After our fast trip from Colorado to Iowa, then our busy week in Forest City getting our motorhome worked on, and then our fast trip to northern Michigan, we needed some time to catch up, both on our sleep, and our paperwork. Not to mention our laundry.

So yesterday morning we slept in, and then started whittling down our long “To Do” list. The first order of the day for Miss Terry was to begin reducing the pile of laundry that had accumulated. Since we hadn’t had full hookups since we left Colorado, it was threatening to spill out of the basket and take over the bedroom.

Terry hates laundromats, and is getting used to the washer/dryer combo in our Winnebago. She says it’s not as good as the separate Whirlpool washer and dryer units that we had in our MCI bus conversion, but it’s much better than the old Splendide we had in our first motorhome. An added plus for her while we’re visiting family here in Traverse City is that she doesn’t use our dryer, she hangs things out on the clothesline. Is there anything as crisp as freshly washed sheets that have dried outside in the sun?

I had a mountain of my own to deal with as I worked my way through an accumulation of e-mail. I have to say that I get pretty frustrated when I tell people that I’m in a poor internet service area, and not to send me any forwards or jokes, and they do so anyway. One fellow sent me 19 in one day, and 13 the next! When I wrote and asked him (again) not to do that, he just replied “If you don’t want them, don’t read them.” Here’s a better idea, fellow, I’ll just block all of your e-mail from now on!

Two weeks’ backlog of snail mail had arrived from our mail forwarding service, and we were also busy sorting that and logging in renewals, book orders, and rally registrations.  We also received back an order we sent out to J. Andrews of Mesa, Arizona, with a notation by the post office that it was undeliverable. If you’re reading this, please contact us with a current address, so we can get your items out to you.

One of the reasons we rushed here so fast is that we have a very dear friend who is fighting a tough battle with cancer, and things have been touch and go for a while now. When Miss Terry was going through that ordeal herself, our friend was a constant source of love and support, and we wanted to get here to spend as much time with her as possible and as her stamina allowed. So during the afternoon we paid a visit on her.

I also went to the Northwestern Michigan Fairgrounds to check out their campground and talk to the folks there about the possibility of  holding one of our Gypsy Gathering rallies there in the future.

They have 120 sites with 20/30/50 amp electric power, water bibs, and two dump stations. They told me that they can also put out portable power lines to provide electric to plenty more RVs, as needed. The buildings are a little small for our crowd, but it might be workable.

If you find yourself in Traverse City, this is the best bargain on camping anywhere in the area. Rates are just $20 a night, or $125/week. In this resort area, that’s a heck of a deal.

As these photos show, they can accommodate any size RV, and there is enough to see and do in this area to keep you busy all summer long. Check out their website for more information.  

In another of those small world syndrome things that happen so often, we discovered that the campground hosts, Henry and Kay Hauffe, just had their fifth wheel painted by our pal Michele Henry at Phoenix Commercial Paint in Elkhart, and that they know many of the same people that we do. The community of fulltime RVers may be spread out all across the land, but we are a close knit group.

It was my cousin Terry Cook’s birthday, so in the evening we took him and his wife Peggy out to dinner to celebrate. By the time we got back to the motorhome, we were tired and looking forward to climbing into bed again.

Thought For The Day – Keep your words both soft and tender, because tomorrow you may have to eat them.

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Yesterday we did another one of those long days on the road that I always tell everybody else not to do. I never take my own advice. We were up at 7 a.m. (I really need to break that nasty habit), and on the road by 8. We started our day in northern Wisconsin, and by the time I backed the Winnebago into my cousin Terry Cook’s driveway in Traverse City, Michigan that evening, we had rolled up 480 miles for the day.

We drove north out of Wausau, Wisconsin on U.S. Highway 51, hooked up with U.S. Highway 8, and followed it east across Wisconsin. This is hilly country, and while the road was a nice two lane most of the way, with a few passing zones on the steeper hills, in some places it was like riding a roller coaster.

It is amazing how lush the foliage is in this part of the country. Dense forests and thick underbrush lined both sides of the highway. We passed through a few small settlements, but there isn’t much in the way of city life way up there.

