Oops! Where did December go?

Jeffrey gently reminded me this morning that I haven't updated this blog since November.  What?  Where did December go?  It blew by so fast that I lost track of time and suddenly it is 2015!

We started December with our annual visit to Lazydays -- our preferred service facility to get non-chassis items fixed or serviced.  Like a house, there always seems to be a (hopefully short) list of "fix it" items. For us this time, it was just replacing a dripping vacuum valve under a sink and swapping out a seal in a roof A/C unit.  We also had them do some general maintenance items that we don't like to do ourselves -- replacing sealant along the roof and window edges in a few places plus a general "jack & slide" service.  In hindsight, this last item resulted in slide seal lubricant getting all over our newly waxed areas, so I have already decided I will do this part myself next time and hopefully be a little more careful about where it goes!

While at Lazydays, we got to catch up with another full-time RV couple we met there 2 years ago, the Zingers!  We always enjoy each other's company and had several overlapping service days to visit and share this past year's adventures. We also got to connect with my uncle/aunt/cousin families in St. Petersburg, one of Jeffrey's cousins from Valrico, plus do quick visits to Costco and Trader Joes before settling in an hour northeast at Lake Louisa State Park for 10 days.

This State Park is in Clermont and wonderfully secluded -- a perfect rest stop before the holiday activities kicked in.  We even pulled out the bikes and gas grill from the "basement" and gave them both some exercise. We also visited with more of Jeffrey's extended family in the Orlando area and even saw a cousin's 12 year-old daughter perform in a team "cheer" competition.  All I can say is WOW -- just amazing to see these talented kids tumble, flip, and toss each other around at lightening speed.  Her team even won first place!

Us with Jeffrey's "first cousin once removed", Jessica

Our next stop was across the state in Hobe Sound -- Jonathan Dickinson State Park.  This continues to be one of our favorite destinations, not only because it is located near more of my family, but also because it is lovely and well configured for a rig like ours (fewer trees, full hookups and big RV pads).  Within a day of plugging in, we jumped on a plane to Raleigh for a 60th wedding anniversary celebration for Jeffrey's parents. Minus some difficulty with flights back to Florida, it was really wonderful spending the Christmas holiday with such a big chunk of family.

Jeffrey's parents, Jack and Evelyn Martin

Us with nephews Karl & Isaac plus niece Anna

Once we got back to Florida, we enjoyed visits with my family there with the few days we had left before once again having to leave to traverse over to Clermont. While we love the state parks, we don't like that there is a 14-day limit on them.  That said, the price and convenience are very nice indeed!  Too bad we aren't Florida residents anymore or it would be cheaper.

As I write this, we have less than a week left before we take Max to a storage unit near Tampa where he will sleep while we fly to spend 2 weeks in Hawaii with my Dad and Sheila.  We are hoping to see whales there as this is the time they visit the islands.

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Winter is threatening central Texas -- time to leave!

We have wrapped up our annual visit to Texas and our trek across the gulf states to Florida so we can celebrate Thanksgiving with Jeffrey's parents. This is one of the few journeys that we make quickly -- driving every day and staying in a different park every night.  Our 3-year chassis warranty is due to expire soon, so we tempted fate by trying to also squeeze in Max's annual service along the way (normal oil changes, etc) at a place that was recommended in Louisiana.  The bad news is they found a small issue and didn't have the part they needed to fix it.  The good news is the warranty covered it.  The bad news is that we were delayed an extra day waiting for the part. The good news is that we got some experience camping with no hookups ("boondocking") in their parking lot.  Hey, even WE can make lemonade out of lemons!

Anyhow, this extra adventure made for 2 very long driving days to make up the time so we could still get to Florida on schedule. The sore butts didn't stop us from enjoying time with one of Jeffrey's 4 older brothers/sister-in-law (John & Susan) in Pensacola plus a fun lunch connecting with 2 other full-time RV couples we met last January. The conversation is what you'd imagine -- cool places and parks visited, issues with the rigs, lifestyle "lessons learned", plus plans to try to intersect again soon. It was hard to part ways again :-(

Our next stop was a week in Gainesville visiting Jeffrey's parents for Thanksgiving (and enjoying a few "live" Gator sporting events on campus), and we have now settled in for a week at Lazydays in Tampa.  Today Max is getting a much-needed wash and hand wax plus having his aluminum wheels polished.  For a rig that is 41 feet long and almost 13 feet tall, these are efforts that we are more than happy to pay somebody else to do!  Tomorrow we report for our "service" appointment and, thankfully, the "fix it" list is very short this year -- just a few minor items that we don't want to tackle ourselves. We have RV friends who are also here having some items worked on, so this gives us a chance to visit with them too.

