North Dakota

We left Sioux Falls last Saturday, June 30^th, and drove to just outside of Fargo, North Dakota. The RV park we stayed at was part of a Days Inn motel with an indoor water park, an Irish Pub, and a Country Kitchen. Paul and Ying took Connor to the water park before dinner.

On Sunday we headed to Bismarck, the capitol of North Dakota. Paul took and passed his second teaching certificate exam on Monday. We celebrated by going to lunch at HuHot, a Mongolian grill where you create your own stir fry. They had never been to HuHot and really enjoyed it.

Monday night, we took Paul, Ying and Connor to their first rodeo in Mandan, ND just across the Missouri River from Bismarck. It was the 139^th annual Mandan Rodeo and was actually very good for a small venue. The saddle bronc riders and bull riders were my favorite.  

We left Bismarck on Tuesday morning and drove to Medora, ND. We stayed at the nearby Buffalo Gap Guest Ranch and RV Park. It was quiet with great views of the surrounding countryside.
  

Tuesday night we went to the Medora Pitchfork Steak Fondue dinner. The steak was very good and cooked to perfection.

After dinner we walked across the parking lot to take in the Medora Musical. Several people we’d met this past year told us we had to go to the musical if we went to Medora. We took their advice and bought tickets a couple of months ago. The Medora Musical is a western-themed musical variety show, performed outdoors. The professional performers are from all over the country and the show was very good.

Yesterday, July 4^th, we visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The park’s south entrance is in Medora and we enjoyed the 38-mile loop through the south section of the park. We saw lots of bison and prairie dogs. We also saw wild horses for the first time in the wild. We watched the Medora July 4th parade after visiting the National Park. 

Okay, we can check North Dakota off our bucket list and now only have three more states we haven’t visited (Vermont, Delaware and Rhode Island). We were pleasantly surprised on how beautiful North Dakota was, especially the western part of the state.

We drove to Montana today where we’ll visit Miles City, Billings, Great Falls, and West Glacier to visit Glacier National Park.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Road Trip – Weeks 1 & 2

Our son Paul, wife Ying, and grandson Connor arrived in Austin from Taipei, Taiwan on Sunday, June 17th. Paul is working on getting a teaching certificate for his position as a science teacher at an international school near Taipei. They are traveling with us for six weeks in our motorhome as Paul takes four exams, one each in Omaha, Bismarck, Portland and Seattle. On Monday we enjoyed lunch at Flores Mexican Restaurant in Lake Travis.

We drove to San Antonio on Tuesday to visit Grammy. She enjoyed meeting her great grandchild. On the way back to Austin, we stopped at one of our favorite Texas stops…Buc-ee’s, which has great gas prices and snacks to go. 

We enjoyed dinner at County Line BBQ. Paul & Ying ordered the beef ribs which are Texas-sized huge.

We met Paul’s cousin Jonathon for dinner on Wednesday at the original Chuy’s Mexican Restaurant, on Barton Springs Road in Austin. It was just as good as the week before when Julie and I stopped there. After dinner we all went to nearby Austin’s best city park, Zilker Park, to let Conner run off some energy.

We left Austin on Thursday and headed north up tornado alley, across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. We landed safely in Omaha at Offutt AFB Family Campground for a three-night stay. We enjoyed dinner on Sunday at old friends Sal & Terri’s home. We hadn’t seen them in a couple of years so it was fun to catch up.

Paul took and passed his first exam on Monday. We celebrated by enjoying the best cheeseburgers in the Omaha area at Stella’s Bar & Grill, where we had to wait for a table. 

On Tuesday we drove 80-miles to my old hometown of Denison, Iowa for lunch with my step-mother Jan, her granddaughter Mandy and her children. We enjoyed lunch at Pizza Ranch and our visit with everyone.

We spent three-nights in Sioux Falls where Paul got a new driver’s license and we picked up our mail at Dakota Post, our mail forwarding service.   

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Austin, Texas

We’ve been hanging out for the past three weeks at La Hacienda RV Resort in Hudson Bend just west of Austin. It’s been hot and humid pretty much every day with temps in the mid to upper 90s.

We did get a few things done on our “house” the past three weeks. We had our waste water tanks cleaned out by a small business that used a special 4,000 psi high pressure wash. Our tank level gauges work like new now.

Last week I tackled a project we’ve been talking about doing for several months. We removed our towel closet slide-out shelf unit and built out a regular closet. The slide out took up a lot of room, but our new towel closet provides nearly twice as much space. It turned out to be a three-day project as I had to build framing for the back and side wall. I was able to re-use the original closet door, a felt-covered shelf and bottom to the closet.

Today I replaced the original molded power plug on our 50-amp power cord for the motorhome. The old power plug and cord were getting hot (to the touch) at the power pedestal, a sign that there were internal wires in the molded plug that were either loose or broken to cause electrical resistance and hence the heat.   

We did get out for lunch a few days during our stay here. One day we went to Lucy’s Fried Chicken and had a great view of Lake Travis.

Last Sunday we stopped at the original Chuy’s Mexican Restaurant, on Barton Springs Road in Austin, that opened in 1982. Their Tex-Mex is really good. It’s crazy now that Chuy’s has expanded to over 60 restaurants across the country.

Tomorrow, Father’s Day, we welcome our son Paul, wife Ying, and grandson Connor from Taipei, Taiwan. They will be traveling with us over the next seven weeks. Paul is working on his master’s degree and a teaching certificate for his job at an international school near Taipei. We’re really looking forward to their visit.

Steve (Grumpy Grampy) & Julie (Nana) Cornelius

Kerrville, Texas

We finished an 11-night stay in Kerrville, Texas at Buckhorn Lake RV Park. We ended up staying an additional 6 nights beyond our plans because we were having work done on our motorhome’s Aqua-Hot hydronic heating system.

We noticed a problem last winter where we weren’t getting any heat in the rear of the coach. Two heat zone pumps had quit working. Then the technician noticed that the boiler-type antifreeze was bad and the system had to be flushed and new antifreeze installed. Next a boiler circulation pump had gone out and we waited a week for the replacement pump to arrive from Aqua-Hot. The good news was all repairs were covered under the Aqua-Hot two-year warranty, except replacing the antifreeze and an annual service.

We had a nice campsite at Buckhorn Lake and enjoyed the peaceful, quiet setting with beautiful sunsets.

Last Saturday we drove 120-miles up to Austin to celebrate Julie’s niece Rachel’s 40^th birthday. Our nephew Jonathon, a culinary chef, created an awesome 5-course dinner for the seven of us. We overnighted at a nearby hotel before driving back to Kerrville on Sunday morning.

Julie and I enjoyed breakfast, lunch or dinner out a few of the days we spent in Kerrville and we got to explore this town of 24,000.  

We left Kerrville yesterday afternoon, Friday, May 25^th, and drove to La Hacienda RV Resort near Lake Travis, just west of Austin, and we’ll spend a month here.

Steve & Julie Cornelius