Saturday, July 12, 2003

Baraboo, Wisconsin! What an interesting place. The Ringling Brother’s Circus started here in Baraboo, Wisconsin. They would winter here and get ready for the next season’s show. That practice continued until 1919 when they bought out the Barnum and Bailey Circus, which was a much bigger operation. From that time forward, the winter home was in Sarasota, Florida. But because of the Ringling Brothers roots, the World Circus Museum is here in Baraboo. Even the name sounds like something that should be associated with the Circus.

We’re here on our way home from Ohio and Nina’s family reunion. The website at home has stopped working and I haven’t been able to make connection with it through any other means, either. I’ll need to put a dial-up capability on a system at home so I can dial in and figure out what the problem is. I also need the ability to remote start a system — perhaps by cycling power. That would by most helpful when I’m not physically there. Why do these systems go down when I’m some huge distance away??? So, I’m writing this using WordPad and will post it when I get home next Wednesday.

It’s been a fun and interesting trip. We’ve been in Pennsylvania with Kirk and Dawnmarie and their family, then in Kentucky with Jim and LeeAnn and their family. On Sunday past (I think that was July 6th), we all began congregating at Salt Fork State Park in Ohio. The park is located east of Cambridge, Ohio, near the I-77 and I-70 interchange. As we were setting up Sunday evening the heavens opened and we got drenched. That pattern continued the rest of the week. Lots of rain — and rain in copious quantities. One of the storms was accompanied on Monday evening by heavy, gusting winds. The winds did a couple thousand dollars damage to the camper. The front awning was ripped from its hinges resulting in a huge crack in the front of the camper. That is currently covered with duct tape to keep the rain and wind out. The storm also ripped the awning along side the camper. I’ll be checking with the insurance when we get home to see what help they can give me on getting thing fixed. Today is the first full day without rain in a week — and that’s probably because the Nettleton’s are no longer congregated in Ohio and we’re north of Madison, Wisconsin.

Tomorrow we’ll go to church at the Baraboo Branch and then drive westward ending up somewhere around Rochester, Minnesota. So, there’ll be more added tomorrow….

Monday, July 14, 2003

Tomorrow turned out to be Monday evening. We’re in a KOA campground near Grand Island, Nebraska. We’ll be home sometime late tomorrow afternoon or early evening, so long as everything works out OK. I’m tired – not really sure why as we’ve done nothing but sit in the car all day today. We decided to head straight home from Wisconsin and have Wednesday to get things cleaned out of the camper and such before I go back to work on Thursday. Besides, there isn’t a whole bunch of stuff worth spending much time on between Wisconsin and Colorado Springs – at least not in this heat.

We’ve traded rain for heat. It’s dang hot here – about 95 degrees at 8 p.m. Colorado Springs is very hot as well. This may be the last summer with no air conditioning at home.

The reunion was a lot of fun. The Salt Fork State Park was a nice venue. Nina’s younger brother Ralph made reservations for us in a cul-de-sac part of the campground so that we were all together at the end of the road. That certainly kept the traffic down in our part of the campground. Sites in state parks are spacious and spread out. There was plenty of room for tents (we were the only ones there with a trailer). By families — Marsha and Billy were there along with Marsha’s daughter Robin, husband Haldor and daughter Elenor and Marsha’s son Brett with his daughter Hanna. Nina’s sister Pam along with all of her kids and grandkids were there. Unmarried Matt and Serena came over. Benjamin and his girlfriend Stephanie were there. Vanessa, her husband Dean, and kids Skyler and Colby were there. Marilyn, her husband Al, and children Lauren and Seneth spent most of the week there. Jordan and Ashlyn were there with Pam for the week. Pam’s husband Ed came down for an afternoon. He’s working at a summer camp and needed to be there each evening. Nina’s younger brother Ralph along with his kids Ashlynn and an (unnamed) boyfriend along with a baby daughter Kelsey, and his son Shawn came over from Columbus. Ralph Jr. was not able to be there. Ralph’s wife Marion was also not able to be there since she was in Connecticut with her family as her father is very ill.

