New Year - and New Energy to Get Back to Blogging!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

It's a new year and time to look forward. I know that I've been slack on the blog ever since we kind of wound up our fall camping in November. We've kinda been thru "some stuff" and it's time to get back on track.

We spent New Years Eve sitting by our fireplace and watching some traveling YouTubes.  Sipping on mugs of Tom and Jerry's is a peaceful way to pass the evening. For those who don't know, Tom and Jerry is a eggnog type batter hot drink that you top off with a sprinkling of nutmeg and add a shot of brandy if you wish!

We kind of dozed off before midnight, but I woke up again about 10 minutes to midnight. I was able to roll over a snoozing Steve during the countdown of the last few seconds. One good "smack" at midnight and it was time to go back to sleep.

We woke up to some beautiful snowflakes floating down. It was absolutely gorgeous. I'm going to try to insert a little video clip here : 

We had some unusually warm weather last week which melted all the snow that we had on the ground. It's nice to see things covered again with fresh white new snow. Covers up all the dreary browns and grays.

I left off on my last blog with a couple links of our fall camping. We had finished our big US2 trip by heading east across the rest of the Upper Peninsula and then looping down around Lake Michigan. We added some leveling jacks down in White Pigeon Michigan at Bigfoot. 

 After we arrived home, there was still some nice weather to continue some camping in and around the North woods of Wisconsin. Here is one of our last trips out:

And the very last camping trip of the season was in mid November! 

It was at Morgan Park on Timm's Lake in Marinette County. I'm still working on the YouTube for that....

If you are interested in any of my YouTubes, I had started a new channel this year that's dedicated just to our traveling. It's called RVing: What-A-View on YouTube and here is the link if you care to like and subscribe:

RVing: What-A-View @What-A-View-ml2uq

Don't worry, it's non monetized and non-sponsored. Just like my regular old YouTube channel of KarenInTheWoods where I put everything else for the last 17 years: 

https://youtube.com/@kareninthewoods111?si=oyWVpSilY-LtyQnv

I did add a video on that older channel recently of the two of us decorating the exterior of the house. It's in fast forward motion and kind of funny....

But we got it done and it lit up that night. I think it's just beautiful. 

Perfect to get in the mood for the holiday season.

Inside of the house, we had some grandkids come over on Black Friday while their parents were busy doing other Christmasy things. They took care of hauling in all of our boxes and totes from the garage and decorating our home. Full of squeals of delight and of course extra sugar and pizza, they put out all of the decorations. It's cute to hear them remember and reminisce over each one. Building their memories to carry on to their families someday.  I cherish these times when they come over to visit with us. It's great to have them at this age where they still want to do stuff with Grandma and Grandpa. Awwwww.

As we got closer to Christmas, we had our traditional "Cookie Day" together with the grandkids. It's such a special day to me because I get all of the grandkids to myself, without any other outside distractions like presents, other parents, traveling from place to place, and big family celebrations. The cookie day event is just for me and only me. I feel kind of selfish, but I also get all of these cookies decorated and they all go home with a big tote full of their creations. To me, it's more special than Christmas itself. I get a lot of one-on-one with them, plus I also get to hear them interact with each other and joke around and build more memories. 

Ahead of time, I baked 18 dozen plus sugar cutout cookies. I get the baking done ahead of time because it takes quite a while. And that way when the kids come it's only the fun stuff of spreading on all the decorations and having a giggling good time during the entire process. We fill them full of pizza for supper and then get to doing all of the cookies....

It is such a special day for me and I'm glad that they still will pose all together for a photo. Missing are two grandchildren of the bunch, but as many come as they can. Even the oldest, Jameson, who is now 16.

They are all wearing handknit hats that I made for them.

Afterwards, we drive them all through the Winter Wonderland that is set up at our local campground in our city. It's all lit up at night sponsored by various businesses and organizations and private displays. It's quite an event to drive through ---- and we lay down the back seats of our SUV so the kids can roll around and romp in the back end. Its just like we did when we were kids in the back of a station wagon in the 1960's!  Once we are done driving through the display, we stop under a street light and put all the seats back in the upright positions. Then everybody is seat belted back in correctly. But it's just kind of fun to break the rules for a few minutes while we drive slowly through the park. 

