Welcome to Tornado Alley

We are parked on a city street in Cooperstown, North Dakota, adjacent to the Coachman Inn steak house, lounge, and motel (map). We had dinner there, which was quite good, and asked about parking here. The main streets are posted no parking 2am-6am, but not these side streets, and we were undisturbed.

Our first stop in this town was actually the city park, a few blocks north, where our guide said there were several camp sites with hookups for $10. Sure enough, there were perhaps ten sites, but half of them had just been constructed and were a muddy mess -- I don't think you could have put a truck camper in them without getting stuck. The other half were mostly full of rigs that looked to be there long-term. There was one space we might have squeezed into with a great deal of effort, but our shoes made enough of an impression in the ground that we decided against even trying; we could just imagine our 12-ton drive axle sinking in several inches.

By the time we arrived here we were pretty much done. We had hoped for quarters at the free city park half an hour west, in Glenfield, but that place was also a muddy mess after yesterday's weather, and between that, the low trees and the narrow access road, we decided not to risk entry. Widespread flooding throughout the region pretty much meant we should stick to paved or well-graveled roads, at least until things dry out.

Even before we had left Minot, our weather radio had started alerting every fifteen minutes or so with severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado watches. We brought the radio down to the cockpit with us for the drive, and as we continued southeast, watches all around us were turning into warnings, meaning actual tornadoes were being spotted or picked up on radar. Every time the radio went off, Louise furiously pawed through the maps to see where we were in relation to the warnings, and while we did drive through the watch area, our presence in any given county never coincided with a warning there.

That said, as we drove merrily along, the crosswind suddenly picked up to 50-60 knots or so in driving rain, and a darkening sky in front of us with low descending and fast moving clouds had us scanning the roadside for tornado shelters. I had to slow to 45mph and fight the wheel with both hands to stay on the road, and we pulled off at the next gas station we found. Fifteen minutes later it was all over, and we pulled around to the pumps to fuel, realizing that, by chance, this station had the lowest diesel price we'd seen in many miles.

While inside paying I heard on the radio about damage in a town still ahead of us, and a couple that had been heading the other way mentioned an overturned grain silo. Sure enough, as we rolled past Fessenden, we spotted the silo, which looked to have been nearly brand new, almost upside down, and well crumpled. This was one of the short squat ones, perhaps 50' across and again as tall, with a conical top. By the time we passed the silo, the sun was shining and the wind had mostly abated.

Half an hour later we passed through the small town of Carrington, one of our stopping options. The county fair looked to be in full swing, and it seemed a bit early to stop, so instead of turning southeast on US-281 we continued east on ND-200, heading for Glenfield. Perhaps a mile out of town we rolled up to a sheriff's deputy standing in the road, his cruiser on the shoulder with lights blazing. After waving us to a stop he told us to proceeded slowly past the fire trucks.

As we approached the scene, we could see the power poles along both sides of the road had been pushed over toward the north; the lines south of the road were intact, but a pole on the north side had snapped and the lines were down. We figured the fire department was there for that reason. But as we got closer we could see that the roof of Wholesale AG Products had been ripped completely off, and pieces of the building and much of the inventory was spread out in a tight fan across the fields north of the building. That's when we knew that a tornado had touched down just south of the road, moved across the road from south to north, sliced through the middle of the building like a giant Dremel tool, deposited its evil spoils in the crops, and then dissipated.

Based on when we heard the warnings for that county, we surmised the tornado preceded us on this section of the road by perhaps 90 minutes. A sobering reminder that we are not only in Tornado Alley, but also in tornado season. All's well that ends well, and while the 60-knot sideways torrential rain drove some water into the bus, we dodged a bullet and were glad to stop for the night where we could get a nice meal and a glass of wine, and not have to be towed out of the mud in the morning by an enormous wrecker.

In a few minutes we will drive the three miles north to the decommissioned Minuteman silo (North Dakota is full of them) that is now a museum. We'll come right back through town and continue east on 200, then stair-step our way southeast to Fargo.

Why not Minot?

We are at the Wal-Mart in Minot, North Dakota (map). We were here in Minot almost exactly five years ago for the FMCA convention, back in the days when those rallies attracted several thousand coaches.

It's quite a change from the more serene and pastoral quarters we've enjoyed for the last few days, but we had many errands here in town. For one thing, we needed a UPS store to drop off one of our eBay sales, and for another we needed a laundromat, and we found both yesterday. We also had quite the shopping list; we did part of it last night as we walked back from dinner at Mi Mexico restaurant across the parking lot, so we'd at least have breakfast items this morning. In a few minutes we'll go back into the store for the rest of our list.

