Home at last!

Monday, May 2, 2011

OTTAWA, ON – I’m sitting in my own easy chair at home, for the first time since February. We’re home! The forsythia has bloomed out front and the hyacinths are up, and the cardinals were singing their hearts out in the back yard. There was a lovely azalea plant and a bottle of bubbly from Mum waiting to welcome us home, and we were greeted by two neighbours with waves and ‘welcome home’s. It’s great to be here!

We left North Bay this morning just after 7 am, heading down the Trans-Canada Highway in a gentle drizzle of rain. Although it delayed us somewhat, we were glad to see some road work under way as we drove along, because there was a lot that needed fixing. We hit quite a few rough spots that made our dishes jump in the trailer and tossed our shoes onto the floor from the storage tower by the door. The last of one set of glasses flew out of one of the cupboards and smashed into pieces. We are convinced now that elegant plastic glasses will be required for our new RV when the time comes!

It was lovely to see more lakes and pine trees as we covered the familiar territory between the north and Ottawa. There were still clumps of snow in some areas, the last vestiges of the winter we left behind. As we got closer to Ottawa, I suggested Val put in his order for the rain to stop when we were getting the trailer settled in its temporary resting place at Long Island Camp. He has an uncanny way of staying dry on rainy days when he has to be outside!

Sure enough, we got to the camp with the objective of emptying our holding tanks and parking the trailer, and the few sprinkles of rain dried up for all those steps! It almost never fails.

We grabbed a few essential items that we wanted to take out right away, such as the contents of the fridge, and headed home. It was great to turn the corner and see our lovely house again! Our priority was to go and vote in the federal election, which we got home just in time to accomplish!

In all, we covered more than 16,000 kilometers, some getting from state to state and some driving around locally wherever we were. We traveled by truck, train, helicopter, jeep and bus at various points. We got as far south as Nogales on the Mexican border and as high as 11,158 feet elevation in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. We experienced ice and snow as well as heat in the 90s. We saw amazing natural wonders and significant man-made structures. We met wonderful people who smiled and chatted, offered advice, helped us out and taught us new things. We saw stellar performances. We admired works of art and beautiful native crafts. We saw inspiring sunrises over Monument Valley and flaming sunsets in Sedona. We were blown by fierce winds and caressed by warm sunlight. Our memories of this trip will be with us for years to come, and already we are looking forward to the ones to come in future trips.

We hope you have enjoyed our travelogue over the past nine weeks. My evenings will be different without a half-hour writing session and photo upload each time! You can use the “comments” feature on this blog to let us know what you think (and thanks to those who have done so!). And so, until the next time, happy trails to you!

One more sleep!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

NORTH BAY, ON – Wind and more wind! Great gusts have buffeted us yet again this evening, as we strolled across the road to a restaurant from our hotel, situated next to the Dionne Quintuplets museum and North Bay Chamber of Commerce. That’s where we were allowed to leave the truck and fifth wheel for the night, visible to us from our hotel room window. The little museum is the original wooden homestead where the famous quints were born in 1934.

Despite the fact that the hotel in Sault Ste. Marie was full of kids involved in a hockey tournament last night, we got a good night’s rest and woke early. We waited till the breakfast room was open for our free meal, and then headed out into a steady downpour to resume our journey.

The low cloud ceiling and heavy rain made it quite dark for the first part of the morning. By the time we got to Espanola, though, it had lightened up, and the rain abated after a while. Val was delighted to catch sight of a Tim Hortons with enough parking space for the rig. I asked the attendant to wash out Val’s commuter mug well before filling it with Tim Hortons coffee, because we had been out of the country for two months drinking other types of coffee, and we didn’t want to adulterate that wonderful flavour with something else.

We bought our lunch to take along so we didn’t have to take a lunch break as we headed toward Sudbury and North Bay. It really felt like home to look at the great rocks of the pre-Cambrian shield by the side of the road, the tall, asymmetrical pine trees, and blue lakes and rivers that are so prevalent here in the north. When we stopped to refuel, the attendant told us to watch out for deer on the road ahead, but I guess they stayed in the woods to keep out of the rain, because we didn’t see any.

