Wendy and I have driven through Montana probably a half-dozen times over the years, and every time we do, Wendy says, “Wow! This place is SO beautiful. Instead of just driving through, we should stop for a while and see Montana.” So, having wrapped up Grand Teton National Park, we headed up to Livingston, Montana, for a week. Two of those days were spent in Yellowstone, but that gave us four days to see Montana. Hold that thought.

You know how sometimes you hear someone say something and you wonder, “Are you serious? What are you thinking? Are you actually that clueless?”

Now, back to seeing Montana. Yes, we actually are that clueless and no, I don’t know what we were thinking. “Seeing” Montana in four days is nuts. Montana is almost 150,000 square miles in size. (Compare that to Georgia, which is about 60,000.) Montana is roughly 570 miles by 315 miles in length and breadth. It has 70,000 miles of paved roads, and an immeasurable number of dirt roads. So, what were we thinking that we could “see Montana” in four days?

Needless to say, we didn’t “see” Montana. What we did see was one little sliver of the south-southwestern part of the state, specifically the Gallatin River canyon, and then the Madison River valley. Seriously. Two riversheds. And it took all day.

The Gallatin River canyon, though, provided us with a quality experience that overcame the shortfall in the quantity of Montana that we actually saw. As usual, we stopped for a picnic along the river’s edge and then simply sat there for an hour, doing nothing but taking in the beauty of that particular place. Which was different than the beauty of the place a mile down the road, which was different than the beauty of the next mile, and so on, and so on, for a hundred miles. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” True indeed.

Here’s something else that’s great about Montana (and essentially every other western state). Almost 40% of Montana is “public lands.” Actually, for the western third of the state, probably 80% is public land. It’s hard for eastern people to appreciate what that means. But realize that every mile or two there’s a fishing access point, a trailhead, a canoe launch point, a pullout, or a picnic area. Mile after mile of profound beauty, with nearly limitless access.

What this means is that to really “see” this little sliver of Montana that we explored, to hike the trails, spend time at a sample of the campgrounds, fish the streams, even head back to hunt the backcountry, would take years. Really. Years. One could never really “see” Montana, even the western third of Montana, is a lifetime. But it would be wonderful to try.

Halfway through the trip, we headed up to Big Sky, a resort area just west of Highway 191. Back in the early 1970s, several investors and developers (including Chet Huntley, the newscaster of the Huntley-Brinkley Report) began the development of the area, which now claims to be the largest ski resort in the country. It has a permanent population of almost 3000, and swells to several times that during the winter.

Big Sky is an area of unspeakably stunning beauty, billing itself as a place not only for skiing, but for hiking, fly fishing, mountain biking, camping, horseback riding, whitewater rafting, and hunting. I’m sure all that is true, although to look at it one might think it was developed mainly as a resort area where nice rich people could go to hang around other nice rich people. How nice? The guy with spotting scope in Yellowstone who set it up so Wendy and I could see the wolves? He lives in Big Sky. And how rich? The spotting scope that he let us look through was a $4000 20-60X Swarovski. Seriously. The cost of his spotting scope was more than the down payment on our first house. That’s OK, though. He can probably afford it: a small, two-bedroom condo in Big Sky would go for somewhere between $400K and a couple million, and single family homes start at around $1 million and range upwards to you-don’t-want-to-know.

And, of course, given the Big Sky clientele, everything about the area is perfect. All of the homes, businesses, sidewalks, even the trails, are immaculate. Following one spur-of-the-moment impulse, we did a short hike down to see a waterfall and, as you would expect, even an otherwise nondescript stream was perfect.

I’m not sure that Big Sky is the kind of place we’d ever like to live. Among other things, I expect one can only live a “resort” lifestyle for so long. But especially nowadays, when rancor, bitterness, ugliness, hatred, etc. etc. etc. all seem to be de rigueur, it might take us a pretty long time to grow weary of living in the company of nice rich people.

In any event, we left Livingston substantially short of our goal of “seeing” Montana, but now we have a new plan to “see” Montana. On some upcoming trip (maybe next year), we’ll divvy up the western portion of Montana into a half-dozen areas and spend several days in each.

We’ll see. But our prior impression was true. Montana is an unimaginably beautiful state and we can hardly wait to go back.