Our little town also has two roundabouts. I always make sure that we drive around them in a complete circle loop-de-loop every time on the way there and the way back. It creates a lot of giggles and I hope it's also creating memories.


As for Christmas Eve, we don't like to make demands on the family members to all gather on the exact holiday. Instead we set aside the following Saturday for everyone to meet up at our oldest daughter Erin and husband Waylen's cabin in the woods.

That means Steve and I have a peaceful quiet Christmas Eve alone at home. We put on some soft music and Steve fires up the outdoor propane burner set up with the big kettle and a huge steaming basket. We steamed up snow crab legs for our special Christmas Eve dinner.

Snuggling up by our fireplace, next to the lit up tree, with Christmas carols playing... This is peaceful. We are thankful for everything that we have gone through this year and we are reflecting on our memories. We are also making plans for the future year and what we would like to accomplish.

By the weekend, it was time to load up the SUV and head on up to the kids' cabin. Because the roads are covered with salt and snow and slush we do not drive the motorhome up there. It's best to keep it clean and dry and in the yard waiting for an escape in the future. The cabin is only 45 miles away, so it's a short jaunt over the river and through the woods...

Shrieks of delight 

and laughter 

and fun 

and gifts 

and wrapping paper 

and food 

and presents 

and decorations 

etc etc etc 

This is what a Family Christmas is all about.

Poor Jameson was feeling ill and opted to not spread his germs among the rest of us. We kept in contact with him through the miracle of the internet, and sent him photos and texts throughout the evening so he would feel included.

Grandma got regalated over to the kids table... And I sure didn't mind because they were full of silliness and jokes and memories and talking about fun stuff. They were also sneaking treats to all three of the dogs! 

The grownups sat at the bar, and we had a feast of all the wonderful food that everybody brought. Topped off with a homemade cheesecake by granddaughter Whitney. 

Here is Chef Whitney, my mini mini me, along with our youngest daughter Heather who is my mini me. Lol!

The kids decorate up their cute little cabin in the woods, and host all of us now every year. It's becoming quite a tradition. They have a lot more room than we have in our little house. It's great to gather up there in the northwoods and build more family memories.

We headed on home with smiles on our faces, and love in our hearts. 

Christmas was good this year. At home, my special present was a three-piece camera case. I have gotten a new Panasonic Lumix digital SLR camera for my birthday, and this case will allow me to carry that along with our two GoPros and all the gear and even the laptop for processing as well as the tripod. It can come apart into three pieces and be used separately or put it all together and use it as a backpack. For our upcoming travels this summer, it's going to be very handy! 

Here's a link on Amazon if you are interested: 

https://a.co/d/ffeqAwr

The other big thing that I've been working on this year has been a special quilt to put in our motorhome. I collected the fabrics to make this quilt last year from a tiny little quilt shop in Canada called The Buttons Quality Fabric and Yarn Shop just east of Sault ste Marie Canada:

https://buttonsqualityfabricandyarn.com/

The woodsy themes and natural prints of these fabrics are carefully picked out from the Stonehenge line by Northcott. The name of the quilt pattern is called Winter Solstice. 

Ironically, I finished sewing the quilt on December 21st which WAS the Winter Solstice! That was not planned at all--- here it is out on the bed in the motorhome along with the two little throw pillows that I made to go with it.

The most important part was the tag! My friend Connie has an embroidery machine and made this tag for me. If you read closely, you will see what our upcoming summer travel plans are:

YUP! 

WE ARE PLANNING 

A 3 TO 4 MONTH LONG TRIP TO 

ALASKA!!!

We are still in the planning stages, but we figure it's on our bucket list and we better get it done before it's too late. I did have a bit of a cancer scare this last few months but things are looking good and all contained within the margins from surgical removal. I don't go back for six more months so that should give me the clearance to go and leave for Alaska by May.  

If we don't take the time to do this for ourselves now, when will we ever do it? 

We are watching a lot of YouTubes of different RVers who are traveling throughout Canada and into Alaska. We are taking copious notes and adding a lot of interesting boondocking spots to our maps. We have The Milepost book for planning from 2024. We will buy the newest version in 2025 as soon as it's available in print.

