Travels with Gunther and Kara

We’ve had a pretty good couple of days here in Medora visiting Teddy Roosevelt National Park.

Sunday we had to punt on attending Mass this week as there isn’t a church here with mass in the morning and we missed the one in the community center on Sunday afternoon. So…we got up early and ran our Honda portable generator a couple of hours to charge up our batteries to about 80% then left for our scheduled drive/hike around the South Unit of the park. The South Unit is one of 3 sections of the park and is located here in Medora; the North Unit is about 50 miles north of here and is more isolated and rugged, and the Elk Ranch Unit is west about 30 miles…Elk Ranch was established by Teddy Roosevelt in his attempt to become a rancher but eventually failed as a ranch due to losses of cattle during winters and became just a hunting lodge for him.

First up is a couple of photos from our campground…a view of the ridge line to the east of us, Medora is on the other side of this ridge and also some nice sunset backlit shots of the horses in the campground with us…the horse noises give us some local color that we’re really liking this week.

Our first stop Sunday morning was the visitor center where we watched the 17 minute movie on the park and TR’s involvement with it…he spent time here twice in the late 1800s…he first time was shortly after his wife and mother died and he came here to restore his spirit and rejuvenate his desire for a political career after his stint with the now famous Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. 

The Maltese Cross cabin…Roosevelt’s first home in the Dakota Territory. It was moved from it’s original location about 6 miles south of Medora and toured the country during his presidency then spent some time at the State House grounds once North Dakota became a state…and was relocated again to it’s location at the Medora visitor center once the park was named after him.

From there we took the loop road around the South Unit…about 30 miles or so total but it ended up taking the rest of the day by the time we hiked, overlooked, had lunch, and watched the wildlife. Here’s photos of the day…brief descriptions added where needed but mostly they could have just said “epic scenery”: and it woulda been pretty close.

Château de Mores…the home of the Marquis de Mores built in 1883. He came here to establish a cattle round up and shipping facility that persisted for 3 years until it collapsed due to drought and price competition from facilities further eastward.

Prairie dogs standing guard around their town. They make cute little barks…especially when starting to become alarmed…and then eventually the whole group skedaddles down their burrows only to reemerge 100 feet away and resume watching and feeding.

Cattle Corral Flats…home of a prairie dog town and also a bowl where cattle were gathered for transfer to the de Mores cattle facility back in the day.

Pronghorn antelope across the way…even with Neil’s bird lens and cropping way in it’s still a long way over there…must have been 600 or 800 yards over to where this buck was feeding.

Looking down the Wind Canyon towards the Little Missouri River. This is a really strangely wind/rain sculpted canyon in the ridge.

A Bull Snake that slithered across the path between Neil and Connie walking…she was about 20 feet ahead of him and must have walked within 5 feet right before it slithered out. Non poisonous and the largest snake in the park.

Looking back up Wind Canyon from the river overlook.

Oxbow bend in the Little Missouri River…although this is a pano shot it actually really does curve back on itself like it appears in the photo.

Hollowed out rock from erosion.

Wind Canyon again.

Wildflowers by Connie.

Bison patties…they burned these for fuel back in the day…but had to make sure they weren’t fresh before picking them up.

Coyote that ran across the road infant of BAT.

Another wind carved rock.

We decided this was a White Throated Sparrow based on the head coloration even though it isn’t quite sparrow shaped and we thought it was a little bigger than that…but nothing else really matched the coloration except a Meadowlark but there wasn’t any yellow chest that we could see.

A blooming prickly pear cactus…first one of these we’ve ever seen. There’s actually a bee down inside but you can’t see it from this angle.

Wild horses up on the ridge. We spotted these because we came around a corner and encountered a stopped car…which meant they were looking for something so we looked around and spotted them.

Herd of bison looking down from the highest accessible point in the park…mother, calf and some adults.

Another wild horse…very long mane and tail.

Brilliant colored and layered mounds up in the badlands area of the park.

A pair of dung beetles struggling with getting a hunk-o’-dung back to the nest.

With that our day was ended so we headed home…got parked and opened up the house for some ventilation.

Dinner was the last of the venison backstrap that Bryan’s father in law gave us last fall…it was really good. Grilled it on the barby and while it was cooking fried up some ‘taters and set them aside. Sautéd some mushrooms and onions in a skillet on the grill then added red wine, cream and dill to make sauce then added the ‘taters and sliced venison to coat everything. Man…talk about some good eatin’.

