Coveys Great Adventure: #82 – July 2021

#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

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