#84 - September 2021 – CO, UT, NV, OR

 September 2021 –  CO, UT, NV, OR

A guy out walking his llamas isn't
something you see every day

In 2015, we passed right through Gunnison Colorado on our way to the Lottis Creek Campground in the Gunnison National Forest. From there we visited Crested Butte and explored the forest but never got back to Gunnison. This year we stayed in Gunnison and focused on the town. There is a lot to see and do there and in the surrounding areas. We stayed at the Palisades Senior RV Park, about six blocks from downtown, on the grounds of the county senior care and services facility. The whole area is quiet, secure and immaculately maintained by volunteers and work campers. This is a great place, but it is small and reservations are hard to get, so book early. It is also only open from mid-May to mid-September. 

Gunnison seems to be a pretty open, friendly town. It’s big enough to have one or two of most services. It appears to be pretty prosperous, too. We didn’t see any signs of civic neglect, and the overall appearance was quite attractive. It’s also a college town, which we always think makes it more vibrant and interesting. Western Colorado University has an attractive campus right down town. With 2,900 students and a couple of hundred faculty, it fits into town without being the focus of the town.

I didn’t look at the map very carefully when we were in Ridgway. I guess I assumed that the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park would be near the town of Gunnison. Actually, it is much, much closer to Ridgway. Despite the 160 mile round trip, we were determined to see it. If you ever get close, make the effort to go. The Grand Canyon is certainly majestic, but this place is just as impressive. It is not as commercialized as the more famous canyon and sees far less traffic, making it a much more personal and pleasurable visit. The pictures don’t come close to the experience of actually being there. With better planning, accessing the bottom is possible, which must be really spectacular; next trip I’ll do a better job.

The Pioneer Museum in Gunnison is a large, eclectic accumulation of items that
are grouped together in a sprawling complex of 30 buildings, barns and sheds housing everything from a locomotive to hundreds of dolls. Two of the largest buildings are dedicated to an extensive car collection that is notable for it’s overall lack of… notability. Most of the vehicles are simply well preserved old cars with little-to-no automotive significance. Someone just took really good care of one and gave it to the museum when they died or stopped driving. That said, I spent most of an afternoon wandering around. The old fire engine and a Cat bulldozer were highlights for me.

Like the museum in Meeker, pianos and parlor organs seemed to be popular donations, but Gunnison has so many that they are packed in too closely to walk through. None of them are playable, so I guess it doesn’t matter that all you can see is an array of water stained and delaminating veneer. As you would imagine, the collection includes lots of old farming and logging equipment, too. Again, none of it has been restored, just cleaned up and parked. If patina is your thing, this place is for you. Only open from May to October, it’s worth a visit.

Tourists went nuts, the locals just went about their business

We decided to revisit Crested Butte. We enjoyed seeing it for the first time several years ago and this trip we were lucky to stumble into the weekly street market. Unfortunately, we got there a few minutes before closing, so a number of the vendors were packing up or had already gone. I did manage to grab the last sourdough bagels as the baker’s booth was being dismantled. They were excellent; I wish they’d had more.

Crested Butte is an unabashed tourist trap that is growing like a weed. Townhouses, condos and houses are under construction in many places in and around town. It seems like every other shop on main street is a restaurant, a bar, a pizza place or an ice cream shop. The other stores sell high end outdoor and leisure wear or expensive, lavishly logo’d sports gear. As popular as this town is during the summer, I can only imagine what getting around must be like once the ski season kicks off and all the rentals fill up. The skiing must be terrific.

We had a few days before we were due in Durango to meet some old friends from Thousand Oaks. On the spur of the moment, we checked the NFS reservation system and found one site that we could fit in at Lottis Creek Campground, one of our top five all-time favorite places. We could only get it for two days, so we booked two additional days in Palisades to catch up on laundry and clean the coach before heading to Durango.

You may recall that we were camped at Lottis Creek when the bear wandered by as Kayeanne and Lucy were sitting outside reading and napping, and pandemonium ensued throughout the campground. We didn’t see any bears this trip, but Lottis Creek is just as lovely, quiet and spectacular as we remembered it. Pictures completely fail to capture the size and subtle colors of the walls of the canyon that the campground is in. At night I think you could hear a sneeze a mile away. Two days was just not long enough, but I’m really glad we decided to go.