After dinner we had the BAT to the rescue excitement for the day. We had finished eating and were sitting around when all of a sudden we noticed some smoke drifting past our windows. We looked up to find a car on fire over by the river next to one of the horse camping sites…and noticed a very anxious young man running over looking for some water. Neil grabbed our grill storage bin and we hoofed it over to the water spigot then carried water and the hose over towards the fire.

The young lady who owned the car (the guy was her fiancé) had parked the car in some tall grass and gotten stuck in a rut. Instead of getting help to push her out of the rut she rocked it back and forth digging herself deeper and deeper until the heat from the muffler or catalytic converter caught the grass…and then the car… on fire. The water wasn’t getting the fire out and the flames were approaching the gas tank…so Neil took over the response at the scene since nobody else was doing so and he learned about that back in his Navy days. He yelled if anybody had a tow strap and it turned out that one of the horse trailer ladies had one that her husband left in their truck. Neil ran and got BAT while they attached the strap…got into 4 wheel drive and low gear and rumbled through the tall grass. The rest of them hooked it up to our trailer hitch and got the car into neutral then BAT yanked that sucker right out of the rut and out into the road…just in time. He unhooked the strap and got BAT out of the way just in case things went from bad to worse and we got the grass fire and part of the car fire extinguished. Someone had already called 911 and the volunteer fire department showed up and finished getting the fire out with their truck. The young lady was burned somewhat on her hands and forearms…first degree so painful but not permanently damaging…and she was hauled off for medical attention.

The worst part of it for her was that the sheriff’s deputy who was investigating found empty beer cans in the car and on the ground nearby and witnesses reported that she was the driver when it all started…so she’s likely going to get charged  in addition to having her car totaled and being burned. Here’s a shot of the burned up car and then a wider one showing how close it was to us.

After everybody left we came home and watched TV until bedtime. 

We got a few new Alex grand baby pictures this week for his six month birthday…we can’t decide which of these two is our favorite but I’m thinkin’ the second one. Cute li’l bugger, ain’t he?

Monday we got up early and after generator running to charge our batteries and coffee/breakfast we headed off for a trip to and around the North Unit of the park. We had heard that it was more scenic and rugged than the South Unit and reports were that there was more wildlife up that way…so we decided to head on up. We didn’t think it was more rugged…that title clearly goes to the South Unit…but it was more open grassland type terrain rather than the Badlands terrain that the South Unit has. There was some of the latter but more open rolling grasslands than down south. Wildlife…eh, not so much. We didn’t see all that many creatures but what we did see was pretty cool. Hard to beat yesterday though.

We drove east about 15 miles then north 52 to the entrance to the North Unit to the park…from there we had a straight shot (more or less at least except for the windings of the road) 14 miles westward. We stopped at pretty much all of the overlooks and such…taking pictures and seeking nice stuff to see. It was a cool, sunny day…we stopped about 1/3 of the way over at the campground in the North Unit. This was one of our potential spots that we passed on because it was at the North Unit pretty far from anything…but we drove through to scope it out for any future visits to the area. The verdict on this campground is that the trees are fine and we wouldn’t have any issue getting into the campground…but only sites 42, 43, and 44 would get much solar power…and with no hookups that’s pretty much mandatory. So…it would do in a pinch if you were willing to be way, way out in the boonies and could reserve one of the sites that would actually have enough sun for decent power generation…otherwise it would probably be 6-8 hours of generator usage a day for us with our residential fridge.

Ok, on to the pictures…

Painted Canyon Overlook.

Red Winged Blackbird male…Connie got this one out the window as he landed right where we were driving by…she tried to get the female he was courting as well but she flew off. Playing hard to get I guess.

Cannonball concretions…these are formed when minerals coalesce around a buried piece of something (usually organic material of some sort) then after it’s hardened the surrounding softer material erodes away…this one is about 4 feet across.

Badlands section showing the layers…the blue/black stuff is a clay that flows when wet and causes the slumped sections of terrain.

Here’s a picture of what it looks like after it slumps…the foreground piece slid downhill from the ridge behind, above, and to the left.

The end of the road…as far west as you can go and be on the road and looking towards the west.

More cannonball concretions

The Howard Payne Memorial Dead Tree photo…our friend Howard from RV-Dreams frequently takes pictures of dead trees and posts on his blog…so Neil periodically takes one in his stead.

Buffalo…these were about 300 yards away but were the closest we had seen one in the park.

Texas Longhorn cattle grazing in the park…don’t know if they’re wild or belong to a rancher…probably wild as there aren’t any ear tags or brands visible.

