Minnesota - Days 3-6 - in the campground

Albert Lea/Austin KOA, Hayward

Saturday, 3 through Tuesday, 6 September 2022

I spent maybe half of these 4 days making travel plans for the first half of this month - figuring out where I want to go, and where I can stay when I get there.  Then making reservations and figuring out driving routes - with a slow internet connection, it all took a lot of time.  But I now have until the 22nd planned out, which is nice, knowing I'll have a place to stay until then.

The weather here is so very different from the desert country I've been in for a while.  Here, it's sometimes very humid and there's dew on the grass early in the mornings.  I'm just not used to having all that moisture around.

The maples in the campground are showing early signs of changing colors - they're all just starting to turn yellow.

The campground is surrounded by cropfields:

corn

Many people, including me, walked our dogs along the road by that field of corn, and I couldn't stop wondering if we'd disappear into the past if we stepped into the rows of corn.  Like Field of Dreams, you know.  Sometimes the feeling was overwhelming.  Very strange.

maybe soybeans

closer view of the soybeans

The campground was nearly full during the Labor Day weekend, and one evening when Dext and I were walking, a little boy asked me if I knew where his mother was.  I pointed out different women and finally he recognized someone that looked grandfatherish.  He went running over to the group who didn't even seem to have noticed that he'd been gone.

One morning at sunrise, the sun was a brilliant orange-red and I suddenly remembered the old song Red Rubber Ball by the Cyrkle.  That's what it looked like.

I saw an RV exactly like mine - a Chateau the same length without any slides and with the same graphics.  Very unusual, I can't offhand remember ever seeing another one.  One evening the couple were sitting outside and I mentioned to them that I was in the other one - which they had seen, of course - and we had a couple of nice visits while we were all here.  They were Barbara and Dennis, from Indiana and Florida, and are traveling around like I am, though they said they were doing a new state each week.  Clearly they have more energy than I do to do all that driving.

I haven't been getting enough sleep because, despite putting up extra covers on all the windows, I can't cover the skylights and there's an overhead light nearby that shines in all night.  Not anything I can do about that, but I do wish I could get some good sleep.

So one morning I gave up on trying to sleep about 2:15 and got up, only to discover that during the night Dext had been really sick.  His system had cleaned itself out from both ends of his body, and had done so early enough in the night for it to have dried and I had to scrape it off the floor.  I'd taken him out on a sort of nature walk and he'd gotten really good at catching locusts, which he then ate.  I thought they were probably protein and didn't worry about it, but I think now his system just couldn't take them.  It took a couple of days before he got back to normal.  For being such a tough-looking dog, his system is actually almost delicate.  I guess we aren't any of us the same on the inside as on the outside, in more ways than one.

It's incredible how much easier it is walking him without having Gracie along too.  His behavior is completely different, and he's able to encounter other dogs with friendliness instead of hostility as he used to do.  I think he was really protective of her - she was double his age and maybe a lot like a mother to him - and it was those feelings that made walking with the two of them such a challenge.