The original plan was that we would explore Yellowstone for a day or two during the Grand Teton stay, and then spend a week exploring Montana the following week. But, Grand Teton turned out to present more opportunities than we had time for, and Yellowstone (at least part of Yellowstone) was more accessible from our Montana location anyway. So, change number 37 to this itinerary: Do Yellowstone from the north.

Then, we then further modified that modification to spend time focusing solely on the Lamar Valley and the Northern Range area of Yellowstone, skipping all of Yellowstone’s more familiar geothermal features, Hayden valley wildlife, canyons and waterfalls, and the gazillion other things that Yellowstone has to offer, to follow a concept much like we did at Grand Teton: select an area that was relatively unknown to us and then just wander around, with no particular objective in mind, and see what happens.

This was by far the best two days we have ever spent in Yellowstone. I’ll leave the highlight of the trip, though, for last.

The northeast corner of Yellowstone is the least visited area of the park. It consists of three regions, the Northern Range, the Lamar Valley, and the Soda Butte Canyon (which leads up to the northeast entrance to the park).

So, to explore the area, we did our usual motor touring and day hikes.

But none of that is what made our exploration of this area so special. The Lamar Valley has been called the “Serengeti of America,” and it is an apt designation. Coming over a rise and descending into the valley, one sees this:

And, something truly exciting for me, we got to see a wolf prowling the valley floor.

Finally, here’s the highlight. It’s hard to explain, but Wendy and I have been RVing and camping since the early 1970s. Although all of these trips have been special for us, and are chock full of memorable moments, in reality they are largely the same kind of thing that anyone would likely have spending time in the same area. But not this time.

It started when we struck up a conversation with some random guy, who mentioned to us that there was a buffalo carcass up the road, and earlier that morning there were wolves and bears on the carcass. Even more, if nature holds true to form, the wolves and bears would be back around 5:00 or 6:00 later that afternoon. So, we drove off, marked the location of the carcass, and vowed to return at the appointed hour. Except we got nervous and returned at 2:30 instead, setting up our lawn chairs and the camera, binoculars at hand, and waited for the appointed hour. And waited, and waited. Waited for two-and-one-half hours sitting in the sun to be precise. But, that’s us. If you’ve ever seen a dachshund waiting outside a chipmunk hole, you know where the phrase “dogged determination” comes from. Well, that’s us. “Dogged determination” for two-and-a-half hours.

At around 5:00, a guy with a spotting scope standing next to us said that a pack of nine wolves had emerged from the woods, quite a bit to our left, and was headed towards to carcass. Sure enough, all nine wolves in the pack worked their way across the sagebrush prairie, and pretty soon we saw this:

After 30 minutes or so of doing buffalo munchies, the wolves meandered off. And not in a “pack” per se. The just sort of separately wandered up towards the woods, laying down in the sage from time to time, sometimes going one way, sometimes the others, until after another 30 minutes they happened to all be near the woods edge more or less in one group, and then they disappeared. At this point, Wendy and I are counting this as one of the best days we’ve ever had.

Then, as if this wasn’t enough, what swoops in but a bald eagle! The only eagle we’d seen our whole time in the park. Seriously. I was hoping he’d also fly down for a tasty morsel, but after flying around a couple times, he just perched in the tree and kept an eye on the goings-on below. But wait … there’s more.

At this point, the professional photographer standing next to us said, “Stand by. There’ll be a bear here soon enough.” As it was explained to us, a grizzly might be able to drive a pack of wolves off of a carcass if he wanted to, but a black bear certainly couldn’t. So, said the photographer, there was almost certainly a bear watching the wolves from the tree line, waiting for them to finish up. And, sure enough, a few moments after the wolves entered the woods, we saw this:

At this point, we’ve been watching the wolves-bear buffalo-buffet going on for over an hour and then the unthinkable happens. A bunch of onlookers headed down the hill from the roadway and started walking towards the bear! Yes, there’s a river between the bear and the tourists, but it’s the same river that the buffalo waded across a few moments ago and one that would take a charging bear about 10 seconds to cross at full speed.

So, this is the moment of truth. In a way, we were rooting for the bear, not wanting any of the tourists to be eaten per se, but a nice mauling would be OK. Unfortunately, though, the bear decided that mauling a tourist might mean he’d end up getting euthanized, so thinking that discretion is the better part of valor, he decided to vacate the carcass instead. A-a-a-a-a-r-g-h! These stupid tourists had managed to drive off our bear!

