CAMPING AT PENINSULA STATE PARK IN DOOR COUNTY, WI & MY BROKEN BIKE!

 Lucky us!!! 

We were on the waiting list for Peninsula State Park in Door County, Wisconsin. It's very difficult to get in there. People sit on their reservation list a year in advance, to the day that they want to get a site. They hit the website at midnight to get in their reservation choices...

We went on a waiting list for cancellations, and managed to snag a week!!! 

This is a huge park with five campgrounds within it's boundaries. There are around 600 campsites in total. We mostly wanted it for the beautiful bike trails as well as the peaceful scenic surroundings.

It is located on the little finger that sticks out of Wisconsin just north of Green Bay. 

https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/peninsula

It's an area known for its rugged beauty of cedar trees and rustic rocky shorelines. But it's also a high tourist area with a lot of resorts, art galleries, tourist traps and clogged up roads with weekend visitors. We try to only go during the week if we head up into that area.

It's not quite fall color time yet in Wisconsin. Some of the sumacs and low shrubbery bushes are starting to turn. But it will not be the bright autumn colors yet for another few weeks. As it is, everything is beautiful right now with glints of red shining through the woods.

The sites here are spaced far apart with a lot of shrubbery and trees in between. That's what we like about the Wisconsin State Parks. They don't scrimp on space or try to cram you in too tight together.

We have a beautiful large site with plenty of room to park our cargo trailer to one side. The site does have electric, otherwise we would be using the solar panel on the roof of the cargo trailer to charge things up for us. We have a 320 watt solar panel up there, as well as two extra flexible 100 watt panels we can set up if we need them.

But for this week, we will camp with luxury with unlimited electricity. That means we don't have to watch which lights are left on or how long we leave the Starlink on using a power. We can actually run the refrigerator and the water heater on electric. This saves on our propane use. 

We even went so far as to splurge and put up our little party lights. They are LED, and don't use a lot of power. But it's fun to put them up and illuminate our patio area in the evenings.

It sure is nice to have our cargo trailer along. We missed it during our entire trip to Alaska. Not only does a carry our e-bikes, but it also carries all of our extra gear to make the load lighter in the motorhome.

We carry extra jugs of water, bundles of firewood, a bucket of pellets for our wood pellet fireplace, and a lot of Steve's tools. We take along a battery operated chainsaw, leaf blower, and drills. He even has a battery operated work light.

I get a shelf for putting things like an electric pressure cooker with air fryer attachment, and we also bring along the Blackstone griddle and our Coleman propane grill/stove. 

Then there are extra lawn chairs, a folding table, a ladder, and a nice variety of electric cords and ropes and assorted items we might need while camping.

This really is like a "garage" for us when we go camping. It's nice to have the equipment available if we need it. We may not use every item each time, but we may need it or want to use it at various campsites. Makes camping much more comfortable. 

Speaking of campsites, we have a lot of room on this one. There is grass around the edges for Nick to sniff at, but the rest of the site is level and hard packed gravel. No mud. We have a picnic table and a fire ring and plenty of room to spread out our patio rug.

While we get set up outside, a little guy has to wait inside and patiently watch us through the door. He wants to get out and sniff!

Nick got really excited when he saw us open up the back door of the cargo trailer and start taking out the bikes. He love love loves his little trailer cart.  We took off the green nylon sections of the original In-Step2 child's trailer, and instead strapped his dog crate right to the frame. He gets to see a lot more and it's safer for him. He has actually bitten into the nylon and plastic of the original cart. So we want him to be secure and safe to go for his rides. 

He loves it so much, if the door is open and we are walking past, he jumps right in! Time to go...

We really like the E-bikes. They are Lectric XP3.0 step through. They can fold up in the middle if they need to be stored in the back of an SUV or a large compartment on a bigger motorhome. The handlebars also can flip down out of the way, and the seat can be lowered down during transport. It's just a few click clicks after unloading, and they are ready to go.

The trails in this park are beautiful to ride the bikes on. They are either paved sections of road with bike lanes clearly marked, or they are packed smooth gravel paths that meander through the woods.  There are also some more rigorous mountain bike trails in various sections of the park. We didn't go on those.

We took three different rides around the park, exploring a different way each time. All together I think we put on about 15 miles in the first day.

It felt good to get back to the motorhome and relax. Now that our recliner chairs work properly (see my previous blog) kick back with a movie for the evening. Nicholas nestles in between us, and all is peaceful and relaxing.

The campground is very quiet at night. It is patrolled by rangers and we also noticed the presence of the local police officer. That keeps down the wild ruckus partying, and makes it a pleasant experience for everyone else. 

We slept so good on our new mattress, check back a couple blog posts about that. We put in a new 10-in memory foam mattress from Wilderness RV mattress company. It sure is comfortable. 

It didn't get too cold overnight, but we did wake up to a few more colorful leaves. Some things are changing here and there. Soon the woods will be ablaze with the colors of fall.

