Learning as we go

On our trip from Memphis to Branson, we relied on our GPS to provide the route. That would have probably been O.K. if we were driving a car and would certainly been ideal if we had been riding a motorcycle, but hauling a 40' trailer is not something that you want to do on a road with a hundred 35mph curves. The drive was memorable enough that we never left camp while we were there and never actually got into Branson. We did enjoy our time on Table Rock Lake.
Two days and 700 miles later we set up in Mitchell, SD and found a host of very friendly people. The Corn Palace Rodeo was well worth the trip and the time that we spent there was some of the best on our journey up to this point.
Having learned about GPS navigation by driving around in circles on a couple of occasions, we used mapquest and a good old fashioned highway map for our trip from Mitchell to Osakis, MN. At one point, the GPS told us to take a different Interstate so I looked at the map and saw that the route was just a little shorter with what looked like comparable state roads and followed the GPS.
35 minutes later, we found ourselves on State Hwy 34 just west of the MN state line in eastern SD driving on a dirt road. The road started out rather rough with plenty of patched potholes but the total distance that we needed to travel on this road was only about 20 miles so I kept driving. It was about 8 miles later having driven half that distance kicking mud up on the front of our 5th wheel that the sign said "Road Closed" with no signs directing us where to go from there. Again I sougfht Garmin's help and was directed about a mile to the next easterly dirt road. The difference being that Hwy 34 was under construction. This new road was dirt from the beginning as evidenced by the strip of grass growing down the middle of it.
I stopped the rig right in the middle of the road, pulled out the good old road map and found another route which only took us about 6 miles out of the way. No harm done, lesson learned.
We hit Hwy 23 east and after a short 30 minutes started looking for a place to eat lunch. A familiar sign greated us at the next two towns that we came to. "Road Closed" and after being diverted past all of the places to eat, we finally pulled over on the side of the road and Deb made peanut butter sandwiches while I let the dogs run.
We are now set up at Linwood Resort on Lake Osakis and I'm looking forward to getting out on the lake to catch some Walleyes. In about 3 days Deb's whole family will be here so we are both looking forward to making some great memories.