Yes, we were happy to get to the monument at the end of the boardwalk, but remember we weren’t going to be happy in a little bit? As we were driving back to Wynne on a 2-lane Arkansas road, just minding our business. The next thing I see a red truck drifting into our lane! I did not have any time to react as the red truck hit my driver’s side rearview mirror. It made a terrible sound and I immediately pulled over.

A car that was following us also pulled over and gave us their info as witnesses to the incident. I did a u-turn and exchanged information. A passenger in their vehicle started questioning their fault, saying we just clipped mirrors and no one was at fault. I told them I had a dashcam that shows otherwise. Here is the footage:

https://youtu.be/gwT9XGSY3kg

We picked up all the remnants of our mirror and headed back to Wynne, stopping for a bite at a Waffle House. The mirror was pretty much unusable:

I got in touch with the local Ford dealer (thankfully they had one there) and ordered a new mirror assembly, knowing the insurance would reimburse me. It was only about $2100! However, it did not arrive until the day we were leaving so we delayed a bit to get it installed. In the interim we did a jury-rig on it:

We said goodbye to our traveling companions, the Chens, as they were continuing east but we were heading back west to get to our grandson’s birthday. We were also trying to get away from this oppressive, humid heat so we were taking a northerly track.

We started heading NW and ended up in Mansfield MO for the first night. We stayed at the Laura Ingalls Wilder RV Park, which is across the street from the Laura Ingalls Wilder house. We will visit that another time. Our next stop was supposed to be a bit further north and west but Roxie saw something about Branson MO and it was pretty close, so we decided to go see it. We stayed at an Escapee’s park there. We got to see a town full of touristy attractions. We saw the water display on the waterfront (including flames!):

We also went to the butterfly palace and got to make some new friends.

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We got back on our path after leaving Branson, cutting through a corner of Kansas and into Nebraska. We stopped in Wamego KS. They have a museum dedicated to the Wizard of Oz and have OztoberFest every year, but we were too early.

After we left Wamego, I noticed a vibration in the truck. Stopping and looking at the tires, I found a bulge starting on one of the truck tires. I was able to find a tire store in the next town that was still open and had the old guy (older than me!) put on our spare.

I have noticed in Nebraska that many of the small towns will have city RV parks for travelers. We stayed in Diller, NE that was $14 normally but they also took Passport America which brought it to $7 for full hookups! Amazing, but why else would we have stopped in Diller?

After leaving Diller it was a short drive to Fairbury. We stopped to see Roxie’s brother’s ex-wife and she was very surprised to see Roxie but it was a good visit. We headed on to our next night’s stay, eating at a Runza on the way. The overnight stay was in a good RV park for the night, but only one night. We did get a nice thunder and lightning display that night though.

We continued our western path, stopping in Ogallala for a night and taking 4 nights in Cheyenne. Cheyenne doesn’t seem to have very many nice RV parks and we found one not-so-nice one, the Restaway Travel Park. We didn’t get full hookups there (no sewer) and there were many long-termers there. Oh well, we were just there for a break and to get trailer tires. We had almost 48K miles on the current tires and could have gone more but it is hard to put a dollar amount on safety. Now we needed a truck tire. Since the tires were originals and we were very close to 50K on those, we got a new set on the truck also. We only had to pay for 3 since the one with the bulge was covered under the extended coverage I had.

Cheyenne is not somewhere I would like to live but they did have a nice locomotive on display:

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My father was a very big train fan, and it rubbed off on me to a degree. It is always nice to see the old iron!

Keep heading west! We stopped for a night in Rawlins WY and then a night at Lyman WY. The Lyman stop was a KOA that reminded me a lot of my parent’s KOA in Redding when I lived/worked there. This one was a family operation also and it was fun talking to them.

A few nights in Brigham City UT, then 2 stops in NV before a week just past Reno. We were still looking around for places to move. However, in the Reno area, we fought very bad smoke from wildfires, something the take into consideration.

One thing we found in the Reno area, that I found interesting was this:

What I find interesting are the names. These names are my last name and my sister’s last name after marriage (or both the last names she has used in her life).

We made it to our westerly destination (San Francisco) in time to celebrate our grandson’s 5th birthday. We then returned to our son’s house before we take off again.