It's almost time! Just waiting for the weather to cooperate and possibly hit the road first thing in the morning. Today it is extremely windy and the temps are dropping down to 1° tonight. Everything is loaded in the motorhome that is not freezable. Everything else is staged by the door, ready to go in the morning.
We slogged our way thru doc appts and lab tests again this morning. We passed! A few medicine changes and we set up other appts for May when we return. But for now, the doc said we are both "Good To Go"!!
The roads home were snowy, wet and a little slushy, but mostly clear. Hopefully by tomorrow they will look a lot better??
We hauled all of the house plants over to my daughter's house. Our granddaughter is going to take care of them for us! They will get bright sunshine and water and loving care while we are gone.
The motorhome is fueled up and ready to go and everything is checked and rechecked. The poor thing is sitting out there in the snow. It has been snowing on and off all day. Steve just keeps going out there and shoveling a new path so we can carry more things out there as we think of them and cross them off our list.
We got our final shipment of things we ordered actually two days earlier than expected. Steve wanted to fly a drone that's easier to use than the one that we borrowed from our grandson. This one even responds to hand motions. I hope he will get me some good footage from aerial views and riding our bikes. It was supposed to arrive on Saturday, then they moved it up to Friday, now they moved it to already on Thursday. Steve is scared to try it in the snow so we will wait until we are in warmer weather and he can try it in a wide open area.
In the meantime, we keep looking out the windows and all we see is snow falling. Hopefully this will be the last snow that we see until we return home in late April. But then again, this is Wisconsin, and you never know...
We turned on the motorhome refrigerator and I went out and packed the freezer full. This Norcold refrigerator in our 2016 Winnebago G is only 6.3 cubic feet.
I'm quite proud of myself that I was able to fit in 22 meals worth of meat for Steve and I. That's 44 servings! Then I was able to get in 40 breakfast meals of meat such as bacon, sausage patties or Canadian bacon slices.
We buy most of our meat from a favorite local meat market. This is stuff we can't get anywhere else while we are on the road. Once we have depleted this supply, we will stock up with average items that we find at grocery stores along the way. But for now, the comfort of having our favorites along, and cooking our own meals will be appreciated. We rarely eat out at restaurants, so it's nice to have our own stuff with us that we like to make.
We are not sure how far we will get on the first day. Usually we travel about 300 miles to the middle of illinois. There's a small town called Wenona that has a Burger King/BP gas station combo just off the interstate. They have five pull through RV sites with full hookups. We will be able to slide into a spot and plug in and use our electric heat in addition to the propane heat overnight. It's only $20. It's not much to speak of for being a beautiful campsite. You can actually hear the people ordering their food from the Burger King drive-thru! But it is a great spot to hole up for the night and have full hookups.
Here's a photo from when we stopped there 2 years ago. We were comfortable and cozy with our extra windshield cover over the front.
We also put pieces of reflectix in all of the windows to help with heat loss. This motorhome only has single pane windows, not like the dual panes we used to have on our last motorhome.
We don't "de-winterize" the water lines or put anything in our fresh or grey water holding tanks for now. We will use the black tank during the middle of the night, and use a jug of RV antifreeze to flush it. Once we get far enough south to find warmer temps, we will begin to use our water system.
Well, it's almost time for dinner. Steve is doing another shoveling at the end of the driveway. The plow keeps piling it up, and it's blocking our ESCAPE ROUTE!!!
I cannot tell you how very, very glad that we have been delayed from taking off on our 2026 Winter Getaway!!
As with most of the country, the weather took a real turn for the worse. We are so glad that we had not taken off on last Tuesday as planned and headed south. Even if we had made it all the way down towards Southern Missouri or Arkansas or even into Texas. Everybody everywhere has absolutely horrible weather.
I would not want to be battling the cold while staying in the motorhome. It's not just the cold, but the condensation on the inside walls, and the frosting up of the windows, and the danger of splitting any of the water lines or damaging the water heater or pumps etc.
So I guess it was a pretty good thing that our doctors have delayed us for a couple weeks to have some more lab work done and medication adjustments if needed.
Yep, this is some of the weather that we had in northeastern Wisconsin. This was at 7:00 a.m. in the morning we were still at 17 below with wind chills of 39 BELOW!
