After spending twelve days in the beautiful Canadian Rockies (see July) we decided it was time to head southeast as we need to be in Kentucky later this month. At Rocky Mountain House, Alberta we did some shopping and had the oil changed in the Honda. In the Rockies we had not had a sewer hook-up and the dirty laundry was mounting. On the southern outskirts of Calgary we found a nice campground (Pine Creek RV Campground) with full hook-ups and settled in for two days. Linda did laundry while Norm updated our website, did e-mail and surfed the internet. Calgary has a local phone number for our internet service and the campground let Norm use their phone line as long as he wanted. It was lightly raining when we left Calgary and a beautiful rainbow had enclosed the skyscrapers of downtown. With heavy traffic we could not stop to make a picture though. We crossed the ever changing landscape of Alberta (mountains, rolling hills, desert plains) and entered Saskatchewan. At the Visitor's Center Linda was told we could stop overnight most anywhere in Saskatchewan as they are friendly to RVers. The Dutch Star fuel gauge was flashing red so we filled up the tank. The tank holds 100 gallons and the red light starts flashing with 30 gallons remaining. It cost $207.61 (Canadian) for 297 liters of diesel fuel. That translates in US terms to $141.32, 78.11 gallons and $1.809 per gallon.

For supper Linda volunteered to make her speciality, hamburger helper, so Norm started looking for a restaurant. We drove the Dutch Star through downtown Herbert, Saskatchewan, all three blocks of downtown, and found a family restaurant. Once inside we found it was a Chinese restaurant. We dined on potato soup, chicken steamed rice, fried shrimp, and sweet and sour chicken balls. With generous cups of coffee and a nice tip the bill totaled $13.14 US money. With full bellies we drove a few miles to an off-road picnic area and parked in the back by trees for the night. We fixed a pot of coffee, cranked up the satellite dish for an Atlanta Braves game, and answered our e-mail. No, we don't camp, the Dutch Star is our home and it is just like a luxury condo.

The next day we drove to Moose Jaw and left the Dutch Star in a mall parking lot. We drove the Honda into town and planned to tour the underground tunnels. It is not documented when the tunnels were built, but it is known they were used for gambling, illegal drinking during Prohibition, drugs and the red-light district. The tunnels begin in the train station and run in several directions under downtown with secret exits into hotels, restaurants and store houses. It has been said Al Capone took the train from Chicago to escape the Feds and rival gangsters and exited the train through the tunnels to prevent detection.  Entrance to the tunnels is by paid tour guides only and they were booked for nearly five hours. Not wanting to wait all afternoon we ate at a brewery and left town. That night we stayed at a truck stop near Moosomin, Saskatchewan. The next day we drove through Manitoba and entered the United States in North Dakota. Just before crossing the border we saw two moose grazing beside the road, a cow and her calf, the first we had seen in Canada. The US Geographical Agency has determined Pierce, County, North Dakota is the Geographical Center of North America. At the town of Rugby we stopped to see the marker. During our drive across North Dakota we saw many beautiful sunflower fields as they grow the flowers commercially there. We rolled into the town of Devil's Lake and spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot and were joined by three more motorhomes.

The next day we drove to a truck stop, ate breakfast, then looked at the map to see where we wanted to go. Hey, being retired and fulltiming is great - we don't need advance plans. We realized we were 240 miles from Norm's son's house in Sartell, Minnesota, so we dropped in for a surprise visit with Troy, Sandy, Luke and Logan. We had visited them two months ago but we wanted to see our grandsons again. We had a nice two day visit and had the pleasure of babysitting the boys for five hours. From Minnesota we drove to Iowa and spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Ft. Dodge. Now, you may wonder why we spend so many nights in Wal- Mart parking lots so let us explain. We own stock in the company, a whopping fifty shares, so we feel it is our duty to check out as many Wal-Marts as we can. Down deep in out hearts we feel like we are staying on our own property. Also, the sites are paved and level and the price is right - it's free.

Amana Colonies is west of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. We had visited there one day in April 1999, but the weather was cold, rainy and windy. It was off-season and many businesses were closed. We wanted to visit again and take in all of the communities. The Colonies are comprised of seven villages, each separated by about two miles in a circle, Amana, West Amana, East Amana, Middle Amana, High Amana, South Amana and Homestead. In 1855, native Germans settled in central Iowa and bought 26,000-acres for as little as $1.25 an acre. They began a communal existence and many of the original buildings stand today. Amana, the largest town, has many craft, meat, cheese and wine shops, plus restaurants, hotels and bed and breakfasts. We attended an arts show in Middle Amana where we saw many beautiful arts and crafts on display with a stage for dancing, music and puppet shows. We watched a blacksmith and pail maker perform their crafts and ate food from area vendors. The Ronneburg Restaurant is housed in one of the old original kitchen houses and is one of the best German restaurants we have found. We dined on sauerbraten, weiner schnitzel, spaetzle, potato dumplings, fried potatoes, sauerkraut, pickled beets, candied carrots, cottage cheese, garden salads and two kinds of bread. The food is served family style and was much more than we could eat, but we did try to eat it all. If you visit the Amana Colonies we highly recommend you dine at Ronneburg.