I am writing this now on our fourth day in the park. We have just been relaxing and taking things easy. We've been cooking some nice meals and not doing much of anything. Steve decided last night to make us some "dessert"...

He is our most meticulous marshmallow roaster... Perfectly golden brown. Never burnt..

Have you ever done this for s'mores? Instead of graham crackers and chocolate bars, just get fudge striped cookies. It already has the chocolate evenly spread and the cookie portion is as close to graham cracker as you can get. Very easy to put them together, and leftover cookies can be eaten after you get home.

Just a simple slide off his roaster stick and both of the ooey gooey marshmallows get trapped in between the cookie layers.

Yummmmmmm!

Lucky little Nick met a new friend. Here's his girly female friend named Maggie. She is 11 years old and not up to any sassiness from a young buck like Nick. She put him in his place and said he can sniff but she is not about to go run around and be crazy like him. He tried to entice her to play, and she said "no thank you". 

But each time he sees her walk by our campsite, he has to try to invite her to romp with him...

Now, here's the sad part of our day:

MY BIKE BROKE! 

The thing I am pointing to is the electronic display. It's also controlled by the on and off switch on the left. We had stopped at a beautiful little picnic area to take some photos. I went back to turn on my bike, and the display was dead. It would not light up. 

How frustrating! 

We were about 2 miles from our campsite. 

The bike weighs about 65 lb.  I peddled it for a while without any type of electric assist. But it was really, really hard. Once we reached an area where the road sloped up, I could not take it anymore. I got off and pushed it by hand.

After a while, Steve took pity on me. He let me ride his bike and pull Nick in the little cart. He rode my bike the rest of the way, with the heavy pedaling. What a hero! 

We got back to the campsite, huffing and puffing. How very sad that my bike would not fire up. So we unhooked Steve's display controller from his bike and plugged it on to mine. Yay! It does work. So we know that is the only problem. It's not anything else. 

But with only one working display controller between us, there's no way we can go riding together. Bummer.

This also happened to Steve's bike last year, so we figured it was kind of going to happen to mine. The company is aware that the original display controllers don't last, and they send new ones free of charge. I called them, and with a wait on hold of about 20 minutes, they soon took care of me with absolutely no argument.  We are out of warranty by almost a second year.  They are going to send it fast, and it will be at our house tomorrow. But that doesn't help me today...  I am sad. No more bike rides.

If we tried to order an aftermarket one, this is what it would cost: 

We are kicked back in our lawn chairs, and relaxing in our campsite right now. Nick is very happy to be curled up on my lap. But what he really wants to know is: "WHEN ARE WE GOING FOR ANOTHER BIKE RIDE?" 

Soon, little boy, soon. 

(I DON'T HAVE THE VIDEO DONE YET FOR TODAY'S BLOG... I WILL ADD IT LATER)

2016 WINNEBAGO VIEW - RECLINER CHAIR PULL HANDLE REPLACEMENT

 

While we were on our trip over the summer, both of the pull rings from our Williamsburg loveseat recliners had broken. Yep, first Steve's broke and then mine. They broke right at the cable where it reaches the handle.

We did a temporary fix while we were on the road just so they would operate. We extended the cable as far as we could and bent it over and crimped it down over a ring to pull on with our fingers. But this was not the end-all "fix" that we wanted.

Here's the blog post where I talked about our fix with the temporary repair:

https://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2025/08/north-to-alaska-2025-days-82-84-mcbride.html

Once we got home, we needed to dismantle the seats from the base of the slide so we could get out the original cables. We needed to measure the original cables to know which ones to order. 

We ordered them from: 

https://recliner-handles.com/recliner-handles-cables/d-pull-d-ring-style/?page=3

They have a large variety of different handles and cables. You have to measure the exact length and have the exact right tip, as well as the distance between the handle and the first bracket. We found the ones that we needed and they shipped them out quickly. We got them within a few days.

Since we had to disassemble the love seats by taking the backs off and then unscrewing them off the base of the slide, this was now the perfect opportunity to make a correction to the wooden base of our slide.

The love seat is the type that is called "wallhugger" design, just like Lazy Boy. It means if you go to recline, the seat portion scoots forward so it takes less space behind the loveseat against the wall. That works out fine except in our case, when we mounted the love seat into the very outer edge of the platform base, we still didn't get a lot of clearance behind to the wall. That meant we couldn't recline in the love seats fully because it hit the wall. 

In the photo below you can see how much space we only have.

If we could scoot it out an additional three to four inches, we would be able to then recline more fully. That was kind of important to us, and something we haven't been able to do over the last 2 years.

In this photo below, we shoved the base frame forward in the slide and now we can get a full recline. But that means we need to extend the platform bottom of the slide 3 inches further into the room. It was already extended 2 inches into the room with a piece of angle iron metal that we put on when we first installed the love seat.  

Steve determined that if we put a new platform down, we could increase the depth of the slide and move the entire love seat forward about 3 more inches. That was our goal. 

Some slide mechanisms in RVs are more complicated and need to slide out and nestle down flat to the floor or roll on rollers. It makes it much more complicated to extend the platform floor of a slide in those types of applications. Fortunately, ours is very simple and stays at one level whether it's in or out.

