AHHH..... The Smell of Manure

Today's Indiana Tracking

We're currently parked near Shipshewana, Indiana, which is heavily populated with Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites, many of which use real live horses to pull their cultivators and plows and carriages here and there.  It's the 30th of June and the corn is almost head-high with no tassels or silk showing yet, and the weather is hot and HUMID.  I've been more actively riding my bike-trike recently, but much of the time the radio-GPS tracker doesn't hit any relay stations so no tracks on the map have been available.  I rode the trike almost 5 miles yesterday up in Scott, MI, before the sun got up too hot and before we packed up the RV and rolled out.
The reason we stopped near Shipshewana (Look it up, it's named after a peaceful Indian Chief Shipshewana) was we had been hearing wonderful stories about all the shops and repair facilities here and the "Cheap" RV repairs available.
So far, I'm a bit underwhelmed.  The so-called RV shops all seem to be backlogged with work and cannot find time to work on my roof or other RV concerns.  So I have no idea how affordable they may be.  I'm now told "in the summer season" all hands are busy with crops and those involved with the RV world are loaded with work in the nearby RV factories in Elkhart and surrounding areas.  The RV factories are so desperate for help they hire teens and high schoolers to assemble houses with motors and wheels.  In addition to anyone else they can find to work.
It's always impressive to see the Amish and their related brethren go about their business.  When we first arrived in the area we of course noticed the horse-drawn buggies clip-clopping along.  Nowadays there seem to be more Amish cyclists than carriage operators, often pulling home made looking small trailers carrying everything from kiddos to groceries.
In spite of the suffocating heat and humidity lately, I determined to ride at least a few miles early in the morning this morning.  It was stuffy all night and already uncomfortable as the sun came up, but I wanted to get a ride going before it got REALLY hot and humid, as per the forecasts.
Instead of riding into Shipshewanna, where it undoubtedly would have been more fun mingling with all the Amish cyclists going to and fro, I rode east on nearby Highway 120 to see what I could see.  I thought there must be another village or small town down that-a-way, but in my short ride all I encountered was farm fields and rural homes.  The title of today's epistle sprung to my mind as I "enjoyed" the aroma everywhere emanating from piles near the road marked "Free Manure" and barns piled high with the stuff nearby.  Having grown up smelling such smells in my youth, I didn't find it all that distasteful.  At least here  there were  no large feedlots or dairies in the area with the absolutely horrible smells of rot.  One impressive bearded farmer was pulling a rather large combine with 2 Percherons or similar huge horses.  They were really throwing up the chaff and dirt and making that machine spin impressively.  The terrain is largely flat with very low rolling hills or rises, and the only minor difficulty I encountered was dodging the several crushed critters along the otherwise wide shoulder.  Traffic was light - and friendly - but several times I had to gauge whether to swerve out in the main road to dodge a squashed squirrel or pile of horse poop or if there was room on the right to go around or if I just had to run over the stuff.  I have a rear fender on the trike, so no brown stripe resulted on my backside.
I had, as all to usual, run off without any camera or phone, so no pictures to enliven the post today.
We found a nice looking bike trail today that goes cross country called "Pumpkinvine Trail".  Looks like we won't be around long enough to explore it, as it was too hot and late in the day today and we plan to leave for Danville IL tomorrow after Church services up in Sturgis, MI, the closest LDS meetinghouse.

Ride Started: 8:41 AM    Ride Ended:  9:42 AM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   12.9 Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  12.7
Beginning Blood Glucose:  156      Ending BG: 77 
Lowest Temp  75 F      Highest Temp: 82 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  7.12 
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
7.4 MPH                                 8.4 MPH                     12.4 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
1 hour                                     50 minutes                 7 minutes

A Thousand Here, a Thousand There...

