/2 hr, and then returned to the Capitol building.

It's a nice building as state capitols go.  When you enter the premises, they have a Theodore Roosevelt Awards Hall of Fame.  To get this award, one must have made a contribution to the community.  Pictures of all the recipients through the years line the main corridor.  Sorry, no photos of that, but here are a few other photos:

The main corridor (long hallway).  We were standing in the middle, so you have the same view looking in the other direction.



State seal:

 

Engravings on all the elevators depicting past, present & future (and our tour guide in the elevator):

   

House of Reps chamber:



Senate Chamber.  The lighting on the ceiling is supposed to represent the moon and stars:

 















Supreme Court:



After visiting the legislative and judicial areas, we headed up to the observation deck on the 18th floor.  There are 21 stories in the building, making it the tallest building in North Dakota! (compare that to NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Fran, etc).  Here are some photos taken from the observation deck:


Photos lined the walls:

  

View of the main entrance to the Capitol:



In the winter of 2007, almost 9000 people lied down to create snow angels:



More views of the Bismarck/Mandan area from up above:

State library

2nd tallest bldg in Bismarck - a cathedral

All of this used to be farmland

More of the Capitol grounds

One parking lot.  That white thing is our truck!

 

Nothing new under the sun - Day 749 (Yr 3, Day 16 )

Bismarck, ND

Yes, dear friends & family; we're still here with nothing eventful having taken place this past week.  Almost every day or night has brought some pretty powerful storms with high winds and hail (with our weather station constantly screeching its alarm), but we've been very fortunate so far that the worst of the storms have been a few miles away, not directly overhead, so no problems.

Although the temps have been in the low to mid 80's, Sunday was 95.  Other than going out to the supermarket, we decided to stay indoors in the a/c.  Mitch finished covering the last chair, so now we have a matching set.  They came out really lovely.  I would love to make some matching placemats out of the leftover fabric, but being that I can hardly sew a button on a shirt, I'm not sure how to sew the fabric.  I'm sure if I attempt it, it will look like the work of a kindergartener; nothing to be proud of.  On one hand, I may attempt it anyway.  On the other hand, I may look for someone who sews and hire them to do it for me.  We'll see.

July 4th weekend - Day 744 (Yr 3, Day 11 )

Bismarck, ND

I do apologize for not writing as often as I used to, but there really isn't much going on that's exciting, or even new.  I think we've even pretty much finished exploring, so our adventures will be returning to the places we enjoyed (although we still haven't gone fishing or to the Science museum).

We enjoyed a nice 4 day weekend -- well Mitch did anyway, as I had some work to do on Friday; thankfully not the usual amount, but enough that all I could do is accompany Mitch to the supermarket.  So here's how our weekend played out:

Friday, July 1 - I prepared for Shabbat.  Here's the challah I made.  I don't think I'll ever get the hang of braiding it, but it came out light and airy this week rather than thick and cake-y.

I wanted to grill the tuna steaks, but it started to rain.  Other than a little bit of work, we both went to the supermarket and Mitch stopped at Menard's (the ND version of Home Depot) for water filters.  Sundown was 9:45!

Saturday, July 2 - Shabbat so did the usual: slept in until about 9:00, had breakfast, prayed, went out for a walk.  The campground, as always, filled up on Friday by 5 pm, and we expected that it would empty out by 11am, which is usually does, even on the weekends.  Much to our surprise, it stayed completely filled all weekend!!!  Tuesday morning was when the mass exodus began.  I wanted to go swimming, but the pool was filled all day with splashing kids which didn't leave much room for actual swimming.  Decided to stay in the a/c, or sit outside with a magazine when there was a nice breeze.

In the evening as it was turning dark (around 10pm), we heard the booms of fireworks.  We went outside and were able to view at least 3 different shows; 1 up the road and 2 others in the distance.  Great thing about the area is that there aren't a lot of trees and no high risers or buildings to block the view.

Sunday, July 3 - This was our big day of the weekend, although it started out by my making a nice breakfast (omelet with leftover mushrooms, onions and potatoes, with "bacon" on the side).  Then Mitch installed the new water filter.  He was disappointed because he was expecting it to be a big deal and it only took him about 10 minutes.  It took him more time to move everything out of the way and then put everything back!

There were numerous events and happenings going on around town (Bismarck, and Mandan across the river, about 10 miles away).  One of the events that appealed to us was "Art in the Park" -- an arts & crafts fair like the ones we used to vendor in when we were candle makers (about 35 years ago) -- much higher caliber than street fairs and flea markets with really amazing handmade stuff.  We decided to go on Sunday rather than Monday because they have a huge parade in the area.  We knew parking and crowds would be pretty bad, but probably 10 times worse on parade day.

It is very fortunate that we live in an RV which prevented us from buying anything impulsively since we have no room to display or store stuff.  I did, however, buy 3 pairs of earrings to replace some of the ones that got broken and, of course, we couldn't resist the strawberry rhubarb and apricot wines and rhubarb vodka from a local distillery (sampling all the different varieties first, naturally!)  We left around 11:30 and returned around 3.

The park was in Mandan.  Below are some photos of the fair and the town, which reminds me of the Old West.  It was very crowded and hard to find parking due to the crowds, but I definitely want to spend a day in that area again.