We hope you all follow along and I want to try to blog every night while we are traveling. Because we have the Starlink, we should have internet access wherever we go. They may be short blogs, they may be long blogs. Who knows? But I will also follow up with videos on the YouTube channel that I made specifically for traveling. 

Please join us for this upcoming adventure??

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the meantime, while we are still at home, we are getting a few things done around the house.  We spend the majority of our time down here in this addition room called The She Shed. It really was an attached garage and mud room to our old farmhouse. Steve and I made it this way to contain all of my weaving, quilting, sewing and knitting stuff. 

I have about 10 of these handwoven sample panels of shaft switching and twill weaving from classes that I took from Jason Collingwood over the years. Steve asked what was I going to do with them? I used to have them hanging on the walls in our last few homes, but never got around to hanging any in this one.

Out came the ladder and the laser level. In no time at all, he had four of them hung up on the wall in my She Shed.

What a guy. He sure makes me smile.

We are not sure about taking any trips this winter. We still have doctor appointments and a dentist appointment to finish up during the month of January. Then of course, the dreaded property taxes are due. Once these things are all taken care of, maybe we can see our way clear to taking off in February and March to go south somewhere warmer.

But we are not sure, maybe we will just save our pennies and stay home.

Nicholas thinks staying home on the couch in the She Shed is not such a bad idea either...

Stay tuned, and maybe you will see what we figure out what to do next???

Thanks for sticking with us. 

Catching Up - We Took Off on US 2 EAST to Finish Our Vacation!

 I am sorry I am so late catching up on this blog.

After we returned home from our aborted trip on US 2 West, due to the wildfire smoke and unusually high temperatures out West.  We were only home for a few days during the Labor Day weekend. Then we decided to reload and head out this time on US 2,  going EAST! Our idea was to then loop around through lower Michigan and come back into Wisconsin.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with blogging and You Tube uploads while we are actually traveling. I've decided that I will not be doing them in real time, and instead be posting them after we get back or take a long enough break.

So far I have uploaded four videos made of the trip. I will catch up with coordinating blog posts in the near future, I promise! 

In the meantime, I hear are the four you tube clips:

I will get back to blogging as soon as I catch up a few things around the house! 

Turnaround to Wisconsin - Day 19 - Back To HOME!

Well, we enjoyed our stay in Wisconsin over at Wissota State Park.  But now looking at the calendar, we realized it would soon be Labor Day weekend. We prefer to not be out and about in the crowds in the campgrounds with the weekend warriors. Especially on a holiday weekend. We decided it was probably best to drive back across Wisconsin and if we didn't want to stop at any favorite campgrounds on the way, we would just go home. 

Skies were blue and the roads were clear, it was good to get home before all the holiday traffic started.

We were driving along, I looked for the quintessential picture of Wisconsin Farm. We had seen so many different farms and ranches and grazing land and woods in our trek across the Midwest and into Montana. I just wanted to give a picture of what is familiar to our eyes back here in Wisconsin....

We rolled along on highway 29 heading east back towards the Shawano Lake area. Even though the road is divided, it really is not feeling like an interstate. We rolled along through the countryside, and we sighed as familiar images and places and towns flew past.

At Shawano Lake, we cut over on the Highway 22. This leads us directly into Oconto. We smiled when we saw this sign appear....

And before we knew it, we were pulling into our driveway. Home again home again jiggity jig... 

We don't dare mention the words out loud of "home" or "house" because Nick goes crazy. We wait until the very last curve before we mention it and he is just shaking with anticipation of getting out and seeing his home. Amazing after only having him for eight or nine months, that he has identified so closely with what is his "home". Going places in the motorhome is fun. But going home for him, as well as us, is a nice feeling.

Fuel up at $3.55 per gallon diesel averaging 13.57 miles per gallon

We traveled 204 miles today 

We traveled 2,224 total miles 

Trip recap 

19 days

$589.56 fuel 

$312.04 campground fees

$24.09 extras 

$118.97 souvenirs 

$53.08 repair/maintenance 

$165.94 groceries (Plus we were fully stocked with groceries from home)

Average of $66.50 per day for 2,224 total miles.

