Heading To the Mothership

It's the middle of April in Yuma, and most all of the Snowbirds have headed North. Like the geese, the Canadians and Yankees from places like Nebraska, Michigan, and Ohio, are settling in to their summer routines already. We, on the other hand, are hanging back, knowing from experience that Spring weather can be fickle, and we don't really want to get surprised by something unexpected, left over from Old Man Winter. The town of Yuma is shrinking down like a balloon losing air, so I finally decided that the right course for us would be to just head up I-17 to Flagstaff and hang a left over to The Grand Canyon, one of Mary Ann's favorite places, for her birthday! It's not too far north for bad weather, but just far north enough to get out of the heat that's already revving up it's summer engine in South Arizona. So like late leaving geese, we're on our way. We spent just three nights at The Canyon, long enough for some beautiful sunsets and long walks along the rim. It made M A's day a memorable one.

M A relaxin' on The Rim

 The next stop along our intended route for a punch list visit at Winnebago World Headquarters in Forest City, Iowa, where H2 came off the line a few months earlier, is Gallup, New Mexico. We stopped off there for a quick visit to Perry Null Trading and our friend there, Barry, for a birthday gift. Nothing strikes Mary Ann's fancy more than a piece of fine American Indian jewelry. She walked out this time with a new bracelet and matching earrings (which she'd be happy to show you since she usually has them on!). The route, now along I-40 East takes us to very familiar territory, Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Our stop in Albuquerque is where that fickle spring weather caught up with us. For the few days we were there, the winds peaked to gusts well over 50 miles an hour. We blew up to Santa Fe for about a ten day visit, just long enough for Mary Ann to work on her Yoga practice with her instructors, Tias and Surya Little, and for me to keep up my practice of searching for the best Danishes and Cinnamon Rolls in the country, which in Santa Fe are, in my opinion, at The Chocolate Maven. We did manage to pull me away from those long enough to hit a few of our favorite eating places there like Counter Culture, Joe's Diner, The Tune Up, and one new one for the list in this great Foodie town, Jambo Café. It's a really eclectic place that features African/Caribbean dishes with wonderful spices and very bright flavors. One of their drink offerings is a whole Coconut with the top sliced off, served only with a straw for the milk and a spoon for scraping the sweet coconut meat. 

Chocolate Maven's Danish

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 Our trajectory next is to head right along the old Santa Fe Trail, to Dodge City, Kansas. As we got closer to Dodge City it became clear that some things don't change much with time. In the old days, it was the cattle drives along this ancient route that brought millions of head from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas into Dodge City for transport East by train. Now, the eighteen wheel drivers are the Cowboys, bringing the cattle along the same road to the feed lots and holding areas in the same places as a hundred and fifty years ago. Dodge City is still a major connecting point for the beef, pork, chicken, and other meat industries, and you see it the closer you get to town. You'd think, as we did, that such an iconic place...Dodge City, why the name itself wreaks of the Old West, would have it's past on display proudly. We figure that somewhere along the line, the city government lost it's way, and there is very little evidence of the old Dodge City we expected to find there. We had to dig around to see what was left of the original part of town and even then discovered that they had actually moved the iconic Boot Hill cemetery to another location! Not much here for the tourist or history buff in you.
 After that disappointing stop, we headed to Wichita, where we caught up with cousins Wayne and Marilyn. They showed us around a town we had very little info on, and we were really very surprised. First, the place has some really good eating places. We weren't around long enough to sample a lot, but Tanya's Soup Kitchen stands out in the memory. Wichita also has a good array of grocery stores, where we were able to reload the rolling stock we like to have on hand. We hit Fresh Market and Natural Grocers, to name a few. Ok, back to that pesky weather situation mentioned earlier. Now we had to hang back for a while longer than expected in Wichita due to heavy SNOW falling in Northern Iowa (we're into the beginning of May!).
 Once the storm finally cleared, we started the last leg of a fifteen hundred mile trek, now through Kansas City and Northwest Missouri and in to Northern Iowa. H2, Smarty, and we reached Forest City the evening before our May 6th appointment. We pulled into the Mothership at the Winnebago headquarters, headed for an empty parking space, hooked up, and waited for the next morning when we walked into the customer service department. What happened next is still astonishing to us. When you take your motorhome back to the manufacturer for service, you hope that the experience will be a positive one. After all, it is a major expenditure and in this case..our home. From the moment we

walked in the doors, the customer service exceeded our expectations! Just think, if you could actually take a new car back to the manufacturer for service...instead of a dealer. This is what we were doing. A really unique idea for most consumer items to begin with (no auto manufacturer allows such a thing, for example). We spent about ten days all together with the service people (at one point, even left and drove up to nearby Minneapolis to visit friends Sol, Sue, and family), and they did everything they could to totally complete our punch list of items and make us feel that all was perfect with our coach...Amazing! What a great experience, and now we were ready to head to Michigan in our upgraded, 100% good to go H2...Winnebago Really Rocks.