We hit the road for our first big drive. Sioux Falls, South Dakota here we come! We were going to Sioux Falls to visit Kelly who I(Christy) have been friends with since middle school. Kelly was a bridesmaid in our wedding. I hadn’t seen her since I attended her wedding in 2012. She hadn’t seen Greg in more than ten years. We were all excited to have our kids meet each other.
Our first stop was at Lakeshore Camp Resort in Portage, IN. We broke a cardinal rule and arrived after dark. Arriving after dark makes everything much harder. When booking online or on an App, you never know what you are really getting yourself into. This was not what we had hoped for at all. The place is huge. It felt like we weren’t in the right place, but we kept following our GPS and found ourselves at a huge gate with a check point/gatekeeper. We were allowed entry and given directions to our pull through RV site. From the gate to the site took us 10 minutes, that’s how big the place is. We passed street after street looking for our street on a dark narrow road with plenty of tree branches that looked too low. There were people everywhere for the first several minutes, loud music, dancing, screaming children, and plenty of people holding beer cans crossing right in front of us. Turns out this resort has a lot of fun features that we never got to see including a music venue where a live band was playing. This was a very stressful drive. Thank God we were in a pull through site. A pull through site is a luxury we were only enjoying because the resort was fully booked! Greg and I used a flashlight to get the RV hooked up, did not unhitch, and got the kids to bed as quickly as we could.
The next morning, we were in a hurry to hit the road and the RV was not in the mood to co-operate. I was getting to the end of my keep calm and try again, when thankfully the couple in the RV next to us came outside. They had a cute little white poodle mix who helped my anxiety. The husband helped Greg problem shoot the right rear axle problem while I got to take a seat with a cute dog and talk to the wife. They turned out to be from South Bend, IN and this was one of their favorite places to take a quick vacation. They were a black couple and I really wanted to ask them about their experiences living in the mid-west. I got the impression that these were truly kind people, so I went ahead and brought up politics. I asked them about Pete Buttigieg who I am a big fan of. The wife got excited and told me that they know him. I asked her if he was as great as he seems on TV, she said “absolutely”. We talked excitedly about him. We briefly discussed the increased racism that they’ve experienced since 2015. Just as we were really getting into a deeper conversation about the 2020 election, our husbands solved the problem. I didn’t want to leave, but I knew we had a long day of driving ahead of us. Juneau is not a very diverse community. This was what I wanted more of for us. I wanted all four of us to meet new people with different life experiences and learn from each other. Greg and I both thanked the husband for his help. I gave the wife a hug, the dog a pat on the head and we were off.
We drove on I-80 west toward Iowa City. As we drove, I kept noticing this pulling or lurching feeling. The roads we had been driving on were in bad shape for freeways and had patches all over the place. At first, we thought that this feeling was related to the road conditions. We checked the hitch when we made a fuel stop. Everything seemed fine with the hitch, the roads were in better shape as we went but the feeling persisted. I knew something wasn’t right. We agreed to stop in Iowa City to get it checked out.
North Liberty, Iowa, which is just north of Iowa City has a ford dealership called Junge Ford. We were able to make an appointment for the next day. In the meantime, we had to figure out where we were going to park for the night. We needed some groceries and we like exploring new Costco locations. The Costco we located on google maps was our first stop in the area. However, as we got closer, we were increasingly confused. This Costco didn’t look like any Costco we had ever seen. We couldn’t see the parking lot. Towing an RV means you must be careful about how to enter and exit parking lots and of course watch your clearance to make sure you don’t hit any tree branches or pass under a low bridge, sign, or parking garage that’s shorter than your RV. We often drive around looking for the safest option for turning into a parking lot, but this time we couldn’t find the parking lot. We did find the loading dock on the back of the building though. Plenty of space back there! We parked behind the building as out of the way as we could and headed inside. We opened a door and instead of the store, we were entering a parking garage. This Costco’s parking lot is a covered garage attached to the store. It’s the only one like that I’ve ever seen. We found a manager to talk to and they kindly agreed to let us stay overnight where we had parked.
Now, place to park check, food check, A/C? No. It was hot, and we had no way to run the A/C, or much of anything with no hook ups. We headed to local mall to escape the heat. We took the kids to a family friendly movie and slept that night in the innocent bliss of people who don’t know financial devastation is on the way.
Just Keep Going 