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When I last wrote you about our RV journey, we were in Minnesota enjoying ice cream and heading towards Wisconsin for doTERRA oil classes with our team there. 
It was a beautiful trip! Wisconsin is one of our favorite places, along with Michigan, Tennessee, Florida and of course, Montana!!!! :)   Our friend, Linda and her family, were kind enough to invite us to Stony Acre Farms for dinner before our first class together. It's a farm to table experience, with homemade stone fired oven pizzas, made from only the ingredients currently available on the farm. Organic, stone ground wheat, all of it........ SUPER COOL! They encourage you to pack a picnic of sides and drinks and come eat out on their lawn between the barn and the house. If you are in the Medford, WI area, did you know they rent out the whole "dining room" for parties and events? AND, they also have barn dances etc. SO cool!  Slideshow:  Classes went GREAT and we have about 8 new people experiencing the power of essential oils in their homes! YAY! Natural healthcare rocks! 
In the 2 and a half years we have been on the road, we have been to 47 states. Poor North Dakota, we've just never made it up there yet. We always seem to be going west and east instead! :) I want to pin it on the Ferguson family adventures map on our wall. Montana is our favorite place on earth, and after we saw North Dakota, planned to head on over to Montana and relax for 2 weeks before doTERRA's convention in Salt Lake City in September. We were going to dive into school, work on some projects, and meet up with dad and Drea. Well, that all changed when we got a call after class about this special lady......  This is Dale's grandparents, he lived with them on the dairy farm all through highschool. Grandma had some dental work done, and for 6 months had to eat liquids only. At the end of 6 months, she was having trouble swallowing food, so they stretched her throat, hoping it'd help. It went right back shut. They were concerned enough they did a scope and found out she has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and its in the lymph nodes. They gave her anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 months to live. This vibrant grandma and mom to 10, went from working her giant garden and putting up corn all day Saturday, to lying in bed hardly able to hold the phone to talk to her kids, in a week. Mental game is a big game changer! She doesn't want to fight, she is 86 a has lived a long full life on this earth. She knows where she is going, and is ready to see Jesus. We made the decision to forgo our North Dakota and Montana plans, to head the 700 miles back to Kansas to go see her. It was the right choice! Dale decided to drive until the wee hours of the morning to make better time, so we tucked the kids in slumber party style and took off. They think this is SO COOL! They said there is nothing better then sleeping as you drive. I totally remember thinking that when I was a kid too. If we take the cushions off the booth, we can JUST fit  When we woke up, Dale had already started driving again. He pulled over at an IKEA at 9am so we could check out their beds before we left the area. We won't be closer to one, so why not?! The kids mattresses are on the floors as of now, awaiting the day Daddy built them a custom wood bed with ladder. This stop would determine whether we were going to build or buy a loft bed.
Not only did we find 4 beds for only $150 each, way cheaper than wood, we found the FERCHOS too! Our dear friends live only 10 minutes from IKEA, so they came to say hi and have lunch with us before we hit the road again.  
Right as we arrive home, the siblings all start flying in from different various locations, from Canada to Costa Rica, and each hosted a meal out at the farm, every night of the week. It was like a big family reunion. Grandma sat out as long as she could each night, before retiring to her room again. She still looks so good I think. Here she is with one of her sons during his time here with her. Great food and lots of laughter and fellowship. This family's ability to pull together is impressive and I love how close knit they all are! You probably had to be growing up with TEN siblings in one small farm house!  
While we are in Kansas anyhow, we will use this time to do some work on the apartment, and get it ready for this winter. We need to be able to pull the RV in the shed when it gets cold, so the pipes don't freeze. Well, that cannot happen until the apartment is done, because all the boxes that go in the apartment, are currently parked in the shed side! Its like a mean game of dominos. SO off to work we go! Pray for Grandma please, to have no pain as she finishes her days on earth. She is just such a precious soul! Hugs, T  
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We headed over to Alma Center since they had a really nice KOA that could fit our big rig. We went into town to see some local sites, and saw all these flags and cars along the way. Our curiosity got the best of us, and we decided to pull over and see what the fuss was about.  Turns out, we were at the location of the Barefoot Water Skiing World Championship!!!!! No WONDER it was so hard to find RV parks! We always seem to manage to do that...in town just in time for a rodeo we weren't attending or the week before Bike week, etc. Haha! Kids had fun trying to spot all the different teams represented. We saw Korea, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden and Australia to name a few!  We headed into town for some authentic Mexican that got good reviews on Trip Advisor, called Cinco De Mayo. Best Chimichangas we have had yet! On our way home we decided to do some exploring of the area.....  We pulled over to check out the HUGE dam. They call it the Black River, but its very very golden brown. The force of the water coming out was terrifying and powerful. It was so loud it was overwhelming to the ears! On the other side, it was perfectly still, like glass. Great use of nature to produce energy but I felt bad for the people that build big cabins with windows to see the river that now see the cement buildings and barbed wire surrounding the dam.
