Wrapping up the trip

After we left Houghton in the UP of Michigan we were basically heading toward Elkhart to get RV work done and meet up with our son and daughter-in-law and her parents. But we needed a stopover and camped in St. Ignace at the north side of the Mackinaw Bridge.  Lot's of good seafood and the weather was great.

Next we did a long day's drive to Elkhart and camped near our dealer at Elkhart Campground.  We swapped our Morryde external steps with a new improved design free since ours original ones were showing material failure. Morryde is great to work with.

We spent the 4th with family and got the RV in for maintenance and then headed back to NC.

We did an overnight stop in Rio Grande, OH and stayed at Bob Evans Farm.  It was very quiet this time of year but they have a Farm Festival in the fall and have nearly 400 campers on the farm.

Next stop was the Charlotte Motor Speedway campground so we could visit with Martha's family. The first night there we had a major storm pass over us. It exposed some leaks we didn't now we had. I was lucky enough to find a mobile tech who came out on Saturday to put Dicor sealant a few places and I hope I'm good to go until I can negotiate Keystone to replace the roof.  It was not installed right originally in my opinion.

Monday we will head home, unload the RV, and park it for a few months.  I have a lot of cleaning and maintenance to do to the truck and RV and that will keep me busy for a while.

So this is the last post for this trip.

Quincy’s Copper Mine Tour

The day we did the copper mine tour it was cold, rainy and windy.  So the environment inside the mine was an improvement.  It wasn’t raining and windy in the mine, but it was cold.  This tour was better than I expected.  I think that has to do with the difference in this type of mining I had seen in the past.

First off, the mine has been closed for mining since 1947, so some of the surface buildings have been torn down before the Quincy Mine Hoist Association took over responsibility of maintain it and turned it into a museum and educational facility.  The Wiki on Quincy Mine gives you better details, but here’s what stood out for me.

The shaft to take workers into the mine and ore out is vertical at 54 degrees.  The men would sit on what looked like 10 sets of steep stairs, 3 men across and travel at 15 mph in the dark as far as 9000 feet down with the wall 1 foot in front of their face.  The ore would come out the same shaft at 30 mph. 

The steam hoist in another building several hundred feet away from the shaft house controlled the cable that pulled the man cars and ore cars. Prior to the underground tour we toured the hoist house.  It’s an impressive engineering structure for the early 20^th century.

To get tourist into the mine, they used a cogged railroad car to take you to an entry on level 7 that’s over the side of the mountain and was not originally an entrance, but a drain port for the water pumped out of the mine.  They widened it so they could drive tractors and other equipment into the mine long after the mine closed for business.  So, we road into the mine in a covered trailer pulled by a John Deere tractor.  We only went in a few thousand feet and it was only the 7^th level of almost 100 levels.  The tour guide showed us some of the tools used over the years of active mining and what it looked like with only a candle lit for the men to work in.  She also showed us what absolute darkness looked like when the candle went out.  That is scary.

On the ride into the mine we went by a classroom where the local college has mining engineering classes.  They also practice what they learn in this mine.

The UP

After we left North Dakota, we drove all day to Duluth, MN, but we camped just across the border in Superior, WI.  We had stayed in Minneapolis camping years ago and needed to get Wisconsin checked off the list.  By staying 2 nights we had a full day to explore  So we decided to got to downtown Duluth to checkout their waterfront.  That turned out to be a great idea.  There are a number of eating places, bars, and even a distillery. We chose to eat at a brew pub call Canal Park Brewing Company.  The beer was great and surprisingly the food was excellent as well.  We got a table by the window looking out over Lake Superior.  Really enjoyed a leisurely lunch and view of the folks walking the boardwalk all the waterfront.

After lunch we too enjoyed a stroll along the shore's edge.  Duluth did a smart thing with their walk. They have a wooden plank boardwalk for walkers and they have a paved path for bicycles and runners. Cuts down on the collisions.

On Saturday we drove to Houghton, MI to stay at a city park and campground.  The drive up was okay except for the late 30 minutes when we hit a storm the locals called the worse this year. Driving rain and a lot of it.  It wasn't blinding so I kept on moving but slowly.  The rain broke and it started to clear off as we pulled into the campground. The good news is there wasn't a bug anywhere on my RV. The heavy rains has power-washed them off. The City park and campground of Houghton is truly a great find.  All the sites are for self-contained RV's only.  No tents sites, laundry, or bathrooms.  Great for rigs like us.  All the sites are back in with covered picnic tables and benches at the rear of the site looking at the river.  In our case our site was actually on the river and since we have a rear picture window in the fifth wheel, it was perfect.


