Across the Top

September 7, 2016 … here we are at another Walmart, on a rainy fall day at the border of Minnesota and North Dakota.    And suddenly we realize it is FARGO — and in fact this is where the movie FARGO was supposed to have taken place.

The picture above is amazingly grey; the late afternoon sky promising rain just sucked all the color out of it.

If you haven’t seen the movie Fargo (and even more if you have seen it), you may enjoy the following “Things You Didn’t Know about Fargo” from YouTube:

As the sun set, this was the view from our coach window – our neighboring coach in the Walmart lot was a vintage motorcoach in excellent condition, owned/operated by a little old couple – even older than us.

The most interesting thing that happened here for us, however, is that this was the first Walmart in the country that required a prescription in order to buy Tom’s non-prescription insulin.  We had to call the emergency doctor’s line at Emory in Atlanta to get a prescription faxed in before the pharmacy closed.  Our alternative was to try getting across the border before THAT pharmacy closed.  So what did we learn?  Don’t wait until you’ve finished your last bottle of insulin before getting another one.

We visited with Aunt Pat and Uncle Richard Brooks on September 10th.  They had not yet left for Arizona, where they winter, or we would have missed them.

We went with them to their grandson’s football game (his team lost), but we have no pictures.  Here is another selfie of us all.

Tom asked if he could take some pictures of the inside of their beautiful contemporary home.

See some of them below.

Continuing across the top of the country, we drove through Wisconsin and stopped for a night at the Walmart in Wisconsin Dells.

Tom sent out this “view from the driver’s seat” picture for our LKL (“Last Known Location”) and freaked everybody out.    But no … it’s not a bullet hole … it’s actually a gigantic bug splat.

Near Chicago, we stayed at an RV park in Union, IL  for about a week.  From there we drove into Chicago to visit some more relatives we had not seen in years.

In Chicago, we visited nephew Ilan and Miriam Arlin and  their lovely family – I had not seen them since the wedding and they now have three children — Atara (oldest), Betzaalel (middle) and baby Tikva Sara!!

Below is a picture of us with niece & nephew Nitza & Ephraim Loiterman and their children, Isaac (older) and Shmuel Dovid.

We also visited Tom’s Mom, Lucille Noesges – we didn’t know it would be the last time we would ever see her, as she passed away shortly after Thanksgiving.  Tom’s friend, Tom Martinez, joined us at her favorite restaurant.  We seem to have taken no pictures, but this is a recent picture of Tom’s Mom which was used at her Memorial.

Upon leaving Chicago, we had a hard time getting through the Loop, and as the afternoon wound down, we found ourselves hours from the planned stopping place, so we took advantage of this old and apparently abandoned “trucks only rest area.”  The truck you see on the right — occupied by two ladies and their dogs — was the only truck we saw all night.   The pavement was cracked and bare with hardly a hint of ancient lines.  Very creepy and spooky.  We kept all our lights on around the outside of our coach all night and actually kept watch most of the night.

As we drove off, I realized it would have been a great place to teach me to drive the coach — nothing around to hit!