Spruce Pine, NC

OK, I guess I do get a little nervous when I head off onto secondary roads in the motor home when I have not traveled them before. The coach is big. Backing up is not an option when towing the Honda, so I really want to avoid tight situations. It was with trepidation that I turned off Interstate 26 onto North Carolina 19E and drove off into the mountains. This part of North Carolina is very mountainous and the roads do not have shoulders.

The sign identifying the entrance to the campground pointed down what looked like a private drive, but we headed down. After about a hundred yards it turned, narrowed, and went out of sight into the bushes and trees. I stopped and asked Barbara to walk ahead and make sure we were not heading into something we could not get out of. Of course, that is when the pickup pulling a motorcycle trailer came the other way. The good news is they said we were going in the right direction. The bad news was that this was a narrow one-lane and we had two vehicles, towing trailers, nose to nose. The kids in the pickup solved the impasse by driving on the front lawn of some guy’s house and, once they were clear, we descended further into the woods .

It turns out the owners of the campground saved their biggest site for us. They are great folks. This family has operated the campground for fifty years. The present owner’s grandfather started it.

As you can see it is beautiful and heavily wooded. As I write this I am listening to the frogs and other night creatures chattering away outside. These shots show our site and the views from the front and rear of the coach.

The view out the front is the road we will leave on. I should be over it by the time we have to drive down it.

Max Meadows, VA

Another short posting since it was another day on the road. We had a good day yesterday visiting Barbara’s cousin Jessie. Lunch was followed by a tour of a few art galleries, then we returned to Jessie’s home to visit with her daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

Pat and Jan joined us last night for brats on the grill. Since they were up at 4:00 AM for the first day of the cancer walk it was an early night.

This morning we hit the road and traded the lush surroundings of the KOA campground in Streetsboro, OH 

for a less fancy overnight spot in Max Meadows, VA.

We arrived around 4:00 and got setup. We were fortunate to arrive when we did. We avoided the rush. Once we were in our site we watched a steady stream of RVs coming in for the night. It seems that Wythville and Max Meadows are ideally placed as a stopping place for the north-south migration. As you can see from the second picture they really tuck the folks in tight. There are folks that stay longer, though, and there is a nice pool for them to enjoy.

We will sleep to the sound of rain on the roof tonight, then leave in the morning for Spruce Pine, NC.

Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure

Aside from a short trip to Camping World for a few things for the coach we spent the day preparing to support friends of Pat and Jan that will be participating in the Susan G. Komen 3-day Walk for the Cure. Well Barbara helped, I just watched the dogs.

Like the Susan G. Komen Run for the Cure, this event is a fund raising activity benefiting breast cancer research. Pat is currently being treated for breast cancer and the ladies are walking in her name. 

This is a three-day, sixty-mile, walk. It is quite well organized. There are activities in the evening and even a tent city that is erected each evening to house the participants. Hundreds of small pink tents! All along the route there are snack/water stations. It looks like the participants have a lot of fun, but sixty miles is pretty serious work, so physical preparation is necessary. The things the ladies prepared today will be used through the weekend to motivate and cheer on the participants that raised money in Pat’s name.

They have named the group PJ Walkers, and they are getting up at 4:00 AM to set off for the starting line. I will be asleep, but wish them well.

Kent, OH

Here is a quick update for those that are following our current trip. Monday we spent on the road. It was a full day of driving with just a fuel stop and brief stops to change seats. It was nearly six when we pulled in to Streetsboro, OH where the KOA campground is located. While it was a little snug getting into the campsite due to the proximity of trees and other campers across the road, the site itself is very nice and has a nice sense of space since it is an end lot and we do not have anyone in the site on the other side. It is a gravel pad with lawn covering the rest of the site. Really pretty nice, but we have not been spending much time there. Pat and Jan came over to greet us the first night and outlined the itinerary for the next day.

Tuesday morning we were off to see the area surrounding Kent, OH. The Cuyahoga River runs through here and there are many historic areas established in the early 1800s when the river supported transportation and industry. The Cuyahoga Valley  National Park now protects a large area along the river. We visited Brandywine Falls and the small towns of Peninsula and Boston where we had lunch and checked out one of the old river barge locks. The towpath along the canal here has been converted to a very popular bike path similar what was done along the Potomac River in the Washington, DC area. Cycling is very popular here and there are numerous bike paths. The area has a New England feel about it. Of course, no drive in the country is complete without a stop at a farm stand. And, Szalay's is as grand as they come.

We topped off the day at dinner in Hudson, OH with Pat, Jan, Pat’s brother David, and his wife Vicki. Barbara’s birthday was last week so we celebrated a bit.

Wednesday morning had us visiting Kent State University and the site of the 1970 anti-war demonstrations that resulted in the shooting deaths of four students. The afternoon is being spent catching up on chores such as laundry and baking cookies in support of a breast cancer walk Pat and Jan are involved with this weekend. It is giving me a chance to catch up on the blog, too. 