Even when the winds died down, the wind chills dissipated but the outside temperature was the same. COLD!
It's way too cold to even take a walk around the block with the dog. We have been avoiding going over to walk the inside track or swim in the pool at our local fitness center. We are trying to avoid any and all contact with the flu or Covid before we intend to take off. The flu numbers in Wisconsin are really high, and transmissions would be quite easy in a place where everybody's breathing hard and sweating and touching equipment!
Mostly, we've been staying inside and I am working on a couple rugs on my big old finlander barn loom. I'm also working on a quilt with some fabrics I picked up last year in Missouri. It's a pleasant way to pass the day, and I am perfectly content to be hibernating and tucked away in my She Shed.
Our kids and grandkids went away for the weekend and we babysat the two little grandpuppies. They came here and hung out in the She Shed too. Nick shares all of his toys and some of his attention.
I tell you, taking a break every now and then to relax is marvelous. Just curling up in front of the little gas fireplace and a mug of Tom and Jerry drink is very relaxing. I turn on some soft music and I can dream away the day. Warm and cozy inside, but bitterly cold outside.
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Enough of that... While we are waiting to take off and go south, I ran across some other photos in my files. I realized I never did a blog post for a campground review of Potawatomi State Park in Door County Wisconsin.
KEEP IN MIND, THIS IS NOT CURRENT CAMPING, THIS IS FROM LAST SEPTEMBER WHEN WE WENT THERE. I AM JUST REVIEWING IT NOW TO FILL UP THIS BLOG POST.
This campground is located directly across from Oconto into the southern part of Door County. If we had a boat, it's only about 12 or 13 miles across to get there...
But we had to take the highway down around through Green Bay and up the other side. That was 75 miles.
This area through Door County is a very rocky part of what is known as the Niagara Escarpment. If you look at the red line you can see the rock formations that lead all the way from Niagara Falls up and around through Canada through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and down into Door County. If the water was a little lower, it would connect right through to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan!
The terrain in this area is heavily forested with cedar trees that grow well on the shallow rocky soil. It is so beautiful that it attracts a lot of tourists in the summer. We wait until later and fall to go there.
We have gone on to the website and reserved three days in the middle of the week. There were plenty of sites available, many with electric. So we took an electric site number 79.
We usually like to check over available sites and pay for it once we are there, but we did reservations to be sure to have a site. We weren't sure how crowded they were going to be. This was September and prime "leaf peeping season" for the autumn colors.
We claimed our site,
and got all set up.
It was a little more slanted than we would have liked. We did help out our levelers by adding four blocks high of our little Lego stacking blocks. I think this is the highest we've ever had to go?
The campground is very neat and clean. It is well maintained and pretty darn quiet. Even though we had other campers within view of our own site, everybody was quiet and we didn't see too many people out and about.
I can't really give a review on the shower building / bathrooms because we didn't use them. But it was a newer building and looked nice as we went past. We usually just use our own facilities on board.
The sites were spaced pretty far apart. There had been some recent removal of trees so there was stacked wood around that could become firewood once it dries. It was pretty green.
I am sure the emerald ash borer has taken its toll on the woods. Many of the trees that were down appeared to be ash trees.
It didn't take us long, and we were all set up with our slides out, awning unfurled, and little geegaws and party lights hanging from the edge. It's so nice to just get somewhere and relax.
We really didn't do anything much for 3 days other than make some nice meals, ride our bikes, and enjoy being in our motorhome. Even though we had just spent 3 months in the motorhome during our trip to Alaska, it's fun to get back in for even a few days. We do enjoy camping close to home.
Breakfasts are especially relaxing with our pour over coffee in the little silicone drip holder. It's a bit easier than percolating in the pot that sometimes boils over all over the surface of the stove. We've stopped hauling along a big electric coffee maker now that we use this pour over method and a little tea kettle to heat up the water. Add some eggs, bacon, and toast with homemade jam from the grandkids.
We are both really enjoying the larger stove top and the oven that we installed after removing the little two burner cooktop that originally came from Winnebago. This Furrion stove with three burners gives us a lot more room for cooking meals. Here is my You a tube about our removal and replacement with this one:
Chef Steveio taking turns with cooking the meals. It's very pleasant to have someone to share the cooking duties with.
