Nostalgic on Route 66

Reduced Urrp!

Hopefully, we have made progress on the urrp issue. Barb read about putting golf balls in the food dish to help slow down the rapid eating and to give a little more variety. If this were us, we would be darn frustrated! So far that has worked, after a week no urrp after a meal. We also have a “puzzle” ball for feeding Wheezy, he has to roll it around on the floor and then one or two pieces will fall out of it.

Our past week was on the historic Route 66 southwest of Eureka, Missouri, (which is southwest of St. Louis) keeping our eye on the continued winter weather to the North. We were going to head further North this weekend, potentially be in River Falls a week early, but the winter weather advisory between here and there scared us. Good thing we kept to the South, the area we were going to stage at in Iowa got over six inches of snow this past week. We still plan to be in River Falls by April 1, but the extended forecast lows are still diving deeply into the lower teens at night.

We love the area around Eureka, we are about 30 miles North of the Mark Twain forest and the Meramec Caverns which was one of our “test” areas. We stayed here half of our two-week trip in the fall of 2016, testing whether this lifestyle was something we would enjoy. It is kismet that we would have been our final location of this first six month leg of Our Next Chapter. We are just now a few days until the end of this leg of travels with April 1 just a week away.

Sunday, March 25, was World Eagle Day and the World Bird Sanctuary nearby had a community event celebrating the day. Barb loves the majestic bald eagle almost as much as penguins. This sanctuary is located up on the ridge on the other side of the Meramec River near the Lone Elk Park, a drive through wildlife refuge for elk and bison. We visited there as well as the historic Route 66 State Park and the Route 66 Visitor center. We stepped foot on the old route, in the shadow of an iconic inn along the Meramec River.

While snow fell deeply up north, we got a lot of rain here. One evening the rain stopped long enough to cook outside and we had a culinary little flashback to stops we made over the past few months. We joined the Winter Garden farmers market and Memphis, when we enjoyed the frozen potato and sauerkraut perogies we bought at the farmers market and the horseradish sour cream from Tazikis Cafe in Memphis. Cameralized with onions in butter, alongside to some grilled pork loins, they may not look pretty but they tasted amazing.

2017 Coachman Galleria 24SQ

Jason shifted his work hours this week, having had a power outage in River Falls on Sunday and then working evenings on his project. Friday we went out in the rain and checked out a couple of RV dealers in the area. We have been considering a downsize of our RV and started to research camper vans (a/k/a class B motorhomes.) We set out to find a Hymer Aktiv but alas no one had one any in stock around here, but we did find others manufactured by that company. We like the Coachman Galleria too. This past week was one year since we signed the paperwork on the Laredo 5th wheel and we are finding our needs are changing. Like many full time RVers the transition from the stick home to a larger RV then something smaller is our progression too. As we approach the six month mark we continue to evaluate what we have and make more donations of stuff we have not used.

We continued to struggle more with the Laredo’s water system. We suffered another flood in the basement forcing us to empty it out again and do some more investigation. Jason found that Keystone had failed to install a washer in one of the fittings that was leaking, apparently a common problem with manufacturers according to our local dealer. Byerly RV continues to be very helpful in the area while we replace the offending parts. We have a list of things we want to do to the RV to make it more livable, but we find spending that money may now be a waste. We will see what transpires, being mobile we never know when we may meet the perfect next opportunity to turn the page in our book to yet another Our Next Chapter.