Today we will continue southeast, towards Fargo. Our conference in Minneapolis is now less than a week away, and I'd like to be in-area at least a full day ahead of time, to get settled. We also know some folks there, and have some things to pick up that are waiting on our arrival in a more major city.

Photo by Bjorn1101, used under a Creative Commons license.

Discovering America

We are at the municipal park campground in Columbus, North Dakota (map). There are three pedestals here, each with one 30-amp and two 20-amp receptacles and a water spigot, for $10 per night.

In addition to the "nine" sites, there is a 9-hole golf course, a ball field, a steam locomotive, a playground, a pair of tennis courts, and the veterans' memorial, all in this park. Apart from the crumbling tennis courts and the fact that the greens on the golf course are all rectangular astroturf, the place is nice and well maintained, in stark contrast to the town itself, which is slowly dying.

We walked the four blocks to the center of town last night, and the only two businesses that look to still be operating are a lone cafe and a bar. The place was ghostly empty. Even here at the park, we have been mostly alone. There are two travel trailers here, using the other two pedestals, and they've been here a while, having been mown around several times. I figured them to be mostly stored, as we did not see a soul all day, but last night around 11 two trucks drove up to them. The trucks were again gone this morning when we got up, so these must be a couple of oil workers living here in the park for the short term.

A couple of people came to use the golf course yesterday, bringing their own electric carts with them on trailers. The whole place is unstaffed, and there is a drop box for the camping and another for golf ($6 for nine holes, or $10 all day). Today the maintenance guy is mowing the grass, and it's hard to see how they are even collecting enough money to do that. Apart from one woman slowly bicycling through town, those are the only souls we've seen since arriving just after 5 yesterday.

Today we will continue east, where in a few miles we will connect with US-52 south of the border town of Portal. 52 will stair-step east and south a few times before heading southeast, taking us all the way to Minot. We need fuel, supplies, and a UPS drop, none of which we've seen in many miles, and Minot will seem positively cosmopolitan now.

Now featuring: Titles

Something Louise read in the Blogger help files suggested we put titles on our posts, so here they are. As if I did not already have my hands full, so to speak, posting our daily wanderings here, I now need to come up with titles. Don't be surprised when the titles become simply the names of the places we stay, which, come to think of it, is often the most descriptive or useful information in the whole post anyway.

Speaking of which, we are in St. Thomas. Not the caribbean island, but, rather, the small town of that name in the northeastern reaches of North Dakota (map). Our guide book said there was a city park here with primitive camping. We found the park, and drove all the way around the small gravel road -- there was barely any parking, let alone camping. We parked in the one gravel wide spot on the road, and chatted with a local who happened to drive by. He pointed out that the "old" campground was actually across a coulee from the bulk of the park. The camping area was accessible only from the main (bypass) road, US-81, while the rest of the park, including the playground, now-defunct tennis court, and picnic pavilion, was accessible only from the town side.

We were in this latter part. I walked over to the camping area -- a long hike out to US-81, across the coulee on the highway bridge, and back to the other park entrance -- and determined that the campground, such as it was, had not been used for that purpose (or any purpose, really) for many years and that Odyssey would sink to her axles in the soft grassy earth there if we even tried it. So we locked down for the night right here next to the pavilion. Even though it was a pleasant Sunday afternoon, the park facilities remained deserted, and we had the entire park to ourselves. A second night in a row of free camping in eerily deserted, slowly deteriorating, small-town facilities.

Yesterday morning, a nice thirty-something couple came zipping around the Elks lodge on a power-walk while I was out walking the dog, and they confirmed to me that the lodge had indeed closed down sometime in the last year, due to financial difficulties. Turns out they were from Grand Forks (visiting relatives in Devils Lake) and related that the lodge there had closed down even earlier, and that the giant fiberglass Elk had actually come from that lodge. (It was a pleasure meeting you, Terry and Babs.)

The past two days have highlighted some of the things we love about small-town America: Everyone we encounter is pleasant and helpful, and not at all concerned that we are camping in their town. In spite of the fact that, for example, the Devils Lake Elks Lodge has been closed for some time, the building has not been vandalized or burglarized. And, while Odyssey might well be the weirdest thing that has happened to these small towns in months, people have generally been respectful of our privacy.