There are three feasible routes from Gunnison to Durango. I’ve ridden two of them on motorcycle trips, so we chose the third. I’d ride US 550 or CO 149 thru Lake City anytime, but both would be pretty intense in the coach. Instead, we made a long loop to the east consisting of US 50 - CO 114 – US 285 - CO 112 - US 160 over Wolf Creek Pass and thru Pagosa Springs to Durango. There were some sections that held my attention, but it was a good route.

Junction Creek NFS Campground converted from reservations to FCFS the day
after we arrived. We couldn’t reserve a site with electric hookup, so I got one without, hoping to get one of the power sites when the current occupants left. It worked like a charm. The dust hadn’t settled behind the departing campers the next morning when we backed in, plugged in and set up housekeeping.

Junction Creek is a real gem of a campground that has three real negatives: no dump station, limited water access to refill tanks, and one of the worst access roads we have ever seen. The first two items limit how long we can comfortably stay, but the last one turned out to be the worst. The road is over two miles of dust and ruts. It was so bad that we went straight to a car wash every time we left the campground just to hose off the dust so we could see. The rough surface may have damaged one of our tire pressure monitors, too.

John, Rick, us, Cheryl and Janie 

Anyway, those issues notwithstanding, we had a great time. We like Durango, but the reason we came this year was to visit with close friends Janie and Rick Fellows and Cheryl and John Clement. What with Covid disruptions and our travels, we hadn’t seen Janie and Rick for a couple of years or John and Cheryl since 2015.

Well, we had a ball. Lots of great food, very, very good company and a fair amount of wine and song just can’t be beat. One morning we took the Durango to Silverton train with Janie and Rick. It was just as spectacular as we remembered it. John and Cheryl drove up to meet us for lunch. Cheryl is very familiar with Silverton and having an experienced local guide certainly made for a far better experience than our last trip here.

Train from Durango to Silverton - this is a tame section

Waiting for the ladies to shop              Kayeanne's pic

One day we wandered the length of main street in old town Durango. I think we toured every shop but fatigue tends to fog my memory. We stopped in to the Strater Hotel, a well preserved, still operating example of the finest in 1890's-era accommodations. It reminded me of the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, AZ, built in roughly the same era and style. The Strater's most famous and long term guest was Louis L'Amour.

On the last night of our visit, everyone gathered around the campfire at our site. John brought his ukulele and led us in song after song as the sun set and night fell in the forest. That is a night that I will remember for a long time. I hope we can all get together again, soon.

We were sorry to leave such good friends, but we had a schedule to keep. We pulled out of Durango and headed northwest to Cape Blanco State Park in Port Orford, Oregon, to spend a week with Leslie and Ray Friebershauser at the state park where we met in 2019. We were all hosts at Cape Blanco Lighthouse that spring, giving tours and regaling visitors with tales of life on the Oregon coast in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. They also spent a couple of months at our park in Benson the following winter. Ray’s help was invaluable when I had to replace some of the siding on the casita.

We had Cave Lake to ourselves

It’s about 1,500 miles from Durango to Port Orford. Using interstate highways is supposedly faster but, as usual, we (I) picked a more “scenic” route. In my defense, this time it was actually shorter, if not faster. Anyway, from Durango we headed to Richfield, Utah, which has an RV-friendly Walmart, reasonably priced diesel fuel and convenient propane access. Rested and all fueled up, we pushed on through Moab to Cave Lake State Park just south of Ely, Nevada to dry camp in the parking lot near the dam. We don't fit in any of the campsites. They still charged us $20, which I thought was excessive. We should have left early to beat the ranger’s morning rounds.

We picked up US 50 in Ely and headed west to Reno. It is too far to do that in one day, so we needed an overnight spot somewhere near Austin, NV. Nothing sounded promising, but we took a chance and pulled into the Bob Scott NFS Campground and were early enough to get one of the two spaces in this very small park that are big enough for our rig. We didn’t even have to disconnect the car. With our Senior Pass it was just $5, a much, much better value than Cave Lake. It is a beautiful setting, and quieter than I expected given how close it was to the road. Schroeder really liked it, too. Unfortunately, we both forgot to take pictures. 