Houghton is one of those places we found by just looking at a map and checking TripAdvisor to see what was there.  Figured we were close and would never come here on purpose so see it while we were in the neighborhood.

Well, I would come back on purpose.  But only in the summer.  They get way too much snow in the winter.  There is a sign along the road showing how deep the snow was one year and it was taller than a 2 store house.  But in the summer it's warm, not humid and cool at night.  We've found the good pizza place, the local brew pub and made the loop around the northern part of the peninsula, even stopping in Gay, MI at The Gay Bar.  They have a lot of fun with their name, particularly with their tee shirts that are for sale.

We plan on a copper mine tour today before we leave tomorrow to head to Saint Ignace, MI.  It turns out that copper is what made this place.  In fact in the early 1900's so much money was made from copper that the rich mining executives wives had a big theater build so they could have some culture in the area.  They still get some big acts in the summer to perform in the theater.

I've put a few photos Flickr - Houghton and Flickr - Duluth.

Impressions from driving across Montana and North Dakota

Being from North Carolina and having never lived in the west makes us observe things that locals take for granted.  The same way we do back in NC.  So I thought I'd write about some of the things we saw that we perceived as odd.

First, thing we did after crossing the state line from Washington was to get off I-90 and head north to Columbia Falls, MT.  Since we didn't know when we'd find lunch we stopped at an old truck stop that was now only a cafe and surprising a casino.  At first I thought I might be on an Indian reservation, but I quickly found that anybody and everybody opens a casino in Montana.  It's always some sort of video game of chance like poker or slots. All across Montana we saw gas stations, convenient stores, restaurants, bars, and hotels with casinos.  I looked but didn't see a church with a casino.  I'm sure that will happen at some point.

There is terrain difference when you drive from one end of Montana to the other and then across North Dakota, but it's nothing like North Carolina.  In North Carolina, you can't drive 20 miles without going into a different town.  In Montana you can drive on a road for 60 miles and still not see a town and may have only passed 2-3 farms/ranches.

Since both Montana and North Dakota are farming states everyone drives a truck and most are dually's, every gas station has diesel and usually Diesel #1 and Diesel #2.  Sometimes they even offer Premium Diesel. That was good for us because I can always get fuel with or without being hitched to the RV.  A whole lot of the fuel stops were truck stops and had restaurants.  They usually service a great breakfast, but no grits.

The big part of the drive was along US-2. The picture at the top is from the start when we left the Glacier area along US-2 which goes from the Pacific to the Atlantic with a break at the upper peninsula of Michigan, but it picks up again in NY.  It is mostly a 2 lane road, but in most of Montana it doesn't need to be but 2.  We'd drive for hours and pass no cars and have none pass us.

One of our overnight stops was in Glasgow, MT.  It was larger than most we passed by, but small enough to have most all the business along US-2.  There were 3-4 gas stations with all of them being C-stores.  All were casinos.  There were a few full service restaurants and all had a casino room. There was a bar/casino that said food on the sign, but that's all it said about being a restaurant .  We checked Yelp and found Nickel Bill's Casino was one of the best breakfast and lunch places in the town.  We went and tried the Chicken Fried Steak breakfast and it was outstanding.  Even the hotel and RV park had a casino.

Speaking of Hotel/RV parks, we found that to be a widely available choice. It's nice to have to combo.  If the hotel is a good one, then the RV park will be as well.  The hotel provides the lounge/restaurant, pool, and laundry for the RV park.

You see some real characters along the way.  In Glasgow we wanted a hamburger and found Flips, a well rated hamburger, hot dog, fries and shake place.  When we walked in the counter girl had turquoise and purple hair, but was good at taking orders and delivering food.  At one of the booths were three cowboys who obviously belonged to the farm truck pulling the horse trailer out in the parking lot. When they got up to leave you could see and hear their spurs. Of course they had the cowboy hat, jeans, and western shirt. They all were a little dirty from their work. The scene called for the decor we saw in Tombstone and not the look of a plastic modern burger joint.

Bugs - I didn't notice many and none bothered me.  That must have been because they all run headlong into the front of the truck and RV.  I can have both vehicles perfectly clean but after 8 hours of driving they are covered.  It's almost hard to tell the color of the front of the RV there are so many of them.  I'll not complain about the few bugs we get back east.  The ones back home must be smarter. They miss the vehicles but annoy and bite people.

Bicyclist out here are a different breed.  There are large groups of them loaded with backpacks, pulling trailers with their camping gear and clothes and are supposed to be having fun. They are usually struggling with their heads down so they miss the scenery.  The roads we've encountered them on are 70 mph 2 lane roads with wide shoulders.  When we or 18-wheelers passed them you'd see them shake and wobble.  Not sure how much fun that is, but there aren't many roads out here that aren't 70 mph.