Latest RV Tracking for Jim & Jacque

CORRECTIONS:  In my torpor while blogging last night, I actually skipped over a WHOLE WEEK that my lovely wife reminded me of.  Thus in the interests of more-accurate tale telling...
Let's See Now.  We camped a few days for the weekend race at Road America near Elkhart Lake in Michigan.  That was nice except for our prized driver breaking his motor before he got into his first test lap.  Racing must be somewhat like RV'ing, in that large lumps of money are involved....
But more about that later.  We left Road America after attending church in Sheboygan and drove to Charlotte ("Char-LOTTE" is the local pronunciation) for their annual Charlotte Bluegrass Festival.  This is a 3-day weekend affair wherein many of us come in the first of the week prior to the fest and snag a decent parking spot for our RV's.  The sweet strings of picking and fiddling begin long before the festival actually starts, with both amateur and professionals practicing and jamming in "Yard-Picking" style.  We enjoy these so much we need to take advantage of the events occurring in other areas than Michigan where we alight temporarily or permanently.  So far it's been Michigan since it involves hob-nobbing with Jacque's auntie and uncle and her brother.  Saturday was the final day and we stayed over another night so we could attend church at the Charlotte LDS Branch. 
We then headed  down to "driveway surf" at Uncle Bob and Aunt Marilyn's lovely place on Pickerel Lake.
When we arrived, safe and sound with no mishaps, we were shocked, SHOCKED when we opened the fridge for dinner and found it was barely cool, nay, lukewarm instead of COLD.  Ice cream in the freezer was sugary soup and Jacque woefully decided much of the foodstuff had to be discarded.
Resetting the 20-year-old Dometic did not help, nor did turning it completely off and back on again, which has worked several times before.
Sadly I began to look online for RV refigerator repair shops.  We found a couple, but come Monday morning when enquiring on the phone, no one sounded helpful, and in spite of advertising service calls, none could spare a repairman to come out to our RV.  Since we live in the darn thing, it is not too handy to have to drive it in to a repair facility and abandon it for however long it would take them to have a look-see, order parts, etc, etc.
Thus it befell ME to somehow accomplish a repair.  Years ago I was able to order replacement absorption cooling units off Ebay and rebuild a failed fridge, but in this case we need quick repair or replacement and cannot wait around for weeks for parts and service to arrive.  We decided to bite the bullet and find a replacement, new fridge.
Which turned into an all day job.  It took a couple hours just to get the old unit out, fighting the tight fit of the hole in the wall housing the fridge, then wrestling it out the front door.  A very tight squeeze in all directions, with impolite comments erupting here and there.  Jacque's brother and uncle suggested Bontrager Surplus in White Pigeon Michigan, of all places, a joint that obtains cosmetically damaged or undesired NEW stuff and appliances from nearby RV factories and sells them for decent prices.  As in almost HALF the cost of new units in the box.
The gentleman did not have the correct replacement fridge on hand, but called his man in another warehouse and got him to deliver a proper unit to us.  All for the bargain price of 1100 bucks, not counting tax.  A new unit was priced at 1800 bucks so I got out my card and paid for this one gladly.
Jacque and I just tried to recall the last time we had to shell out a kilobuck.  Why Shucks, it turns out maybe a MONTH has gone by since we had our driveline rebuilt with new U-joints in May.  That was almost a kilobuck, which reinforces the old saying in the RV world:  "A thousand here and a thousand there, eventually it starts looking like real money."
Installing the new fridge was not as difficult, since I now knew where all the screws were supposed to go, and since this was an exact replacement, they actually  all fit.
Well, the good news is that gasoline is almost 20 cents cheaper here than in Ohio and Indiana, and 30 cents a gallon cheaper than in New York State, which is not much of a surprise.

On the Road Again... to Road America

Thursday's RV Tracking

Thursday, 14 June was our check-out morning for the West Bay Campground at Thompson Lake.  I awoke at 5 AM, feeling guilty about not riding the trike enough or even regularly.  I loafed another hour and got up, fed the dogs just before I left, and saddled up the trike and rode to the Rhinelander Post Office and back before  breakfast.  It was again great to be out and about under my own steam.  There were small rolling hills involved but they were anything but exhausting.  That early in the morning the temperatures were actually a bit chilly as I approached 20 MPH going down the little hills but warm enough that I was never tempted to stop and put on my windbreaker tucked inside the pannier.
Evidently I was again out of radio range since the tracker on the trike didn't record a single position.
The big bad bike tour was only  a little over 6 miles total but it was great to get out and stretch the rubbery legs.  Now if I can just get motivated to make it a habit instead of just occasional outings.