I’ve long wanted to cross Nevada on US 50, which was called “the loneliest road in America” by Life Magazine in 1986. I don’t think it still deserves that distinction, but there are many long stretches without any sign of habitation except the fences that keep the beefs (or, "beeves", really, look it up) off the boulevard. Kayeanne was pretty bored with it, so it was good that we had cell coverage most of the way.

After three days of dry camping, we wanted a couple of nights with full hookups, and the laundry had been piling up since we left Gunnison. Gold Ranch Casino RV Park in Verdi, NV, just west of Reno had everything we needed, so we dropped anchor there for a couple of nights. We did the laundry, dumped the sewer, refilled the water, restocked at Trader Joe’s and enjoyed our first sushi in weeks. Ah, all of life’s basics fulfilled in just two days, so on to Oregon.

Verdi to Port Orford can be done in two days if you put your mind to it, so we decided to go for it to spend an extra day with Ray and Leslie. I laid out a route that avoided the fire areas and most of I5. Klamath Falls turned out to be just about half way, so we spent the night at the Klamath County Fairgrounds RV Park, which is an exaggeration for a large gravel lot with hookups. What it lacked in ambiance it made up for in convenience. I think there were five campers that night, giving all of us lots of elbow room.

Rolling into Port Orford the next afternoon felt very familiar. We spent two months at Cape Blanco State Park in the spring of 2019 giving tours of the lighthouse, and came to really like Port Orford. One supermarket, one gas station, a half dozen or so restaurants and a food co-op pretty much describes the town that is small enough that US 101 passes right thru without a traffic light or a stop sign. Despite that it has a pretty fair art gallery, an interesting Coast Guard station museum and two great state parks. And, of course, the not-to-be-missed lighthouse when Covid relents. Not bad for a town of about 1,200 people.

Ray and Leslie are once again working in the park, but the lighthouse tours are a Covid casualty, so they are camp hosts, cleaning cabins and selling firewood this year. The four camp sites that are usually reserved for the lighthouse hosts are now available FCFS, and Leslie grabbed one for us that came open the day we arrived. Host sites are the only ones in the park that have sewer connections, which was pretty critical because we wanted to stay a full week and the park doesn’t have a dump station. Despite their work schedules, we got to spend a lot of time with our friends.

This park is truly one of the gems in the Oregon system, even with the lighthouse closure. I went on and on about it in blogs #55 and #56, and suffice it to say it hasn’t changed one bit, except the weather is sure better in the fall than it is in the spring! Schroeder clearly remembered it, too. He led me right to the trails, the horse camp and the group camp areas that he and Lucy thoroughly inspected a couple of years ago.

A couple of our favorite places to eat had closed down, but the Golden Harvest was just as good as we remembered. They still make the best roast turkey and stuffing that I have eaten outside of my kitchen (or Paul Wiklund's, too, I must admit) and they have added a bulgogi entrée that was very good, too. The lemon blueberry cookies, though, are one of my all-time favorite things to eat, and were just as good as ever. When Ray’s Market restarts their smoker after Covid, be sure to try their brisket sandwiches and the ribs.

Bandon is the “big” town about 25 miles or so north of the park. Fish tacos at Tony’s with a double helping of their secret sauce was terrific. When we tried to walk it off, though, we stumbled across Cranberry Sweets and More which we had to check out. Cranberry is not what I think of when I’m looking for sweets, but this place really merits its 5-star reviews. We didn’t try everything, but the tea cookies were delicious, even the cranberry ones.

Da Gurls had a ball

Sooner than we hoped, it was time to leave Ray and Leslie, and head to Nehalem Bay State Park for our seventh season as camp hosts. 

Some of the wines we discovered this month include:
Chateau St. Michelle Horse Haven Sauvignon Blanc 2018 – Kayeanne really liked it
Santa Ema Reserve Cab 2018 - Val Chile – Very good
Rough Day Cab – Romania - Maybe the best cheap wine I’ve had in quite awhile
Juan Gil Jumilla 2018 – Spain - Very, very good. Total Wine may have it.

More soon,

Bob

 

Black Canyon

Lottis Creek

Schroeder remembers Cape Blanco

Crested Butte

Hiking at Cave Lake

Junction Creek

Silverton

#83 – August 2021 – WI, IA, NE, WY CO

 

August 2021 – WI, IA, NE, WY CO

Well, what can I say, it’s just time and fuel. We are certainly getting to see the country and, more importantly, spend time with more friends we haven’t seen in too long.