In our family, LeeAnn, the twins James and Steven and daughter Shaundra came up with us on Sunday and stayed through Tuesday night. Jim had started a new job and was only able to come up for a few hours on Tuesday evening. Heather and Jaelene flew into Cleveland on Monday and then flew back home Wednesday afternoon. Dawnmarie, husband Kirk, and children Madison, Spencer, Rachel, and Kate drove over from Pennsylvania. Daryl and Jared drove out together and left Thursday afternoon to drive back. We also brought Trevor’s daughter Kendra out with us so she could spend some time with her cousins. So we were well represented. With all that, we had 52 people there plus two dogs, Bradica and Zoey.

There weren’t any major activities planned, just visiting and whatever folks wanted to do. Since it rained from time to time in copious quantities, most people spent much of the time wearing wet clothes and sleeping in wet tents. Skunks were also present every evening. A couple of them got into Marilyn’s tent. One of them sprayed as they were trying to run the animals out of the tent. Scratch one tent!

The park is built around a very large reservoir and the beach was very nice. Late morning and early afternoon had a lot of sun on Monday and Tuesday so most of the kids went swimming. A couple of them got quite lobster-looking by Tuesday afternoon. Ralph brought plenty of food and enjoyed cooking the evening meals. Kirk made a marvelous breakfast on Tuesday morning for everyone. We didn’t lack for food. After the evening rain storms, sitting around the campfire was also quite enjoyable until the bugs drove us into the camper. Everyone agreed that we need to do this again in about three years – perhaps where it won’t rain every day???

We left Friday morning and drove just into Wisconsin and spent the night. We moved the camper to Baraboo on Saturday morning and spent the afternoon at the Circus Museum mentioned earlier. We went swimming in the “heated” pool long enough to cool off on Saturday evening. Sunday we got ready for church, packed up the camper, and drove over to the Baraboo Branch building. We stayed for Sacrament Meeting and then drove along the Wisconsin River, up the Mississippi River, and into Minnesota that afternoon. We camped near Austin, Minnesota, and left early this morning with the intent of getting as far into Nebraska as we could.

We did stop in Omaha at the Winter Quarters Temple and Visitors Center. We spent about an hour there. The Temple is beautiful. The grounds are exquisite. The Visitor’s Center was very interesting with a lot of artifacts. The film was very interesting, made up mostly of video to accompany journal entries concerning the time in Winter Quarters in 1846-1847. I think that was a much better film than the one in Kirtland.

We’re bringing two other souls back with us – Trevor’s daughter Kendra who has made the entire trip with us, along with Pam’s seventeen-year-old daughter Ashlyn. Both of them have been wonderful to travel with. Kendra is very easy. She does what’s asked of her without arguing or complaining. She seems to always be happy and she’ll eat anything. She’s almost 9 years old (going on 17). Ashland has been wonderful as well and a great companion for Kendra. Ashlyn has really wanted to do something outside of Ohio and this is her “chance.” She’ll fly back to Ohio a week after we get home. She’s a good kid – actively involved in the Church and very interested in doing right things. I’m impressed.

Internet connections using Sprint PCS have been spotty, much more so than I had expected. We had a poor connection in Pennsylvania at the campground, a little better connection at Kirk and Dawnmarie’s house, no connection at the campground in Kentucky but a pretty good connection at Jim’s house. There was no connection at the State Park. Even driving across the Ohio and Indiana Turnpikes was spotty. The first campground in Wisconsin had a connection, the second in Baraboo did not. The site in Austin, Minnesota had a good connection. We occasionally had signal today and no signal in this campground. I’d sure like this service to be much more reliable and available.

So, tomorrow we’ll arrive back in Colorado Springs, 19 days after we left. It’s been a fun trip and for most of the trip, we really didn’t want to go home. Now that we’re a day away, we’re both quite anxious to get home. I think we’ll be out of here quite early tomorrow morning.