As we got into the house, this little stinker had to push his way past us to zoom through the entire house from room to room. He had to make sure everything was exactly the way he left it. Here he is standing at the top of the steps leading into my She Shed. He's making sure that we are coming in the house too.

He took assessment of all of his toys in the basket on the floor, and hopped up on the couch and anticipation of a good snuggle and cuddle for an afternoon nap.

The grandchildren came over and took some turns giving him some special attention. He enjoyed some time out on the front porch on the swing with the youngest granddaughter Claire.

Before school was going to be starting, we held a little tie-dye day with a couple of the grandkids. We tried to do this every year before school starts. I'm glad we got home in time to do this.

Their creations were absolutely amazing!  And now they each have two new shirts to choose from to wear to school.

We decided while we were home over Labor Day weekend we were going to do a very serious upgrade to the suspension on the motorhome. My next blog will talk about that...

Turnaround To Wisconsin Days 17 & 18 - Lake Wissota State Park in Wisconsin

I am way way way behind in posting these blogs. I got the photos on and I never got around to finishing all of the dialogue. 

After two really nice relaxing days at Gull Lake in Brainerd, Minnesota, we decided to move on into Wisconsin. There was a state park near Chippewa Falls called Wissota State Park that we have always meant to get to.

We looked ahead online and found a campsite for two nights so we set our GPS and away we went. 

We left Gull Lake about 8:30 in the morning. We went into Brainerd and stopped for a little restocking of groceries. We stopped for some fuel but we only found BioBlend. Instead we decided to move on further and we found regular diesel number two at a Marathon. Mercedes-Benz does not recommend ever using the bio blend diesels. 

It wasn't too long and we were crossing back into Wisconsin. We saw this welcome sign. 

At almost every major entry point into Wisconsin they have this beautiful large wooden sign. As a child, there's a picture of all six of us kids lined up in front of it with Mom one of the times we traveled up to Michigan. It brings back such fond memories to see these familiar signs everywhere.

Yep, we were back in Wisconsin! Look at those beautiful blue skies!!!!

Now we didn't regret at all aborting our mission to reach all the way to Washington State. The wildfire smoke and high temperatures had chased us back. But everything now looked familiar and clean and fresh and clear to our eyes.

Look at these wonderful temps by Chippewa Falls. 75° days and 50 and 60 at night. This is our kind of weather!!! 

The website had warned us that there might be some construction going on near our campsite. There was a new shower building being constructed. But absolutely nothing was happening when we arrived at the park. So we had total peace and quiet and no construction.

Wisconsin State Parks do not accept the Federal America The Beautiful Senior access pass. So we do pay full price. It is $28 a night with electric. There's also a $7.95 reservation fee. But by this point, we were so happy to be back in Wisconsin, that we didn't care. 

Our campsite was quiet and pristine. We had beautiful shrubbery all around. The only drawback was the lower shrubs had little teeny burrs on them. This is the time of year that they reach out and grab little doggy fur coats as he brushes past them. A few times we had to take a comb and get them out of his long fur before they became entangled. 

The sun dappled ground with the dipping and swaying of the leaves and the trees was absolutely beautiful. There was a slight breeze and the temperatures were perfect. The humidity was down and there were no storms in sight.

Little Nick enjoyed laying out with us on the mat. We kept him away from the brush so he didn't get any more burrs. Potty time was out on the mowed grass area in front of our site. 

Our camper was set so far back into our site and we were surrounded by green on every side. I think of all the campsites we've been on for the previous three weeks, this is probably my favorite! Isn't that crazy? By now we had put on over 2,000 miles! And what do I like best? A campsite right here in Wisconsin.

We set the lawn chairs out by the campfire and we were going to light our little pellet fireplace. Steve hauled out the bikes and said let's go for a ride. Of course, Nick hopped right in his little cart.

All of the blacktop in the park had recently been repaved. It was super smooth for riding bikes up and down all of the roads. Just cruising on through the woods in the perfect temperatures was absolutely delightful.  We put on over 5 miles just checking out the campground.

