Coming Back for A Big Adventure

Sorry folks, we kinda took off most of the summer here. But we are back! 

I am sure some of the readership numbers have fallen off because we haven't been posting regularly. Hopefully this will increase now that people will see we are back and starting out on a brand new adventure. 

This week, we are gearing up and ready to leave the country. We are going to scrape together our pennies, forget about the high cost of diesel, and enjoy ourselves. After facing a few health issues, it's better to get out and do what we want to do before it's too late, right? 

We are heading up through the Upper Peninsula and Sault Ste Marie to cross into Canada. From there, we are going to work our way across to the Canadian Maritime Provinces!

We are thinking about being gone for about a month or two. Basically, return when it starts getting colder, maybe??

Our tentative route is going to be somewhat random. We only picked a few of these destination numbers to get mileage ideas and distances between different provinces.  Nothing is set in stone, and we haven't made any reservations for anything. Probably about 4,000 mi round trip.

Any suggestions on interesting things to see would be greatly appreciated.

I've been checking my lists, yes even twice, and we are just about fully packed. It doesn't take us very long, just that we like to pack along our favorite things that maybe we can't find along the way. Compared to planning for our trip to Alaska, at least this trip we know there are stores along the way and more access to interesting local foods. On our way to Alaska, stops for refueling were few far between.  We really had to plan ahead for fuel, groceries, and comfort items like fresh water or dumping our holding tanks.

One of the things that we will be doing this week before we leave is harvesting our five apple trees in the backyard. They are just hanging so heavily with fruit that we've had to prop up some of the branches with boards!

These four trees were given to us as a gift from Steve's father before he passed away. They have grown immensely fast over the last 5 years and are bearing tons of fruit. We are going to pick what we can and store them in dark cardboard boxes in a cool dry area of the garage. When we come home, we will process them into canned apple pie filling or frozen apple filling. Two trees are honeycrisp, and two are mutsu. The fifth one was a gift from our children when we first moved here and that is a Granny Smith.

I've been working on some quilts this summer, and I will be taking along my little Singer Featherweight machine and a quilt project to work on while we travel.  Steve just made me a cute little table top for sewing inside of the rig in a limited space. We will see what we have time for. It's a great way to pass time on a rainy day.

We've been spending time this summer with the grandkids. Our oldest grandson Jameson graduated from high school! I can't believe that little guy is that old already??? It seems like not too long ago I held him in my arms. 

The grandkids have been picking a lot of raspberries in their yard. They came over to work on jam at my house. They said it's much more fun doing jam here because "I have all the stuff"! 

Even 14 year old Clayton got into the hot water bath and timing of batches and helping out with our processing.

Chelsea is the Queen Jam Maker. I think we processed up about two and a half gallons of jam. She likes putting them in these little jars that are perfect for gift giving. Last year at school, she even gave jars to her teachers.

Claire is the little pest in the kitchen, but she does help with picking the berries. She's a little too young to be manning the splattering hot bubbling jam pots, but she did help with washing the jars and playing with the soap suds. 

We did some upgrades to some of our camping equipment this year. Since there have been so many fire bans on and prohibitions on transferring firewood due to diseases, it was time to pick up a propane fire pit. The pluses are that we don't stink like campfire smoke when we go to bed at night, and it's easier to turn off and cool down in a relatively short span of time. I know, it's not the same as a real fire. Many times when out in the desert or boondocking, firewood is not readily available. So having a propane fire pit kind of makes sense. It rides nicely up in the front tip of the cargo trailer, tucked away when it's not needed 

We did get away for a couple little camping trips. One of them was to check out some of the dispersed camping sites within an hour's drive of our home. This one happens to be a favorite. It's along McCaslin Brook and it is all by itself in a beautiful serene setting. Yes, the brook really babbles... 

We did enjoy the peaceful setting in the woods, and found it good to get away for 4 days of relaxing comfort, just to unwind.

We've been trying to catch up some things around the house. Some stuff got put aside last year while we spent the whole summer in Alaska. Then in the Fall we were busy with projects and replacing the roof and dealing with contractors. The year just really seemed to get away from us. But it's great when the grandkids come over and help us. Here Clayton is giving Grandpa a hand moving the fences into a wider circumference around the apple trees.  The deer are really hungrily going after them, and we have to keep them far enough away to not damage the branches or destroy the fruit.

The tomato growth this year was rather disappointing. I had bought indeterminate tomatoes, Early Girl and Better Boy. They are supposed to produce all summer right up to the end of the season.  As the tomatoes started growing they were smaller and more pointy, much more like a roma tomato. We only really got one batch of flowers and fruit. And now they aren't producing anything else for the rest of the season. Very disappointing. They are not the big beefy slicing tomatoes that we were waiting for. I think somebody changed the little tags around at the nursery racks and they were all mislabeled. Maybe it was somebody's idea of a joke? These are really growing like determinant varieties. One blooming, one batch, and then done. We ate some and only had enough to can up a few jars!