We crossed into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the charming little town of Norway, where we got onto U.S. Highway 2 and followed it to Escanaba, and then along the Lake Michigan shoreline for 145 miles. The water is incredibly blue here, and in some places the roadway is just feet from the shoreline.

There are plenty of marked pullouts where you can stop to admire the water and play in the sand.

In other places, people park on the shoulder of the highway to access the lake shore.

They call the hardy folks who live here Yoopers, for the initials of the Upper Peninsula, UP. It’s a beautiful place in the summertime, but in the winter, I want no part of it.

If you heard a high pitched wailing coming from the Midwest yesterday afternoon, don’t worry, Tiny Tim didn’t break a fingernail. That was me driving across the Mackinac Bridge.

I have a real phobia about driving over bridges, and in the last couple of years, I have been working very hard to conquer it. But as I wrote in yesterday’s blog, the very high, five mile long Mackinac Bridge that connects the Upper Peninsula with the rest of Michigan, scares the hell out of me. I’ve driven it a couple of times in the past, and found it absolutely terrifying. So ever since, when we have come this way, it was just easier to have Miss Terry drive while I sniveled, because I am not very good at multitasking.

But I believe we have to face our fears head on if we ever hope to overcome them. All the way to the bridge, I was debating with myself whether I was going to keep driving, or chicken out again. Terry is very understanding of my many shortcomings, and she let me know that she would be happy to drive if I wanted her to, or to talk me across the bridge if I needed that.

We rolled up to the toll booth, paid our $12.50 for the motorhome and van we tow behind us, and I was committed. Up, up, and away! The bridge is four lanes wide, the two outside lanes being paved, and the center lanes are paved part of the way, and then grated steel on the higher portions of the bridge. Trucks and RVs are supposed to stay in the outside lanes.

Did I mention that it is very high? Giant Great Lakes freighters look like tiny toys from the bridge. Not that I was looking down to see any!

Don’t I look like I’m having fun? If I seem taller in this picture, it is due to a phenomena known as the pucker factor. Cops, pilots and anybody who has ever been in combat are very familiar with the term.

It didn’t help that when we approached the very top of the bridge, we had to change lanes not once, but twice, for construction zones. I was having a hard enough time just following the truck ahead of me in a straight line, let alone changing lanes back and forth!

I’m not too proud to say that I did a lot of whimpering as we crossed the bridge, but Miss Terry kept calmly assuring me that it was okay, that I could do this, and that everything was fine. If it wasn’t for her, I may have just stopped right there in the middle of the roadway and ran back to the bedroom and covered up my head. But, like everything else we do in our life, we got through it together, and I made it to the other side. Thanks, baby, for your strength when I have none of my own.

Some people may think it’s pretty silly to be so afraid of a simple thing like driving over a bridge. But what can I say? I didn’t choose this dumb phobia, it chose me.

So I drove the damned bridge. And I’m in no hurry to go back and do it again. We were halfway to Traverse City before the above mentioned pucker factor eased up and I could sit all the way back down in my seat!

Thought For The Day – I plan on living forever. So far, so good.

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When they stopped working for the day on Tuesday, Chris, the tech assigned to our motorhome, told us that he had a couple of hours left on it, but he hoped to have us out by about 9 a.m. the next morning. So once again we rolled out of bed yesterday morning before the chickens, and at 7 sharp he came knocking on the door to pull the coach inside.

Well, we all know that nothing goes according to plan, and 9 came and went, as did 10. Finally, at 11:30 he came out to tell us that he had the new springs installed for our HWH leveling jacks, but there was still a very tiny leak in one spot in the bedroom slide that he was trying to resolve. No problem, we went into town and dropped off some things at the post office, then grabbed a quick lunch and headed back to the service facility.

More time came and went, and finally, a little before 1 p.m. Chris came out and took us back into the shop to show us where he was at. There is one spot on the bedroom slide that, when run through the high pressure water test bay that Winnebago uses, allows a drop or two of water to get inside. But if he just touched that spot on the gasket with his finger, it stopped. Since the amount of water pressure they use to test with is much more than any kind of a rainstorm outside of a hurricane, and it comes from several directions at once, I really don’t think it will be a problem, and I told Chris that.