But then, ta-da!, the heat showed up. A ranger walked down and rousted the tourists.

At around 6:30, we decided we needed to head back to the camper. There was a chance that the wolves would return for second helpings, or maybe even a grizzly would show up, but we had a two-hour drive home and wanted to get there before dark.

So, for this last day, we had spent nearly 12 hours simply wandering around the northeast corner of the park, with no particular plan in mind, taking up whatever delights we happened to come across, culminating with watching, in the wild, unaffected by human presence (until the very end), the wild behavior of a wolf pack, a bald eagle, and a brown bear. What a day!

RV travel has a lot to commend it: beautiful locales, a slower and more relaxed pace of travel, destinations that would be difficult without mobile accommodations, and, in a time of pandemic, the previously mentioned advantage of being able to see the country while essentially self-isolated. But there’s another side to RV travel, a darker, less romantic, and decidedly less enjoyable aspect. Perhaps the best way to put it is to paraphrase the oft-heard warning to those thinking of cruising the oceans: if you don’t like tinkering with things, facing a constant stream of maintenance, dealing with a never-ending series of breakdowns and repairs, and being able to keep an even keel when faced with being stranded, don’t even think about RV travel.

What brought on this moment of sudden realism? For the second time since we’ve owned this RV, we found ourselves locked out. The insidious little cause of this latest bit of frustration is a poorly designed and/or stupidly manufactured door mechanism on most RVs. It turns out there’s a little plastic part that connects the door handle to the latch bolt that engages the strike plate. And as you’d expect from a cheap plastic part, certainly made in China by virus-spreading worker bees whose mission in life is to weaponize RV parts in order to foment rebellion in the West, the little stupid connecting part breaks with some regularity. Really. Any Google search on the web will turn up thousands of accounts of people finding themselves locked in or out of their RVs with no way to retract the latch bolt and thereby get to the other side of the door.

Fortunately, having been through this once before, we at least understood the concept for a temporary fix. I was able to climb in through the driver’s side window (don’t even try to picture a seventy-year-old, corpulent, crinky old man trying to contort himself enough to make it though an opening 18-inches square). Once inside, I was able to remove the interior molding to get access to the latch bolt. Being unable to force it to retract last night, we decided to have dinner and sleep on it overnight, which necessitated Wendy doing a similarly ungraceful entry to the motorhome. Then, last night, as my over-energized, sleep-depriving brain ran through an infinity of possible jury-rigging options, another idea came to me. We got up this morning, implemented my overnight epiphany, retracted the latch bolt, and opened the door.

We’ll be fine for the rest of the trip. We’ve removed the latch bolt, so there’s no need to worry about having to retract it using the now useless door handle, and we can use the deadbolt to secure the door, both inside and outside the RV. Once we get back to Atlanta, I’ll replace the door handle, reinstall the molding, and wait in dread for the next door handle failure, which is certain to occur too soon. Or maybe it will be something else. It will certainly be something. Such is the nature of RV travel.

But now, off to Grand Teton National Park, and in the grand scheme of things, who cares about door handles?

The caption is right on all counts, starting with the fact that I’m writing this while sitting in the RV in the Peculiar Park Place RV Park, located in Peculiar, Missouri. Seriously. There are a variety of explanations as to how this town came to earn its moniker, but the leading candidate is that the guy who surveyed the town wanted a unique name and kept submitting various unusual names to the state, all of which were rejected, until in exasperation he said, “I don’t care what name you give me, as long as it’s peculiar.” He asked for it…

The reason we’re here in Peculiar, though, is that we finally got into the RV for an actual trip. It took us FIVE tries. First was a trip to North Carolina with all four families. That didn’t work because Robert got eliminated by the flying fickle finger of fate (AKA DoD), which imposed a 250-mile travel limitation. Version 2 was three families in the same location, which got nixed when we decided, correctly, that two families in one RV during an epidemic was a tad too risky. Version 3 was a two-family trip to some random state park in Virginia, which got cancelled because, well, who wants to go to some random state park in Virginia? Version 4 was the same two-person group, but headed to Grand Teton National Park. That got cancelled because Cliff realized that the prospect of flying cross-country with three children, connecting in O’Hare, dodging infected people, dousing the upholstery with antiseptic sprays, while everyone was wearing masks, including a four-year-old, was nuts.