Today we will cross into Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes.

Hager Park, St. Thomas, ND. Our visitor guide to North Dakota lists this park as having camping that is "primitive." The rest of the facilities are well-developed: playground, ball fields, picnic gazebo. There's not a soul here.

Parked at the abandoned Elks lodge in Devils Lake, ND. We were told this morning by passing pedestrians that the fiberglass elk started life in Grand Forks, ND, and moved here when THAT lodge closed.

We are at (what we thought was) the Devils Lake, ND, Elks Lodge (map).

I put it that way because what is here looks very much like an Elks lodge, complete with a life-size fiberglass elk atop the porte-cochere, and a sign on the street identifying it as BPO Elks Lodge 1216. We came here because the state park west of here was full (a story unto itself, which I will relate momentarily), and our Elks travel guide clearly listed this facility as having ten RV spaces with hookups, and additional dry parking in the lot. However, the facility appears to be abandoned.

It is not abandoned in a boarded-up sense. More like a scene from one of those B-grade, after-the-holocaust films from the 60's, where places look like the people just disappeared in the middle of whatever they were doing. Think, for example, The Omega Man. Upon arrival, we noted the parking lot to be uncharacteristically empty for an Elks lodge -- on a Saturday evening, there would inevitably be a barkeep and at least a handful of Elk at the watering trough. We stopped the coach and walked around the building, peering in all the windows. Just inside the front door is a signboard listing the hours and functions, exactly as they were published in the guide (Saturday night should be dining and entertainment). There were several windows offering glimpses of the office, complete with office equipment such as computers and printers, desks strewn with papers and other work-in-progress, etc.

Nevertheless, dialing both the phone line and the fax number reveals them to be disconnected. The remainder of the facility looks unused for weeks or even months, although clearly the parking lot is being swept at least occasionally, and the lawns are mown. All the power and water is off in the "campground," but a hose bibb and a convenience outlet on the side of the building are in working order. All external appearances are of a functional lodge, with signage accordingly, and no notice posted of any closure or such.

We were pretty much out of other options for tonight, unless we wanted to drive back into town and stay at the Wal-Mart, so we decided to put a sign in the window with our Elks credentials and stay here anyway. So far it has been all quiet, save for three or four cars that drove into the lot, around the building, and back out, quite possibly just to look at us.

After deploying our dish and getting on line, we immediately began researching the situation on the net. The mystery only deepened, with many apparently near-current references to an active lodge here, including full contact (and camping) information on-line on the national Elks site. Only after extensive digging did we find that the lodge facility quite possibly closed in December of 2003, with the city of Devils Lake or possibly the county in negotiations to acquire the facility for a community building. It is possible that the references we found to nearly current activities here might have been for events under municipal, rather than Elks, auspices.

In any case, after getting all parked and established, and now having had a glass or two of wine, we are entrenched for the night. If the local constabulary has an issue with it, we will just explain the situation and that we are leaving in the morning in any case. Louise has keyed the local frequencies into her scanner, so we'll know in advance as well.

With regard to the above-mentioned state campground, I will tell you that it is about 15 miles from here, on an island in the middle of the lake. The lake has apparently risen nearly 24 feet in the last decade, inundating farms, roads, and other facilities, and washing out, fairly recently, part of the causeway leading to the park. (It appears, actually, that the entire causeway runs over formerly dry land that has been consumed by the lake.) So after driving most of the 15 miles, we ran into fairly soft sand and gravel road on the way into the park that had me stomping on the throttle to avoid bogging down in the muck. I think our new block-tread drivers helped out a good deal.

Imagine our disappointment, then, when they told us the place was full. We pointed out that they could have put out the "campground full" sign, which we passed in its undeployed state a full five miles back, on the main road before the soft stuff. Harrumph.

On the 15-mile drive back into town, while I groused about the colossal waste of diesel fuel, Louise identified another state park just a few miles east of town, and we decided to give them a call rather than risk another disappointment. We don't usually expect anyone to answer the phone at these places on a Saturday evening, but they did. When she inquired, they told her the park was closed. She asked if it was under construction, and they said no, it was under water.

The MapQuest map linked above shows the lake at some previous level -- it has now come right up to the town. It would seem the ancient Native American spirits are trying to reclaim their land. My GPS also shows a much older lake border, while the current Street Atlas seems to have a much more current reckoning. Many roads, though, are still shown right on the lake bottom.