 One of our favorite places to stay is a KOA, because of how beautiful and well kept they usually are, as well as offering great things for us to do while we are there! A favorite in particular, is the bouncy pillow. We do family relays (if no other kids are around to get hurt or scarred for life) or just sit like adults and let the kids go wild.    We wanted to see our sweet friend, Miss Ruby, while we were in the area. We met Ruby down in Texas of all places, and hit it off right away. She lives in Wisconsin and loves to RV too!  She treated us to a fun date to the Cranberry Museum and showed us around the local bogs. Warrens, WI is the Cranberry Capital of the WORLD! In fact, they produce enough cranberries in one year, to give every man, woman and child in the WHOLE WORLD, 26 cranberries. Crazy right?! The museum was SUPER well done! The kids did a great stopping at each display and reading about how Cranberries grow and are harvested. I was proud of them, we have made some good improvements in how we "museum" in the year and a half on the road. They also loved the scavanger hunt at the end..... Our stop wouldn't have been complete without some cranberry purchases and cranberry ice cream from the gift shop, of COURSE! I had Cranberry Cheesecake ice cream and it was DIVINE!   Our time with Ruby wasn't over yet, she took us out to the actual bogs to show us where they grow. You know, cranberries are only flooded like the commercials in the fall for harvest. They are flat and carefully maintained all year long, then there are natural gravity waterways that allow them to flood when the time is right. A field must be surveyed perfectly level, or the water will flood one area and not another. The old huts you see are from the 50's when the Ho Chunk Indians used to come help with harvest....  Bye friend, bye Wisconsin, we WILL be back!
Thanks for all the fun! :) Hugs, T First of all may I say, Montana is still sitting very securely as my #1 favorite place in the whole world, er continental United States. But northern Michigan, and Wisconsin are edging in!!!!!!! This last part of our trip has been SOOOOO beautiful and amazing! Wow. Wisconsin is our #45th state in our journey so far. I have to tell you, I cannot fathom that we have been doing this for a year and a half almost. It literally feels like we left for summer vacation a couple months ago, and never went back to reality!! This photo is missing the Wisconsin pin, but it's on there now! :)  I'd love to see your family experience the gift of TIME, and FREEDOM. How about having some extra OPTIONS? Options are a beautiful thing. We are always looking for passionate people to run this race with! And I promise, if RV life isn't for you, you can live at home at still be financially healthy with doTERRA! :) Jump over to the Financial Opportunity tab to read more..... That was a Bunny trail, but one I am so so passionate about, aaaaaaand we are BACK to Wisconsin! So, what's the FIRST thing you do as soon as you get your RV set up for the week at your Wisconsin RV park? You go find CHEESE. You ARE in Wisconsin, after all!
We dropped down into WI from the Upper Peninsula. Our first stop was Peshtigo RIver RV Park in Crivitz, WI. Turned out it was one of our favorite ones yet! Probably because of THIS little beauty just a hop skip and a walk away from our spot.  With no essential oil classes on the books until later in the week, we pretty much spent all day, every day, HERE. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ And it. was. AWESOME. We floated. We fished. We ate lunch on a picnic blanket. Kids Crawdad hunted. We fished and floated some more. We pretty much spent 3 days alone on this river. AMAAAAAZING! The last day, was warm enough, we did a family swim in the strong current. Strapped on some goggles and headed under, letting the current push us like some amazingly fast swimmers! We could see the fish and rocks below us in the golden water, and it was CRAZY and CREEPY and AWESOME all at the same time.  I also want to note, for memories sake, that this trip was when Destiny asked if she could start menu planning with me, shopping for the ingredients and making supper by herself once a week or so. UUMM, Yeah. My kids have always loved to bake and help make food, but out of all of them, Destiny was the least interested. Until now! She selected and made our favorite Creamy Tacos! (https://4littlefergusons.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/mrs-bs-creamy-tacos/) Destiny also made a Peaches and Cream pie for dessert! Mmmm! (https://4littlefergusons.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/peaches-cream-pie/) She was SO proud, and I was too. My little girl is growing up, and its really really special....
After this we had a weekend worth of classes in Medford, with Miss Linda, and our awesome growing team there, so it was time to head out.  We immediately loved the FEEL of Medford, reminded us of home in the midwest. We also loved being parked at the little county campgrounds, all by our lonesome. Medford is a precious, little, quaint town. We rode our bikes to the grocery store, visited the farmers market right on the fair grounds Saturday morning, and had some amazing fresh Wisconsin cheese brats, sweet corn, thick slabs of tomatoes, cucumber salad with a watermelon eating contest for dessert, thanks to our farmers market finds. No pics, just was present. :) That's good too! I have pretty much eaten my weight in cheese since we got here.....SEVERAL TIMES OVER. I adore a good high quality cheese, and I haven't tasted anything like what I am eating here. Oh, and the CHOICES! I know we must have looked like tourists in the grocery store staring, slack jawed, at the local cheese section that LITERALLY WENT ON AND ON AND ON in the back refrigerator section of the store!  The smoked string cheese is the winner so far, with buffalo curds a close second! After this, we headed to Alma Center and Black River Falls, then Warrens. I think the hills and forests really surprised us! We were imagining Wisconsin to feel like Ohio, flat farm lands. Nope! Tons of valleys and big green hills, you can see farms along the side of the road with their crops stretched up the hill at an angle to the very top.  This is so full of photos already, I think I will continue tomorrow instead of packing more in here....
See you again, soon! Hugs, T |
Tonya Ferguson
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