We have been looking forward to seeing Mark and Nicole Tuggle for a couple of
years. We had a great time with them in 2018 (see #48). Mark suggested a route that bypassed the worst of the traffic and road construction near Chicago. It was too far from Shipshewana to their place in Wisconsin to make it in one day, so we spent a night in Madison at Lake Farm County Park, again, and pulled into Wilderness County Campground in Nekoosa early the next afternoon. Lake Farm hadn’t changed. It is a little more expensive than it was three years ago, but the standards haven’t slipped. Wilderness County Campground, on the other hand, really needed some attention. I told the manager that he was doing a poor job on brush clearance and road repairs. He apologized, but that didn’t fix a couple of new scratches on the coach.

It was so good to see Mark and Nicole again. They are gracious hosts, gourmet cooks, great tour guides, and they spoiled us at every turn. We went kayaking on the Kickapoo River, the perfect combination of peaceful drifting and slightly challenging currents in a few places. That said, we all got soaked and went out for a great lunch.  The next day we visited The Cranberry Discovery Center in Warren, WI. I always assumed that Massachusetts produced more cranberries than anywhere else, so I was very surprised to learn that Wisconsin grows more than twice as much as Mass.

It was hard to top the berries, but the South Wood County Historical Museum succeeded. Kayeanne and I are big fans of small local museums and this one is terrific. The regional  lumbering industry history exhibit in the basement was fascinating, as was the discovery that Myron H. “Grim” Natwick was a local celebrity. Natwick was a pioneering animator who created Betty Boop. He was also involved in Snow White, Mickey Mouse and Woody Woodpecker productions. The museum was a real treat. And, so was lunch at the very swanky Sand Valley Golf Resort.

It was hard to say goodbye to Nicole and Mark, but we needed to start moving west. Our first stop was Palisades-Kepler State Park in Mount Vernon IA. This was our first experience with an Iowa state park and we were impressed. The pull thru sites were laid out a little oddly, but we figured it out. That was about the only complaint, the grounds, facilities and amenities were otherwise terrific.

1970 Bultaco. I owned 12 Bultacos

As nice as Palisades-Kepler was, the real reason to stop here was so I could visit the self-declared National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa. Mark Tuggle turned me on to this place. As I suspected, the majority of the bikes were Harleys, with a smattering of Indians and long-defunct American manufacturers like Henderson and Pope. None of that is interesting to me, especially the customized creations. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to also see a number of European bikes, most of them thankfully unmodified, as well as a small selection of motocross machines from the 60’s, my racing days. 

BSA Victor, my first race bike

The non-Harleys were crammed together and the information on each one was pretty spotty or missing altogether, but there were some real gems: a Velocette Thruxton, a Bultaco Pursang, a few BMWs, and even a couple of older Moto Guzzis. Most of the bikes I was interested in had not been restored, they were in clean, unmolested original condition which is always better in my view than a perfect restoration. The museum had too many motorcycles crammed much too close together, making it impossible to get a good look at the details or to get decent pictures. That said, I was glad to visit.

And the food was good, too

The next day we drove to Coralville/Iowa City and to Cedar Rapids, just to look around and to restock at Trader Joe's. On the way we stumbled across a restaurant called Estela's Fresh Mex and had great tacos. While not quite up to Taco del Gnar standards, we’d gladly stop there again.

In 2018 we discovered Ashland, Nebraska, and the town RV park located just a block or two from the small, attractive downtown area. This trip we planned to stay two days, but extended that to three when we blew another dolly tire on I80. I have to say that I’ve had all the tire-changing-on-side-of-the-highway practice I need. It took a couple of days to get new tires shipped to us.

Ashland RV Park site 9

We like Ashland and spent a very pleasant afternoon eating lunch and wandering from one end of main street to the other. We visited several shops, had ice cream and just generally played tourist. If you are traveling on I80, plan on stopping in Ashland for a day or two. UPS showed up right on time, and we had the new tires mounted and got back on the road.

We had planned to leave I80 near Ogallala (Country View Campground is a good place to stop for a night or two) to take I76 to Denver and I70 to Grand Junction, then onto US50 to Ridgway, but a large landslide closed I70 for several days. We decided to make the best of the situation and stayed on I80 to Cheyenne, Wyoming, a town Kayeanne wanted to see. Then we would head southwest across Colorado on US highways and state roads to bypass the slide area and get back on our planned track.