So, now that everything is torn apart, is the perfect time to extend this platform floor. We decided to only extend the platform in 2/3 of the area and leave the original seat belt attachments where they are. That is a safety feature we did not want to mess with. 

Steve purchased a 3/4-inch piece of sturdy plywood and cut access holes for the slide motor and wiring that needed to go through. He created divot spots for the bottom bolts of that stuck out from the underside of the loveseat bases. Now it would nest in perfectly, and not be riding on the exposed nuts and bolts on the frame like it was before.

We painted the outer edge of it black, that's the only spot where you're going to see it if you look down from underneath while it's attached back in the slide. Notice how we left the original seat belt fastening features in the back 12 inches or so of the slide.

Steve fastened the plywood board down in multiple areas using 2 dozen self tapper screws that attach directly into the frame of the slide, not just into the previous wood, which was very thin. When he was done, he said "That ain't going nowhere..."

Now that the plywood was secure, he was able to bring back in each of the seat bases to install them into the slide. He had them in the garage so he could transfer accurate measurements onto the plywood. Look at that guy, how happy he is to be carrying his seat back into the motorhome. They easily fit through the door, and I grabbed them on the inside. It's quite easy to install one of these loveseats through the narrow door of an RV.

First thing was to hook back up the electrical connections. These are wires that go up to the speakers and the light in the slide overhead in the cabinet. Once that wire connector was safely into place he was able to start fastening down the base frame of his side of the loveseat.

We pulled the seat belts forward up through the back access areas of the seat.

Once the upper back portions are snapped into place, the buckled seat belt can be tucked down in between the cushions. It's easier to leave it buckled so it's easier to access it in the event of a passenger needing to sit there.

In the photo below, you can see the black platform of the plywood extending out beyond the box of the slide itself. This has now enabled us to scoot the entire love seat forward and fasten it down securely to the board. Now the recliners will work better!

Steve went around the entire base frame with many heavy duty screws to attach it to the plywood board. The little recessed holes he drilled were perfectly matched up to the nuts and bolts on the bottoms of the frames. 

We decided that even with the screws in the base on each side, we would also add eight of these pipe brackets (4 for each chair). They fit perfectly over the front and the rear support bars of the seat bases. It can't hurt to have extra insurance, and we already had them on hand in the garage.

He decided to try his out... Before he even got my side done. Look at that--- Now he can recline all the way and not hit the wall!!!

Now that his half of the seats were fastened down, it was time for him to bring in mine.

It was a little snug to get back there and attach these things. But Steve was able to squeeze his legs down in between and try to kneel on the board to get to where he needed to get. Pretty soon, he had everything attached!

It took some contortionist positions to get down underneath to fasten it with the leg rests raised out of the way.

Finally it was time to snap on the last backrest on my side. They just snap down into place on two levers. Click click and it was done.  See how we have the seat belts pulled forward and latched together? Now we will tuck that down in between the cushions and save it for the event if we ever have a passenger along.

As Steve would say "So there you have it"... It's all done! Yayyyyyyyy

Of course, we had to try them out. It is really nice to have them extend all of the way back and not hit the wall partway. This is how we should have installed them in the first place 2 years ago.

DID YOU KNOW 

 THAT LOVE SEATS 

ARE FOR LOVERS?

And now for a little motorhome modification that we had done. This is a beautiful acacia wood tray from Aldi. But you could really use any nice tray that you would find to do this...

We had removed the original large rectangular table that came with our motorhome. In it's place we decided to do a smaller circular cocktail tray when seated at the loveseat. It is much easier to get in and out of the chair with the circle table in place then the original rectangular one.

We bought an extra table bracket from The Boat Seat Store: 

https://www.boatseatstore.com/products/sure-fit-pontoon-table-mount?_pos=1&_sid=fbc4f3b61&_ss=r

The reason why it is offset to one side is so the table can be rotated to either be closer in, or further away from our seats.

We also needed a little taller post than the original one that came in our motorhome. The boat seat store also carried those called a Sure Fit pontoon boat post. We ordered it in the 27-in length: 

https://www.boatseatstore.com/products/sure-fit-27-pontoon-table-leg?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=46b9b49f2&pr_rec_pid=6535525498953&pr_ref_pid=6535525531721&pr_seq=uniform

There is a secondary floor mounting location in our motorhome, up near the two cockpit seats. They can swivel around and become part of the living room area as well. So the cocktail table can go over there too.

The table can be swiveled closer or further away, and works all quite well if we're playing cards or Yahtzee or just setting a big bowl of popcorn on while we watch a movie.

The best part is, that because it's positioned exactly in the middle. It can stay situated between our two leg rests when they are raised.  Perfect!

Here is the YouTube that goes along with today's blog post: 

So that was our motorhome modification / repair for the day. We only have a couple more to do before we post about our upcoming camping trip. I might put those out of order and work on our camping trip on the next blog post. 

We will see...