And finally…a buffalo closeup. This guy was just sitting there right alongside the road just as we were about to leave the park. We had finished our slow drive out to the end of the road and were basically heading back eastward to the entrance…and had given up hope of seeing one close up. Didn’t even have to get out of BAT for this one…Neil just aimed the camera out the driver’s window. He’s still got some of his winter coat that hasn’t been worn off by rubbing on trees and rocks.

Shortly after the one above we got to the entrance and headed home for the day. For the second day in a row we didn’t get much clear sky down at Medora so our solar output was less than spectacular. Had some pork ribs and corn on the cob on the barby and then watched TV until bedtime. Got up early this morning after overnight rain and it’s supposed to be rainy and cloudy most of today…which again means not much solar…which means we’ll just run the generator a bit this morning and probably again late this afternoon.

Today Connie’s got a little work to do before we head into Canadia tomorrow and have to depend solely on wifi as our Verizon MiFi Internet device won’t work outside the US…at least not without an obscene bill…Canadian data prices are ridiculous. We did have some email with our friends Bill and Linda the past couple of days…they’re crossing the border a bit east of here and will meet us in Saskatoon on Saturday afternoon. We probably won’t have another blog update until Friday or Saturday after we have some Fun Stuff™ to report on from Saskatoon. Will grab photos at targets of opportunity and at our CG in Regina tomorrow night but the post would just say we traveled most likely anyway unless we see something interesting to stop for.

Dinner tonight will be at the Little Missouri Saloon…it’s got those swinging doors and everything. We ate there t’other night and had brews and elk burgers that were pretty outstanding…elk tastes like really lean beef. We’ll sit at the bar again and talk to the locals. Our other option is the Boots Bar and Grill…but it looks a lot more touristy and trendy so most likely we’ll stay out of there and eat at the saloon again…after all, any place with those doors and saloon in the name can’t be all bad. I’ll grab a shot of it tonight and put in later.

Cyas.

Following my last post on Wednesday we had one remaining day in Maple Grove…which was scheduled to be a rainy day according to the weather forecast…so we devoted it to errands. Neil did laundry in the AM while Connie worked and then we headed off for some errands. A few final groceries, fill up BAT with diesel, get some propane, a quick stop at CVS for some stuff we needed, and we were back to the house by mid afternoon. Our plan was to have a nice dinner in (which we did) and then just get ready for our 2 day travel period starting on Friday. Neil did get this shot of a Downy Woodpecker right outside our house while at Site 40 in the KOA at Maple Grove…had to use this one taken through the window as he flew off when he went outside to get a better one.

Friday we got up early and packed/hitched/etc and were on the road by about 0930 for our scheduled 315 mile day. We were headed for Jamestown ND via Fargo ND and it was a pretty uneventful day…stopped for lunch and bathroom breaks and rolled in about 1600 or so. The last mile or so from the freeway ramp was down a dirt/gravel road…but we figured that was just training for Alaska. Here’s a shot of our site 43 at the Jamestown Campground…quite a nice little campground. Dinner was leftover pizza from Mama G’s the other night and we did only minimal setup but Neil did load us up with 80 gallons of fresh water for our planned boon docking site at our next scheduled site.

While there…Connie checked our our next stop at Cottonwood Campground in Teddy Roosevelt National Park…when we checked in February there were no reservations and little to no info on the National Park Service site about the campground. Between then and now…they had updated the site to say that only RVs 13 feet or less in height could get in (we’re 13’5”) and 3/4 of the campground could now be reserved. So…we nixed the idea of staying there and went to our second choice…which was Sully Creek State Park out 5 miles from Cottonwood…where again we would be boon docking.

Connie looked up Sully Creek on the Internet…and found that although there were 70something sites in the park there were only 8 or so that were OK for rigs of our size…at which point she…well, let me be gentle and say that she FREAKED OUT ABOUT IT. 

So…we planned a couple of backups at commercial parks in case Sully Creek was full…and decided to roll the dice and just go there first…even though we were arriving Saturday afternoon. With all of that sorta/kinda finalized we headed off to bed. Here’s a shot of our site at Jamestown.

Saturday morning we arose to a mosquito feeding frenzy or something…the bugs were out something fierce around the park…dunno why as they weren’t there the evening before. So…having already filled the fresh water tank Neil quickly dumped gray and we finished our abbreviated pack/hitch routine and headed off for another 240 mile day.

On our arrival in Medora ND outside Teddy Roosevelt NP…we say the Red Trail commercial campground near downtown and it had plenty of open spaces albeit a little close together. We continued on another 4 miles or so to Sully Creek…and there were 3 of the 8 big rig sites open around the central loop of the campground. We quickly picked site 2 which we think has the best view of what looks strangely like the South Dakota badlands and paid our $68 for a 4 night stay. 