Entries might be a bit sporadic while we are here, but we will try to keep up.

Mackinac Island, MI

Today we boarded the ferry to Mackinac Island for a day of walking through this really great village. Despite the spelling, the name is pronounced Mackinaw, by the way. Did you know that? We didn’t, but now we do. We were also lucky that the cool weather has continued.

The island has been preserved much like it was in the 1800s. The automobile never took off here. When the first horseless carriages were introduced the horse carriage operators on the island petitioned the local government stating that the motor driven conveyances were startling the horses and creating a hazard. The city agreed, and there haven’t been motor vehicles on the island since. Horses and bicycles, that’s it!

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island is where the move ‘Somewhere in Time’ was filmed. Remember the one with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour? What a grand place it is. After six in the evening coats and ties are required of the gentlemen and woman must refrain from wearing slacks. That is on the GROUNDS, not just the dining room or lobby. We enjoyed the immaculate gardens and tried to visit the huge balcony only to find that there is a $10 charge (each). I understand. They want to discourage the masses from wandering around the hotel and creating a distraction for those guests that are really paying top dollar to stay at this hotel. Not to be outdone, I kept the attendant occupied while Barbara went up and got some pictures at least.

We toured the old fort and visited the restored homes and businesses. Some dated to the 1700s. For me the high point was the Brats with kraut along the harbor and the ice cream. I think Barbara was impressed with the fudge.

It was a great day. We leave early tomorrow for Kent, OH.

Mackinaw City, MI

This was probably our shortest day on the road thus far. We had a nice ride over from Munising and arrived at the campground in Mackinaw City just after one. A good part of our drive was on Michigan Highway 2, which in this part of the state runs along the lakeshore. That is the northern shore of Lake Michigan. It converges with Interstate 75 just north of the Mackinaw Bridge. It was a very nice drive with plenty of lake views. There was a little bit of a back up at the bridge toll both, but nothing too bad. The toll turned out to be $12.50. Not sure why since the sign said two axles with a trailer was $7.00. The guy must have seen the Florida plates.

The Mackinaw Bridge is similar to the Skyway Bridge in St Petersburg, FL in some ways, but it is over much deeper water. The main channel beneath the bridge is 295’ deep and was originally cut by glacial river flows when the Great Lakes were originally formed. Barbara was just a young girl at the time. Did I mention she had a birthday this week? Yep, she has joined me on Medicare.

The campground check-in is very well run. You can tell they do a volume business. There are double check-in lanes and several windows for the drivers to go to to check in. The young woman checking us in was very nice and very efficient. They even give you printed instructions to your specific site. Why all this attention to check-in? There are 800 campsites and they accommodate campers from tents to big rig RVs. This is like the Disney of campgrounds. They have any number of ways to vacuum your wallet clean if you have kids. Lots of activities like miniature golf and hay rides. They offer a shuttle to the Mackinac Island ferry, too, but their schedule and ours does not match tomorrow so we will drive over on our own.

We walked through Mackinaw City this afternoon. It has its tourist trap area, but once you walk a block away it is very tranquil. The old homes in town are, for the most part, small and there are small parks sprinkled through the area to make it very nice.

We walked the docks and saw a fantastic restored Chris Craft yacht floating in crystal clear water in the harbor. From there we walked to the old lighthouse and watched a young couple wed on the lighthouse grounds. Lots of body art on the backs of the bridesmaids, bride AND the brides mother! What is up with that? The bride also looked like there might be one in the oven. Everyone was having a wonderful time, and that is what counts. We wish them well.

The beach and grassy park adjacent to the lighthouse had a very nice view of the bridge so we sat down and enjoyed the view for a while before heading back to camp. 

We really feel like campers. We don’t have the A/C on and there is nothing on TV!

Tomorrow we will take the ferry to Mackinac Island. We have been told that it is pronounced Mackinaw Island, by the way.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI

We boarded the ‘Miner’s Castle’ around 9:45 and she shoved off right on schedule at 10:00 on her way to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The boat departed from the city dock in Munising, MI for a two and a half hour cruise along the limestone cliffs of the park. The Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore was the first of the now four National Lakeshores and is co-managed by the US Park Service and the US Forest Service. It covers about forty miles of coastline on Lake Superior and this cruise covered about half of that.

We could not have asked for a better day weather wise. I should have worn a hat and sunscreen since I spent the entire outbound leg squinting and holding a hand up to shade my eyes in order to see what the captain was pointing out. To take pictures we should have been on a later cruise since the sun was backlighting the cliffs. Barbara tried to get shots, but they are probably not going to be as dramatic as they could be if taken later in the day. Barbara is collecting about a thousand photos in her camera and hopefully she will eventually get them into the gallery. There is not much she can do here since she needs a better internet connection. To get this blog entry in I need to take the car to the front of the campground and park outside the office to download the pictures emailed from my iPhone, open Blogspot and a new posting, then cut and paste the text from Word and upload the pictures. I write the blog in advance using Word rather than be online while I think of the astute, yet pithy, dialogue to subject you to.

