Breathing a sigh of relief

This morning, literally holding our breath, we headed back to the tire company to have our last two tires mounted and installed on the truck. After spending five hours yesterday getting four tires installed we were really apprehensive about going back. We didn't want to spend our whole day there. As we motored down the freeway we chanced a call and told them that we'd be in their shop in the next ten minutes. The front man told us that the new tires had arrived from the distributor and Derek was as we spoke mounting the first of the tires on one of our new wheels.

Soon after, we pulled up in front of the store and the crew set to work right away. We got there at 10:30 a.m. and we were unbelievably done an hour later, including remounting the spare underneath the coach. So, we now have six new tires, two new wheels, and we still have our new spare that we started out with underneath. All the other tires and the wheel that ended up on the ground along the freeway yesterday went into the dumpster.

Before we left town, we stopped by the Ford dealer, conveniently located next door to the tire shop, to inquire about any recalls for our 1996 E350 Ford. One of the maintenance men at our camp last night, a very helpful and friendly chap named Brent, said that there might be a recall on the cruise control, which was reported to catch fire. It was nice to find out that such was not the case for our 1996 coach.

Once we were out of the Ford dealer we set our sights on heading on down the road into Wisconsin. It had taken us two days to accomplish it, but we were finally clearing out of Minnesota, not the luckiest state that we have encountered, at least for the pocketbook.

The rest of the day we rolled down the interstate moving southeast. At one time I tried getting off and driving route 12, a secondary road that promised to be more rural in nature. We found so many 18-wheelers clogging the interstate (Sorry John) that it was kinda unnerving in view of our recent luck with tires. But that particular stretch of route 12 was just as busy and had a million stop lights to boot. So, we got back on the interstate.


Our special quest today was to find George Aldrich's mother's house just off I94 in Wisconsin. Mrs Aldrich lives in a beautiful area, though somewhat perplexing to find unless you're paying really close attention. Still, we eventually found the homestead and spent a half hour waiting to see if Mrs Alrich would show up. When she didn't, we left a message and headed back for the interstate where we had seen a camp site called, "Jellystone." Pretty original, hey?

Anyway, we soon missed an important turn and ended up way south of our intended camp site. So, when we wandered into Tomah we went ahead and cranked the address of the nearest KOA into the GPS and, well, here we are in beautiful downtown Oakdale, just eating some fresh trout, watching Pawn Stars on TV, and enjoying the good life.

George's mother's home was located in a truly beautiful forested area of Wisconsin and the log cabin-style construction was terrific (see photos above).

On the way to George's mother's house we chanced to pass a nice display of a vintage steam locomotive and two passenger cars that I just had to stop and photograph. I know not many of you are railroad fans, but for those who are, enjoy!