Our RV Adventures

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Today was just such a cold, overcast day that we just decided to stay home. A few days ago I had put together a crockpot of Chicken Vegetable Soup, and this certainly seemed like a good day for it.

I did come across a couple of interesting things online. The first one is the Best Tourist Attraction in Every State. Check and see how many you’ve done and let me know.

The second one is pretty neat. It’s the LA CARAVANE DANS LE CIEL. This translates to “The Caravan in the Sky”. A Caravan is what most of Europe calls an RV.

I guess this might be the solution if you’re parked in that beautiful heavily wooded RV park and find your satellite dish blocked.

Although it might be a problem if you take the dog out for a late night walk and forget you’re 50 feet in the air.

Check out this video on how it works.

Since today’s blog was kind of sparse, mainly because our day was kind of sparse, I’ve reposted some of our travels in North Dakota from a couple of years ago.

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Prairie Dogs and Dinosaurs . . .

Originally posted on August 3, 2011

After yesterday’s exhausting quixotean quest for the large pale cetacean, we opted for dinner and a movie.

After checking local reviews, we decided to try Country Kitchen, a national chain. They have locations in 22 states, but we’d never heard of them. But luckily for us, the reviews were right. I had a double cheeseburger and Jan had a Spicy Chicken Sandwich. Both very good.

As far as the movies go, we didn’t have a lot of choices – Cowboys and Aliens, Captain America, and The Smurfs 3D.

But two out of three weren’t bad. We saw Cowboys and Aliens last night and decided to see Captain America tonight. And we did.

We both really enjoyed C & A. Good story, with a lot of twists, great effects, and anyway, any movie with Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and big, nasty aliens, has got to be good.

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This morning was a tourist day, so we started it off with breakfast at Country Kitchen. After all, if it was good for dinner . . .

And after a great breakfast, our first stop was Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND, about 35 miles west of here on I-94.

After getting our National Park Passports stamped at the Ranger Station, and checking out Teddy’s Maltese Cross cabin on the grounds, we headed out on the 36 miles scenic loop around the park.

And of course the first thing that caught Jan’s eye were the prairie dogs. Lots and lots of prairie dogs.

Whole towns of prairie dogs, as a matter of fact.

It’s like they have their own personalities.

Here, the wife is giving her husband a smooch before he goes off to a hard day of finding seeds, leaves, grasses, and roots, and also dodging hawks. Life can be rough on the prairie.

These three neighbors had a spat over who went down the wrong burrow, and now they’re not speaking.

The guy on the right just discovered he’s on camera.

These two are getting ready to race. and the other is doing the “Ready, Set, GO!”

And we did see some really beautiful scenery. This park is part of the Dakota Badlands and it shows.

There are several herds of wild horses in the park, and we saw quite a few.

And toward the end of our drive we also saw this female deer high up on a ridge grabbing a snack.

Leaving the park we headed back east on I-94 a few miles and stopped off at Painted Canyon, which is really just a continuation of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

It’s easy to see why they call it Painted Canyon.

Again heading back toward Dickinson, but still within the park boundaries, we saw one of the several large bison herds in the park.

Passing through Dickinson, and going about 10 miles out the other side, we turned south on the Enchanted Highway. Following up on Nick and Terry we saw some more of the really neat, very large, metal sculptures along the way.

This grasshopper was huge, but I kept looking for the giant seagulls.

A pheasant family, complete with chicks.

And Jan got this great shot of a field of sunflowers.

Again coming back into Dickinson we checked out the Dakota Dinosaur Museum.

Although not as extensive as the one we saw in Thermopolis, WY last week, they did have some interesting stuff like this cast of a T-Rex skull, found just 200 miles from here in Montana.

And this very nice display area.

This is a REAL Triceratops skull, weighing about 1500 pounds. The weight of these fossils is why most of the assembled skeletons you see in museums are fiberglass casts. They would weigh 10’s of tons and would be very difficult to suspend safely. It’s not really purple, it just looks that way under the light.

And Jan and I both really liked their large collection of beautiful rock specimens.

By the time we left the Dino Museum it was almost 5 pm, so we decided to check out a place Nick and others had recommended, although Nick couldn’t remember the name of the place he was trying to recommend.

It’s really sad to watch a mind just go like that.

It turned out to be the Dakota Diner, and once again the recommendations were spot on. The place was jam-packed and really, really good.

After dinner we came back to the rig for a while and then headed out to see Captain America at the movies.

The movie, subtitled “The First Avenger”, was very well-done, and held very close to the original comic book origins. I hated it when they take a known character and then just completely change the storyline.

This Captain America movie is the final one that will unite Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, along with other superheroes in next summer’s “The Avengers” movie.

Tomorrow . . . Fargo.  The city, not the movie.

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“I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” – Ben Franklin

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Friday was basically a errand/client day with stops at Fry’s and several other places checking out laptops for a client, Then it was off to Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. I also checked what they had in the way of laptops, but didn’t see anything in my price range.

My next stop was a client’s office to take a look at a printer problem he was having, The culprit was a Canon Copier/Printer similar to this one.

This is a network printer that the client uses to print out 1000’s of pages for the catalogs he sends out to customers. The computer said the printer wasn’t online, but the printer said it was too online. So I went back to the computer and tried to set up another printer driver, but was not able to see the printer at the static IP address it was set to (192.168.1. 10).

Next up I checked the CAT5 cables connecting the printer and computer to the router. I knew the computer line was OK since it was able to the see the Internet.  And the connection lights on both the printer and router ends were flashing away, a pretty good indication that that line was also good.

So it was back to the client to get some more info about when the problem occurred. After repeatedly pressing him on when/how it had quit working. He finally said “Oh, yeah. I switched our Internet service from the phone company to Comcast and they mentioned that they made some changes to the router.

Well, doh!

At this point, I was almost certain I knew what had happened. Comcast had probably changed the local private IP address from192.168.X.X to the other main one 10.0.X.X. (There is a 3rd one, 172.16.X.X, but it’s not used very often).

And as it turns out, I was right. So rather than trying to change everything back on Comcast’s end, I just change the printer’s static IP address to 10.0.1.10, and then changed the IP address in the printer driver , and now everything worked.

So after fixing his problem I felt a little less guilty about picking up my check while I was there. My next stop, (after the bank to deposit the check) was our storeroom to drop off some stuff and pick up some stuff, mainly Jan’s bird feeder to put out in front of the rig.

Finally getting back to the rig about 4:30, I turned right around and Jan and I headed out about 5 to meet a couple of friends, Maria and Connie, at the Joe’s BBQ over in Alvin, TX for dinner. Then all of us headed over to the Alvin Opry for the Friday night show.

As usual, Gene Hofford, the owner (along with his wife, Sue) of the Alvin Opry opened the show with a rousing number.

Like many of the band and performers here, Gene had a number of  hits back in the 60’s, including ‘Better Hang On Girl’ and ‘Surf Bunny’. Then after a number of local favorites, it was time for the feature, and who we especially came for, John Mark Davis.

 

John Mark is the full-blooded son of a chief of the Adai Caddo Indians of Louisiana, and has performed all over the country. He has opened for Mark Chestnutt and Tracy Byrd, and was offered a slot opening for Dwight Yoakum, but due to a prior obligation was unable to accept.

He was also twice an award winner in the Nashville’s Music City Song Fest, and really knows how to work a crowd and keep you entertained. He’s also know for his hilarious versions of Kaw-Liga, Running Bear, and Please Mr. Custer.

You can go here and download for free, or listen to one of John Mark’s songs oh his website.

So you can blame John Mark for us getting home late and you not getting a blog yesterday.

Today, Saturday, was pretty much a hang-around-the-rig day. I did spend some time pulling our winter coats out from the back of the truck, since it looks like we’re going to need them for a while. But other than that, we just goofed off all day.

BTW right now at 11:55pm Saturday night, it’s 29 degrees in Whitsett at our old gate. Really glad it’s our OLD gate, and not our present one. Feel sorry for Jim and Linda.

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Thought for the Day:

To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am. – Bernard M. Baruch

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