After it was done I realized that the two loops of the campground kind of made it look like a butterfly!!!

I cannot tell you how comfortable and relaxed we felt by hanging out in our campsite, back in Wisconsin.

I have a YouTube to correspond with this blog post, but I haven't finished editing it yet. When it's done I will post it here: 

We traveled 239 miles today 

That is 2058 miles so far 

We fueled up at $3.45 a gallon diesel and we are averaging 13.58 miles per gallon

Turnaround to Wisconsin - Days 15 & 16 - Gull Lake COE Brainerd Minn

I am way way way behind in posting these blogs. I got the photos on and I never got around to finishing all of the dialogue. 

In my last blog post I left off leaving Lake Ashtabula Corps of Engineers Park in North Dakota. 

We woke up early and decided to get moving and get some miles behind us. We loaded everything up and hit the road.

We crossed into Minnesota by 10:30 a.m., and the smoke situation seem to be getting a little bit better. The sign made us feel very welcome. We were just one state away from getting back to Wisconsin. 

We stopped and fueled up at a Casey's. We found fuel for $3.53 per gallon diesel and our mileage was back up again. We're at 14.1 miles per gallon. That made us feel better.

We decided to try and reach at least the middle of Minnesota if we could. One of the campgrounds that was on our bucket list earlier this spring was Gull Lake. We were wandering around in Minnesota earlier this spring hitting a lot of the Corps of Engineer parks. Gull Lake was one we had set our sights on, but there was a bunch of road construction going on, so we passed it and went somewhere else.

Now it was almost directly on our way back, right near Brainerd, Minnesota.

We looked ahead on the website and found out we could get a camp spot, for not just one but two nights. We decided we've been pushing ourselves and it might be nice to take a break for a day in between driving sessions. We took our chances and picked a campsite off the pictures and the aerial map of the campground.

We took the detour around and made our way into the park on back roads. We did see the area that had been closed down earlier in the spring that was almost now complete. 

It was such a pretty area in the rolling countryside. There were quite a bit of large nice homes nearby and a few golf courses. But the campground itself was surrounded by tall trees and some very nice scenery.

We passed by this pond full of birds. At first I thought they were domestic geese or maybe some kind of trumpeter swans. Nope, they were pelicans! We really hadn't seen these species of huge white pelicans with the black tipped wings. I know the picture is blurry but it brings it up to my mind when I see it. We just flew on past but we knew it was something different that we hadn't seen before.

When we got to the campground, there was a travel trailer ahead of us making its way through the campsites. Because we were pre-registered we knew where we had to go. But we had to wait patiently for this person ahead of us to work his way into his campsite. Little did we know he was actually stopped before the entrance of his potential site. Because his potential site was still occupied by somebody else! So instead of moving somewhere else in the park, maybe a parking lot or by the entrance shack... and maybe waiting until his site was available, nope, he was going to sit right there blocking any and all traffic until the people were done packing up and leaving. We could kind of see ahead around his vehicle that these people weren't even unplugged yet nor did they even have their slides in. They seem to be quite upset and they were trying to back in and hook up and get everything thrown back in their travel trailer. Now we and all the people behind us, could have kept moving on to our sites if this one idiot in front of us would move. But he didn't. His wife was out walking around with a little yippy chihuahua in her arms. She was wandering around and talking to some people further down. It turns out they are camping with a group of three or four other people who are on nearby campsites. I guess the people on their intended site were gone somewhere and hadn't vacated yet. They were beyond the checkout time by almost 2 hours. 

We sat there, trying to be patient. But are irritation at the guy ahead of us and his rudeness to everybody else lining up behind us was growing. We sure didn't want anybody behind us think we were causing the problem! We were thinking it was about time to go and find a park ranger or at least a campground host, when suddenly the guy decided that yes, he would drive around a loop and pass up the people who still were not yet hooked up. So as he moved forward, now we could move forward trying to get to our campsite. We saw the flustered people trying to get off his intended campsite and I think they were having some difficulties. It looked like quite the marital spat in the making. I think everyone was upset and short-tempered. Best for us to just let it go and wait. 