So, here we are with version 5: Wendy and I travel cross-country over 4-1/2 days and we do Grand Teton National Park on our own.

RV travel during a pandemic presents a unique combination of considerations. On the upside, RV travel means no hotels, no restaurants, and no public bathrooms; we can, in essence, self-isolate while we travel around and see the country. That explains why most RV dealers have found their inventory depleted and the RV rental companies are booked for months in advance. The downside of RV travel during a pandemic is that it occurs, well, during a pandemic. That, in turn, means that places and activities where people naturally congregate are closed, such as the Grand Teton’s ranger stations, visitor centers, ranger talks, and ranger-led hikes. That’s a significant issue for us — we enjoy all of those activities. We always start out a visit to a national park by reviewing all the information and displays at the visitor center, no matter how many times we’ve been there, and we pretty much go to the ranger talks every night. Still, it’s Grand Teton National Park, the singularly most beautiful place on earth, and we look forward to a great time, add-ons or not.

So, further updates will follow in a few days.

It is said that Walt Disney World is a land of adventures. Adventures, indeed. Consider, in particular, the adventure experienced by grandson number 2:

The course that led to this particular adventure began in the ordinary way. The first night we did the campfire sing-along and marshmallow roast.

By 6:45 am the next day we were at the Ft. Wilderness dock for the boat ride to the Contemporary Resort, then the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom, then a morning of racing from place to place, doing the usual stuff, except that Chris was the only boy interested in Space Mountain.

Eventually it was lunch, then back to the campground for a brief respite, with a plan to return later for more rides, then the fireworks show, and then to drag three depleted boys back to the campers.

But during the interlude back at the campground, we decided on an excursion to the nearby playground, which turned into some kind of a game wherein, for reasons only little boys can imagine, there was “hot lava” only on the highest parts of the play equipment, and escaping the lava required one to climb up to and then jump from the top or, in Chris’s rendition of that maneuver, jump from the top and then cushion the fall by landing squarely on an arm.

So, after a lengthy “is-it-broken-or-not” discussion among the grownups, all the time with Chris crying and insisting, correctly as it turns out, “I’m telling you my stupid arm is broken!”, Robert took the little guy to the emergency room and the rest of us did what all sympathetic family members would do under such circumstances, which is to say, we went back to the Magic Kingdom.

The untoward turn of events created something of a crimp in the plans, but (except for Chris, of course) not as much of a crimp as one might think. The remaining five of us still had a great time at the Magic Kingdom, culminating in the most amazing fireworks show that the world has ever seen.

The next day was scheduled to be one hanging around the campground anyway, and even for a little boy with a broken arm there’s no shortage of things to do.

All things considered, it was another wonderful trip to Walt Disney World. As before, I’m amazed at how Disney, whatever it does, does it to a degree of perfection that one never sees anywhere else in our modern world of mediocrity. And, also as before, when I hear the carping of cynics who say that Disney is too commercialized, too artificial, too expensive, too American, or too whatever, I’m just glad that no such sentiments occur in this family. For all of us, Disney really is a magical place and, as was remarked to me by a visitor once before, “I guess if you’re not happy at Disney World, there aren’t a lot of places you’ll ever be happy.”

The last two posts summarized various aspects of this year’s Experimental Aircraft Association “AirVenture” gathering in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A recent article in Flying magazine details the record-setting statistics for that event: “The Numbers Are in For AirVenture 2019.” Just to highlight a few of the most unbelievable metrics:

• Total attendance was 642,000, an increase of 7%.
• More than 10,000 aircraft were flown to the the event, resulting in 16,807 aircraft operations, an average of 127 takeoffs/landings per hour! [Compare this to Atlanta Hartsfield airport, which averages 91 operations per hour (2236 per day), and it’s supposedly the “busiest airport in the world.” Sorry, but not during the week of AirVenture it’s not!]
• Besides the thousands of plain ol’ general aviation aircraft, there were 1,057 home-built aircraft, 939 vintage airplanes, 400 warbirds, 188 ultralights and light-sport aircraft, 105 seaplanes, 62 aerobatic aircraft, and 7 in an “other” category.
• There were 12,300 camping sites (tent-, RV-, and airplane-sites), which together accounted for 40,000 visitors.
• At one point, when I was grousing about the shortcomings of the camper registration process, I thought to myself, “If I were a decent person, I’d quit complaining and get out and help.” I should have. AirVenture relied on 5,500 volunteers who contributed more than 250,000 hours of volunteer time!

