Departure Day!!!

CHECK LIST:

v Nadya out of school another day early so we can leave very early Wednesday morning – Check

v 95% of what we’ve planned to take packed into the Cozy Den by last night – Check

v Last ‘To Do’ that can’t be done on the road completed – Check

v Daisy putting herself into the Cozy Den at the earliest possible opportunity this morning – Check

v All items from the three lists completed – Drat…no Certificate of Health for Daisy

It seems I spaced on Monday afternoon and forgot to take Daisy to her 4 PM appointment to get her Certificate of Health (which is required when you cross state lines and which may be asked for, especially at RV Parks). A quick call to Daisy’s vet revealed that we could get in…at 11:10. So we took the appointment…much to Daisy’s extreme displeasure. “Adventures” are great, but it’s a dirty, rotten trick when the destination is the vet’s office which reminds you of bad memories of surgeries from your past.

The good news about waiting until 11:42 AM to depart is that westbound Interstate 94 (THE route west across Wisconsin and our intended route) which had been closed overnight due to the possibility (translate: probability) of a breach at the point where it crosses the Rock River became open while Daisy was literally shaking in her skin at the vet’s office.

For those of you who have been listening to your Wisconsin weather news, you know that Lake Delton (which used to be a 250 acre lake) is now EMPTY!! Of course, this is devastating news for the folks (and the fish) on that lake and we pray that the breach is fixed quickly so that it will fill back up again. And while we feel horrible for those folks…we do have to admit that we were craning our Tenges necks trying to see it as we drove by on Interstate 90. No such luck…no muck viewings from the rolling Cozy Den.

Apart from the delayed departure (which was all my fault and which Bob handled with extraordinary grace after having declared only a few minutes before in a snippy tone “I don’t want to leave at noon” and which I answered in an equally snippy tone “I’ve been working as fast as I could since I got up”), we have had an uneventful first day filled with MILES of driving, 528 to be exact. We are making our way to Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park in Sioux Falls, SD. It is 8:52 PM and we are about fifteen minutes from being greeted by Yogi, Bubu and the Gang. So far our rolling Cozy Den is just perfect.

Our first sighting of a ‘Wall Drug’ billboard was in Fulda, Minnesota: “Only 355 miles to Wall Drug.” The Wall Drug billboard sighting count stands at three...stay tuned.

Tomorrow we are headed for Devil's Gulch; the Ingall's Homestead; the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S. D.; and Interior, S. D., the gateway to the Badlands

Nighty, night,
Becky