*Bump*
We're away for the season -- and we have NEVER covered ground so quickly in the Princessmobile as we did last week.
It all started with a sudden cold snap after a fairly warm fall.
That's snow on the ground, the day before we left. We had agreed that this year we could leave before November 1, since I had no obligations keeping me in town. We'd had a mad dash to get the Princessmobile packed: this summer has been one of major repairs needed, and they were only finished a week before we wanted to leave. (More importantly, they were finished 2 days before Camping World closed our repair facility permanently, but that's another story except to say it was a nail-biter for all concerned.)
There is always a certain level of mayhem just before we leave on these trips. I've been overly optimistic all summer about how much food, and of what type, I'd be able to cook. The freezers and refrigerators were full. My darling's daughter made sure to bring us pounds and pounds of the beef they'd bought and had processed. I'm pretty sure there's venison among the gifts too. The upshot is that the Princessmobile's freezer looked like this the day we left.
The refrigerator was just as packed, and a large cooler in the bed of the pickup had some frozen meat that was guaranteed to stay frozen until we got farther south.
On the morning we left, it was 21F. And that morning, the trailer's furnace quit. Then the dolly legs and stabilizer jacks seized most of the way up, with a total electrical failure of the trailer's landing gear system. In other words, the trailer was hooked to the truck and couldn't be released until the landing gear was repaired. We had no way to get the trailer repaired before mid-November if we stayed home. "Bugger this for a lark," we said, and hit the road for warmer weather.
Duluth really is a beautiful city. There's a lot of road reconstruction going on, but traffic jams are rare. Until that day.
There was a man running naked on the freeway (film at 11!). Did I mention it was 21F? I never got the rest of the story. Was it a lost bet, or a dare? We hope it was nothing more sinister. We got to take the scenic route through town.
I hadn't bothered to pack road food the first day, though there was plenty in the trailer. At our first fuel stop I got a couple of breakfast-biscuit sandwiches.
Not something I"d care to eat every day, but tasty enough.
Later on down the line it was some sort of Italian sandwich for each of us. I was intrigued by the mustard package, but it turned out still to be garden-variety Heinz. Still, good enough for the road.
Snacks, of a delicious and unhealthful variety:
I'm a purist when it comes to chips. I like straight-up crispy crunch potato chips. No fancy seasoning, thanks. Lay's is my favorite. My darling prefers extra seasonings: maybe hot, maybe sweet, maybe sour cream and onion. He's still working on his bag of BBQ-flavored chips.
Did I mention that it had been 21F when we left home? And the furnace had quit? We drove 461 miles that first day, to Osceola, Iowa; where we could plug into electricity at a casino campground we like. We didn't go visit the casino. My darling had a couple of beers and went to bed. I had the remains of a wonderful dinner our best friends had fed us 2 nights before we left. It doesn't look like much here, but it was comfort food at its finest: meatloaf, garlic mashed potatoes, and the last of the green beans from their garden.
