Day 61 - Turn out the lights, the party's over.

We were up at dawn, got ready for the day, dumped the holding tanks and headed for home.

A little after noon we crossed into Michigan and a few hours later pulled into our driveway.

So that's it.  Sixty-one days in a 24' motorhome.  I have to say, it wasn't all that bad.  Not that I want to spend the rest of my days in one of these things, but we made out OK.  I can't get enthused with the full timer RV group.  That life style wouldn't work for us.  The first issue would be Walking Dead or NFL?  See the problem?

We did need alternate transportation a few times that it wasn't available, but not enough that it would have been worth dragging around a car behind us.  Perhaps something like a Vespa scooter would have been good.  The bicycles were worthless.  Nearly everywhere we were, it was a hill climb to use a bike.  We learned to use Uber and that worked well in Las Vegas and Branson.

My best of the best are:

National Park...it's Glacier, Grand Canyon, Sequoia, Carlsbad in that order.  Banff/Lake Louise is over rated.  Yosemite is over crowded.

Best food we experienced...the steak at Amarillo was the best tasting piece of meat I've ever had.  To put that #1 over crab is saying something.  The buffet at the Aria in Las Vegas was a close 2nd. The best value was the $12 Two for Tuesday prime rib buffet at the Route 66 casino.  We didn't eat out much but when we did it was always good.

Best RV Park...East Glacier/St Mary KOA and Oasis Las Vegas.  

We saw a lot and it will take a year to digest it all.  We were concerned about the wild fires when we started out but they were a non issue for the most part except for a few days of compromised visibility in the mountains.  

The stats are like this...

61 days
8113.6 miles in the RV (around 1000 miles more in rental cars)
822.21 gallons of fuel
All in, about $110/day for everything.

Time to start planning 2019.

Day 60 - Getting Closer

Sorry...no photos today.  Picture a windshield with raindrops and the wipers running.  That was the view ALL day long. 

We made it as far as Terre Haute, Indiana today.  It's 44° and raining and we took the last site (a tent site with electric only) at the KOA here.  Who camps in this crap?  These aren't travelers filling the place up, they're the weekend crowd.  Who would of thunk?

We've got another 6 hours to get home so that should be no problem tomorrow.  I'm not sure I'm going to be able to handle a house where it's more than two steps from one room to the other.  Kathy and I are going to have to adjust to separation again.

My next post will be the final post for the trip and I'll summarize the whole experience.

Day 59 - Branson Shows

We juggled our schedule and attended two shows today.  The first one was a group called "SIX".

This is a group of six brothers singing acapella.

They first performed as youngsters on the Donnie & Marie TV show years ago.  Since it's a family act, it makes sense that the Osmonds might find them.  This show was outstanding.  It was absolutely amazing the amount of music that six voices could make.  These guys were definitely worth the ticket.

In the evening, we went to a Legends show.  We saw acts such as the Blues Brothers.

And Wynonna and of course, Elvis.

The act also included Barry White and Elton John.  They were all talented.  

We have nothing else we want to accomplish here so are heading toward Michigan tomorrow.  We should arrive home Saturday or Sunday.

Day 58 - Branson too

We needed to find something to keep busy yesterday and I really didn't see anything that I wanted to rent a car to get to so it had to be within walking distance.  Kathy knew there was an outlet mall down the street so we went on a hike to the mall.

It had been a while since I had a hike up and down hills so this was an opportunity to get back into the swing of things.  Everything in Branson is built on the side of a hill.

I'm a little disappointed in the Branson stop.  Shows, motels, and amusements spread over about 7 miles of road and everything designed to empty your wallet.  It's too spread out and not at all pedestrian friendly.

Our RV site is on the side of a hill as well.  It's a climb to the shower.

We had another show scheduled for last night.  We went up on the "strip" and walked to the theater.

We went to see a Beatles tribute show.

It was entertaining, but we didn't think it was as good as the Beatlemania show we've seen on a cruise ship.

Maybe the other shows we have booked will be better, but our opinion so far, is this entertainment has been very amateur.  My guess is the country acts may be a bit more polished as that is the Branson theme but there's no way Kathy is going anywhere near a country act.

A couple more days here, then it looks like we'll move out as the rain moves in.

Day 57 - Branson, Missouri

Today we traveled to Branson...the entertainment mecca of the Ozarks.  It was a relatively quick trip of about 100 miles.

We turned south out of Springfield and ran into the hills and valleys after several days of flat desert and plains.

We stopped at a "Branson Visitor Center" looking for travel information.

There's not much travel information there.  It's a place that sells show and attraction tickets.  Anything else and they were useless.  We had our show reservations already.

So we continued on to Branson, stopped at the downtown Branson Travel Office to pick up our show tickets then found the local...

...you guessed it, quilt shop!

This place was large.

I was impressed with all the quilts hanging around the rafters.  That's the stuff I go in for.  Many of these quilts are really nice.  Here's a sampling.

Last but not least...

We arrived at the RV park a few miles away, had lunch, hopped an Uber ride to the theater and caught a 5:00 pm show.  

It reminded us of sitting in a cruise ship theater waiting for a show.  The only difference was the curtain wasn't swaying with the movement of the ship.