It was interesting to see the landscape around Sudbury, which in earlier years had resembled the surface of the moon because it was so barren. Now, there are lots of birch trees and poplars, with no impression of blight that used to epitomize this part of Ontario. The bypass highway didn’t allow us a glimpse of Sudbury’s giant nickel; one of these days we will take the time to visit the city’s science museum and learn a bit more about the giant meteor crater where Sudbury is situated.

Finally, we saw the first glimpse of Lake Nipissing and the outskirts of North Bay. We had a list of several hotels here that we were going to drive by, to see if the parking lots had room for us. But as soon as we saw the Holiday Inn here, we found what we needed and turned in.

Our return to familiar Canadian icons continued with supper at Don Cherry’s across from the hotel, complete with Stanley Cup playoffs on the TVs, Italian for Val and Chinese for me, ending with a cup of Red Rose tea. Only in Canada!

There’s only one more day to go on our fantastic trip. But being here in North Bay almost feels like home, considering the hundreds of times we have been through this area over the last 40 years.

Our home and native land

Saturday, April 30, 2011

SAULT STE. MARIE, ON – We’re back in Canada again! Yay!  The signs are bilingual, there’s a Tim Hortons down the street, and the money has lots of colour to tell one bill from the other.  It feels great.

We made another early start today, gliding as quietly as a diesel truck will allow from the RV park just after 6:30 am.  We had heard a weather report for rain, but the sky was almost completely clear with no sign of the wet stuff once we got onto the highway.  When you get on the road that early, there are very few other vehicles, so we were able to make good time.

Glimpses of the northern shore of Lake Michigan came into view as we traveled along Highway 2, and we could see white caps on the waves in the steady breeze.  Every creek and river we passed was swollen with snow melt, rising past the banks into the woods.  There were also a few clumps of snow as we got closer to the Canadian border, but we pretended they were just white birch logs lying in the bush.  Until it was obvious a birch log couldn’t possibly be a meter in diameter.

We passed through the little town of Escanaba and, by the highway on the outskirts of town, we saw a group of people in high-visibility vests.  It was a team of kids with a couple of adult supervisors, gathering trash into bags to clean up the roadsides.  They had been at work for some distance, because we passed trash bags set by the road more than a mile further along.  It sure made the scenery more attractive without plastic shopping bags snagged in the bushes or pop cans and plastic bottles strewn around.  Those kids were learning a valuable lesson, I hope!

The highway through the upper peninsula, as that portion of Michigan is called, is fairly long and straight, with tall pines on either side and only a few little burgs.  We stopped to refuel one last time in the US, where prices for diesel are rising but not yet as high as in Canada.  Then it was on to Interstate 75 and the short hop to Sault Ste. Marie.

As we crossed the bridge over the Soo canal, there was a long lineup headed the other way into the US.  We hoped it wouldn’t be quite so long when it came to the Canadian side.  The view from the high bridge is quite interesting, with the canal and ships passing below, factories and smokestacks beyond, and, on the horizon, the wind farms with their rotating turbines.  One of the nicest sights was the beautiful Canadian flag, flapping stiffly in the wind.

The wait was not long when we got to Canadian customs. We had to pull aside because our declaration exceeded the amount we were allowed for a stay outside the country longer than 48 hours.  Buying a new laptop kind of augmented the grand total somewhat, but the customs agent was reasonable in any case. 

Then it was off in search of a hotel in Sault Ste. Marie that would have a parking area big enough to hold our rig. The KOA where we stayed here last time doesn’t open till May 6, and, besides, it’s not exactly camping weather in these parts.   We succeeded with very little searching, fortunately.  We winterized the trailer so nothing will freeze as it sits unheated for a couple of nights.  We also put anti-freeze into the holding tanks to keep the contents from freezing until we can drain them.