Here’s a shot of site 2 looking towards the east and the ridge…the Little Missouri River is behind Neil in this shot.

And a shot of the Little Missouri River about 30 yards from our campsite, along with a pano shot looking east toward the ridge, and a couple of shots of our neighbors in the park…there’s a large horse camping area just north of us that is pretty full.

The pano is essentially what we see of our rear window.

So…here we sit…parked in this wonderful field with a great view…albeit it without utility hookups. With our solar panels we have as I write this fully charged batteries, a full tank of fresh water, and the generator ready for a couple of hours of runtime in the morning then we’ll just let Mr. Sun finish topping us off. It’s about 70 degrees with a 9 or 10 mile an hour breeze. Neil thinks that it will be really, really dark when the sun sets so he’s hoping for some Milky Way shots or something later…we’ll see how that turns out I guess.

For dinner we headed into Medora and had a couple of brews each plus a nicely done elk burger (sans bun for Connie)…met some locals…had some good conversation about Alaska, RVing, and life on the road then came home. With our somewhat limited power we’ll stay out until it starts to get dark then head in for TV and bedtime. We have great internet signal here and decent but not great cell service.

Connie’s doing some planning for Sunday and Monday’s Fun Stuff™. Tuesday it’s supposed to rain (maybe) so we’ll play that by ear and either do more stuff or hang around. Wednesday we’re off early for a 330 or so mile trip up to Regina SK…let’s just say that we now know the correct way to pronounce the name of this city…we were pronouncing it with a long e sound for the i up until our Canadian friends told us how incorrect we were.

More photos and reports on Fun Stuff™ tomorrow I’m guessing.

Cyas.

Today was more Fun Stuff™. After a (for us) relatively late rising time of 0700 we had coffee and breakfast…then dressed and headed off around 0940. We had two destinations today…Fort Snelling which is pretty much in the middle of Minneapolis at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers…back in the day it was built to control and pacify the territory and in the 1820s when it was constructed it was the farthest west and north outpost of the country. 

The fort was used up until after WWII…during it’s history it trained soldiers for both World Wars as well as being the initial in-processing site for Minnesota citizens who volunteered for service during the Civil War. It was also the home for 4 years of a slave named Dred Scott and his wife who he met and married here. Because Minnesota was in the north where slavery was outlawed…and because Congress passed a law that made any slave who entered a free state a free man…his time here was the genesis of the court case which culminate in the famous Dred Scott decision. In addition, it was the home of the chief Japanese language school for the military in the years before and during WWII and it’s graduates plated a pivotal role in in interrogation of Japanese prisoners and translation/evaluation of captured documents during the war.

There were slaves held at the fort with the approval of the commandant and in apparent violation of Federal law. Years later…Dred Scott sued for his freedom based on the congressionally passed law and the case went up all the way to the Supreme Court. The decision came down against him and the court stated that Congress could not pass a law outlawing slavery in the territories. There were some quotes from the majority opinion of the court in the historical movie we watched at the fort…and it’s clear that despite anything you’ve heard to the contrary that racism was alive and well in the free states even though there were no slaves in those states. The court held that the Negro race was known to be deficient and did not have the rights accorded to white men. While we had heard of the Dred Scott decision way back in American History class in grade school…we were not aware of the details of the decision. I don’t mean to bring up a touchy subject…but from the court decision it’s clear that racism was not confined to the Confederacy. Well…’nuff said about that…but it is part of the history of the fort and I thought it should be mentioned.

Anyways…after our arrival we got parked and paid the entrance fee…then sat down and watched the 16 minute or so movie about the history of the fort. Here’s a picture of Kara intently watching to learn stuff.

After a quick tour of the fort by a young lady staff member dressed in 5…or so she told us…layers of heavy period clothing from the early 1820s we gathered in the parade ground to watch a cannon demonstration. This is a 6 pound field piece…so named because it fired a 6 pound shot and was designed to be mobile artillery instead of being fixed in position in a fort. We watched the crew load and then fire the cannon…a properly trained crew could load and fire twice a minute…pretty good rate of fire.

That’s the enlisted men’s quarters in the background behind the field piece…12 men to a bunk room but only 6 bunks so they slept head to toe two to a bunk. 

Here’s a shot of the Commandant’s Quarters…it’s at the far end of the parade ground about where the field piece is aimed, and a shot of the officer’s quarters located across from the enlisted men’s. Larger rooms as the officers were expected to have servants (usually slaves, soldier’s wives, or local settler women) to maintain their social status…their quarters were bigger and had a parlor, bedroom, and kitchen for each officer and his wife or set of 3 bachelor officers.

