Finally, we're sitting in a coffee shop in Clear Lake, Iowa at our first stop on the rest of our life's journey. The coffee shop has western saddles for chairs.Oh heart, be still. This is way too much adventure at first. We need to take it a little easy and start out slowly. So, here we are sitting on conventional wooden chairs sipping our lattes, and taking advantage of the free WiFi.

We managed to, at last, pull out of Lino Lakes at 2:15 yesterday afternoon. No matter how late it got in the day, we were determined to leave yesterday. Tempers were short and small stuff became nearly insurmountable stuff, but at last we pulled out. Made it through the Cities just prior to rush hour traffic and was feeling that life is good.

We had no plans but to leave. After several hours of traveling south along I-35, we did have to think of some kind of plan. Found a state park in IA that our I-phone app said had a campground and was open all year round. It was just off I-35 and not too far south of the MN-IA border. Perfect fit. We found it with only one crisis, but no dents, scratches, or bashes. The campground has over 100 sites and had only 3 campers when we arrived, and we made it 4. Electricity was on, and we were good to go. Just to demonstrate that we really are now care-free RVers, we signed up for two nights, and we are just hanging around today, relaxing at an empty and quite beautiful campground, and trying to find places for all the stuff we threw into the trailer at the last minute.


We will probably leave tomorrow, although this is pretty nice and one more day here might make me adventurous enough to try one of those saddle chairs. But I think tomorrow will be a day to move toward Illinois. From Iowa to Illinois. So much adventure, I can hardly stand it.