Wakeeney, KS

After a little over 2 weeks in our hometown of Imperial, NE we are on the road again. As you can see by the title of this Blog we are not exactly going toward Oregon. The beauty of living in a motor home is that we can change our minds when ever the notion strikes. Well the notion struck and we are now on our way to Calico Rock, AR for a few days of trout fishing and visiting with Nancy's relatives. We still plan to be in the San Francisco Area in Nov. We have a couple of other stops planned on the way, but you will just have to keep watching the blog to know when we are at them. We enjoyed visiting with many old friends while in the Imperial area and even made a couple of new friends while there.

Imperial, NE

On Tues. of this week we drove from Omaha to Imperial, NE. We are parked in our son Dan's yard. There is nothing better than having free parking. We have been enjoying our time here seeing old friends, acquaintances and relatives as well as taking care of business in the area. We feel especially fortunate that we were able to spend some time with Uncle Wilfred & Aunt Helen Miller. They are both in thier mid 90's and have just recently moved into the Heights, a wing of the assisted living facility. Also got to spend some time with Uncle Ave Hudnall. He is 90 years young and lives in the same wing.

Omaha, NE

We are at the West Omaha KOA. We arrived here yesterday early evening. We Plan to be here at least through Mon. Our leveling jacks are not working so we are awaiting repairs for them plus we have some other business to take care of here. We took two days coming from Hazen Bay. To our surprise it is just a few miles further to Omaha than it was to Imperial.
Labor Day our last big weekend at Hazen Bay went very smoothly. We had an overflow of campers, but all were very low keyed & orderly for the weekend. A lot of our seasonals and some of the regulars looked us up before they left on Mon. to say their farewells and wish us well for the winter. After two years many of them are just like family. One of the couples that stays in one of the cabins brought Nancy a bouquet of roses when they checked in on Fri. afternoon. Needless to say she got very emotional and teary. Our plans now are to return to Hazen Bay again next summer. We never thought when we first got the call about going to North Dakota that we would be going to a place that we would both fall in love with. In fact when we first arrived there in May of 2006 we nearly told them no thanks and drove on to a job offer we had in Oregon. We are so glad that Ken and Terrie Peterson talked us into staying.

Hazen Bay ND

for a round of golf at the Bully Pulpit The last couple of weeks have been pretty slow here at Hazen Bay. It also feels like fall is in the air. Last week we had some nights in the upper 40's. As you can see by the picture it wasn't very warm last Sun. evening (Aug. 19th.) Sat. Evening Aug 18th My sisters Gloria & Ilene and theirhusbands drove up from western NE to spend a couple of days with us. On Sun. we visited the Knife River Indian ruins and Fort Mandan. Later in the Afternoon we had Walleye and fresh Nebraska sweet corn. HUM HUM On Mon. we toured the Freedom coal Mine, The Antelope Valley Power Plant and the Dakota Gasification Plant. We had lunch in Beulah and then my sisters and brothers in-law continued on to MedoraGolf Course and the Medora Musical & pitchfork Fondue. We surely enjoyed having them spend a couple of days with us. This past week end we were nearly full in the park again after 2 rather slow weekends. The upcoming Labor Day weekend we are booked to capacity. On Wed. or Thur. of next week we will be headed down the road again.

Aug. 11 2007

Surprise it's not 2 weeks or more between posts. The weather has cooled here in North Dakota It's only supposed to be in the upper 70's today. We have had some rain since the last post.
machines and maybe 75 old old tractors. Another was full of old cars, old buggies and just to many things to name. An old church was full of clocks. Another building was full of dolls. There was an old general store stocked as it was in the past. The old farm house was full of old furnishings. This is a private museum that is run by volunteers and supported by the 5 quarter sections of farm land that Dale & Martha Hawk owned. The story told to us was that Dale & Martha had no children and that Dale was not a very good farmer. He did however love to go to auctions and bring home what the neighbors called junk. He would then restore this junk into the things that are on display at this museum. Some of the This week on our days off we decided to see couple of things that we had read about but hadn't seen before. On Tues. we drove about 175 miles to Wolford, ND (about 35 miles south of the International Peace Gardens) to visit the Dale & Martha Hawk Museum www.hawkmuseum.org. Wow what a place One building had probably a dozen steam engines plus some old threshingexhibits belong to other people but for the most part it is things that they restored & collected. We also stopped at the Prairie Village Museum in Rugby, ND. They have various old buildings set up like an old town as well as some displays of old things from the past.

Wildlife Museum. What a surprise we expected to see a few stuffed birds and animals native to the area On Wed. we drove to Beulah and visited the Pfenninginstead we found a huge collection of stuffed animals from all over the world. This again is a private collection that is the result of one local farm couples hunting expeditions all over the world. In my opinion this compares to the display at Cabellas in Sidney, NE. Since this is a private collection the husband & wife are there to tell the story that goes with each animal and to explain the animals that we didn't know what they were.
You couldn't as for anything cheaper to see as the cost for the Hawk Museum was $5 per person and the Phenning Museum was only $2.50 per person

Hazen, ND

It's time for another update from Hazen Bay. The weather continues to be hot and dry. However it is only in the 90's instead of the 100's as it was. We have had some rain this morning it it is raining as i write this. The camp ground continues to be rather busy on the weekends but is pretty dead during the week.
a flax field in the distance I think it is a lake until I get closer and realise that it isn't a lake. I will make The North Dakota landscape this summer has been like a giant patch work quilt that continually changes colors. When we arrived in late May there were the green pastures with brown fields of bare dirt and green fields of growing wheat & barley. That soon changed to a patchwork of varying greens. When the canola fields came into bloom some of the patches in the quilt changed to yellow and some of the pastures started to take on a tan tint as the heads of grass began to mature. In a week or so the barley fields turned to a gleaming white tan color and the winter wheat fields turned to a golden brown while the spring wheat fields began to change from and deep green to lighter green as they began to turn to their eventual golden brown color. Now the sun flower fields are starting to take on the deep yellow colors as the seed heads form and the grass on hills has turned to the tan green color of mature grasses. I forgot the occasional blueish color of the flax fields at the same time the canola fields had their yellow colors. Every time I Seeanother post in a week or two.

Hazen, ND

It has been a while since I have posted a blog. Things have been pretty routine here in No. Dakota. The weather has turned hot and dry. Mon. & Tues it was 106 degree's. It cooled into the lower 90's yesterday so the heat is more bearable now.
Last Wed we journeyed by car to Imperial, Ne to take part in the bi-annual Wheeler family reunion on Fri. & Sat. It is 640 miles so it is a 12 hour drive each way. We stayed in a motel while there. I know now why we like to travel in the motor home as the mattress was really hard. We got to see a lot of old friends and view some of the damage from the 12 to 14 inch rains in the area last month. There were around 50 family members at the reunion. Our Sat afternoon and evening were spent in the canyon on the old Wheeler farm that my mother and here siblings grew up on. We have been having our reunions there since 1976. On occasion we have held them at places away from Wauneta but people seem to always want to go back to the canyon and the farm.
On the return trip winter wheat harvest was in full swing from Pierre, SD and north to the state line. Here around Hazen we saw one field of spring barley being harvested but most of the other spring crops are a week or two away from harvest.
Things here in the park are pretty routine. The mowing has pretty much come to a halt due to the lack of rain and high temps.