After the cruise we headed for Muldoon’s and the promised award winning pasties. The manager here at the campground said they received an award for the best pasties on the UP. Perhaps they were the only ones in the competition, or then again, perhaps the judges never had the opportunity to try Joe’s in Rhinelander, WI. No comparison! Joe wins hands down!

Now filled with potatoes, carrots and something purported to be beef we set out to walk some of the areas we saw from the lakeside. You really can’t beat this area for scenic beauty. The water had the clarity and much of the color of the Caribbean. The clean pine scented air is wonderful. We visited Miner’s Castle rock where these pictures were taken as well as Miner’s Falls. More pictures will eventually be forthcoming when Barbara gets a good internet connection and the proverbial round tuit.

Tomorrow we are off to Makinaw City. It should be a short day on the road and we hope to have a site looking out at the famous bridge. We understand it is a pretty sight at night when it is lit up.

Munising, MI

What beautiful country! We drove up into the Upper Peninsula from Woodruff, WI via highways 70, 45 and 28. Michigan highway 28 runs along Lake Superior for a good way and the countryside is gorgeous.

We have stopped east of Munising, MI in the Wandering Wheels Campgound. Our site is well shaded and cool enough that we are not using the air conditioning for the first time since leaving Florida. This is a nice family campground and there are plenty of kids.

Tomorrow we plan to take the Pictured Rocks Cruise on Lake Superior and hope to have pasties again after the cruise. Word is that Muldoon’s in Munising has been voted as having the UP’s finest pasties! Stay tuned and we will let you know how they stack up to Joe’s in Rhinelander yesterday.

Manitowish Waters and Rhinelander, WI

The rain last night has moved on to the east and left us with a marvelous day. The locals find it hot, but it is not too humid and therefore much more comfortable than we have been in several days.

We drove north to Manitowish Waters, WI and the site of a big shootout between the law and John Dillinger back in the thirties. The law got a tip that he was there and they set a trap at what is now the Little Bohemia Lodge. In the resulting melee for locals were killed in error and Dillinger and his gang got away. They have a display case with the items he left behind which were a leather satchel and toiletries. Judging by the two tins of Ex Lax, running from the law was hard on poor John.

This area is the homeland of good friends Ted and Linda Seefeldt who now live in St. Petersburg, FL. We were dock neighbors at Twin Dolphin Marina in Bradenton, FL. They let us know that a fellow C dock alumni was running a campground here in Woodruff, so we decided to stop by the Fire Fox Campground and say hello. We had a nice visit with Bob Krueger. After our educational visit with the Bissen family we were impressed to see Bob has a 1950 Ford 8N tractor that he uses for camp road maintenance. It is still going strong and even the paint is holding up well. Way to go Bob!

Our next stop was Rhinelander, WI where Ted and Linda lived for several years. It is the birthplace of all three of their sons. This is such beautiful forest country and the drive was gorgeous. We stopped in at Joe’s Pasty Shop. This eatery has been in business since 1947. We enjoy eating in local places like this over the chain restaurants, and this was a real treat. For those of you that have not spent any time in England, Pasties are a meat pie like beef hash turnovers. They came to this country with Cornish miners in the 1800’s and are very popular in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

After lunch we walked around the old downtown of Rhinelander and found a farmers market in progress. The offerings included organic veggies and elk meat. The downtown has passed its glory, as have most small towns, but it is by no means dead as witnessed by the market. 

There was a contest in progress for painting large fiberglass “Hodags” which are a local mythical figure. In Linda Seefeldt’s words:

“In 1893 newspapers reported the discovery of a Hodag in Rhinelander,
Wisconsin. It had ‘the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant
elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur,
and a long tail with spears at the end’. The reports were instigated by
well-known Wisconsin timber cruiser and prankster Eugene Shepard, who
rounded up a group of local people to capture the animal. The group reported
that they needed to use dynamite to kill the beast”.

The decorated Hodags are raffled off for charity. We have seen this done in Bradenton, FL with large fiberglass geckos. These are fun, but at three feet high and six feet long I have no idea where the winners would put them.

After our downtown walk we headed back to Woodruff and a Wild Animal Recovery facility where we toured their birds of prey. We enjoy these facilities. They run on the donations of visitors and the largess of sponsoring donors. Barbara will eventually get photos into the gallery, but she needs a better internet connection than we have had for quite a while.

In the morning we are off for the UP! Munising is our next stop.