Since I don't have any RV travel pictures to post yet, below are some good shots taken of us during a cruise we took in October.  We left Max in Texas and flew out to California for a cruise that visited Los Angeles, San Diego, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, plus a few other lovely quaint Mexican towns.

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Kicking off the "Fall Plan"

I'd love to say things have slowed down a bit now that we are back near Austin TX for the fall, but so far that isn't true!  We arrived back with just a few days to rest and pack up before leaving Max and flying to Washington State to visit my parents. We have learned that August in Texas is a great time to go somewhere cooler and they have graciously given us a perfect destination.  That said, the NW was having its own version of a heat wave, but to us "high 80s" is not a big deal when it is over 100 at home!

We spent most of our visit enjoying their WorldMark location near Bend, Oregon with my parents and aunt Pat.  Her middle name is Maren, so we are kindred spirits :-) Bend was a real surprise as it was a combination of lush and desert conditions, with dormant volcanic activity very close by.  One of our favorite day trips was to Crater Lake National Park.  I used my new cell phone camera to get some fantastic pictures of this place.

Closer to Bend, we checked out a candy factory (and boy were the samples delicious!), the quaint downtown area, the Old Mills district, and nearby High Desert Museum.  We also got out to the Observatory in Sunriver and, thanks to a moonless evening, got some great views of the night sky through an impressive set of telescopes.

Barn Owl at High Desert Museum

His otter neighbor

On the drive back to my parent's home in Burlington, WA, we passed a privately-built version of Stonehenge in Maryhill, Oregon. Needless to say, it is a bit more complete than the real one.  The owner had dedicated it to the area's war veterans and it was quite impressive.

As we were heading back to the airport to fly home, we took an amazing tour of the Chihuly museum near the Seattle space needle. Truly amazing what that man does with glass.  I felt like every picture I took was good enough to be a postcard.

Now that we are back at our RV park "home" in Georgetown TX for the fall, life will be our fall season routine of Gator football game parties, annual visits to our doctors, trying to connect with all of our local friends, weekly "attempts" at playing golf, and getting our fill of our favorite local Tex-Mex and BBQ. This is all very exciting for us, but probably a bit dull for our blog readers, so unless something unexpected happens, we'll give you all a break for a few months! Enjoy the fall!

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The Mad Dash South

Our departure from Forest City, IA, was delayed a few days while we waited to receive a package that got mis-routed. This was actually good news as we got to have a few relaxing days hanging out with some wonderful RV friends PLUS we got to witness RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa).  This week-long event stopped over in Forest City for a night and it was amazing to see these 10,000 riders -- along with the party and tent city that accompanied them.

We finally trailed the riders out of town and made our way to Springfield, IL -- our first stop on the "homeward bound" path back to Georgetown TX.  We had decided to pick a path back that would swing us by a number of Presidential Museums and Lincoln's was only a short swing east.  Unlike the other Presidential museums we'd seen, this one was not sponsored/advertised on the U.S. government website. Only later did we realize that there are others like this and we had missed a few along our travels already. Sigh.  Anyhow, the state of Illinois has done a fantastic job with preserving "all things Lincoln" in the area and, like the other Presidential Museums we've seen, it was a real treat.

Jeffrey posing with the Lincoln family

Our next target was the Harry S. Truman museum in Kansas City, Missouri, but there was no reason to skip over St. Louis along the way.  Though we only stopped for a day, we were able to venture atop the Gateway Arch as well as tour the Anheuser-Busch Brewery.  While the enormous beer production operation is impressive, the Clydesdale horses were even more so.  There were only a few on site, but they were equally marvelous and GIGANTIC.