Cheyenne is a Union Pacific Rail hub

We found a site at Laramie County Fairgrounds RV Park, which turned out to be pretty disappointing. I guess I’d stay there again because it is easy to access, but only if there wasn’t anything else available.

Cheyenne didn’t turn us on, either. We drove around looking at the city and some of the neighborhoods, and did a little shopping, but nothing really appealed to us. That said, there are a number of pretty parks scattered throughout the city, and the Cheyenne Depot Museum was quite interesting.

The forced detour made the trip through Colorado much more interesting than just pounding out miles on I76 and I70. Cheyenne to Ridgway was a two day trip so we needed a place to stop for the night that was roughly half the distance. Meeker, Colorado, was in the right place, and a quick search popped up the town park as welcoming RVs to spend the night for $20. They even had a few sites that included electric hookups at no additional cost. With nothing to lose we decided to give it a shot, and we found a small gem. The RV parking is right in the middle of a lovely park on the banks of the White River. We were the only ones there when we pulled in, so we got one of the power hookups. The park also offered a free sewer dump station, and a fresh water faucet to refill our tank! We quickly decided to stay two nights.

The White River runs through Meeker

Meeker is a small town that clearly has a lot of civic pride. We got a good vibe walking around the small downtown area. The place is immaculate, the stores are mostly occupied and busy, and there are a number of good restaurants. Don’t miss having  ice cream at Meeker Drug. Once again, a local museum turned out to be very interesting. Run by the son of the founder, the White River Museum is supported completely by donations. Everyone who works there is a volunteer. Some of the exhibits are pretty ad hoc, and most of the artifacts appear to have been donated to clear out the old barn, but nonetheless we spent a couple of hours just meandering around.

Site 260 at Ridgway State Park

We have been looking forward to returning to Ridgway State Park since our last
visit in 2015. Ridgway is one of the best state parks we have stayed in, bar none. This year we were fortunate enough to get a large pull thru site close to the river. The only downside is the state of Colorado’s rapacious charges for “extra” vehicles. A pickup pulling a trailer doesn’t pay anything extra, just the camping fee, but a motorhome pulling a car is charged $9 per day in addition to the camp fee. That increases the daily campsite cost to $50, more than many very nice commercial campgrounds. No one I’ve asked can explain this nonsense to me, but given the current demand for camping sites and states’ unrelenting zeal for ever more revenue I don’t see anything but higher and higher costs. This may be our last visit to a Colorado state park, though. Ok, rant off. 

A Luca Brau and a Drippy Mitch,
I think

Long-suffering readers of this blog (thanks to all nine of you!) may remember me raving about Taco del Gnar, the best tacos we have ever eaten. Well, I can assure you that they are still just as good as I said they were six years ago. They have 11 tacos on the menu. We went there for lunch four times, so I ate eight of them and tasted one more that Kayeanne ordered. Someday I will return to try the ones I missed, and maybe start over again. Check out the menu.

Ouray, a mountain town

Ouray is another favorite of ours. We parked close to the middle of town and walked up one side of main street and back down the other. There are lots of local shops, bars, restaurants, ice cream stands and a neat market to check out. The local museum is, as usual, well worth a visit. Ouray is an old mining town and the collection of historic photos in the museum is fascinating. That was a really tough way to make a living.

For some reason we didn’t get to Telluride on our last trip. This year we decided to make that a priority. Boy, were we disappointed. Telluride appears to be all about slick, glossy posers. It reminds me of Park City but without the charming old downtown part. We drove the length of the main drag, turned around and headed back to Ridgway. I guess the skiing must be fantastic.

I’ve clearly fallen behind in my reading; I guess YouTube has taken over. But, our wine drinking hasn’t slacked off. Kayeanne nominated two white wines this month, and I discovered a really good Malbec:

Trader Joe’s Vintjs Sauvignon Blanc - 2018
Santa Francesca - Pinot Grigio – Italy
Navarra Correas Coleccion Privada Malbec – 2017 Argentina

More soon,

Bob

Lunch in Ashland

The boys share ice cream at Meeker Drug

Velocette Thruxton - Just gorgeous

BMW R75/5 - My first Beemer

Nicole and Mark at the museum

Ridgway in the morning

Wow, great original patina! And, it runs!