The West Bay park gave us a good discount because of our Passport America membership, but the "Enjoy Our Heated Pool" was always locked, with no one ever in it - including us.  The office hours were limited and often no one was there, so we couldn't ask what the secret was for pool access.
BUT their bathrooms and showers were respectably clean, which is a rarity at campgrounds.
The mosquito population was dense and ferocious.  Lots of water in these climes usually means the skeeters are abundant and prospering... at our expense.
Our son Christopher is a hobby race car driver and he has a race at the Road America speedway this weekend of June 16.  Thus we aimed our GPS southward and drove our homeless home down to the Plymouth WI area.
Speaking of GPS, I just sent a belated nasty-gram to Garmin about the GPS situation.  Our latest "Garmin Upgrade" has changed our favorite GPS into a find-a-horrible-back-road-detour machine.  Instead of taking us on the shortest route, as selected, it regularly leads us off major highways and through the nasty back streets of some small burg.  A couple weeks ago it routed us in a large loop through a small town and took us right back up on the highway it had just detoured us AWAY from.
We'll see how this works out.  Our early  GPS devices were great time and effort savers, and lately (we have several, of course) they seem to lead us astray close to half the time.

RV Homeless by Choice

Dateline Rhinelander, Wisconsin

We left Peshtigo WI Monday morning and trundled across the state to our next destination:  Rhinelander, where my old Army buddy Tom lives.  We made it without incident, but the radio tracker did not work for some reason so I cannot link us to the map showing our latest route.  Since we're planning to leave Rhinelander tomorrow for Plymouth, WI, I likely will not have time to troubleshoot the equipment so we'll see if any tracking results from that.
Back to our story about becoming truly changelings:  Selling our "real house" and hitting the road full time in the RV.
I left tale-telling in our last epistle, dear reader, about the time we arrived in Yuma, AZ,  and drove up to the US Army's YPG (Yuma Proving Ground) north of Yuma and crossed that military complex to access the BLM's Imperial Dam area straddling the AZ and CA borders involving the wonderful Colorado River.   We had friends from Grants NM already parked there for the winter and they talked us into their immediate neighborhood via our ham radios.  On BLM lands, the public is allowed to camp for free in various areas for 14 days for free, but having to move at least 25 miles away to gain another 14 days' free camping.  We elected to pay the BLM Season Pass fee of $180 to be able to stay at any campsite of our choice for the duration of the winter, essentially available from October through April each season.  Various BLM areas have different services available, and at Imperial Dam the amenities include fresh water stations, waste dump stations, trash dumpsters, and restrooms mainly intended for tent campers.  These restrooms also included OUTDOOR showers, without walls.  These must be intended for the free spirits in the area.  We dared not expose our fish-belly white skins to the world, not even to try it out.  Not that anyone could work up much interest in watching me cavorting in such fashion.  Even in Vietnam we had a couple of curtains and modicums of privacy in our thrown-together field showers.
Hundreds , HUNDREDS, of thousands of RV'ers take advantage of these desert delights each winter and it is a kick to walk about and view all the license plates from mostly northern states and areas including Vancouver, other Canadian districts, Alaska, the Dakotas, and of course Michigan and Minnesota.  Not to mention the entire Northeastern states.
The uninformed might wonder what so many Old Farts could possibly do to maintain sanity so far from "Home", but there are actually more activities of all sorts, fixed and mobile businesses catering to mobile home dwellers and travelers, wintertime church congregations to handle the hordes of wandering worshipers such as we, and DANCING.  We found (with only minimal searching) more that just a couple of dance halls where weekly dances were held, WITH LIVE BANDS, in Yuma.  We had a grand time attending and dancing at least once a week for very minimal cover charges to help pay the electric bills.  (Now that winter is over and all we RV'ers are scattered to cooler climes for the summer, we find NO such fun activities going on.  In Albuquerque, dance halls have all but disappeared, even those selling liquor to invigorate incomes.)
Since we stayed in the Yuma area all winter from December 2017 to April 2018, we certainly have more stories to tell about this wonderful area.  However, it is again well past my bed-time and I will attempt to resume the narrative sometime later.... again.