A regal Clydesdale at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery

Atop the St. Louis Gateway Arch

No surprise that the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum near Kansas City, Missouri, was as fascinating as the others.  With 3 full days in town, we thought we'd have plenty of time to see everything else in the area, including the daughter of dear neighbors we knew in Texas, but how wrong we were.  It took us more than a day just to see the WWI Museum and we barely squeezed in the King Tut exhibit at Union Station and a quick pass through the Money Museum at the Federal Reserve. Whew! We will just have to come back here (we find ourselves saying that about almost every city we visit!)

Tower at the WWI Museum

Reproduction at the King Tut exhibit

With temperatures rising as we drove further south, our next stop in Fayetteville, Arkansas, became another "darn we need more time" stopover.  In addition to visiting with a High School friend of Jeffrey's, we swung through the Wal-mart Museum (especially enjoying the "Walton 5 and 10" shop with 1970's ice cream prices), a wonderful walk through the University of Arkansas (much hillier than we expected), and the Crystal Bridges Museum (an impressive collection of art and architecture from many eras).  We regret we didn't have time to enjoy walking the 3 miles of lovely trails around it.  Our final touristy stop was the Clinton Presidential Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas. Bonus in that there was a special Chihuly glass exhibit there too.

At this point we needed to get serious about getting back into Texas, which coincidentally lines up with the "life in an RV" segment of this blog post. No sooner had we left an overnight stop in Mt. Pleasant that we experienced a "high coolant temp" fault on Max.  Funny enough, this exact same thing happened when we arrived in Texas a year ago.  Restarting the engine after a few minutes was enough to kick the big cooling fan in the radiator to start turning again.

With our "chassis" still under warranty for a few more months, we decided that a 2nd occurrence of this problem needed a formal check-up, so we diverted to a Freightliner service center in Tyler.  Out came the computer and they confirmed something went briefly wrong, but they didn't have the parts to replace a "clutch fan assembly".  A stop at the Waco facility as we continued south the next day also came up dry on the parts, so we continued on to our fall season home in Georgetown TX -- watching the engine temp like a hawk and having nothing further go wrong. Once we get settled in, we'll do a day trip up to Temple and get Freightliner to address this so we don't have to worry again.

We have already been welcomed by RV neighbors on both sides of us so it looks like we'll make some new friends this year :-)  That said, we have already connected with some of our Austin-area friends and it is so great to catch up with everyone!

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Corn sure grows fast up here!

We have spent most of this last month in Iowa and have actually observed the corn fields growing at an impressive rate.  We start this blog issue in Forest City where we had a service appointment for Max at the Winnebago factory. While we enjoyed their nice customer lounge, good wifi, and exploring the quaint town nearby, Max visited his birthplace and got a small collection of issues addressed.

From there we drove to Moscow, Iowa to visit the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum and nearby HWH Corporation.  We have discovered that these museums are really gems, so we are on a mission to eventually see them all. HWH is the manufacturer of Max's stabilizing/leveling jacks, so this was a great opportunity to have the system checked out and cleaned up by the experts.

Next on the path was a long July 4th weekend in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to attend the AVP (Association of Volleyball Professionsals) Tournament.  As most of you can guess, Jeffrey was over the moon at this chance to see such great sand volleyball players competing -- and one if his favorites, Kerri Walsh Jennings, won the women's title with her partner.  We also got a chance to visit the Miller Brewing factory and stroll along the riverwalk area where we got a picture with the famous "bronze Fonz" statue!

Maren and Jeffrey with the Bronze Fonz

Sign at the Miller Brewing Company

AVP Volleyball - Men

AVP Volleyball - Women

We then made our way back west to Forest City to attend the Winnebago club's annual Grand National Rally.  It included days of educational seminars, a nice collection of product/service vendors, and  many opportunities for socializing with fellow RVers. We even ran into RV friends we had met during our winter stay in Florida.  What a small world! The theme of the rally was "Out of this World", so there was a hysterical collection of alien decorations everywhere and we even got a concert from Jefferson Starship on the final night.  To our great delight, a "polar vortex" weather event reached us during our stay at the rally and our temperatures were a wonderful -- low/mid 70s during the day and low 50s at night.

