Visiting a neighbor

After leaving our friends' farm near Balaton, Minnesota, we headed north and a little bit east to Sauk Centre. We were staying there for two nights while taking the opportunity to visit with a couple of friends in this area of Minnesota.

On Saturday afternoon, we drove to St Cloud to visit our Venture Out neighbor, Barb! After catching up some and seeing her beautiful home in Minnesota ...

... we headed into St Cloud for a Mexican dinner!

After supper, Barb drove us around St Cloud, including a visit to Munsinger Gardens.

This is a beautiful public garden area along the Mississippi River.

Along the river

We walked through the gardens and down to where a dam on the river is located...

The river is very high and a lot of water was flowing over the dam.

Some of the interesting flowers in the garden

Same flower without the additional small middle growth (seed pod?) out of the bloom

We were enjoying using Google Lens to identify the plants.

There were a *lot* of hostas in the garden.

In another part of the gardens - delphiniums

Patti and Barb in the garden

Carl and Patti in the garden

It was so nice to visit Barb in her home and know that she has just as beautiful home in Minnesota as her home in Venture Out!

Kittens, kittens, and ... well, you get the drift!

Two posts today because I am having more to post every day and don't want the blog to get too far behind real life!

Saturday morning, Carl and Randy went out on the four-wheeler, and I paid another visit to the kitten shed...

The "mama-mama cat" (mother of some of these kittens as well as mother to another of the mothers of these kittens, so "grandmother cat") escorted me to the kitten shed... "Do you want to visit with my children? Go ahead, sit down..."

Kittens being kittens

So many games to make up!

Some may have been trying to sleep, but their siblings/cousins/relatives weren't going to allow that!

So many things to explore!

Is anyone lurking in the box with holes?

Mama-mama cat got up on my lap, made biscuits, and then settled down to watch her brood with me!

 A short video of kittens at play:

 If the embedded video does not work, it can be found here: https://youtu.be/KWfeaLfgjig

After breakfast, we returned to the she-shed...

... and got a picture.

Then Laureen encouraged us to take one of her beautiful quilts with us! We picked one with blues and purples...

What an amazingly generous gift!

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Randy and Laureen, and look forward to meeting up with them again back at Venture Out in Mesa, this winter.

Minnesota Farm Visit

We think that the largest "source" state of folks visiting Venture Out (the resort where we own a lot and where we stayed last winter) is Minnesota. We have met lots of folks there in Arizona who call Minnesota home in the summertime. One couple that we met, Randy and Laureen, have a farm near Balaton, Minnesota, and they had invited us to come with our RV and visit them -- so we put that into our plan for traveling from Illinois to Idaho.

Gracie parked next to one of their outbuildings (man-cave/she-shed).

Garage next to the man-cave shows that Randy likes John Deere Green!

Randy took us over to explain the grain handling facilities that he has...

Two of the storage units (in the middle -- another one can be seen to the left) and two drying units with the "grain leg" that is used to distribute the grain to the appropriate location.

Where the harvest grain would be dumped into the system.

The process is all automated to move the grain...

The controls also allow him to pull grain out of the storage bins into a semi truck to deliver to market.

Inside a dryer

Control panel for the dryer...

He can set where the grain should go from the dryer. The dryer sends the grain when it is at the desired dryness.

The "insides" of the dryer controller.

A video of the auger in motion: https://youtu.be/VTSUAqEbwtQ

Dryer mechanism

Generator (actually for house power)

Randy continued to show Carl his new combine...

He said that this is the smallest combine that John Deere makes and that the company is probably going to discontinue it.

Inside the combine -- filters out the debris from the grain.

Control panel

Laureen showed me her she-shed (that had originally been planned as a man-cave)...

...*and* she introduced me to their kittens!!

So cute!

Three mama cats have given birth.

I think there are about a dozen kittens.

This particular box had holes cut into the sides which were great for the kittens to push their paws through!

After a delicious dinner,

Laureen showed us her beautiful quilts!

Each so unique!

Such a beautiful farm, and such sweet friends!

About to leave Illinois and heading west...

We wrapped up some last to-do's in Illinois...

We went to the laundromat and caught up on a couple of weeks of dirty clothes... since we only have water/electric hookups (no sewer) at Paul Wolff, we don't do laundry in our rig. With the weather being quite warm (90s) while we were there, we had quire a lot of wash to do. Laundromats are nice because we can get all the wash done in a short time. The picture is of two dryers that we were using -- and we noted that one looked like a black-and-white TV and the other like a color TV!

Carl wanted to visit a White Castle before leaving the Illinois area. He asked me if I didn't think that there would be White Castle burgers in heaven -- I said, "Maybe in your neighborhood!"

I was grateful that there was a Steak and Shake near the White Castle, so I could get something I would enjoy more than White Castle!

The last evening at Paul Wolff -- the weather promised to get nicer after we left.

We left on Thursday morning -- Miss Kitty took her customary location on the lap of whomever is in the passenger seat.

After not too many miles, we entered Wisconsin.

We stopped for the night in West Salem, near La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Right across from our campsite, there was a pool of water being with a continuously running spigot.

Our campsite in Veteran's Memorial Campground in West Salem.

On Friday, we pulled out and continued west...

Soon after we left the campground, we came to a bridge...

... crossing the Mississippi. The rivers in this area are very full as the rain has been very heavy.

Welcome to Minnesota!

Miss Kitty again napping on the passenger's lap.

While our journey since we left Mesa in March has had a destination of joining our caravan to Alaska on July 6, we really feel that now our sights are set on heading to Alaska!