Minocqua and Woodruff, WI

Once underway this morning we made good time to the Wisconsin state line. We stopped in at the visitor center and got talking with some people. The result was a change in plan. We turned left early. Instead of going to Oshkosh and running up along the lake we went up the center of the state to the Minocqua/Woodruff area.

Minocqua is a bit touristy, but here in Woodruff we have found some quiet in a small trailer park that caters mostly to full season renters and semi-permanent tenants that have had trailers here long enough that they now have decks and docks built on their sites. Yes a dock, the park is on a lake and has a small, but nice, beach.

The spaces are pretty skinny. I had to negotiate between two pine trees to get in our spot and once in there was just barely room to get our slides out on either side. There is a picnic table on the site, but if we get neighbors in the spot between the road and us we will not be able to use it. That should not be a problem since we will mostly be sightseeing tomorrow and then off on our way on Thursday.

We are enjoying lower temperatures and as I write this there is a gentle rain falling. The rain is expected to pick up through the evening, but should be just a memory by the time we get up in the morning.

We met a nice couple from Ft Meyers that are here for the season in a Journey like ours, only a year newer. They passed on some ideas of things to do tomorrow. So, tomorrow we will set out to see the area!

On The Move Again

We met Curt and Elly in Stacyville, IA this morning for breakfast. We met up at Elly’s father’s house and, along with a few other family members we descended upon The Chatterbox Café in downtown Stacyville. The fourteen of us were the only customers, thankfully or the owner would have really had trouble since she was alone. In this area it seems that everyone is related to Elly and this was no exception. The owner is a cousin. So that the owner could concentrate on cooking, Curt took over as server and kept all coffee cups full and helped bring out the meals. Great food! Great people! Pappa Curt! Isn’t that how the add goes?

After breakfast we returned to Elly’s dad’s to look at his collection of toy tractors and other Ford memorabilia. He has been collecting this kind of thing for some time and the collection was quite large. Barbara and I got to try out his Segway. Barbara was a natural, but I was a little shaky at first. Must be my height. Brother Larry ran around on it like he was born on it. They are pretty cool!

Curt was returning to Orlando today so we shuttled him over to pick up his tractor so he could get it back in the barn at Larry’s farm, then we made a quick stop at the Stacyville market for brats to bring home. Can’t wait to get at those. We intend to break out the first batch when we get to Pat and Jan’s in Kent, OH.

It was after one by the time we were back at Dale and Sandy Bissen’s farm where the coach has been parked. We got everything together and decided St. Charles, MN was about as far as we would be getting this afternoon. It was only about and hour and a half east and that would get us there in time to get some laundry done and hopefully come up with a planned route to Kent via the UP and the Makinaw Bridge.

We are staying in the Lazy D Campground just outside St Charles. Since it is during the week there are plenty of spaces open and we were able to park across three site to be able to keep the car attached and still get 50 amp service for running the A/C. Have I mentioned that it is HOT! Well it is HOT! And HUMID! As nice as this area is here near the Whitewater River State Park it is just too uncomfortable outside to do anything.

We have no phone service on either AT&T or Verizon so no email or internet at the coach. There is a hotspot at the office so I will try to get this posted up there. Yes, I know it is HOT! out, but I will go any way.

Stay tuned to find out where we are going. We haven’t the foggiest idea ourselves, but we are leaving in the morning.

Winding Things Up at the Tractor Show

The bus left the Bissen farm at ten this morning and took the crew to the tractor show for the big tractor parade through the fairgrounds. Barbara was pleased to see that when we got there she had been assigned her own tractor for the parade and the ride back to the farm. She took advantage of a few minutes free time prior to the start of the parade to figure out how the thing worked. 

We were at the front of the parade since Ford tractors were the ones featured this year and we had more than anyone else. It made it difficult to see the parade ourselves, but we did get back and parked in time to see the really old timers come by at the end of the line. 

It was not just about old tractors. There were plenty of Old Model T and Model A Fords as well as a few other brands. I even saw a Ford Model S and Model M. I did not even know there was such as thing.

After the parade we had some lunch and walked around the grounds. The Bissen’s gathered the group together and we headed back to the farm. It was a hot and windy ride back, so we had a watering stop half way home. That worked out well because it also let the slower machines catch up. In this photo of the rest stop my tractor is the fourth in line and Barbara can just barely be seen atop the fifth behind the two guys talking. The stragglers had not yet caught up when the picture was taken.

When we rolled into the farm Sandy Bissen greeted each of us with a cold cup of well water. As refreshing as that well water was we wasted no time getting to the cooler for a ice cold beer. We are from central Florida, so it ought to mean something if you hear us whine that it is hot and humid. The beer felt great!

In the morning we will meet some of the family for breakfast and then set off for the UP. It has been a wonderful visit. The Bissen families are wonderful people and gracious hosts. We loved our visit here very much.