We have more or less decided that we are heading to southern Illinois for the Escapade rally in late September. The principal reason for this is that we have been looking at becoming Red Cross disaster volunteers, a calling that requires a great deal more training than one might assume. The Escapees have a chapter devoted to disaster operations volunteering and they are offering a full complement of training at the rally, and we figure this is an easier way to get started than trying to piece the training together from individual Red Cross chapters around the country.

Unfortunately, this means that we will once again miss Burning Man this year, something we've been saying we will do "when we get on the road in our bus." Many apologies to Gary, Bryce, Lissa, Eric, and anyone else we told that we might be at the festival this year. Perhaps we will finally make it happen next year, just before we head to Mexico. We will also be missing a killer Labor-Day party in Washington to which we have been invited -- sorry, Debra and Brian.

Since we have nearly a month to get to Du Quoin, IL, we will head east and slightly north to the Great Lakes, as this is a great time of year to do it. We're also going to slow our pace a bit, and make at least one or two multi-day stops to relax a little.

On day 2 of the Minot rally, rain made our parking area into a mud pit. Many coaches pulled out in a panic as the rain fell, and dozens got stuck. We waited until day 5 to leave, when the ground was dry and firm again.

We are back on-line now with our satellite system, so I can finally post from the comfort of our coach again. I have also updated our position on the DataStorm map.

We are still in Minot, although the FMCA show technically ended Thursday. On our way here, we thought that it might take us through Tuesday to go through all the exhibits and attend whatever seminars we wanted, and that we would be leaving by Wednesday morning. As it turned out, though, it was a very productive show for us, and we ended up with appointments all the way through yesterday afternoon.

For starters, we attended several interesting seminars, most notably three on traveling in Mexico and Central America. These were very informative, and we are very much looking forward to our first trip south of the border. For our first foray, we are going on an organized caravan, which is currently scheduled for October, 2006, although we are on a waiting list for a departure this February. The seminars wiped out most of Monday and a good deal of Tuesday as well.

Unlike our past visits to FMCA events, we spent very little time in the outdoor coach exhibits, and breezed through them quickly during the preview on Monday afternoon. We are certainly not looking for a new coach, and our intensive interest in these exhibits in past years was motivated by collecting ideas for incorporation into Odyssey.

While we did briefly visit the indoor exhibit hall on Tuesday, we spent literally all day there on Wednesday. We came armed with a list of items we wanted to either investigate or purchase here at the show. Chatting in various booths took more time than we expected, and by closing time, we still had not seen the entire floor. No problem, Thursday would be another day, and, besides, on Tuesday afternoon we had signed up to have Odyssey weighed, and the weigh-in appointment was set for Friday morning.

Also Wednesday afternoon, we finally ran into the Diamon-Fusion people, and were able to nail them down on the exact terms of their glass warranty. We ended up, by Thursday morning, deciding to try the product. Usually, I view these sorts of treatments as snake oil. However, with the amount of glass damage we are sustaining to the lower windshield, we are willing to look at anything that might help. The expensive ($1,300 for our one-piece windshield) treatment comes with a four-year guarantee against rock damage and consequent glass breakage, and that will easily pay for itself if the window breaks, as it cost $3,000 the last time we replaced it. Our regular insurance also covers glass breakage (and chip repair), but we have been reluctant to file claims since we are so hard to insure in the first place.

Speaking of insurance, we spent a good deal of time at the AON booth discussing the issues we are having with Odyssey's policy. Specifically, we are still insured at an agreed value from before we had the new conversion done at Infinity. We spent twice again as much money on the new conversion as our entire agreed value, and we have been trying to get Odyssey re-appraised, or at least insured, at something much closer to our total investment. Most appraisers won't touch this coach, because there are simply no comps.

After going around and around about this on the phone with AON, the representative at the show was able to call the underwriter at National Interstate, our underlying carrier, and they agreed to insure it at a value I would call fair, on the condition that we have Infinity write up a feature sheet and a "fair market value" for the coach based on their conversion expertise. Since we have extensive documentation of the work Infinity did and what it cost, as well as the features of the coach, this should be straightforward and we will begin working on the required verbiage immediately. If we can bring closure to this issue, it will have made the whole FMCA show visit worthwhile just by itself.

We also picked up a variety of small items that have been on our wish list, including the Campfire-in-a-Can that we originally saw at the FMCA show two years ago, various hose and cord organizers, and silicone and Teflon bakeware (demonstrated at the most excellent seminar on getting the most out of the weird Advantium oven we have).