#82 – July 2021 – NY, PA, OH, MI, WI, IN

 #82 – July 2021 – Six states in 20 days    

Leaving the tranquility of Casa Kendrick for the open road was a rude shock. We pulled into Camp Walmart in Oneonta NY and the bedroom slide wouldn’t work; the motor ran but nothing moved. Not a crisis you think, but we can’t open 80% of the bedroom drawers with the slide in. I didn’t know it, but this was the first of a pretty long list of problems that happened one after the other right up to today, seven weeks later.

The explosion in RV sales has led to very long leadtimes for parts and service. I called the local mobile RV tech who came up on Google braced for the worst. I called him first because he had the only 5-star reviews.  Jason not only answered the phone but agreed to take a look at the slide the next day. We met him at a gas station near his house because the road to his shop had washed out a couple of days earlier and the county crews were still repairing it. He met us by ATV. He looked it over and decided that he needed his tools and a few parts. The road repairs were expected to complete by evening, so he suggested that we get a site for the night at nearby Chenango State Park and he’d work on it in the morning. We did, and he did.

Working on that slide mechanism under the bed is best done by a small contortionist. Jason is a big, strapping guy. Much straining ensued, and I was able fit into the small space to reach the last two bolts. Once he had the slide assembly removed, repairing the actual failure required five minutes and $2 worth of shear pins to reattach the drive gear to the motor shaft. Getting the whole assembly out and reinstalled took over an hour. When he billed me $80 I felt like I’d won the lottery.  

Chenango State Park was our first experience with New York parks. Like most northeastern parks, it wasn’t designed with rigs our size in mind. Luckily, the camp host recognized a problem as soon as we pulled up. The site we had reserved online might have theoretically worked, but access to it was really sketchy. He reassigned us a better site and we spent a couple of days catching our breath and putting the bedroom back together. It’s a nice park, and we’d stay there again.  

That unexpected delay caused us to rethink our schedule. Reservations were hard to find, especially at state and federal parks, our preferred destinations for cost and aesthetic reasons. Weekends were sold out months ago, and midweek reservations at popular parks were also hard to get. Rather than trying to reschedule several reservations, we decided to bypass the Wright Paterson AFB Museum, again, and head directly to one of our primary destinations, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, aka “da’ UP”.

The waiter liked the "Ducati"
It's a Buell

That meant that the next four days were one-night stands, starting with a Walmart in Erie, PA; then the Wayne County Fairgrounds RV Park in Belleville MI; a Harvest Host site, the Wellington Farm Park in Grayling MI; Waterways Campground in Cheboygan MI; and finally to our first UP campground, Monocle Lake NFS campground in Brimley MI. By the time we got to Monocle Lake we were ready for a break from the road.

National Forest Service (NFS) campgrounds are always quiet and beautiful, but are usually inaccessible to large RV’s or located miles from anywhere. Monocle Lake is an exception. The lake-side setting is wonderful, the sites are huge and easy to get into, and it is located fairly close to Sault St. Marie, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum and several other places worth visiting. All that for just $9 a day with the Senior Pass!

Entering the Poe Lock

The city (town, really) of Sault Ste. Marie was interesting. The Corp of Engineers visitors center next to Poe Lock, the main shipping lock, is really worth a visit. The displays are well done and the folks working there seem to enjoy it, always a good sign. A huge lake freighter was departing the lock as we were looking for a parking place, and that was uncharacteristically the only ship we saw in two days. Since 7,000 ships a year traverse the locks, that was highly unusual.

Sault Ste. Marie is actually two cities sharing the same name, one in the US and the other, much larger one across the river, in Canada. Canada’s Covid border closure was still in force, so all we could do was look at the shoreline buildings. We hoped the border would be open by the time we arrived because the food is much better on the other side of the river, but we had to make do with the local fare.

July at Whitefish Point

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is located at the entrance to Whitefish Bay on the southern shore of Lake Superior. It documents the many wrecks that have occurred in these waters over three centuries, but the central exhibit focuses on the loss of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, immortalized by Gordon Lightfoot’s well known ballad. The largest ship on the Great Lakes at that time, she sank in seconds with the loss of all hands during an especially severe storm in 1975. Her loss is only one of literally thousands of ships to be lost on the Great Lakes since the 1700’s. Storms are frequent and the relatively shallow waters quickly develop dangerous wave conditions. Before the days of Satnav, GPS and radar navigation was very difficult, leading to the loss of many, many lives.