The show was real good, but not quite what I expected.  I was expecting a group kind of imitating the ABBA group.  This was just four singers performing ABBA music.  It lasted about two hours.

We're here for a few more days and have three more shows booked.  I think they'll be a bit more of a production, but time will tell.  

In the meantime, we're hunkered down in the RV tonight waiting for the rain to pass.  All that Oklahoma storminess has caught up to us again.

Day 56 - Carthage, Missouri

Today's route plan was to be a direct shot of about 300 miles.  

Kathy had a different plan so we didn't do that.  In order to hit more quilt shops, we needed to add a couple hours to the trip.  I won't even guess how many extra miles, but it was a few.  The good news is that we bypassed most of Oklahoma City and Tulsa altogether and avoided all the toll roads.

Driving across Oklahoma looked much like driving across Michigan.  Even the clouds looked like home.

When I checked into the RV park yesterday afternoon, I asked about tornado shelters since we heard severe weather was predicted.  The woman that checked us in said not to worry about that, they don't get tornadoes this time of year and even indicated May 6th as THE day for Oklahoma tornadoes.  Well...guess what?  We watched a couple hours of weather coverage after dark where they were tracking a tornado about 30 miles east of us.  So much for the excellent local advice.

Back to today's travel, we arrived at stop #1 about noon.

I ate lunch while Kathy shopped.

She came out with a package and it was on to our next stop at the corner of Rte 86 and P.

Must be there's only 26 cross streets.  Anyway, we pulled into quilt shop #2 for the day, the Bittersweet Quilt Shop.

I haven't seen one of these in a while.

A wringer washer.  

This was a nice store.  Kathy came out with an arm full.

Outside the quilt shop hop, there was a mission to today's destination.  I needed a wheel simulator to replace one that I lost somewhere in New Mexico.  I received a tip that a place here in Missouri was a big RV salvage yard and they might be able to help.  Well, I didn't get the salvage part, but they did stock the new part at a reasonable price.

That will dress up the ugly wheel.

We moved on to tonight's RV park.  It's called the Red Barn RV Park.  Wonder why?

It's a real nice park.  Clean and quiet.  The manager even gave me a couple chocolate chip cookies for showing up.

So tomorrow we move on to the final significant destination, Branson, MO.  It's just a short hop from here...unless Kathy dictates the route again and we take a series of detours.

Day 55 - Weatherford, Oklahoma

Before I get into the lengthy, detailed summary of today's activity, I noticed the odometer rolled over 50,000 miles just as we arrived in Amarillo yesterday.  I'm guessing that number has some effect on the value of this rolling mansion.  We purchased the RV with 35,000 miles and this is our second season with it.

It looks like today's travel covered about 200 miles due east along Route 66 or what is now I-40.  

It was probably good that it was a mostly straight, flat road.  When we left Amarillo, it looked like this.

I'm not positive what it looked like beyond the 1/4 mile we could see, but have to assume the same flat pasture as the previous hundred miles.

When it wasn't foggy, it was pouring down rain.

We had no desire to stop anywhere so just continued to the RV park we had picked out for tonight's stay.  It's a very nice park outside of Weatherford, OK.

We're near the shower/laundry so Kathy doesn't get too wet running back and forth.  All the sites are level, concrete pads with full hookups.

We don't have cable TV so Kathy was disappointed she wouldn't have AMC tonight for the Walking Dead...oh well...I did get her close to the laundry!  We have a couple dozen channels off the antenna so she'll have to be satisfied with the NFL.

Tomorrow we have to traverse a couple cities (Oklahoma City and Tulsa) so the drive might not be quite as much fun.

Day 54 - Steak

Today was an idle day.  We have reservations next week for shows in Branson and when we changed our route through Arizona last week, we scrambled the schedule a little.  So we've got a few days to get to where we're going.  I figured Kathy could find some quilt shops along the way to slow us down but she said many are closed for Columbus Day on Monday.  Go figure.  Sounds like a shop owner looking for an excuse to not open.  What retail store closes on Columbus Day?

Today was as cold as yesterday was hot.  I put on jeans for the first time since Banff.  We didn't have anything in particular to accomplish so we did what people do in Texas...go find a steak.  That's not very hard to do here.  This park is associated with the Big Texan Ranch Steakhouse.

It's about a mile away but the restaurant provides complimentary limo service to the restaurant.  Our driver said they service something like 65 different locations to the restaurant.

And yes, it's a "long-horn" limo.

This restaurant is almost a destination in itself.  There's a bar, gift shop, dessert/candy counter and probably more that we didn't get to.

The big draw is the 72 ounce steak.  The challenge is to eat it in 60 minutes and you get it no charge.  Fail the challenge, and it's a $72 meal.  

The table in the middle of the photo is the challenge table.  There's an electronic timer over the table so spectators can watch as well as a web cam on their website.  The list on the wall indicated there was a successful challenge about once a week.  

My selection was a little more conservative.

I had the 18 ounce ribeye and it was better than excellent.  If you're through Amarillo on an empty stomach, this will fill it up.

Tomorrow we're making a few more miles east.  We don't have any particular plans other than to get somewhere else.  We're headed to...

OOOOOOklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain.