The 68 Frolic

 Not only did we enjoy the things we saw on our big trip, we enjoyed time with people. Keystone South Dakota is one of the several little towns/cities around Rapid City. It seems an unlikely place for folk from the islands of Micronesia to settle, but, in reality, it has been a landing place for several Micronesians over the past few years. While Keystone is definitely an interesting place to visit, the four islanders we stopped to see, and the others who preceded them didn't come as tourists. The Keystone Project, https://keystoneproject.org/, is a missionary-related discipleship program. Four young adults, alumni of Pacific Islands University (see my other blog, https://micronesianadventure.blogspot.com/, and scroll through some of the past posts to see our involvement at PIU, a school that serves the Micronesian Christian communities) are currently working at the Keystone Project.  On the left are Joysee and Marco Ilon, then Addie Greene and me, with Patleen Esemanaw on the righ

  We left our remote campground on the north bank of the Missouri and headed northwest to Rapid City South Dakota. Google guided us over about 20 miles of gravel roads. That much crushed stone is not something we are used to. Oh, we have gravel roads here in the Alleghany Highlands of Virginia, but for the most part, they aren't regularly traveled roads where folks live, work, and, worship. As we crunched along, we saw lovely houses, with nice trucks and cars sitting in the yards. The buildings and equipment indicated that the farms/ranches we were driving through weren't just little "forty acres and a mule" kind of operations. We passed what I would call a small village. The most prominent building in Dustville (I made that up) is a quite-impressive church with a large cemetery.  Like everything else on this part of our trip, Dustville was covered with, you guessed it. By the time we got to asphalt the Explorer and the Frolic had turned to a dull clay color. We wat

All over the West, we saw windmills. I don't want to get into an argument as to whether these gigantic pinwheels really are helpful in producing green energy and helping save the environment. I will simply say they are impressive. Kathy and I both think they are pretty. I am confident in saying that there is plenty of room for them all across the plains. If they are any good, out west is certainly a great place for them. I did most of the driving, so the windmill pictures are all Kathy's. Here is one of the many she took. The Missouri River is the water route that Lewis and Clark took on their incredible journey west. The Missouri National Recreational River (https://www.nps.gov/mnrr/planyourvisit/visitorcenters.htm) is a National Park that straddles the Iowa Nebraska state line. Much of the Missouri River has been changed by dams and other manmade projects. The stretch of the river within the park is much as it was when the great explorers made their trip. On our trip, Kathy a

 Kathy and I grew up in Illinois. Kathy was born in Indiana. My birthplace, Tennessee, is due South of where I grew up, so this "central" part of the country, in our thinking, is familiar. On our way west it wasn't fly-over country, it was what we needed to drive through.  Still this part of our journey, through Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa was interesting. Though this part of our trip lacked the awe-inspiring scenery that we saw, later on, it wasn't without its beauty. Mainly, though this 550-mile stretch gave us the opportunity to see some people we hadn't seen for a while. We left Cornith Kentucky and made our way to Elkhart Indiana, passing through a sliver of Ohio along the way. We have spent most of our lives in the mountains. We are always struck with how flat this part of the midwest is.  Elhart is where Frolic was made. So, while there were no welcome home banners, I figure it was the little trailer's first time back. Elkhart is known as the "RV C

 After giving you the overview of our epic journey, see the last two posts, I figured I'd give some more detail about our travels with Frolic. The First day of our trip took us to Corinth KY. We setup at Three Springs Campground. TSC is a small family-owned facility. The sites are grassy and gravel. There is enough space between sites so that we didn't feel crowded.  Corinth is about an hour south of Cincinnati OH.  This was the actual day of our 50th so I had planned a nice evening out at the Bouquet restaurant in Covington KY, just across the river from Cincinnati, https://www.bouquetrestaurant.com/ .  When we got off the interstate and entered Covington, it looked like a bigger version of our home town, Covington VA, an aging mill-town that had seen better days. However, as we drove down Main Street and got closer to the address of the restaurant, everything changed. I commented that it looked like a place put together by our artsy granddaughter. Restaurants, bakeries, pubs