When you hit North Dakota, the change is immediate.  No casinos and among the fields and grazing lands are oil wells and the associated equipment.  The oil work is down due to the world oil price.  So a lot of the businesses have hundreds of pieces of oil field tools just setting there waiting for the next boom.  It's also interesting to see how the industry ramped up and how it temporarily shutdown. There are special high density trailers communities built especially for oil workers.  The trailers don't resemble RVs or mobile homes.  They are closer to module housings. I saw dozens of these communities completely empty of people. Some even had for sales signs for the whole community. Each one of the communities held hundreds of workers when full.

Glacier National Park

We went into Glacier National Park several times during the week we were camped in Columbia Fall, MT.  The first day was just to the Apgar Visitor Center area to try to figure out if we would be able to do the Going to the Sun Road tour in the Red Bus. It's called the Crown of the Continent Tour.  It came down to the fact that the tours would start on June 17th or when the road was opened by the park service.  Snow removal and guardrail replacement were what was keeping the road closed.  In fact we found out by driving the Going to the Sun road that it was closed at the Avalanche Creek area.

We did get some good pictures of the Lake McDonald Lodge and Lake McDonald and the creeks that fill the lake.  The good news is that the night after we made that trip, we saw that the park service had posted to their website that the road was going to be open on the 17th just in time for the first scheduled tour.  So we quickly got 2 tickets for Sunday, the 19th.  The weather was supposed to be good on Sunday and it turned out that it was.

Because we had some days with rain, even down in Columbia Falls, we found out we had a significant leak in the rear of the RV.  We got an mobile RV tech to reseal the roof seam and while it was drying we went to the east side of Glacier to see what we could see and check out the route as it was the likely path out of this area to our next destination.  When we got back we had a major rain storm and no leaks so that was great.

On Sunday, we got up early and dressed for multiple climates; low 60's at the RV and 35 degrees at the continental divide with 30 mph winds.

We met the Red bus at the Apgar Visitor Center.  The buses were made in the mid 1930's and were completely rebuilt to make the DOT happy about their safety in 1999.  Ford donated the rebuild after the old buses were donated to a non-profit organization to manage the buses.  It cost $7.5M to upgrade all 35 buses.  The were able to save the original carriage parts and figure out how to mount them on a Ford E-450 chassis, which is the chassis a lot of Class C RV are build on.  Ford even made them dual fuel; propane and gasoline.  Since these buses were made for 1930's sized people it was crowded to get 1 driver and 17 passengers into them.

I was more relaxed as a passenger than as a driver on other narrow mountain roads. Even though this road was better than the San Juan Skyway highway, I would not drive it.  The driver can't watch the scenery, so it was more enjoyable for me being a passenger this time.

We stopped periodically to stretch our legs and take pictures.  At the top we stopped at Logan's Pass and it's was covered with snow.  They had just finished plowing that parking lot on Thursday.  35 degrees and 30 mph wind as predicted. Luckily the canvas tops of the buses were still closed at this point.

We proceeded down the east side and out the East entrance of the park then drove 10 miles to the Many Glacier park entrance and stopped for lunch at the Many Glacier Lodge restaurant.  On the east side we saw more wildlife.  Saw 2 bears, and some mountain goats and sheep, bald eagle, and deer.

We went back to the east entrance and retraced our path back to the start.  We did open the canvas top about halfway back that really gave us a great view of the mountains as we drove down the west side.

We knew we were pushing the season for the tour, but a lot of the waterfalls we saw would not be here in mid summer.  I posted a lot of photos on Flickr.

RVing out west - observations

I've been busy with a lot of driving so not much time for posts.  When we left Walla Walla, WA, we luckily had arranged to meet my cousins David Paxton and Kathy Paxton-Schwartz and their spouses in Seattle.  With such a great distance between us all our lives, we don't get the opportunity very often to visit in person.  It was a great afternoon and evening at Kathy's house.

It was the difficulty in setting up our travel arrangement into Seattle that prompted this post.  Seattle has no RV parks, but the communities around Seattle have a few 10-20 miles outside of town.  Well most of these have been around for years and suffer from being designed for smaller RVs.  So getting my rig in was next to impossible.  Everywhere you called said you need to call 6 months ahead to assure a spot.  We didn't know 2 days ahead that we were going to Seattle.  We finally found a spot in Bellevue but for only one night.  So we had to drive in early, setup the RV, and head to my cousins.  