Ah, the RV Life

Today's Michigan Upper Peninsula (U.P.) Route

Since we do more RV'ing than cycling, it only makes sense to blather a bit about the various pratfalls and misadventures involved in that enjoyable pastime.
Since we put our house on the market, gave away, sold, and stored a few percent of our unbelievable number of household possessions and yard junk, and moved into our RV full time, we have encountered a few basic reactions from those we encounter:
-But where do you live NOW?  -When you're NOT in the RV?
-We have friends who did that several years ago and they're still at it!
-How can you stand to live in the cramped confines of an RV for more than a few days or nights at a time?
Well, we left the house empty and on the market in December 2017.  It is now Mid-June and we're still pretty much talking to each other. 
We dawdled a bit heading toward Southwest Arizona for the obviously warmer weather.
It was almost freezing when we passed through Albuquerque and turned south on I-25.  We'd left later than we wanted and by the time we got to Socorro it was dark and we searched frantically for an RV park.  We parked somewhere and paid the money and were shocked, SHOCKED when we awoke next morning to a temperature of FIFTEEN degrees!  How we avoided our pipes and water freezing up is beyond me.  We thought since Socorro was 70 miles south of Albuquerque it should be warmer there.  WRONGO
Next morning we gingerly loaded up our stiff power cord and water hose and headed south again on I-25.  As we approached the Highway 380 turnoff going over the mountains to Carrizozo  and Roswell, we discussed the idea of detouring the wrong way and going back east to Roswell and then south on 285 to Carlsbad to participate in the "Christmas on the Pecos" affair.  Ads for this hoo-ha
had been running every few minutes on KOB-AM as we drove and we decided to go for it.  We turned east off I-25 and made it to the outskirts of Roswell where we found a fairly decrepit RV park that only cost us $10 for a night's parking, as best I recall.  My cousin Darel has a ranch with room for our RV that he has encouraged us to stay at, but it was so late and we hadn't called ahead so we spent the big bucks and stayed on  the outskirts of town.  Next morning we left the RV and drove in to downtown Roswell and visited him and his sister, Cousin Peggy, at his complex where he markets indian jewelry, beds and mattresses and high end sleep supplies, and prospers.  Enjoyed that visit for a couple hours and then we returned to the RV, loaded it up, and headed on south to Carlsbad.
As we passed through Artesia, we had called ahead to Lake Macmillan to park the RV there.  Just south of Artesia we spotted a tiny sign pointing to "The Ranch", an Escapee or SKP campground.  We had just joined Escapees a few days earlier before we left home and had no prior idea they had a complex anywhere on our route.  We drove over to see what they had there, found a bustling RV complex with a vacancy they immediately put us into for $50 for a full week's stay, and at the same time invited us in for a group enchilada supper.  Great folks and a great place to stay.  We used that for a home base to attend LDS church services in Artesia, and commute down to Carlsbad for the Christmas on the Pecos boat ride up and down the Pecos River.
From there we headed south and west out of Carlsbad to eventually make it to southern Arizona for their fabled warm winter weather.   We approached Carlsbad Caverns and again succumbed to the temptation for another detour.  The Caverns, of course, were well worth both the delay and the cost and the sore legs and feet.
From there we made it to Las Cruces via El Paso, where again it was dark and found us needing a place to stop for the night.  We looked up an RV park on our GPS and drove across Valley Drive, finding a very crowded, run down, and pot-hole filled mobile home park with no evident slots available for an itinerant RV.  Bouncing roughly out of the rutted pot-holes and up onto the smoother pavement of the street, we saw a brightly lit grocery store across the street with a large parking lot and pulled in for a few supplies.  On a whim, I approached one of the cashiers and asked if the manager was available.  He was.  I asked him if we could possibly spend the night encamped in his spacious lot and he said Yes, we normally allow people who ASK FIRST to park overnight.  Even though barely across the street from the nasty looking trailer park, it was an enjoyable evening with no one bothering us.  We eventually made it to the Yuma AZ BLM free camping area but that involves more stories for another chapter.  It's getting too close to bedtime here in Badger Park in Peshtigo Wisconsin, of all places, and I need to prepare to hit the sack.  More later - when I get around to it.

