WE VISITED THE RVW BOOTH AT THE HERSHY RV SHOW 

FROM CONNECTICUT TO EUROPE

On the way from Wisconsin to Connecticut, we stopped in Hershey, PA to visit the “largest RV show in the US”. Our main purpose was not to see the RVs (we’re very happy with what we have) but to visit the RVing Women booth there run by some of our members. So we didn’t even peek into any of the 1200 RVs but did spend over two hours visiting at the booth with old and new friends.

We did take time to look at the vendors for anything new. We got a wonderful folding scooter that will fit in a duffle bag but has an electric motor that will go up to 7 miles an hour for up to 8 hours. We rode it back to the parking lot but haven’t had a chance to use it further.

We arrived at a great RV park near New London, Conn. and my brother and his wife. We have had a wonderful visit with them and they have shown us great parts of this area. We were especially intrigued by the visit to the Nuclear Submarine Museum. My brother served on the Navy base here and then worked for 38 years at General Dynamics working on building the submarines.

We were able to catch Amtrak at New London to go to Boston to visit Zoe’s grandson who is in graduate school at the New England Conservatory of Music. It worked out so well with Jameson and his girl friend meeting us at the train station. We had a delicious lunch in John Hancock’s former counting house and then walked across the street to a fabulous aquarium.

It was so easy to use the train that we decided to leave our RV in the Conn. park (instead of going to PA as originally planned) and take the train directly from New London to Newark airport. It is so handy and my brother will drive us to the train and pick us up. What a deal!

We are excited as we leave for our trip to Eastern Europe. We will fly to Berlin for two days and then take a boat down the Elbe River to Prague. Five days in Prague and then a train to Vienna where we catch another boat on the Danube River to Bucharest. Two days in Bucharest and then a flight to Amsterdam and on back to Newark. I am especially happy that my daughter, Peggy, will be joining us on the Danube cruise.

The outside ring is the diameter of a modern sub. The inside ring is the diameter of the very first sub ever built. 

ONE OF HUNDREDS OF FORMATIONS IN THE DELLS. GREAT TRIP 

MINNESOTA AND WISCONSIN

Finally leaving Wyoming, we buzzed through South Dakota to Minnesota where we stayed at a Sioux-owned casino RV park that was very nice. We had stopped to see Zoe’s grandson who is in the graduate school of international business at the U of Minn. It was exciting to hear him describe his program and to see how much he has matured in just a month in the program. There are 96 students in his first year program, about half of them foreign students and about 20% women. Some Chinese students help him keep up his Chinese language skills.

Next it was on to Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. We had heard so much about the area, we wanted to see it for ourselves. The town is an overblown Disney World with theme parks everywhere and huge hotels with theme parks also. Once out of town though, we took two boat tours of the Upper and Lower Dells that were beautiful. Hundreds of acres have been preserved in their natural state with no buildings allowed on them. They surround the Wisconsin River and the reservoir, Lake Delton. The soft Cambrian era sandstone rocks beside the water were carved in fantastic shapes by an ancient frozen glacial lake that suddenly thawed and broke free.

We were in our favorite place, boat tours. I thought two young foreign women in front of us on the cruise sounded like they were speaking a Balkan language. Sure enough, they were from Bulgaria where we are going in less than a month. The world gets smaller and smaller.

OUR RV SPACE IN PRYOR LAKE, MN WHERE WE VISITED ZOE'S GRANDSON, RUSSELL IN GRADUATE SCHOOL AT THE U 

ZOE ESCAPING FROM THE RV ON AN ESCAPE LADDER...PRACTICE, PRACTICE 

MORE CONFERENCES, ESPECIALLY RVING WOMEN

We are back in Gillette, Wyoming for our third and fourth RV convention, Freightliner and RVing Women. We have grown rather fond of Gillette. With its small size (20,000) it is easy to get around, no traffic jams, no pollution and warm helpful people. We are impressed by the sense of community spirit. The original downtown (all three blocks of it) has public art on every corner, including a huge Pancho Villa-like mural. Scattered throughout the complete town (a huge sprawling area) are beds of flowers that are evidently taken care of by various volunteers (like the adopt-a-highway program).

We didn’t get a whole lot from the Freightliner Convention but we stayed put for the RVing Women Convention and so had about two weeks in one place for a change. The RVing Women Convention was outstanding, so well run, a big turnout and a chance to see old friends. There were over 200 rigs and almost 400 women. We were surprised at all of the big rigs the women were driving. When we Rved before, the women were mostly in smaller rigs. Just to look out over all of these rigs made our hearts glad at what we had started.

Zoe gave the keynote address and drew a huge response when she said, “This is not a club. It is a Community!” And she is right. There were excellent seminars and dozens of vendors. Zoe went to the technical seminars and I went to the heavy ones like “Cooking for 30 Days” and “Beginners’ Texas Hold-em” poker. We had happy hours and get-togethers that were great.

Zoe started the fulltimer’s chapter within the organization and turned the whole thing over to willing and able fulltimer’s. We have met lots of like-minded fulltimers who we will be sure to see often down the road. Most of them have big rigs like ours.

I finally got an MRI of my shoulder that showed I had a torn rotator cup, a spur and fluid. I have decided to wait until we are back from Europe to have it operated on but one seminar that I took at the RVW Convention (Twinges in Your Hinges) taught by a surgical nurse has given me the info to select the right surgeon and the right questions to ask.

GILLETTE IS FULL OF STATUES AND MURALS ON THE BUILDINGS