Autumn Camping--and other family activities

We got home from our two-month RV trip right after Labor Day, but we still had plenty of warm autumn weather to do some fun family activities. That would include a camping trip with some of our favorite people to celebrate our grandson's fifth birthday.

We left the RV at home this time, because we were staying at a tent-only campground at Chickasaw National Recreation Area near Sulphur, Oklahoma. Their web site said that the camp sites were too small for RVs, but we found several that we could have fit into comfortably with our little trailer.

We can't express enough  how much we missed our trailer during that two-night camping trip. We might be too old to sleep in a tent. We also found that our borrowed tent had a little leak during a deluge one afternoon.

We left that campground for the six-hour drive to Houston. We have made it an autumn tradition to watch our favorite band members perform in the Texas regional competition. We visited our nephew and his family in The Woodlands in October to watch the band sew up another first place finish.

The large Texas high schools have impressive bands that march hundreds of talented musicians. It's some of our favorite entertainment enjoyed with another group of our favorite people.

We had to rush home to go trick-or-treating with our son's family.

You can tell that we are cool grandparents because we recognize that Carter is dressed up as Rumi, one of the lead characters in the animated hit movie "The Huntrix." That braided purple hair was a work of art that her mother got up extra-early to blend with her natural hair before school that morning.

Our son and grandson were also characters from another famous kid movie--Space Jam.

Autumn Major league baseball was in full swing, and we were home for some games at the Kansas City Royals field.

We were also home in time for the beginning of football season, where our son took our granddaughter to her first University of Oklahoma football game.

Our son is a proud alumni of OU with his B.S. and M.D. degrees. He took Carter on a campus tour that included one of his favorite places--the library. He's doing some early recruiting to sway her to consider the University of Oklahoma as her college ten years from now.

Before we had to winterize the RV, we wanted to go on one more camping trip. We made the trip to Missouri's Weston Bend State Park, where that big golden tree made our little trailer look even smaller.

Our special guest for this camping trip was our grandson, Eli. He and Grandude did some tree-climbing . . 

and we all hiked through the golden forest.

Grandude is known for his dare-devil hiking, and Gram was happy to have help to keep him from getting too close to that steep edge. A careless misstep on this trail could result in a bad tumble all the way down into the Missouri River.

Maybe Grandude was a bad influence on Eli, as he seemed to climb a lot of trees during our trip.

When we weren't hiking, we were hanging out at the playground, fighting dinosaurs, or competing at an exciting game of "splat" at our campsite.

When the sun went down, we cooked hot dogs for dinner with a hearty dessert of smores.

During fall break, we had some beautiful weather for a family trip to Tulsa. We spent a day with Mark's brother and sister-in-law at their home in the country.

They have go-carts for their grandchildren, and we had a great time driving them too.

A good time was had by the little kids and the big kids too!

Tulsa was a great place to visit because our youngest son and his wife live there.

Besides go-carts, we used their kayaks for a spin around their pond.

They also have three horses, and these three cowgirls took a ride around the pasture.

Carter loved the big and little farm animals during this trip.

Thanksgiving brought more family time, where we all made the trip to the Oklahoma panhandle to spend the holiday with our mothers--and many of our younger relatives.

Again, the horses and pony at this ranch were a favorite form of transportation.

While we are no longer traveling full-time in our RV, this autumn found us traveling 370 miles to Chickasaw National Recreation Area, 352 miles to Houston, and 690 miles to get home for Halloween before driving 227 miles to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and 269 miles back home for a camping trip at Weston State Park. Then it was 392 miles to the Oklahoma Panhandle for Thanksgiving, and another 392 miles to get back to our house. While we are no longer traveling full-time in our RV, that total of 2,692 proves that we are still traveling many miles!

Feeling Welcomed Back Home

We left our camping spot in Nebraska early in the morning, and crossed the Missouri River (again) to find ourselves in Iowa (again). This river and these two states do a do-si-do along Interstate 29.

We were heading straight south through farm country. We loved seeing the harvest colors of the fields of grain through this flat section of the midwest. 

Staying on Interstate 29, we entered our 15th state as we drove through the northwest corner of Missouri. But we didn't make any stops in this state because we were on a mission to get home.

We crossed back into Kansas not long before we got to our house. 

This two-month journey had taken us 8,345 miles from the central plains to the Pacific Northwest and now back home. We had 27 different camping sites, and Mark made the 2025 map that shows the location of each. The green line is this trip, while the blue line shows some of our earlier camping spots closer to home. We had a great time, and we gained a daughter-in-law in the middle of our adventures!

Back at home, we had a lot of unloading and cleaning to do. But we had good help waiting for us. There was a "welcome home" banner on our front door . . .

and our refrigerator was stocked with milk and eggs and meat and all our favorites fruits and vegetables. 