There’s a nice restaurant next door to the hotel where we can have supper tonight.  We’ll even get to watch a little TV for the first time in two months!

The marathon

Friday, April 29, 2011

IRON MOUNTAIN, MI – Four years ago on our way back from Alaska, we stayed at Rivers Bend RV Park, the same campground we’re at tonight. At that time, it was in high season, and the wi-fi was operating. This time, however, we hit the park just prior to May 1 when the camp’s wireless internet contract resumes, so we are bereft of our connections – not only as regards the internet, but also our cell phone. It is like being in the dark ages.

Today we covered the longest distance of our entire trip – 411 miles in all. As I write this, Val is asleep in his easy chair, having been at the wheel since 6:30 this morning when we rolled out of the KOA. The fields were still sparkling with frost and the sun was barely above the eastern horizon. We had to scrape the frost off the windshield before we could head out! Nevertheless, it was a lovely clear morning that bloomed into an even lovelier day, with the mercury reaching 68 degrees before day’s end.

Using our road atlas, I plotted a route that took us on a couple of interstates plus some state highways of reasonable quality to get us here as directly as possible. We crossed the entire state of Wisconsin and are just inside the Michigan state line. Tomorrow we cross into the Eastern time zone and our watches will match Ottawa time for the first time in weeks.

Our introduction to Wisconsin was through mist and cloud that had settled in the valley, through which flowed the Mississippi River. As we drove across the bridge, it was like driving into oblivion, as cars and road were swallowed in mist! The river itself was very wide at this point, and high as well. The trees were standing in water up to their knees, and the water’s surface was not far at all from the underside of the bridge. Aside from swollen banks, however, there was no other sign of flooding.

We’d heard on the radio, and saw in the newspaper we bought, about the terrible devastation caused by tornadoes through the southern central states. It made us grateful that we had altered our original travel plans to avoid that corridor. There are a lot of people who have no homes tonight because of the storms. I imagine they count themselves lucky though, because they are still alive. We actually passed an area where a similar wind storm must have recently hit, because we saw big trees snapped off and houses with siding ripped away, and crews clearing lots of brush with chain saws. Mother Nature can be pretty severe at times.

We really enjoyed seeing pine trees, lakes and forests that remind us of Canadian landscapes. It’s easy to feel close to home when there aren’t saguaro cacti, yuccas and ocotillo plants on every side (beautiful and exotic though they were)! We spotted some deer today – one young buck sauntered up onto the shoulder of the road, hesitated and then scampered back when he saw us and our big rig coming at him. It caused us some angst before the beautiful creature made his wise decision! We also saw a couple of wild turkeys, plus a whole flock of turkey hens, in our travels.

I had hoped to call up some video clips of the royal wedding this evening, just to see how things had unfolded, but that’s not possible. I did locate the shortest of clips at around 5:30 this morning on the laptop before we set out, so I got to see Kate’s dress, hear a bit of the choir music, and see William slip the ring onto his bride’s finger, but that was it. I guess I’m one of about a dozen people on the planet to have missed pretty well the whole thing. When we get to civilization, I’ll have to get caught up.