We wanted to visit the area around Houghton but could not get a reservation anywhere. Any place close to the lake shore appears to fill up as soon as the reservation windows open in January. After a couple of days of fruitless calls and online searches, I went to Plan B: The Klint Safford RV Park in Iron River in the interior of the UP. Iron River is an old, small town working hard to become a destination for off-roading, fishing, snowmobiling, car clubs, etc. The RV park is the cornerstone of that effort and it’s a real gem. Fairly new, well designed and immaculately kept, it was a pleasure to stay in while we explored the area.

I wish it still ran

There isn’t much to see or do in Iron River, but the Cornish Pumping Engine and Glider Museum about 50 miles away in Iron Mountain caught my attention. It was certainly worth the drive. The pump is the largest ever made in the US. It was built in 1892 to de-water the Chapin iron mine, one of the most productive in the area. Pictures can’t impart the scale of it, and the specs are equally impressive: for decades it pulled 4.5 million gallons a day from the 1,500’ level of the mine. If you like iron, you really need to see this.

I had no idea that Ford bought over 500,000 acres of virgin hardwood forest near Iron Mountain beginning in the early 1920’s. Large scale timber operations began immediately and vehicle manufacturing started in the early ‘30’s. During WWll the Iron Mountain Ford plant was one of the largest manufacturers of the gliders used in aerial assaults like D-Day.

I found the gliders and other war related exhibits quite interesting, but the history of Ford’s impact on the whole UP area was fascinating. I could return to that museum with a stool and spend all day just reading the articles on the walls. For example, Ford sold charcoal thru their dealerships throughout the country because Henry Ford hated waste. The vast timber operation created enormous amounts of waste that he was determined to put to use. That business continues today as the Kingsford Products Company.

The front roof-top air conditioner had died when we were in New Hampshire and we couldn’t get a replacement before we planned to leave. We have two others and thought that they would see us through the summer and we’d deal with the problem when we got to Arizona. A few days on the road in 90° heat and humidity quickly changed our minds. The dash AC driven off the engine works until the temp hits 80 or the sun comes through the windshield. At that point we need the much more powerful cooling of the front roof unit.

Parking in Shipshewana

RV components like AC’s are hard to find because the manufacturers of new RV’s are sucking up everything. I finally got a reference to National RV Refrigeration in Shipshewana, Indiana. It turns out that they are one of the largest dealers for Dometic brand AC units in the country, the brand we needed. They had the model we needed in stock, so we reserved one and rearranged our plans, again. Two looong days later we arrived in Shipshewana with an overnight stop in Madison WI. The next morning we had a new AC unit. We spent a week in Shipshewana before heading right back to Wisconsin, but more on that next month.

Oh, yes, the folding stair mechanism broke, for the second time, when we arrived in Erie. I tried to order the part from the manufacturer but they were out of stock. That’s never good news.  Amazon was also out. PPL in TX claimed to have it, took the order, and then didn’t ship. It turns out they were simply incompetent, not actually deceptive. I finally found RVUpgrades.com who actually had them on the shelf and shipped one right out, but…. it was defective. The replacement finally arrived while we were in Shipshewana and after an hour under the coach it worked. We have stairs again.

I haven’t had a chance to do much reading this month, mostly rereads.

We stocked up at the New Hampshire State Liquor Store before we left and they carry a very respectable collection of both domestic and imported wines. That means we had lots of new wines to try and we hit an unusual number of good ones: 

Emma Reichart Rosé of Pinot Noir 2018 – Good
L'Envoye The Attache Pinot Noir – Willamette Valley – Good
Loudenotte Pinot Noir 2017 France – Trader Joes- Good
Trader Joe’s Reserve Cab - Columbia Valley - Wahluke Slope Lot 189 - 2016 - VG!
Pedra Cancela Selecao do Enologo Tinto - Dao Portugal- 2016 – VG
Dry Creek Fume Blanc – 2019 – CA

Santa Francesca - Pinot Grigio – Italy

More soon,

Bob

More pictures:

Ain't she pretty?!

Tahquamenon Falls.

Monocle Lake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zoom in on the specs

Wellington Farm - they still run!

The neighbors at
Shipshewana