Sign on the side of a food truck at the fair

Kiddie tractor train outside the fair

                 

Next, we had tickets to what I think this town revolves around in planning for the entire year -- the July 4th rodeo (which is actually a 3 day event).  We bought tickets for Sunday, 7/3 rather than 7/4 because we had to work on Tuesday and since fireworks followed the rodeo at 11:00 pm, it just wasn't feasible to go on Monday. There was supposed to be a fireworks display on Sunday anyway, albeit not as big or spectacular.  Then again, having been up close & personal at the Macy's fireworks in NYC several times, nothing at all comes close.

This was our 2nd rodeo (first one in Arcadia, FL back in February 2015).  We went with our friends Roger and Kathy:





We had pretty good seats.  Here are a few pics:

Everyone really goes all out with the cowboy/cowgirl and patriotic gear.  I'd say about 90% of the crowd, from babies to seniors, were all decked out.

Little kids having stick horse races

The theme of the evening was Patriot's Night.  Rather than a parade of participants, there was a military celebration.  The Sergeant on the right (female) sung the National Anthem.  They had a huge fundraiser going on for the K9s for Warriors program which included a silent auction (and live auction Monday).

Now, this is where it started to get exciting, or at least adventurous.  The weather forecast was calling for possible thunderstorms in the evening, around the time of the rodeo (which started at 7:30pm).  Mitch and I packed raincoats just in case.  As we were seated, we noticed the sky way off in the distance was rather dark, and about 15 minutes later, we were able to see lightening.  The announcer said that people shouldn't worry; that they were closely monitoring the situation and we should be cowboys and cowgirls and brave it out.  He also joked that you can see a storm coming 30 miles away and it takes a long, long time to arrive.

About an hour into the show, this is what the sky looked like, and it just kept getting closer and more ominous.  I have to admit it these shelf clouds were an absolutely amazing sight.  Meanwhile, checking the weather app on the phone, there were severe warnings in the area for flash flooding, frequent lightening, large hail and winds up to 70mph.

        

     
When it got to the point below, the announcer said that the storm was about 15 miles out and if anyone wanted to leave, now would be a good time, although it wasn't necessary and the show would continue.  Hey, what's a little rain?

By the time it got to the next picture, I was really scared.  We were up pretty high in the bleachers and I am very slow moving traffic on stairs.  I also didn't want to get knocked down by a horde of people panicking to leave, so although Mitch, Kathy and Roger wanted to stay, I decided I was moving downstairs and seeking shelter under the bleachers.

As I was leaving my seat, a very strong gust of wind blew.  You could see lots of dust and people's programs and all kinds of papers being blown about.  By the time I reached the stairway, the announcer said that the police department told them to close it down temporarily.  So I was smart to have avoided the rush and made it down to beneath the bleachers on time.  The other 3 eventually found me in the crowd and we all huddled together, trying to stay as dry as possible.  Here's me:



There was a lot of wind, but it took about 15 minutes before the rain --or should I say the deluge -- finally came.  It was almost an hour later that we were finally allowed to return to the now very wet bleachers as the show was continuing, despite the arena now being a huge mud puddle (I felt bad for the riders who had to jump or fall off their horses into the mud).  In fact, the announcer made a dare -- he made up a figure - $1,000.  He said he would have the staff go around the crowd with collection hats and if he could raise the cash (which would go to K9s for Warriors), he would jump into the largest mud puddle after the show.  He raised over $2100!  Unfortunately, after about another 15 minutes and a few more bucking broncos, it started to rain again.  Not enough to close down the show, but we all had enough and decided to call it quits.  Sadly, we did not get to see him bathe in the mud, nor did we get to see the fireworks.

When we got home, we discovered that we had no hot water.

Sunday, July 4th - We had a slow, lazy morning, getting up at 10:30.  Our plan for the day was to see a movie we've been waiting a long time to see - "The BFG" (a Disney/Spielberg movie in 3D, based on a very favorite book by Roald Dahl).  It was truly delightful.  We were thinking of my getting a haircut afterwards, but I didn't feel like it.  Plus, Mitch needed to troubleshoot and try to figure out what was wrong with the hot water heater.  Before going home, however, we found a fruit/veggie stand in Mandan and decided to take a detour and check the place out.  It was a bit disappointing.  Although some of their stuff was a much better quality than Walmart or Dan's, the prices were pretty much the same.  The only thing really great were the peaches which were like sugar; I've never tasted a peach that wonderful.  I'm not convinced that it's worth going there on a weekly basis, though, since it's really out of the way.

Anyway, we returned and Mitch took down every manual we could find, DIY guides and looked on the internet to try to figure out what the problem was.  We didn't have an owner's manual (although he found one online).  It wasn't helpful as it didn't have a troubleshooting guide.  It turned out, however, that the previous owner had kept meticulous notes about any and everything on the RV and truck, and Mitch happened upon notes regarding the position of the bypass valves.  Ah hah!  Turns out that when he was installing the water filter, he must have knocked it out out of position.  He turned it the way the notes said, and voila!  Hot water again (if you're reading this, Kevin--thanks!!!).  So thrilled it didn't need to involve replacing the unit (although, realistically, I'm sure we will need to replace that, as well as the refrigerator and microwave/convection oven at some point).

Tuesday was back to work day and as slow as it was on Friday (many folks starting their holiday weekends), they all came rushing back on Tuesday.  Mitch also only gets paid for 8 hours on days he doesn't work (10 hours normally), so he has 2 hours to make up this week, which means leaving 1/2 hour earlier Tues/Wed and Thurs and working 1/2 hr later one of those days.  This week he is leaving home at 5:30am.

Nothing else exciting planned this week.  Maybe if my workload is light on Friday, we can go to the science museum, since they're closed on Sundays.  Will let you know....