When we were talking to friends about what to expect at Oshkosh, I would often say, “Well, I’ve been to lots of airshows before…,” to which the response was always something like, “No, you don’t understand. This isn’t an ‘airshow.’ It’s an aviation experience in a completely different category from anything you’ve ever seen.” Truer words were never uttered.

After loitering around for a day, waiting for EAA to give us an all-clear to head to the campground, and with nary a peep from Campground Central Command, we decided to head on over and take our chances. Good call. The campground was open, although in the throes of thousands of like-minded campers all converging on the airport at the same time, and after 4+ hours of creeping along at a turtle’s pace in the camper registration line (which is baffling since we were pre-registered), we finally made it to the campground and got set up.

It’s easy to have mixed feelings about the campground: there are (literally) four thousand (!) campers, all jammed together elbow to elbow, with no amenities (or even shade, for that matter), which creates an environment like what you’d expect it would create. But, all of that pales in comparison to the convenience of walking just a fraction of a mile to the flight line, displays, and everything else that AirVenture has to offer. So, even with EAA’s conspicuous campground management deficiencies, we decided that staying in the campground is definitely the way to go.

And AirVenture is everything we were told it would be, and more. It really is hard to convey the atmosphere of a place where over the course of a week, there are 600,000 airplane kooks flying around, walking around, lounging about, visiting exhibits, and watching airshows, interspersed with nearly a thousand vendors, and God-only-knows how many displays, programs, and seminars. We were in and amongst this AirVenture frenzy for two-and-a-half days, and saw only maybe a tenth of what there is to see, and only half of the activities we had flagged as things we definitely wanted to do. I have thousands of pictures trying to capture the feeling (don’t worry, I’m not going to post them all), but understand that all of what follows falls woefully short of adequately communicating the experience.

The first thing one notices is that this is not just an airshow; it’s a pilots’ convention. Many of the attendees flew here in their own planes, and the assortment of aircraft is as varied as you’d expect for a group named the “Experimental Aircraft Association.”

Of course, Airventure also included four hours of air shows every day, featuring not only aerobatics but demonstrations and flights of a wide variety of aircraft.

And there were a large number of military demonstrations…

The military aircraft, though, we’re limited to the hair-on-fire fighters. This year’s airshow included a special series of flights by military training aircraft…

… and besides the trainers, AirVenture also featured flights of little-heralded, but extremely important “observation” aircraft, mostly used to spot enemy positions and call in hell’s fury on top of them, something that gives me a nice warm feeling in my heart.

A highlight of the show was the aerial firefighting demonstration:

Besides all this, there were also demonstrations by aircraft that, well, defy understanding by normal people.

But this is the weirdest:

But the real highlight of the show was the night airshow.

I have probably been to over a hundred airshows in my life. As a kid, I grew up at airshows, and air races, and airports, and air-everything. Nothing in my life prepared me for this.

Just one concluding thought. If one is an airplane nut-case, Oshkosh is a little piece of heaven on earth. But it likewise holds a parallel appeal even to normal people: this is also a gathering of people who just love America, who support the military, and who aren’t hesitant or embarrassed by conspicuously patriotic celebrations. Every afternoon show began with the National Anthem, and everyone (as in “everyone”) stood, removed their hats, faced the flag with their hearts covered. Essentially every event, every performer, every display included some kind of a stated thanks to current and former military members, without whom (it was always said) as a country we would have nothing. At one point, Wendy (who is by no stretch an airplane devotee) looked at me during one of the more patriotic moments and said, “These are our peeps…” True, true.

For anyone not familiar with it, “AirVenture” is an annual gathering of aviation enthusiasts in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but that doesn’t begin to describe how over-the-top crazy this event is. Imagine an airshow with all of the usual aerobatics and stunt-flying, except that the airshow is attended by about 600,000 people, many of whom fly to the airshow in airplanes they built themselves, and who spend the week sleeping on the ground under the wings of their aircraft. And during the same show, the military takes advantage of the opportunity to show off its latest hardware. And all of this is held at “Whitman Regional Airport” in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a dippy little two-bit airfield that, incredibly, for the week of the airshow actually becomes the busiest airport in the world. During the week of AirVenture, the airport will see 10,000 aircraft, 3,000 show planes, nearly 1000 journalists, and 900 commercial vendors. Besides gawking at airplanes, there are hundreds of seminars for the attendees, with topics ranging from the latest aviation technology to (no kidding) “How to hand prop your aircraft,” which I think means starting the engine by grabbing the propeller and giving it a good yank, getting out of the way before the propeller slices you to ribbons.