We spent time out in our lawn chairs, relaxing and just enjoying the beautiful woods. Nick, tied up on his little rope, enjoys the woods with us. He's on his ever-vigilant duty watching for birds, squirrels and chipmunks.
We made up some hot mugs of mulled apple cider with spices. Perfect for a fall afternoon.
It was supposed to rain, but the sun came out. Steve unloaded our e-bikes from the cargo trailer and set up Nicholas's little trailer to pull behind. We adapted his trailer by removing the fabric child type portion, and use the frame hitch and wheels of the original configuration. Then Steve mounted this collapsible dog crate. It's more secure for Nick to ride and I think he feels better being able to look in all directions. The previous child's trailer had some nylon fabric sides and plastic windows. He had made a few small holes in them and we really didn't want him to ever get out. So having this little dog crate instead makes it a secure ride.
The whole three days was really just about relaxing. We had spent the previous trip to Alaska in the "go go go mode". This was much nicer to not really do anything. Some little walks around the campground with the dog on the leash was about as far as we got on foot.
Nick didn't mind. He was very easily entertained by a sassy little red squirrel. It seemed determined to torment Nick and kept leaping from tree to tree, over and over, to give him a tough time.
Once the squirrel realized that Nick was not a threat, it even came down to hang out on a tree stump nearby. He sure was pretty brave!
We did have some beautiful sunshine on the second day that allowed us to get out and about again on the bikes. There were a few hills in the park, but nothing that we couldn't handle. We went up on a little bluff to view out over the Bay water and the harbor. It was really quiet and we didn't see a lot of noisy people that generally frequent this area in the summer.
We did see one sailboat go past, but that was about it. No joy riding on jet skis or big noisy power boats. How nice was that?
After a bike ride, Nick is always very willing to hop up on the bed and entice us into taking an afternoon nap. Of course, we complied.
Amazingly, the forecasted rain did not come and we were able to get out on the bikes again in the later afternoon. I think we got in more bike riding then we did the previous weekend at Peninsula State Park. Also, my bike had broken at Peninsula, so that was a reason to not get in as much riding either. The new controller came during the week and we were able to get my bike functioning again as good as new.
Just look at this happy guy with his happy dog! I guess I never would have thought that in our mid-60s, that we would be having so much fun getting out on bicycles again. We have long given up the motorcycles and the motor scooter because we just don't trust other drivers out on the busy roads. Bicycles seem to be much more our style now. Especially when we can find nice trails to ride on within parks and not open roads.
When we ride our E-bikes, we pedal all of the time, and use the "assist" feature in various levels to get up and down the hills. We get our exercise and fresh air. We don't ride with just twisting the throttle and sitting still.
Of course, little Nick is very eager to go along. Once in awhile he will bark at a dog that we pass, but usually he just rides along and sniffs the air. He usually stands bolt upright with his butt against the back side of the cage. Someone might think he's terrified and that we are torturing him by making him ride in a cage? But honestly, he loves it and he jumps right in willingly anytime the door is left open. He begs to go for rides... Lol!
The clouds started rolling in and I think the forecasted rainy weather was going to catch up to us.
We spent the third day curled up inside of the motorhome while it rained. But we didn't mind. We had some movies to watch and I caught up on some YouTube processing and editing.
Here is the YouTube that goes along with this stay at Potawatomi State Park in Northeast Wisconsin:
Now back to real time here in January... We are hanging out and marking down interesting places to go when we are able to take off after February 6th. We will probably head south down through Illinois, maybe cut over into a little bit of Missouri, maybe head down through Arkansas and into Texas. We might like to check out Galveston and then head over to Central Texas and find some interesting Corps of Engineer campgrounds that we have on our bucket list. Not sure about anything, and we aren't making any reservations.
The sun was out today and even though it was cold, we did get in a half mile walk around the block. This is our little red park bench at the back side of our two and a half acres. We sometimes stop and rest here with the dog. But it was a little too chilly today to make a stop.
Out at the Breakwater Harbor, a half mile away from our house, everything is frozen over and icy and shivering cold. There are a few ice fishermen that brave the temperatures. They head on out and set up ice fishing shacks to stay warm while they drill holes in the ice to catch the fish.