Our other big upgrade to the motorhome we just finished up. These were the two Trojan wet cell deep cycle batteries we had on board under the steps. They worked fine, but we would really like to consume a lot more power. Unless there was enough sunshine, solar just wasn't cutting it. We knew it was time for an upgrade...

We invested in a Vatrer lithium battery of 300 amp hours. That, in combination with our Bluetti ac200L power station, will now give us more than triple of the battery power that we had before. 

Our Bluetti power station rides in a side compartment of the motorhome. We have a DC to DC charger hooked to it from the engine's alternator system. It charges up while we drive and in turn it can also charge our new lithium battery under the steps.

The best part is, we snaked a 30 amp extension cord through the interior portion of the motorhome from the rear power bay up to the Bluetti. It plugs into the 30 amp outlet. This allows our motorhome to function the same as if we were plugged into an outside power post. We no longer need to use an inverter, and this is now clean pure sine power throughout the coach. (Our original inverter was only a thousand watts and modified sine wave).

This will be a big improvement to our power system, plus we have our additional solar panels or the option of running the onboard propane generator to recharge things as needed. 

Also, we did a couple other silly little upgrades too. The kitchen faucet was fine the way it was, but I really like the idea of having a pull-down sprayer and a pause button. It will help conserve water when we are boondocking.

There's a recent video of the swap over on our YouTube channel, the link is down below at the bottom of this blog post. We liked this faucet so much, we also changed over the one for in the bathroom with one similar of the same brand.

This summer was also a difficult one for our family members that were down in Menasha, Wisconsin where the tornadoes touched down. We helped where we could, and Steve lent our Bluetti, our solar panels, a generator and extension cords as well as refillable water containers and assisted with tree removal and debris. Our supplies helped keep his brother and sister-in-law functioning within their house. They now had their refrigerator running and they were able to have hot water which was a lot more than most people had. They had five holes in their roof and a lot of damage to the yard and surroundings. Others lost their entire homes. It was devastating and the area is just slowly gaining back a month later for some of the residents.

Others were not so lucky. Miraculously, there was not one single death or serious injury!

On a happier note, we spent quite a bit of time this summer transporting our granddaughter back and forth to her summer job. She worked 4 days a week from 10:00 a.m. till 3:00 p.m. She never missed a single day of work and was never late. We also spent a lot of time with her getting in her required driving practice hours behind the wheel. We had her drive us all over the place, even in busy areas of Green Bay and through roundabouts and to shopping centers and parking lots. Successfully, she passed her driver's test and now has her license! Congrats Chelsea!!!

We did manage one other getaway during the very hot and humid and horrible weather that we had this summer. We escaped up to the shores of Lake Superior. We were able to go to Ontonagon Township Park and secure a site for a week.  The sunsets were absolutely spectacular!

The first night we had to stay in one of the wooded campsites across the road. But by the next morning we were able to move up to site closer to the beach. We were right across from the beach access and it was absolutely beautiful. The breezes were calm, the temperatures were great, and we only had rain one day.

The waves lapping on the shore gave us visions of the seaside, and it was a good time to unwind and relax. 

The camping was a little close together, closer than we prefer. But to be right near the Lakeshore was worth it. This was our view right out of our campsite:

The sites were sandy, and we had to vacuum out a bunch of sand from the motorhome when we were done. But it felt like our own little beach house perched on the shore.

The other thing that happened this summer is that I was dancing and prancing my way out of a quilt shop, and I happened to suddenly step on uneven ground between the pavement and the gravel. My knee gave out underneath me and I could not walk! Steve had to help me off the ground and scooch up my butt back into the motorhome. He drove me straight to the emergency room. After x-rays and some pain pills, they sent me home to my own doctor. 

From there, seeing an orthoscopic surgeon, getting braced up and on crutches, and subsequent MRI showed that I totally tore free my meniscus! At this point I am slowly healing and off the crutches. We are going through therapy treatments and low impact exercises like walking in the swimming pool and slowly riding my bike. No high impact activity. I'm finally able to walk about half a mile. But at the store, I have been regalated to driving the hilarious motorized shopping cart!

Those things are not easy to drive, and they jerk and lurch and they do not ease on and off with a throttle. Now I see why people are so dangerously careening around the store in them things...

So that's about it to catch things up around here. It's been quite a summer. We are looking forward to wearing flannel shirts, wool socks, sipping spiced apple cider and checking out the colored leaves as they change in the Canadian Maritime Provinces.

Please join us? 

In the meantime, you can check out the last five or six videos on our YouTube channel of what we've been doing this summer: 

You Tube channel: 

RVing:What-A-View You Tube Channel