The last ten weeks we had driven the Dutch Star 5,200 miles and about the same in the Honda. We decided to stay a week at Amana, catch up on laundry, wash the motorhome and Honda, and have our mail forwarded to us. It felt good to lay back and relax. The weather turned hot so we had to turn on the air conditioner for the first time this Summer. (The middle of August) We had been far enough north we had not needed the air conditioner until Amana and had even run the furnace and heat pumps much of the Summer while in Canada. Just before arriving in Amana we received word Norm's mother (age 85) had fallen and broken her wrist in two places. While in Amana we received word she had also broken her hip, had surgery and would need rehab. That presented a problem since Norm's father (age 89) is in poor health and spent the winter in a hospital and nursing home. He is home now and Norm's mother has been his full-time care giver. We had a hard time deciding whether to immediately head to Kentucky to see what we can do to help, or stop by Hannibal, Missouri as we had planned. After talking to Norm's brother, Larry, who is helping his parents, we decided to stop in Hannibal three days then proceed to Kentucky. When we chose the fulltiming lifestyle we knew there would be family emergencies and we would occasionally have to return to Kentucky. But we never envisioned the number of visits we would need to make. We have been on the road less than eleven months and this will be our seventh trip back to Kentucky and there were other times we should have returned as we missed two family weddings and one funeral.

Driving from Iowa to Missouri we took route 392. We passed several signs warning of a low clearance bridge (13' 8") ahead but we could clear the bridge by over a foot. No problem. But as we approached the bridge we noticed it was narrow, very narrow, with lanes about nine feet wide. Our motorhome including mirrors is over nine feet wide. Then we saw semi-trucks approaching the other end of the bridge. Surely the drivers could see us hurrying across, but the semi's entered the bridge anyway. Norm got the right mirror two inches from the bridge's side beams and stopped as the trucks rolled by. Then to add insult to injury, a toll collector at the end of the bridge wanted $1.50 for our crossing. Heck, they should have paid us as we made quite a scene getting across.

Hannibal, Missouri was writer Mark Twain's home in his young days and it seems everything in the town is named Mark Twain something. We stayed at Mark Twain Cave Campground and were treated royally - we were given the owner's private pull-through site. As a lad Mark Twain explored the cave that is named in his honor and wrote about his adventures in the cave in Huckleberry Finn. The cave was just feet from our Dutch Star so we took a tour. The Hannibal Trolley picked us up in the campground and we toured the historic town. We visited Mark Twain's boyhood home (picture below), the Mark Twain Museum Annex, Becky Thatcher's house, Judge Clemens' (Mark Twain's father) law office, and Grant's Drug Store / Pilaster House (Mark Twain's family also lived there). The New Mark Twain Museum on Main Street had an interesting Summer exhibit - original Saturday Evening Post covers of the paintings of Norman Rockwell - all 322 of them. From 1913 - 1963, Rockwell was commissioned to paint the covers for the magazine and the exhibit had them all. Awesome. In the 1930's Rockwell was selected to illustrate Twain's books "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." He wanted the drawings to be authentic so he traveled to Hannibal and did his drawings in the cave, at Twain's home and at the picket fence that was whitewashed in the book. Those original pencil drawings with the colored final plates are on permanent display in the New Museum.

When we arrive in a small town we always ask the locals where the best restaurant and the most unique restaurant is located. The campground managers suggested Bubba's by the Mississippi River as the most unique and TJ's as the best. So we ate Bar-B-Q pork sandwiches and ribs at Bubba's and prime rib at TJ's. We can now say we recommend both restaurants. We wanted to take a ride on the Mississippi Riverboat "Mark Twain," but the boat had been sent upstream to pick up Democratic Presidential nominee Al Gore. He was to arrive in Hannibal the day after we left and workers were cleaning up the riverfront park and trimming trees. Sorry Vice-President Gore, you made us mad. We'll vote for Governor George W. Bush.

We arrived in Norm's parents' town of Irvington, Kentucky and the town has no nearby campgrounds. The Methodist minister told us we could boondock in the church parking lot as long as we needed to stay. That was handy as the church was three blocks from Norm's parents and we could also walk to church services. Over the next two weeks we helped Norm's parents with cooking, house and yard work, transportation and support. Mom is 85 years old and recovering from a broken wrist and hip. Dad will be 90 next week so we celebrated his birthday a few days early before we left. We were able to work in some quick visits to Linda's family in Louisville and spent nearly two days getting the annual maintenance service done on the Dutch Star. The RV dealer's service department wanted $95 to change the oil and filter in the generator - $65 for labor, plus parts. Wow, what a rip-off. Norm changed the three quarts of oil and the filter in the church parking lot so we saved a bundle.

We are heading to Elkhart, Indiana to meet some of our RVing friends, then attend the Escapees Rally in Goshen, Indiana. Check back next month.