South Dakota/Iowa 2019 – NNs On the Wind

August 17, 2019November 7, 2019 Kathleen Ennen

AUG 11, 2019 – to Fargo, SD

We leave the beautiful park on Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota for a day long drive to Fargo, ND. We drove across the long earthen dam that creates the Lake. The scenery of the drive was not impressive – acres and acres of farmlands.

Aug 12

We are staying in Lindenwood CG, a Fargo public campground near the Red River for 2 nights. On our lay day we walk through the park and find a pedestrian bridge across the river. It’s not a big river at all! We walked across to Minnesota! It’s a good day for a long walk!

AUG 14-17, 2019 – Oxford, IA and Coralville Dam, IA

We are in driving mode to get to Moscow, IA and have the leveling system installed. I am so looking forward to making the arrival/setup at each stop quicker, easier and with less stress on managing the truck’s tendency to lean left with the slide extended.

We spend one night in a regional park outside of Minneapolis MN after encountering lots of traffic. We move on the next day and spend 2 nights west of Oxford IA. Though the CG is close to I80 it’s a pretty place with a small lake and a terrific sunset!!!

Aug 16

We stop in Iowa City to have the truck looked at due to a “new” sound. Seems when downshifting we hear a shudder that is similar to driving across a rumble strip. A Mercedes dealer, Carousel Motors, assesses the noise and reports it’s normal for these trucks. We also find that the recent software update wasn’t logged into the system so they took care of that. Nice place. We also had a great lunch nearby.

We go to a Corps of Engineers’ campground at Coralville Dam for a 3 night stay. Great spot and we walked across the dam and enjoyed the view of the large lake. There’s a terrific spot for fossil viewing adjacent to the dam. We didn’t walk there but there is a great video in the visitor’s center up the street from the dam. There have been 2 very significant floods that overtopped the dam since it was built. The floods tore away several feet of soil to expose a former ancient lake bed.

We have traveled over the years and retired in 2017, when we started on a nine month long adventure departing in December 2017. In the past we’ve traveled to Sri Lanka, Africa (several times), Turkey, and made a number of trips to Europe, and St Lucia. Our 2015 trip to Turkey, took nearly 3 weeks to explore Istanbul, Cappadocia and the areas in proximity to Izmir.

This is a chronicle of our travels, past and present. We love to travel by trains, planes, ships, and cars – and love sailing whenever and wherever we can.

We retired from the US General Services Administration, the Federal Government’s landlord! Thom worked at planning and large scale program management of numerous projects and Kathleen, a registered professional civil engineer, was a project manager for many infrastructure and building renovation projects, including both design and construction aspects, in New England, Florida and the metro DC area. We lived in Washington DC for 12 years and upon retirement sold the house, putting a few things in a 5’x5’ storage unit and started traveling.

On return to the US in September 2018, after traveling to 21 countries, we bought a Class C RV – 2019 Thor Freedom Elite 24FE. We enjoyed our week long camping trip in New Zealand in a small converted van with few amenities, so this seemed liked a good way to tour the US. We hope to visit family along the way and as many US National Parks as possible.

UPDATE – the Covid pandemic made travel more difficult for us. We were abroad for several months when the pandemic started and returned to the US in July 2020. After several months in the RV to visit Utah and Albuquerque NM, we moved east, bought a house on the Northern Neck of Virginia, and sold the RV. For 2021 and 2022 we tended to our new house and cottage, gardens and various boats including a 18’ 1977 Marshall Sanderling catboat and a 25’ Steiger Craft Chesapeake fishing boat, and kayaks and a canoe. Hopefully travel will start again one day!!

May 2022