Mackinaw Riding

Today's Tracking Where the GPS and Radio Work Together

We have been riding intermittently recently, what with RV travels and sightseeing and all.
In more areas than one, we have not had radio coverage to the extent that the GPS track was logged at all.  Today, however, we arrived in Mackinaw City, MI, so far up north and seemingly in the boonies that I assumed there would be no radio coverage here either.
Out here east of the Mississippi, what hills exist are relatively gradual grades, and Michigan is wonderful in the lack of mountain-style climbs as well.
We journeyed to Kirtland, OH, and stayed at Geneva State Park while visiting the Kirtland Temple and other LDS historical sites nearby.  I think we stayed there 3-4 nights and the cost was $30-something per.  That was a nice park except for being almost totally waterlogged:  Not only is it right on the shore of Lake Erie, but recent rains had left most or all the camp sites with standing water, with barely enough dry gravel to park on.  Several campers and tenters drove in, set up camp, and left within hours after realizing how soggy everything was.
There was a nice cycling path there, interrupted for only a few hundred yards by mud and water.
No radio coverage, but nice cycling.
From there we drove to Caesars Creek state park, where I departed for my 73-mile ride to celebrate my 71st birthday.  After a few days there we drove clear up to Palmyra, New York, to visit LDS history sites there.   Very lovely place except for high prices, especially gasoline.   We stayed the first night in the parking lot of the Fingerlakes Casino, for free, and the only 'legit' place we could find to park the RV was in the Wayne County OH Fairgrounds, where we were the only visitors for most of our week's stay there.  It was lacking in the absence of picnic tables but a very quiet sleeping spot.  Trouble is, it cost $30 a night for electrical and full hookup and since it was $25 for the cheapest spots we gladly spent the extra $5 nightly for full amperage AC power for our air conditioners.
We rode around Palmyra very enjoyably but again had no radio coverage, and the heavy tree cover and nearby metal municipal buildings appeared to block both TV signals and our Tailgater satellite TV system.
From there we decided to go up to Dearborn MI to see "The Henry Ford", a compound of museums and exhibits memorializing American ingenuity, including of course the history of the Ford auto empire.  It cost over 90 bucks to get entry tickets but then every time we saw something interesting inside, we got charged again for almost everything.  $5 each to ride the steam powered train around the complex:
THEN, high prices (Of Course!) for ice cream and other snacks, and of course we had to take a ride in a Model T automobile.  That cost $7.50 or so apiece for something like a 5-minute ride around several blocks of the complex.  These T-models are the genuine article, EXCEPT having been modified with electric starters so the drivers don't have to risk injury trying to crank the dern things to get them going again after a stall.  Fun ride, but more even more expensive than  driving the RV per mile.......
We stayed 2 nights at the Wayne County Fairgrounds in Wayne County Michigan, next door to Dearborn.  $24 something per night, a modest relief from the 30-dollar versions we've encountered elsewhere.  We could have gone back to the Ford complex to see more of the fun, but our legs were tired from all the walking and we decided to go on up the road for more travels.  We are aiming to visit an old Army buddy in Wisconsin, and along the way, we sought to stop and visit (again) one of Jacque's dear friends up here in Mackinaw City, "at the top of the mitten" in Michigan.
Surprisingly, as shown in the top link of this post, the radio coverage covered our cycling travels quite nicely. 
Last night we parked the RV halfway between Fordtown, er, I mean Dearborn, and Mackinaw City at a state park called Higgins Lake.  We were a tad sticker-shocked at the price to merely stay overnight:  40-something dollars including tax.  I would have driven on but was sufficiently exhausted from driving all day that I just popped out the card and paid for it, grateful to have found a place to crash for the night. (Of course the next morning when we left, an interstate rest area popped into view within a mile or two, where we could have stayed the night for free.)
Jacque's Mackinaw friend is all too generous and insisted we could "driveway surf" and park next to her house and blood-suck electricity from her garage outlet.  All very nice, and we arrive soon enough to tour downtown Mackinaw City and get the inevitable commemorative T-shirt.

Ride Started: 6:16 PM    Ride Ended:  9:22 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.2 Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  12.9
Beginning Blood Glucose:  170      Ending BG: 85 
Lowest Temp  64 F      Highest Temp: 82 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  7.43 
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
3.5 MPH                                 4.6 MPH                     14.5 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
2 hours 9 mins                        1 hour 37 mins           32 minutes