He agreed, but Chris and Mike, the service advisor, wanted to be sure, so they called in their supervisor, who thought that as soon as the stiff new rubber gasket relaxes a bit, it will probably seal completely. They also made a notation on our records, so if it does ever becomes a problem, we’re covered under their parts and service warranty.

Terry and I were dreading the bill, because they worked on our rig for two half days, and two full days, at $100 an hour shop rate, plus parts. In all, we had new slide seals installed on both slide-outs, both slide-outs adjusted, the fiberglass roof inspected and resealed, our air compressor manifold adjusted, the small floor slide over the stepwell in front of the passenger seat fixed, the front door adjusted (it’s amazing how much you can mess up a door when you use it to break a burglar’s wrist!), the springs in all four of our jacks replaced, and several other adjustments to different things. They also tried to determine why our big power awning is so slow, and deduced that the motor is weak, but that part is obsolete, and no replacement motor is available.

To be honest, we expected to have to fork out somewhere between $4,000 and $4,500, based upon our experience with other RV repair shops. So we were delighted to be handed a bill for $3340. And that also included six nights of free camping at Camp Winnebago!

We are very pleased with Winnebago’s factory service. When you consider the fact that we showed up at the tail end of Grand National Rally week with no appointment, and had a long list of things that needed done, while they had all of those rigs in for service during and after rally, we felt that they did an excellent job of getting us in and taken care of.

And yes, it sounds like we have been spending a lot of money on the RV, but as I said before, a lot of that is because the original owner neglected maintenance so badly. If he would have been taking care of things as needed, a lot of this wouldn’t have been necessary. Like the old mechanic used to say, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.” Still, we bought the coach for something like $30,000 less than any comparable one on the market that we saw, and we still feel that we got a very good deal.

We pulled out of Forest City about 1:30 and drove north into Minnesota on Interstate 35, then hooked up with Interstate 90 and took it east into Wisconsin. We jumped around on a couple of doglegs and eventually got onto State Route 21 eastbound to Interstate 39. Once on I-39, we took it north to Wausau, where we dry camped for the night at a Gander Mountain store, having covered 320 miles.

Today we’ll head over to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and follow U.S. 2 along the Lake Michigan shoreline to the Mackinac Bridge. That is one structure that has really scared me in the past, so I’m not sure if I’ll be driving across, or hiding in the bedroom sniveling, while Miss Terry does the driving. Time will tell.

Thought For The Day – Blessed are the flexible for they will not be bent out of shape.

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Yesterday we drove a few miles to Britt, Iowa to check out the Hobo Museum, and instead found ourselves caught up in a wild crowd of bikers who had taken over this tiny farming community.

But don’t worry, these weren’t outlaw motorcycle gangs on a rampage, but rather bicyclists participating in the Des Moines Register newspaper’s annual bicycling event, the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI, for short.

Each year thousands of bicycle enthusiasts participate in the seven day long event, which takes a different route across the state each time.  This year the ride began in Sioux City and will end in Dubuque. Now in its 38th year, RAGBRAI is the oldest, largest and longest bicycle touring event in the world. The route follows the back roads all of the way, and stops for the night at selected small towns along the way.

RAGBRAI is a bicycle ride, not a race, and the route is laid out with an average of 68 miles per day. RAGBRAI is limited to 8,500 week-long riders and 1,500 day riders, who participate in a lottery to be included. But the ride has few rules, and thousands more unofficial riders, who call themselves “pirates,” also participate. Some ride the entire route, and many more ride just short sections. Riders range in age from 10 years to over 80 years old,

This year, the number of riders we heard about in Britt ranged from 15,000 to 17,000. and that doesn’t include the thousands of support personnel who travel the route in cars, pickups, vans, converted school buses, and RVs, carrying tents, bicycle parts, supplies, clothing, and food.

One might think that Iowa’s small towns would would cringe at the thought of hordes of riders and support teams descending on them, but quite the contrary, towns bid for the opportunity to be included in the route. These riders bring a lot of money to town. In addition to filling local motels and restaurants, every night is  a party. We were told that during their stay in one town this week, they spent over $50,000 for beer alone! In one town! I don’t know how accurate that figure is, but from what we saw, this is definitely a group that rides hard and parties harder, and some folks looked like they were sweating more than water and salt as they passed by us!