Our granddaughter helped shop for all those goodies and drew our welcome home banner. It was so good to see her sweet little face, and catch up on the latest visits that the tooth fairy had made to their house on her behalf.

Our four-year-old grandson couldn't wait to come visit, and he was a big helper. He helped wash all the grime off our bikes . . . 

helped Grandude with the tools . . .

and vacuumed out two months of grime from the pickup. What a cute helper he was!

We don't get to see our granddaughter as much, since she is in school all day. But we were glad to be home so we could go to events like her school fun-run.

When she comes to our house, she teaches us new math skills that she learned in school. Since she's in a Spanish-immersion class, we are struggling to learn new math in Spanish.

Returning in September left lots of warm weather to spend time at the park, and we enjoyed this last fall with Eli since he will start school next year. We felt welcomed and loved, and glad to be back at home!

Will Denisa fall at Sioux Falls this time?

After leaving the Corn Palace, we made the 1.5 hour drive through the agricultural fields of South Dakota to the state's largest city--Sioux Falls. We have mixed emotions about this place because in Denisa's mind she equates Sioux Falls with "painful falls." We were here for the 4th of July in 2018, and we enjoyed the patriotic parade and a free community barbecue lunch. But Denisa stepped off an unusually tall curb and got the worst sprained ankle of her life. She couldn't walk at all for a week, and then not without a limp for over a month! Because of her clumsiness, we didn't see anything else in Sioux Falls that day. So we wanted to try it again. We arrived on another summer holiday seven years later, hoping for better results. You can be sure that she walked carefully and approached curbs with unusual respect on this return visit.

We parked the pickup and trailer at the empty farmers market parking lot, and walked to the Sioux Falls visitor center. We climbed up the 83 steps into the tower for our first view of Falls Park. We saw lots of people hiking and biking the trails on this beautiful Labor Day holiday.

We hiked down to the center of Falls Park, to see the Big Sioux River tumbling over the red quartzite rocks. We had made it to the Sioux Falls falls without falling!

We walked to the Arc of Dreams--the stainless steel structure that arches over the river. While the arch is about a football field in length, you might notice that the two segments do not quite meet in the middle.

The Arc of Dreams is a tribute to dreamers past and present. That 15-foot gap represents the leap of faith that dreamers must take to see their dreams come true. Denisa just thought it looked like the leap she took when she stumbled off the curb where she fell last time.

Looking straight up to the blue sky, that's quite a leap of faith! It's interesting that this structure was made by the same artist that built the "Dignity of Earth and Sky" statue we saw at the South Dakota rest stop yesterday. Artist Dale Lamphere made his home state proud!

We continued walking along the river, where the flower pots were overflowing. Denisa was almost camouflaged with all those colorful blooms--and she still hasn't fallen in Sioux Falls.

Our next destination was Sculpturewalk 2025. For the last 22 years, Sioux Falls has invited sculptors to display their works of art in their downtown. They also invite visitors to take a ballot and vote for their favorite. Each year's people's choice winner is purchased and then becomes a permanent part of the city's downtown. The ballot brochure included prices, as individuals and businesses could also purchase the sculptures. For example, "Down Feather Portal" could be purchased for $10,000.

One of Mark's favorites was "Strength and Courage." He obviously has expensive taste, because it had a price tag of $40,000.

"Lupine" was only $10,000 . . .

and "Archway" was $6,200. 

But our people's choice vote went to "The Last Man Standing," a $30,000 statue of a saluting veteran standing up from his wheel chair. (When we checked back on the voting results, we found that the city purchased a modern abstract sculpture from a local artist that hadn't caught our eye or our camera lens.)

Sculpture judging was good exercise, as we walked all over the riverfront and downtown Sioux Falls. We worked up an appetite, so we stopped at the Blarney Stone Pub on Phillips Avenue for chicken and bacon pot pie. It was great, and the end of our successful (and accident-free) visit to Sioux Falls. We still had a 2.5-hour drive to our last destination of the day. That drive took us through the corner of Iowa--our 13th state of this journey.

We were just settling into becoming Iowans, when we crossed over the Missouri River . . .

and entered Nebraska--our 14th state.

Our last overnight camping spot was another Boondockers Welcome. Our hosts lived at the top of a very steep gravel hill.

Once at the top, we were delighted to meet our hosts for the evening. We love meeting the locals, and they had some especially welcoming pets. They travel in a van-size RV with their three Bernese Mountain dogs. Even though they weigh over 100 pounds each, these pets think they are lap dogs, and love to be loved. We enjoyed our time with all five of our hosts!

This was our last camp site on this two-month journey, and it was a dandy. We have enjoyed the hospitality of Boondocker Welcome, as we stayed with seven different hosts on this trip. We also enjoyed our stop at Sioux Falls, where Denisa managed to not fall this year!