No thank you for us. I think we will just stay in the She Shed and look through the windows and stay warm!
Please hang on and join us as we are preparing to take off --- hopefully late next week to head south. We are going to call it:
Although right now it's the middle of winter, I had these photos in my files, as well as a video, of replacing the step motor on our Kwikee brand power steps on our 2016 Winnebago View.
From our helpful friends on our Facebook Group for the View and Navion motorhomes, we learned that the step motor is nothing more than a window crank motor for a door for a Ford vehicle!
We ordered it through Amazon, and it was only $38. We looked at the original brand for replacement as well as one from the E-trailer website. They were many hundreds of dollars!
Be careful when ordering one, make sure that you look at your original one. There are two different lengths of the little shaft on the drive motor. You have to make sure you get the right one!
We checked ours over and compared it to the one we had and yes, we had ordered the right one. Ours is the shorter shaft for the 2016 Winnebago View.
Steve got started by collecting all the tools that he needed, and laid out a foam yoga mat for doing the replacement.
He took the old one off. Now it was time to put in the new one.
MAKE SURE THE STEPS ARE EXTENDED OUT AT THE FURTHEST POINT BEFORE YOU ATTACH THE NEW MOTOR.
OTHERWISE YOU WILL NOT BE IN SYNCHRONIZATION WITH THE GEAR AND THE DOOR SWITCH.
Another HINT--- Steve quickly figured out that to keep the little spacers in place, using some green painters tape to temporarily hold them was a lot easier. Once they were into place on each of the three bolts, he could pull the green tape away and finish tightening up the bolts.
Now he could easily lift the little motor up into place without dropping the spacers all over on the ground. The spacers are actually 2 nuts and a washer per bolt, and you need to get all three of them up there at the same time. We thought it was kind of hinky, but that's how our previous one had been mounted. So he wanted to mount it back the same way.
Before bolting it up into place, he temporarily connected the cable and we tested it. Just to make absolutely sure that the motor was in perfect working order and that we didn't get shipped a defective one.
Caution! If you are going to test it, make sure you unplug it before you proceed any further with the installation. Make sure the electric step switch is OFF while you work on it, because the steps fling in and out with extreme force. You wouldn't want to get your arm or hand in the way of any of the moving mechanisms.
While the steps were in the OUT position, Steve was laying on his back underneath to one side. He carefully mounted it up into place and made sure he got each of the three long threaded bolts lined up with the holes on the mechanism. He lined up the gear, making sure it meshes correctly with bracket on the step. It helped to have another person on hand to move the steps slightly in one direction or the other until he could line up the gear correctly.
Once he got each threaded bolt started just a few turns, he was able to reach in and pull off the green painters tape.
He tightened up each bolt and then plugged in the wire to the existing connector. Be sure the wire is up over that bar and not down underneath it where it could get pinched. He also used some pieces of zip ties to keep the wire up and out of the way of the step mechanism.
Now it was time for the final test....
OUT!
IN!
PERFECT!!!!!
NOTE:
It's important to rinse your step mechanisms well after driving in a lot of gravel and dusty terrain. It's also important to lube them multiple times each year with a spray lithium grease on all the moving joints.
Here is the YouTube clip that goes along with today's blog. It also has a segment about visiting the Mercedes-Benz dealership to have some things looked at as well as stopping off at a few of our favorite places as we ran our errands. It finishes up with some of my painting on the front porch. Nice to look at in the middle of winter...
I know this was all filmed and photographed back in August. But I feel it's a helpful post for anyone else that wishes to change their Kwikee step motor, no matter what brand of RV you have.
We saved a lot of dollars by doing it ourselves instead of having an RV dealer replace it. Also we saved a lot of money by ordering an aftermarket motor from Amazon rather than the Kwikee name brand which was big bucks!
Even if this $38 one only lasts a couple years, that's a lot cheaper than paying for the name brand and having someone else install it.
I'm so thankful that Steve is able to do these maintenance projects, and I'm the helpful gopher with all of the parts and pieces as well as the filming and the photography.
I hope you enjoyed this blog and the video that goes along with it.
Now back to our winter hibernation wait to finish up the rest of our health tests so we can leave and go south in a couple weeks!!
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