The other major purchase we made at the show was our new satellite equipment. While there was nothing really wrong with the old equipment (actually, in many ways the older 4000 series satellite modems are better than the newer 6000 unit), it needed to be wired directly to a Windows computer to operate. In order to have our convenient wireless laptops work, we have been using a leftover clunker laptop just as a server to run the satellite gear and serve a wireless hot spot throughout the coach. The clunker in question, a ThinkPad, has been dying a slow death for the last year. First the hard drive went out, and I replaced it with one I had lying around, which was only 6GB, barely enough to run XP and the satellite software, and then only because I deleted every non-essential part of Windows I could get away with.

More recently, the top alphabetic row of keys on the keyboard stopped working. I disassembled the entire thing to see if I could patch it up, but no such luck. We have been "typing," whenever necessary, using the on-screen keyboard built in to Windows, but that only works when Windows is already running. Troubleshooting hardware problems pre-boot or from DOS is impossible, and the external keyboard we have also will not work without Windows loaded. The last couple of problems forced us to give up one of our cherished wireless laptops to act as the server, and we knew it was only a matter of time before the ThinkPad had some kind of problem we could not repair at all absent a fully working keyboard.

It came down to acquiring another laptop to run the satellite modems, or upgrade to the newer 6000 modem which has a built-in server, eliminating the need for another computer. The 6000 upgrade, including the newer D2 dish controller required to make the whole thing work without a server, was $900 after some haggling with one of the four or five vendors here at the show (close-quarters competition being one reason we chose to do this here), and a replacement XP laptop to function as a server would not have been much less than that.

Since we were changing equipment, necessitating re-commissioning the satellite, we also took the opportunity to change service providers and to move to a different bird, AMC9. This satellite, at 83 West longitude, was not available to us when we signed up a year ago. Its advantage is that it covers the entire continental US, as well as the northern third or so of Mexico. Consequently, we now have service here in Minot, whereas our previous satellite, SatMex-5, had a big gap across the northern reaches of the western states. (The only other choice we had a year ago was a bird with a big hole over Texas and no coverage in Mexico.) We will likely have to switch back to SatMex-5 when we embark on our Mexico caravan, but that's now a year away. Our new provider also does not charge for bird changes up to twice yearly.

The Diamon-Fusion people did not finish with us until nearly 4 yesterday, so we decided to find a spot to boondock here in Minot. We ended up parking with a group of four coaches, and they invited us to happy hour. Eventually we had dinner with them at a nearby restaurant -- nice folks.

We're not sure where we are heading from here. We have been so focused on the show that we have not had much time to give it any thought. There are several items on the calendar that interest us, but, for now, we are going to take things a bit slower and day by day.

Today is the last day of the FMCA rally in Minot, ND. It's been a really good rally for us: we've met many nice people (most of whom stopped by to gawk at Odyssey), purchased some needed RV accessories, and even learned a few things at the seminars.

Tomorrow, or possibly even tonight, we should be back on-line through our satellite setup. Because our current satellite is SAT MEX5, we have not been able to connect this far north for almost two weeks. Today we sealed the deal with a new internet provider, switched satellites to one that covers further north, and upgraded our equipment. FMCA and the vendor "Coach Connect" has a wifi hotspot set up here in the exhibit hall, but I'm looking forward to blogging and emailing from home again.

Well, we finally made it here to Minot, ND (map) and the FMCA convention. Our arrival was uneventful, although the parking crew has positioned us in such a way that we are highly visible to everyone who enters or leaves the lot. This has generated a good deal of foot traffic around Odyssey, as folks from all over the lot come by for a look. The good news is that we are off by ourselves, with quite a bit of room to spread out, in contrast to the vast majority of coaches that are lined up several feet apart like tin soldiers. I was even able to track down the water guy, who agreed to sell me 200 gallons to fill the YachTub.

We spent last night about 130 miles west of here at Lewis and Clark State Park, on Lake Sakakawea, part of the Missouri River (map). It was a nice park, with a decent campground. We did not fit in the primitive sites, so we ended up with a hookup site, even though we didn't really need the juice, The fire "rings" have cutouts of the now ubiquitous Lewis and Clark icons in the sides, and the piece of metal thus removed is standing vertically in the center as a log prop. Amusing, but I can imagine the fellow who had to make all the cutouts didn't think so. I'm sorry we didn't take a photo.