So what happens? From the map it looked like we could enter our campsite from the third loop. Nope! We actually had to go all the way around it and come in from the second loop. The entrance to our campsite was on the second loop. Guess what? That same guy in front of us decided to go very slowly also down that second loop and figured he would stop again and wait THERE for his campsite to become available. So again, we were backed up behind him and waiting. 

Aarrghhhhhhh

Finally, finally, he moved on and we could get into our campsite. Aahhhhhhh. It was a very nice site and we were pleased that we had picked it off photos. But little did we know that we would have to wait all that while, approximately 25 to 30 minutes to get into it.

Steve hauled out the Blackstone griddle and I steamed up some sweet corn in the microwave.  It was a quick dinner, along with some veggies, but since we had to go through such difficulties to get into our site, we didn't feel like cooking an elaborate meal.

Our campsite was really nice, and it was sheltered on all three sides by thick shrubbery and trees. We still got a good Starlink signal, and it was very pleasant sitting out in our chairs. Every once in a while, that guy from down the road would walk by with his wife with their little yippy chihuahua. They were friends with the people camping just on the other side of the shrubs from us. We could kind of hear every word they said as they were complaining about how it long it took them to get on their site. He sounded like quite the "hot head". Glad that we didn't have a confrontation with him. 

You think he ever considered how long it took for us to get on OUR site because of him?

As we ate our dinner at the picnic table, we smiled at how his perceived problem was the only problem in the world. Oh well, this too shall pass. 

Nicholas enjoys scouting out underneath the table just in case a little piece happens to fall his way. Smart puppy.

In the evening we took a nice walk down by the dam. The weather was pretty temperate and we were losing all that horrible humidity from earlier in the day. It was nice to relax, and also to know that we didn't need to pack up the next day and drive. We had taken our site for two nights. The sites here run $28 a night. Again with our senior access pass we get it for $14. Pretty nice for a site with electric and water. Even if we had to struggle to get into it.

We were getting a little behind on laundry and our clothes needed to get washed. If you had seen back the week prior in my blog, you would see the little Costway portable washer/spinner that we carry along in our shower stall.  Since we had water available at the campsite, I thought it would be a good time to catch up some laundry. We really didn't know how many days we were going to be in Minnesota or in western Wisconsin before returning to our home near Green Bay on the far east side of the state.

Here's the little washing machine and spinner. It uses about 6 gallons of water to wash and another 6 gallons to rinse.

 I had actually three loads to do so I started with the whites. After they were done washing I set them aside in a laundry basket lined with a plastic bag. Then I did the colors. Set those aside. Then I did the towels and blue jeans. Once everything was washed, I drained out the soap water and added fresh rinse water. Now I repeated with each load of rinsing. As each item is rinsed it goes into the spinner basket. The spinner spins really really fast! I only spin a few things at a time. They come out actually almost dry just damp. We hang all the t-shirts and towels and pants up on hangers. The rest of the unmentionables either go on a line between the awning arms or inside hanging from the shower curtain rod.

And there you have it--- LAUNDRY DAY!

The next morning started out with some of Steve's most favorite coffee cake. It's the cinnamon swirl mix from Krusteaz. It's in the video in the link below. I cannot tell you how wonderful the motorhome smelled, intermingled with the smell of fresh perked coffee.

We decided to do an early lunch and Steve fried up some bacon. We had some delicious BLT sandwiches for an early lunch. We had along some really thick bacon from the local Mennonite store back in Wisconsin.

Just look at that! 

After our lunch, we decided to take a bike ride and get out and explore this campground. We put little Nick in his cart and took him along. He really enjoys his rides around the park.

We explored over the dam and through the picnic area and boat landing. We also drove down a really nice bike path to where the construction had been taking place. That's why the road had been closed off earlier in the spring. We went quite a ways but not all of the route made it to my video link down below.

It was good that the smoke had finally cleared enough that we could get out and do a little exercise and breathe. Otherwise my lungs could have never managed 3 miles under the previous conditions.

Here's a little video length of our time in the campground. Please like and subscribe?

We traveled 214 miles today 

That is 1,819 miles so far 

Fueled up at Casey's in Lake Park, Minnesota for $3.53 per gallon diesel. Averaged 14.1 miles per gallon