2017 July

Independence Day celebrations at Cutty’s Des Moines Camping Resort were hectic. I should explain a little about Cutty’s. It is a member owned club which means that only Cutty’s members and their guests plus Coast to Coast members are allowed in. It has around 500 sites located on over 80 acres at the northwest corner of Des Moines. It is a true resort with a huge number of activates such as swimming (3 pools), fishing (11 acre lake), miniature golf, horseshoes, shuffle board, tennis, basketball, hot tub, sauna, exercise equipment and more, plus themed events every weekend from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Since you can remain on a site for a maximum of 14 days, people started arriving as early as June 20^th, to begin jockeying for the prime spots. And as it got closer to the holiday, people started having more guests coming to their sites. The traffic in and out of the fee booth/gatehouse was amazing.

We have an annual fireworks display that is a rival of any I have seen outside a major city. This year the display was on the Sunday preceding the 4^th. For that day, guests were required to park in designated areas rather than being allowed to drive to their host’s camping site. There were literally (and I know what literal means) hundreds of cars in the park that day. And, of course, after the fireworks, there was a mass exodus of all the “day guests”. It went amazingly smooth as we had two exit gates open; one for left turn only and one for right turn only. Over the next several days campers began to leave, go to storage (on the club grounds), or move to a different site. This kept us at the fee booth/gatehouse very busy. We were all glad to see it slow down to the normal busy of summer camping.

Our winter home, the Hitchhiker (which fell apart before leaving Texas in the spring) wasn’t worth the cost of repairing. So, we purchased a used 38 foot Sierra travel trailer. The plan is to leave the Sierra on our seasonal site at Cutty’s. Then we will take the Excel (which has been our summer home at Cutty’s) south to Texas. With a little imagination you can understand what we’ve been going through in moving stuff from the Hitchhiker into the Sierra. Now also understand that the Hitchhiker held our winter stuff and the Sierra is going eventually hold our summer stuff. So after the Hitchhiker is empty and gone, we can begin shifting things between the Excel and the Sierra.

The temperatures have been in the upper 90’s with high humidity which means that a 93 degree day feels like a 107 degree day. So, we have been working a moving in short bursts and drinking plenty of water.

One evening, while we were working on moving and finding places for our stuff, there was a knock on the door. A Cutty’s member stopped to ask what we were going to do with the Hitchhiker once it was empty. I told him that it was damaged and not worth our repairing so the plan was to sell it for salvage. He said that he has a hobby/business of rebuilding RVs and would be interested in buying it. Things like this, I call “God Things”. Unexpectedly, we may receive more compensation for the Hitchhiker than we had planned. With the expenses involved in purchasing the Sierra, paying for the storage of both the Hitchhiker and the Sierra it has stressed our bank account. A major part of our coming back to Iowa and Cutty’s is to earn and bank a little money. We have not been able to keep the money in the bank this year.

We have still managed to work in some time to play games with friends. When my work schedule allows, I play dominoes on Wednesday evenings and card jackpot (think Bingo with playing cards) on Friday evenings. Also as work allows I go to the Grimes senior center for games and lunch. Ella, unrestricted by a job, attends all of these.