The Rogers shuffle

We are at the Camping World in Rogers, Minnesota (map). However, we spent last night down the street at the Cabela's store (map).

We got a very late start from Wadena yesterday, between setting up all the equipment and having to wait for printer paper -- the stuff they sent with the printer was too thick and kept jamming. So we rolled into Rogers fairly late. We decided to put off our Camping World shopping till today and headed right to Cabela's. We knew they had a restaurant, albeit with a limited deli/grill type menu, and we were expecting to meet reader and fellow bus enthusiast Craig.

After deploying the dish, still a very tweaking-intensive affair due to ongoing problems with the hardware, we did some quick research on other nearby dining alternatives, but none was in walking distance. As Craig arrived by motorcycle, that sealed the deal and we walked into the store, only to find the cafe already closed. Hmph. We had to pull a scooter out so we could ride the couple miles with Craig to nearby Maynard's, which was actually quite good and had some nice happy hour specials.

It was curious to us that the enormous truck and RV lot had only trucks, plus us, and no other RV's last night. That's because it turns out that Camping World actually has 30-amp power pedestals for its customers, and although we did not need them yesterday afternoon, in today's heat and humidity the power to run the air conditioners has been quite welcome. We both had Red Cross training development to do today, along with a one-hour conference call on the subject. After we wrapped up our call we went into the store and dropped $250, making this one of the most expensive 30-amp pedestals in our history. In addition to replacing the $90 folding step that I destroyed by running over it with the bus, we bought two new chairs for the roof deck and a fancy propane-fired campfire.

Shortly we will leave our "free" power behind and head into Minneapolis, where we need to be squared away for our conference tomorrow. First we will head back to Cabela's and use their free dump station; Camping World also has a dump, but it is one of the new coin-operated systems. I think they charge a dollar for it; this is the same system Flying-J is installing where a dump token will cost you $10, or $5 with fill-up.