In addition to the riders and their support teams, the sidewalks were filled and the streets lined with vendors selling everything from cookies to t-shirts, and people who just came to see all of the activity and watch the parade of riders go by.

One lady even brought her goat to town for all of the festivities. After all, it is Iowa!

We watched the riders for a while, visited the Hobo Museum, where Miss Terry took my picture with a gentleman named Todd “Ad Man” Walters, who was crowned King of the Hoboes at Britt’s annual National Hobo Convention in 2005. I’ll have a feature story on the Hobo Museum in the next issue of he Gypsy Journal.

Back at Forest City, we had hoped that the work on our motorhome would be finished yesterday, but they still have a couple of hours left before everything is done. Hopefully, we’ll be on the road by noon today.

We’re looking forward to getting up to Traverse City and settling in for a few days, while we get Miss Terry’s annual medical checkup out of the way, and visit my cousin Terry Cook and his family, and our friends there.

And after days of getting up so early, I plan to sleep very late, then open my eyes, take a look at the world, and then roll over and go back to sleep again!

Thought For The Day – An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

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Yesterday was a horrible day for me, because I had to get up at 5 a.m. so we could be dressed, and have the motorhome ready to roll when the factory techs came to get it a 6 a.m. Anybody who knows me knows that I hate getting up early in the morning.

I do most of my writing at night, and don’t post the blog until midnight. With the terrible internet connection we have on our Verizon air card here in Forest City, it took me well over an hour to get yesterday’s blog uploaded. (My desktop computer doesn’t have a WiFi card, and I have not loaded my blogging program on my laptop, so I couldn’t use Winnebago’s WiFi signal.) So by the time I got my shower and got into bed, I managed about four hours sleep.

Now, I’d never be so bold as to tell anybody how to run their business, but I’m telling you something, the folks here at Winnebago are missing the boat on an opportunity to double or triple the revenue from their service department. All they have to do is rent cots or hammocks to those of us who have to be up so early to have our RVs worked on, and I’m convinced their bottom line would skyrocket.

I tried to nap in the front seat of our van, since the back end is filled with bikes, kayaks, and a few thousand copies of the Gypsy Journal, but that just wasn’t happening. You’d be surprised how rude people are when you knock on the door of their RV and ask if you can take a nap on their couch! Is that any way to treat a perfect stranger? (Okay, an imperfect stranger, in my case!).  

We have toured several RV factories in our time, and since we now own a Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, and since we are here in Forest City, Iowa, the home of Winnebago Industries, it just seemed like a good thing to do yesterday while our motorhome was in the shop.

First we looked at a small display on company history in the Visitor Center, including this vintage motorhome. It was one of the first Winnebago motorhomes to come off the assembly line.

Then we boarded a bus for the factory tour. It was interesting to see how Winnebago makes Class A and C motorhomes, but, unfortunately, our tour guide wasn’t all that great. He was a nice guy, but he didn’t seem to grasp the concept of using a microphone and bullhorn. He kept letting the thing hang at his side instead of holding it up where the sound would project. If you were standing right next to him, you could hear what he was saying, but five feet away, you couldn’t.

Winnebago was the first RV company to use an assembly line, which revolutionized the industry. They have it down to a science, and while other RV manufacturers have closed their doors in the last couple of years, Winnebago keeps right on chugging along. They have cut their work force to deal with a lower volume of sales, but they are still producing top quality motorhomes every day.

It is interesting to stand on the viewing platforms, high above the factory floor, and watch their skilled employees bring a raw frame in and turn it into a home on wheels.

Today we have a bit of a reprieve, since they won’t be taking our coach into the shop until 7 a.m. Whatever will I do to fill that empty hour in my life? Hmmm… snoring sounds like a good idea!

We are having quite a bit of work done, all the result of a lack of maintenance on the part of the former owner of our motorhome. The list includes new seals on both slide rooms, re-caulking the fiberglass roof, and new springs on all four of our HWH leveling jacks. It’s not going to be cheap, but we got the motorhome at such a good price, that we feel we still got a great deal.

The techs working on our coach say they hope to have the job done today, and if they do, we’ll be hitting the road Wednesday morning. If not, we’ll just hang out here at Camp Winnebago another day.

Thought For The Day – There is a difference between being broke and being poor.

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