May 29—June 1: We departed Bellville on Thursday morning (29th) en route to Smithville, MO, to visit with Brian’s family before continuing our trek to Dawson Creek, BC, where we’ll meet the other members of the Foretravel Motorcade tour of Alaska. We’re traveling in our 1997 Foretravel 36′ motorhome and towing our ’02 Subaru Outback wagon with 2 bicycles (our tandem and Dave’s single) atop it.
After several days of soaking rains, the weather Thursday and Friday was gorgeous! The only problem was strong winds, which can be especially difficult if you’re driving across them! We spent our first night at the Belle Plaine rest area on the Kansas Turnpike and arrived in Smithville mid-day on Friday. We parked at our usual campground on Smithville Lake and had a delightful visit with Brian, Renee and the kiddos through the weekend. Ainsley and Logan each spent a night with us in the motorhome, and we had loads of fun both times! We also took Logan birthday shopping on Saturday (he turns 8 years old on the 15th of this month). He wanted books and chose several from a series of biographies he’s been reading. We were rather amazed by what a varied selection of famous people he chose to read about (from Da Vinci to the Beatles to Bruce Lee!). I may borrow some of them when he’s finished! We also left a map of the northern U.S. and Canada/Alaska for the kids to use to “track” us during our trip.
By the way, if you’re interested in tracking our progress from our GPS locator, send us a private email and we’ll send you the URL to connect you to it.
June 2: Today was our first day going north into relatively unfamiliar territory. We drove from Smithville across western Iowa and into Minnesota. It was mostly sunny all day, but wow! The winds were terrible, blowing at high speed mostly across our route. Where’s a tailwind when we need it?? But this is the Great Plains in June, so we shouldn’t have expected anything else, I guess. We’re stopped for the night in a lovely campground in suburban Minneapolis. Tomorrow, we need to decide whether to go on north and cross into Canada (Manitoba) then, or go westward across North Dakota and cross into Canada the following day. Stay tuned!