Six Saturdays And A Sunday: Retirement At Its Best

     Our friends, Ted and Kathy, have been our friends from our early days of teaching, the mid 1970s. We value their friendship beyond belief and it is because of their camping spirit that Doug and I decided to explore the possibilities of joining them on occasion. So, with the promise of fun times,  we made our first RV purchase and struck out on this adventure called camping.      Saturday the 25th and Saturday the 26th we trudged a whole 2 miles to the Des Moines West KOA campground in Adel for our first camping experience.  It only took weeks of planning, days of lugging things to the RV, hours of cooking, an hour to hook up, and checking numerous lists to get out the door but we made it to our destination. It only took us about 10 minutes to get there from our house, in fact, if the trees hadn't been in full splendor we could have seen it. Good thing because Doug had to run home to grab a few forgotten items which I still don't kn...

I don't know how many of you realize that Doug and I bought a used RV from a nice couple in Redfield. Last October, 2016. To make a long story kinda short, we have never camped using it. In fact, up until the time we lost our minds with this crazy purchase we have never camped. My idea of roughing it has always been having to leave the hotel to go eat. But we got swept up in the moment and now own a very nice, older, heavier, pull behind RV. We parked it the day we brought it home and didn't move it until this April when it took us 2 hours to get it from our house to Adel for new tires.(This trip usually takes, at the most, 15 minutes.) The 2 hour delay meant we were late for our tire appointment which made us late for getting it to the RV place in DeSoto for its check-up. By the time we pulled into the Ketelsen RV parking lot, we had a flat tire on the pickup and they were closing for the night. We were lucky that they saw how frustrated we were so the four, very nice service ...