Our new royal coach

Thursday, April 28, 2011
HAYWARD, MN – It has been quite a day!  After a chilly night under an extra blanket, with only a “milk barn heater” for warmth, thanks to our new friend Chad from last night, Val was up and on his way by 8 o’clock to fill the propane tanks.  At the same time, he looked up the repairman Chad had mentioned, to us to see if he could help us find out what exactly our propane problem was.
We battened down the trailer, hitched up and headed over to the RV dealership for our morning appointment, and Ken, the propane repairman, arrived in his truck right behind us!  He got to work right away, and was still at it when we had to go inside. 
Casey, our sales rep, was in her office when we arrived, having done all her homework from yesterday afternoon.  She said it would probably be best if we sold our truck and trailer on our own rather than selling it to them, and we were quite happy with that.  Then she quoted a price which was literally thousands of dollars less than we had anticipated!  We were blown away, and to make a long story short, we bought the new motorhome with a deposit, with the balance due on delivery in a couple of months when the unit is built.
So we are turning a page in our RV experience, saying farewell to the fifth wheel and truck in exchange for a 24-foot, 2012 Itasca Navion iQ, built in Forest City at Winnebago Industries.  We are thrilled!  It has two slides, one for the sofa and one for the bedroom, which includes a queen-sized bed.  We’ll have a microwave convection oven, bathroom with shower, a diesel generator, even a TV, and all in a very compact vehicle.  We’ll be flying back to Forest City in the summer to pick it up and drive it home, and the dealers will have all the paperwork done for its transfer into Canada at that time.  It’s all very exciting.
When our business was all attended to, we went back out to the truck and trailer, where Ken had left a note saying there was more work to be done on the propane system, so we drove to his offices and parked outside.  It was bitterly cold as he laid down on the ground and pulled out a piece of pipe and connector.  He had discovered a leak in the pipe that fed our furnace, caused by a couple of tiny cracks that he attributed simply to old age.  We took this to be a sign that we were due for a new RV!
It was lunchtime by this time, so we stopped at a nearby café and celebrated our purchase, and the promise of warmth once again in our trailer, over Reuben sandwiches and hot beverages.  Then we were on our way, aiming for a KOA not far away in Minnesota.  Once we were set up there, we turned on the furnace and were delighted to feel warm air coming through the vents!  Good thing, too, because it was still only 47 degrees outside, next to the cornfields and highway nearby.

After studying our maps and mileages, we’ve figured out a route that will make up for a lost day and get us back to the travel schedule we had originally planned.  We are looking forward to getting home!

Small town friendly

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

FOREST CITY, IA – We were up and at it promptly today to take the tour of the Winnebago Industries complex. It started with a film showing how the motorhomes are constructed. The thing that impressed me most was how many components are manufactured on site. Very little is made somewhere else and assembled here.

They extrude their own aluminum from pellets to make frames; they have a stitchery building where workers sew all the bedspreads, cushions, car seats and curtains; they have cabinetmakers who make and hand-finish all the cupboards, closets and paneling; electricians who string all the wiring; specialists who liquefy plastic pellets and twirl the result in molds that produce seam-free shower stalls and other plastic components – the list goes on and on!

One of the things that Winnebago does import is the chassis. We saw rows of them – basically four wheels, a frame and a motor, from Mercedes-Benz, Ford and Freightliner, and Winnebago cuts them and welds pieces in to make them longer if they are to be used for motorhomes longer than 24 feet.

Terry, our guide, took our little group of eight on a bus through the entire campus of buildings, and in several buildings we went upstairs to a mezzanine level to look down on the assembly line. When they introduce a new design, they make a full-scale model entirely of clay and get a computer to “read” all its contours so it can be reproduced exactly in the appropriate materials. The whole tour was fascinating, and we learned a lot. It was clear that the company aims for the highest quality at every stage of the process – very reassuring when you are thinking of buying one of their units.

Which is exactly what we are doing. We’ve had the fifth wheel for 10 years and are ready to get something newer, simpler and smaller. So, after lunch today we went to the local Winnebago dealer to see the model we’ve been eyeing and find out how to get the best price while meeting the requirements for taking a US unit into Canada. You can save thousands by getting a unit this way. It was an interesting afternoon with Casey, the sales rep, a young woman who knows the product well and showed us all its features. We even went for a test drive and I took the wheel for a time (which I never do with the fifth wheel!) and found it quite driveable!

We’ll be going back in the morning to hammer out the details, so we left Casey and came back to the trailer. That’s when we discovered the propane furnace had pooped out. Though the two tanks seemed full, no heat was coming into the trailer, nor could we light the gas range. We went out to find a phone to call some dealers we’d located online and stopped in at a gas station. The attendant and one of her customers offered several options and let us use their personal phones. We couldn’t reach anyone after hours but thanked them for their help.