Since we had to leave Seattle the next morning, we didn't get to visit anything but family.

Big cities seem to have not planned well for RVers.  I'm told it's not as profitable to build an RV campground as an apartment or housing development. The ones that do remain can charge anything they want and not upgrade their facilities.

We drove a lot on Monday to get as close to Glacier National Park as we could.  Stopped at a road/lakeside campground that was nice but nothing special.  It was still $40 with all our discounts. It seems that most all the decent campgrounds are packed from June to September out west.  We spent the next morning trying to find a campground near Glacier.  Must have research 20 and eliminated those who could not offer 60' sites with room for slideouts. Then we called about 5 before we could find availability for 5-7 days.  The KOA was $99 a night with discounts, some were $65-75.  We finally found a newly rebuilt campground in Columbia Falls for $54/night if you stayed a week.

Not sure why everything is so full and expensive.  Probably it's the 100th anniversary of the National Park service, the increase in the popularity of RVing, and/or the cheap fuel.

It does mean we are going to have to do what we hate and that's plan ahead.  It's been nice up to now to just drive until you are tired and start using your phone to search for a campground.  You can no longer reroute your trip because you saw a roadsign about visiting the world's largest ball of twine. :-)

Also forget about RVing in State and National campgrounds.  We have not found one that you could put a 40' fifth wheel with pickup truck into.  In fact most we've researched limit you to a ~30' RV and a pickup.  Basically 40' combined vehicle limit.  The basic infrastructure of state and national parks has not kept up with the growth of RVs. No 50 amps, no sewer; great for tents and pop-ups, but not for big 5th wheels.

So if you are going to visit National Parks out west,  book as far out as you can.

  

Walla Walla Wines - best reds in the USA?

Didn't know much about Washington State wines, but we'd had a few good ones thanks to wines tastings at the club.  So after a lot of research we found that the Walla Walla Valley was the place to go to taste the most red wines without driving too much.  And we were right.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon and set up camp at Blue Valley RV park.  It was just on the other side of the big 4 lane highway from the downtown area.  There was even a nice walking path from the campground to downtown.  Of course we didn't use it since Martha's foot is acting up again.  Plus it's hard to carry cases of wine that far.

We did have time for 2 tastings at a couple of wineries.  We talked with the visitor center lady about her opinion on destination wineries around town.  Dozens of the wineries don't have tasting rooms except downtown.  That's good for hitting a lot of them, but we like tasting out at the winery surrounded by fields of grapes.  With over 100 wineries in the area there is a lot to taste.  The first winery we stopped at was Amavi on the south side of town about 2 miles from the Oregon border. Beautiful location on a hill overlooking some of their fields of grapes and around the corner from their sister winery.  Everything we tasted at Amavi was good and we bought a cab for supper.  On to the sister winery Pepper Bridge.  They also had great reds, but they started at $65 a bottle.  So we just paid for a $12 tasting and moved along.

Back at camp we met a RV neighbor lady, Karen, who was a full timer.  Her husband was in software and worked out of the RV and she worked part time at Tero Estates winery tasting room downtown. Since she worked on Saturdays, we put that on the list for Saturday's tastings.

On Friday, we started at the Walla Walla Community College which has a winemaking program. The students learn all aspects of the wine business and they even run the tasting room.  The college owns their own vineyards around town and in the higher altitudes surrounding the valley.  We likes all their wines some had won awards and got a 91 from Wine Spectator Magazine.  Some of the graduates had gone on to be well respected winemakers in the valley.

After a pizza for lunch we went back out to the south side and tried the wines a Saviah.  We talked them into opening a Cabernet Franc after we tasted their current choices and it was good enough for us to buy a couple of bottles.

All of the wineries are good about recommending other wineries to try in the area.  Saviah sent us to Windmill Winery just over the border in Oregon. It's still part of the Walla Walla AVA. Loved their Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc.

Back at the RV park we met the new folks next door who were from New Zealand.  Passed our newly found wine knowledge on to them.  First time we've met someone who lives a long way from the USA, but owns and stores an RV here so they can RV over here every year.  He was a former world champion speedboat racer and comes over for the races and touring.

On Saturday morning we went to Walla Walla Vintners and talked with the owner/winemaker. Everything we tasted was wonderful.  Had to buy a lot, plus he ships to NC.  We were the only folks there when we got there, but it got crowded soon.  A limo arrived with a bunch of ladies and the driver talked with me about his very old Pontiac.  He had stretched it into a limo to hold 8-10.  Photos are on Flickr.

After lunch we hit a few more downtown tasting rooms including Karen's Tero Estates and another one she recommended.

This is the place to come tasted big bold red wines.