Seeing as how I’ve basically been an aviation aficionado my whole life, AirVenture is a major bucket list item for me. So Wendy and I are here to spend a few days immersed in aviation excess.

But life is not so simple. Just before we arrived, a major weather system passed through, leaving our camping area at Whitman Field a soggy, impassable, mud bog. So, we’re stuck in a nearby campground, waiting for things to dry out enough to get to Oshkosh.

So, we spent today, first, killing time at a different airport, sitting at the finish line for air races where guys take their own airplanes and, just for the fun of it, see how fast they will go.

So, after a couple hours of watching planes (either fascinating or boring, depending), and with Oshkosh still closed, we decided to explore a bit of central Wisconsin. A friend had suggested the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, but it’s closed for renovations for the entire year. Wendy read a short blurb about the Dells of the Wisconsin River nature area, and we always enjoy hiking, so it’s off we go!

A-a-a-a-a-r-g-h!!! Somehow we missed a turn and ended up in the town of Wisconsin Dells. Words cannot even begin to convey the vulgarity of that locale. Billing itself as the “water park capital of the world,” the city has more water parks than any other city in America. The experience is so demoralizing that the only way to convey its full effect is to labor through the details of it all. In the span of a few blocks, one is confronted with:

• The Mount Olympus Water and Theme Park (three hotels serving a 300-acre outdoor and 120,000-square-foot indoor water parks, with more than 40 waterslides, plus eight go-kart tracks, seven roller coasters, a large wave pool with 9-foot waves, lazy rivers, and hot tubs).
• Noah’s Ark Water Park (the Flamingo Hotel, serving what is billed as America’s largest water park, 70 acres of waterslides, pools, rivers, bumper boats, surfing experiences, arcades, a 4D dive-in theater, a water coaster, slides, swings, water cannons, along with 12 eateries and bars).
• Kalahari Resort (750-room hotel with indoor and outdoor water parks with multiple slides, lazy rivers, activity pools, wave pools, including a Ferris wheel, African-themed carousel, ropes course, climbing walls, go karts, bowling, mini-golf and arcade games).
• Great Wolf Lodge (80,000-square-foot indoor water park, with 6 slides, rivers, activity pools, hot tubs, kiddie pools, a four-story water tree house, and the Howlin’ Tornado, a water slide “thrill ride”).
• Wilderness Lodge (600-acre, also billed as America’s largest water park resort, with four indoor water parks, three outdoor water parks, a large outdoor pool area, indoor go karts, a lazer maze, a ropes course, bumper boats, mini-golf, a kids’ club, arcades, the Klondike Kavern, with its two, five-story tube slides, and the Wild WaterDome, America’s largest indoor wave pool).

And so on and so on. It never ends. You get the point. Except you don’t. As if this isn’t enough, in and amongst all this are go-kart tracks, t-shirt shops, junk food dispensers, souvenir shops, and an unimaginable array of the most ghastly, grotesque, garish architectural nightmares on earth. The “Rome Hotel,” for example, is an ersatz replica (or maybe caricature) of the Roman Coliseum.

That’s enough. No, it’s not. One more point. You might think such an area is so repulsive that it would be empty, devoid of people, like those creepy photos one sees of abandoned amusement parks. Wrong again. The area is packed, crammed, jammed with people standing in pools, elbow to elbow, in whatever microbial soup exists in these communal pools, which almost certainly includes E. coli, Ebola, and flesh-eating bacteria. Thousands of people, everywhere you look. It’s like Manhattan, only wetter.

Somehow, we managed to maneuver our motor home through the traffic, and out of this little piece of hell on earth, and back to our campground. The Oshkosh campground is still closed, and unfortunately we didn’t tow our car along with us, and all of the rental car agencies within 50 miles are sold out, so I’m not sure what’s next. But it certainly doesn’t involve Wisconsin Dells.