Aerial view of the Grand National Rally with us on the left

Maren with friends Ken and Wendy at the concert

Jefferson Starship

This was also a second chance to get any final service items addressed, so we added awnings to our biggest side windows (which will be a huge help when we hit the heat in Texas) and had a water leak from 2 of our roof A/C units re-visited.  This leak only occurred in heavy heavy rain so it was difficult to reproduce on demand -- but luckily we had several big rains this month so we knew it wasn't fixed entirely yet.  It turned out to be a very rare internal seal failure that the Winnebago service team had never seen on any coach before, but with our tenaciousness and the A/C manufacturers help, they triumphed in the end and we are truly fixed now. There is definitely an advantage to our "engineering backgrounds" in a situation like this as we are getting more and more proficient at helping to research and diagnose issues.  Unfortunately we don't think the service teams truly appreciate this and no doubt consider us technical "pests" -- makes the victory all the sweeter that we were right!

We will now begin a meandering trek southbound to Austin, Texas. Low and behold -- we can catch 4 more presidential museums before we even hit the Texas state line!

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Michigan U.P. Part 2 and Minnesota

Though we continued to fight a bumper crop of mosquitos in Michigan's "Upper Peninsula", we didn't let them stop us from seeing the sights (though we DID wear lots of bug repellant, long sleeves/slacks, and kept moving!).

We continued our trek across the shore of Lake Superior and stopped about halfway in a town called Munising.  This is the perfect place to catch a boat tour to see the amazing Pictured Rocks that line the coast in those parts. It is hard to catch the beauty of this area with a camera, but hopefully the photos below will do it some justice. Apparently we just missed (by less than a week) seeing ice still floating on the lake but we could still see some hiding in the rocks on the shore.

Max in his Munising campsite on the shore of Lake Superior

The amazing colors of the Pictured Rocks

More color and a waterfall too!

Pictured Rocks as seen from the shore

A little over-exposed, but still a cute dual-selfie

We also explored nearby Marquette by car, which turned out to be the largest town in the U.P. While we enjoyed a local park and nice downtown area, we were especially impressed with the Wells Fargo bank building.  We stopped in to get a little cash and found ourselves the only customers, but the structure was impressive with its majestic ancient vault, soaring elaborate ceiling, and even two revolving doors.

From there we drove the house to Ontonagon on the west U.P. coast.  From here we could explore the Keewanaw Peninsula, drive all the way to the end into Copper Harbor, tour a former copper mine, and see the scenic views in Porcupine State Park.  While here we celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary at a very understated combo restaurant + bowling alley.  The food was surprising good, the wine was nicely inexpensive, and you ate your meal watching the big picture windows hoping to see bears come up and feed on scraps they put outside for them.  Unfortunately, even though we came two separate nights for dinner, we struck out seeing any bears.

Bundled up in the Quincy Copper Mine

Old copper car

Jeffrey getting blown away in Porcupine State Park

Maren in Porcupine State Park

Heavy rain causing waterfalls everywhere

We cut our Ontonagon visit a day short to flee some approaching storms that sported predictions of 55+ mph winds -- no thanks! We managed to escape to a campground in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, which was packed to the gills with families since it was Father's Day weekend. Thankfully we only got a bunch of rain, but we saw our first wild turkeys on the drive down!

This schedule change enabled us to arrive in Rochester, Minnesota a day early -- letting us enjoy a full 5 days of visiting and sightseeing with Jeffrey's aunts Louise and Margaret and uncle Merlyn along with their son Mike. Along with Jeffrey's mom, Evelyn, the girls grew up in nearby Burr Oak and Decorah, so it was nice to tour those areas and see plus hear the family history.

Visiting with Jeffrey's Aunt Louise, cousin Mike, Uncle Merlyn and Aunt Margaret near  Rochester

As I write this, we are sitting in Forest City, Iowa awaiting a service appointment for Max at the Winnebago factory. Life in a motorhome is just like living in a "sticks and bricks" house... stuff breaks and you need to have repairs made every once in a while -- though maybe a little more often when your house drives down the road hitting bumps along the way :-) We are pretty handy (and getting handier!) and fix what we can ourselves, but we almost always have a list of "fixes for professionals to do" or "upgrades that would be nice" or "cool stuff to buy". Fortunately we've never had anything go wrong that stranded us or prevented us from traveling!  Here is an impressive rock chip we got in Max's windshield on the way to Ontonagon (2nd chip in 7 months).  It is about 1 inch long and we had it repaired immediately so it won't crack any more.  Our insurance company sent a mobile repair guy out to us and you can't even see it now!

