Launched!

After days of packing, we found we still had "last minute" (= "last hours") of things to do this morning.  Up and moving at 8a, but it was after 11 before we finally hit the road.

And the first discussion of the trip occurred as we headed out of our neighborhood after Debbie won the Who Drives coin toss:
She - "So where are we headed?"
Him - "I thought you knew."
That resolved after a good five minutes.  Y'see, John's a planner.  He spent hours with various route-planning  websites, honing each day's trip down to our target of 3-to-5 hours of driving, staying at nice RV parks with electricity and sewer services and getting West ASAP.  Debbie's a Whimsical vacationer.  She knows we'll meet her brother early in June in California.  And she knows she wants to spend a few weeks exploring the mountainous states in between.  Period.  And she's of Norwegian stock, which is to say more frugal than a West Michigan Dutch(wo)man. Keep that in mind.

The inside of the coach still is not organized, either.

Oh, we knew to put the clothes in the closet, but when you trade your house for extended mobile residency, all the little things like medicines, bandages, potato peelers, batteries, and the traditional kitchen catchall drawer have to be accommodated, as well.  Our coach has 20 cabinets like these in the Living Room/Kitchen area alone.  And more back in the shower/bath and bedroom.  And there is whopping big underneath storage ("the basement") for other necessities like sewer hoses, John's tools and Debbie's vacuum cleaner. Not only do you have to find a place for each item, you have to memorize where it went.  And we're old dogs.  It'll work out eventually/

And so did our destination.  John never did get to see the Alpaca Farm in Kokomo, Indiana, that Debbie had mentioned months ago, but we got to drink wine that afternoon.  In Carlock, Illinois.  No, neither of us had ever heard of it either.

But for $47, Debbie had signed us up with a group called Harvest Hosts that is an association of wineries, farms and such like all over the country.  The deal is, you get to park your coach at such a place --for "free" (Debbie smiles here)-- while passing through, but they sort of expect you'll buy something, too.  So we found the Sunset Lake Winery not far off our route near Bloomington, Illinois.  Three RV's could find space in the parking lot, but we were just one of two, having met Lenny and Penny from Pittsburgh who plan to join an RV caravan (think wagon train on the Oregon Trail) headed to Alaska.  He said they'd have 37 RVs on the trip, a doctor and a mechanic, too.  Just for perspective, Alaska is really Out There: better than 3,000 miles just to get to Anchorage by land.  If we ever decide to visit John IV (in Kenai) via something other than an airplane, John III is convinced this "caravaning" would be the way to go, especially in the backwoods of a foreign country.

So-- Oh, Wine! 

The vineyard has a tasting room and our hosts were a nice couple who had just sold the place and plan to take off on their own trip in another month or so.  We tasted five and very much liked a dry white Weiss Eiche (White Oak), so we bought a bottle, grabbed some cheese and sat on their porch on a beautiful sunnyish afternoon looking over the lake, the not-green-yet trees, and 16 wind turbines visible from that vantage point alone.  It seems we'd driven into a forest of those sometimes productive low-energy generators. 

Six weeks before this year's first wedding!

We're thinking St. Louis, MO, tomorrow.  Let's see how that goes.