Then we went on to find a diesel fuel station to fill up the truck, and while we were doing so, a man in a pickup truck pulled up and asked if we were the folks with propane problems at our trailer! He’d heard about it after we left the gas station and came in to town looking for us! He offered to lend us an electric heater for the night and then drove to his place to get it and bring it to our trailer. It turns out he’s director of marketing for Winnebago, and he said we could leave the heater at the Visitor Center in the morning where he’d pick it up.

When he came with the heater, Val showed him the tanks and the regulator, which he figured was the source of the problem. But he also discovered that the tanks were, in fact, empty as well. So Chad, our new friend, went back home a second time and brought us a small propane tank to supplement the electric heater! He insisted he knows what it’s like to run into problems when on the road and left it at that. We were amazed at his generosity and kindness. We will not forget Forest City for a long time!

Winnebago world!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

FOREST CITY, IO – Our resting place tonight is in the parking lot of the Winnebago Industries Visitor Center, where up to 14 RV owners are allowed to stay for free for a couple of nights. They even provide electricity and wi-fi, but no water or external washrooms and showers. Still, we are in the perfect spot to catch tomorrow morning’s factory tour, where we will see how the world-famous motor homes are built.

We left the outskirts of Omaha this morning in a steady drizzle that continued for most of our journey east and north. After we reached Des Moines, we left Interstate 80 and switched to the I-35, heading due north. Through the mist and rain, we could see thousands of acres of rich farmland and homesteads every few miles, ringed with trees where the barn, sheds and farmers’ homes stood, with the pickup trucks in the driveways and farm implements stowed out back. There was a comfortable, wholesome look to the landscape, just taking on the fresh green blush of spring, with the moist, brown soil ready to nourish the new crops.

Corn and hogs are two of Iowa’s biggest resources, which are relevant to our story a bit later, and we saw scores of huge wind turbines on various hillsides, churning electricity from their three-armed blades as they slowly traced huge circles in the breeze. They may be useful in contributing to local energy needs, but to me they lack the romance of old-fashioned windmills. Others must think the same way, as we saw a highway sign directing visitors to a real Danish windmill at one point today, but not a single mention of the turbines!

One of Iowa’s favoured sons is actor John Wayne, whose birthplace, De Soto, we drove past today. There are scores of others, such as Mamie Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, Elijah Wood, and Johnny Carson.

To reach Forest City, we left the Interstate and took state Highway 69 west and north, passing through the town of Clear Lake. I noticed a sign for Buddy Holly Street at one intersection. When we queried this later on the internet, we learned that this was the town where the rock-n-roll star gave his last performance, in February of 1959. The tour bus heater was not working so he and two other music greats, Ritchie Valens and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, decided to hire a plane to the next venue. Six miles after take-off, the young pilot lost control of the plane and crashed into a farmer’s field, killing him and his three passengers instantly. They call Feb. 3, 1959 “the day the music died”. The site of the crash is marked with a memorial in the shape of Holly’s signature black eyeglasses.

When we arrived at the Winnebago Visitor Center in Forest City, the rain had let up a bit, so it wasn’t too unpleasant getting settled after we had registered inside. Since it was still fairly early, we went over to see the display room and museum, where the history of the factory is explained.

In the late 1950s, Forest City was dying with little else but farms to give it any lifeblood. That’s when John K. Hanson, a local businessman, convinced a California company to open a travel trailer factory. Originally called Modernistic Industries of Iowa when it was incorporated in 1958, it took on the name of the county where it’s located (Winnebago County) not long afterward, and with Hanson’s guiding hand became the immensely successful company it is today. At one point, he advertised that, instead of spending money, customers could trade hogs or corn for one of the new trailers – a gambit that garnered national attention!

The museum displays Hanson’s school report cards and Boy Scouts of America badge sash to illustrate the strong values he applied throughout his life. His wife Luise was a dedicated partner in the business, and both were very community-minded as well. Prior to the recession, the company had more than 4,000 employees, but has downsized to 1,500 to remain in the black. It’s clear there is great pride here in the Winnebago success story.