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Amazing Michigan

After leaving the Detroit area, we crossed over to the SW side of the state and plugged Max in at a KOA in Allendale.  This turned out to be a great central location as it let us easily explore Grand Rapids, Grand Haven, South Haven, and all parts in between. Lucky for us, with the exception of some fog that rolled in off of Lake Michigan in Grand Haven, the weather was exceptional for our entire visit (and the fog was actually kind of cool anyway -- one minute we could see the lighthouse perfectly and the next minute it was completely hidden).  Grand Haven also had a lovely walk-able downtown area that we roamed around. 

Lighthouse in Grand Haven 

Just a little drive (by car) further south along the shoreline was South Haven. Our main target there was a Maritime Museum that had a special exhibit of shipwrecks and the disappearance of NWA flight 2501 in 1950 over Lake Michigan. For being one of the smallest museums we have ever been in, we spent a lot of time there because the displays and write-ups were so fascinating (though often sad and sometimes morbid). We also enjoyed seeing yet another local lighthouse and South Haven's equally lovely downtown area. No surprise that none of the lighthouses we are seeing have a human "keeper" anymore.

Next up was a day in Grand Rapids -- in fact, we actually had to come back a 2nd day in order to see everything on the list.  The highlight was the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum and boy was it well done! Though we were young, Jeffrey and I both remember that time in history and it was so interesting to hear the more personal details about this president, the bizarre circumstances of how he became our un-elected leader, and the very difficult job he was faced with.  We also spent a bit of time at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.  Lesson learned -- museums are best seen mid to late afternoon if you want a quiet experience. The mornings and early afternoons are typically swarming with school and camp groups and rarely is the concept of "inside voices" applied by kids. 

At this point we packed up Max and relocated our home base to the Traverse City area (the "pinky" area of the state if you imagine it as a hand). This area is renown for its cherry and wine industries.  We did a tasting at Chateau Chatal on the Mission Peninsula, but there were scores of other vineyards too. It is also near Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park and it is somewhat mind boggling to see such gigantic sand dunes away from an ocean or desert -- at several points they encroach several miles inland and are almost impossible to climb up. And guess what? We saw more lighthouses up here.  They literally dot the coast all over the lake borders -- turns out Michigan has a longer coastline than any other state except Alaska.

Maren at the Sleeping Bear Dunes (Jeffrey taking picture form a higher spot)

Our next "house" relocation took us to Brimley in the "U.P" (Upper Peninsula).  To Jeffrey's delight, this took us over the 45th parallel (halfway to the North Pole) and we thankfully had an uneventful crossing of the 5-mile long suspension Mackinac Bridge.  We've been told that if the winds are too high, a vehicle like ours can't safely go over.While somewhat remote, Brimley was a good spot to park Max while we made day trips in the car to Tahquamenon Falls, the Michigan Shipwreck Museum, Sault St. Marie (where the Soo Locks are), and Mackinac Island.  This island was especially interesting because it was all bicycles and horse-drawn carriages. You take a ferry over, enjoy a lovely carriage ride tour, and even see historic Fort Mackinac. If you like fudge, this is the place to go -- there are fudge shops everywhere you look and competition is fierce!

A boat entering one of the Soo Locks

"Upper" Tahquamenon Falls

Lovely naturally formed arch on Mackinac Island (various shade depths of lake water seen through it)

One of our horse-drawn carriages on Mackinac Island

The only negative we have experienced so far in the U.P. is a horrible mosquito infestation. Apparently some disease is harming the local bat population (their biggest predator) and the late spring and high lake levels are making them a bumper crop this year.  Somehow we managed to suck in a bunch of these blood suckers into the motorhome and spent days swatting at them -- I'm talking 100 at least!  We haven't figured out yet how they got in as it was too many to sneak in the door.

On a happy note, we celebrated our 2-year anniversary of living full time in a motorhome and can't really believe it has been that long.  It is definitely true that time flies when you are having fun!

Our first "couple selfie" celebrating the anniversary

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