After that we climbed up to the top of one of the three surviving buildings…the original round fortification located behind the field piece. The others are the officer’s quarters and the Commandant’s Quarters…which is the oldest home in Minnesota being built in 1822. Here’s a panorama shot of the parade ground taken from atop the fortification. This view is looking towards the Mississippi about a half mile outside the walls below the bluff…there weren’t any trees back then so the fort commanded the confluence of the two rivers. The Minnesota is to the left of the fort and is immediately adjacent to the bluff the fort is on. You can see the enlisted quarters, Commandant’s Quarters and officer quarters from left to right around the parade ground.

We stopped and had some popcorn for lunch…then visited the kitchen below the Commandant’s Quarters and had a brief demonstration of how the meals were cooked…she was cooking chicken, peas, and fruit cake for the daily meal for the family…it smelled pretty good but because of a mouse problem in a 195 old year building they aren’t allowed to give any samples out. Bummer. After that were pretty much fort’ed out so we made our way back to BAT and headed off to our second destination of the day…Minnehaha Falls. We didn’t realize that this  was going to be as crowded as it was…we knew it was in the middle of downtown and it’s June but we never really made the connection between that and crowds. After a bit-‘o-adventure finding a parking place for BAT in between the roads closed for construction, detour signs, and cramped parking lot we made our way over to the falls…which is a 53 foot drop on the Minnehaha Creek about a half mile before it empties into the Mississippi. Here’s a shot taken from the side atop the gorge and another one taken from down at the base after trekked down the stairs to the bottom. We were going to try and get closer but elected to obey (good idea!) the No Trespassing signs…however there were dozens of people who violated them and then risked their lives by crawling up the rock face to get behind the falls themselves. We thought to ourselves that there is “ignore the No Trespassing signs” stupid…and then there’s “let’s risk our lives” level of stupid. We frankly don’t understand why the city doesn’t have a Ranger down there to prevent people from violating the signs…or at least a taller fence to keep them out. Seems like a whole lot of potential liability to us when one of the snowflake teenagers falls and is injured or killed. You can see from the second photo a couple of the higher level of stupid teenagers…Neil was going to edit them out but left them in for ya’. Connie had to walk away as almost nothing gets her irritated more than idiots that endanger themselves by crawling out on waterfalls as well as ruining the ability of the rest of us to get a decent picture without them being in it. You can just see them at center right in the second shot.

With that our day was done. We made our way back to BAT, stopped for a coke, and headed home. Got stuck in a bit of traffic going through town on I-94 but after that it was smooth sailing all the way home.

Neil went out and greased the hitch in the back of BAT…it’s got a couple of standard grease fittings on it where it pivots up on the airbags when they are inflated. Then it was a short nap…and dinner of brats, corn on the cob, and leftover sweet ‘taters from the other night.

Tomorrow is errands…check book balancing, work, Neil’s got a pile of of paper to process/scan/file/shred and need to pick up a few last minute groceries since we’re boon docking out in the ND prairie next week…then Friday we’re off bright and early with an overnight stop at Fargo ND on the way to Medora.

Cyas.

Well…today was one of those good news and bad news days. We got up about 0500 for coffee and waking up and after making a couple of wraps for lunch headed off about 0720 for our day’s activities. First stop was the Ford dealership in Plymouth a couple miles south of here to get an oil change for BAT. Everything else was still fine on the standard inspection although we’re getting towards time for a scheduled transmission flush and fluid replacement…but we’re leaving that for this winter after the trip to Alaska. It takes a couple of hours and we didn’t have enough time for that today.

After that it was time for Fun Stuff™ as opposed to Fun Stuff© which was our former designation. Connie and Neil were talking about it today and since copyright is generally for text you write and trademark is generally for a slogan or logo or whatever that using ™ was more appropriate. Just wanted to answer any burning questions you may have had when you noticed the change.

Anyways…on to Fun Stuff™. First stop was the town of Hastings MN about 25 miles southeast of here right on the Mississippi river…it’s a quaint little midwest town that was supposed to have shops and other cool stuff to see. We had to wend our way through traffic a bit as it was 0930 or so when we were headed that way and it was still the end of rush hour. We got there, found a place to park and wandered around the historic/restored part of town…but quickly found out it was about 3 blocks long on both sides of one street. There’s supposed to be 60something buildings in town on the National Register of Historic Buildings…but mostly it was a bunch of antique shops and empty storefronts. We did get a few shots of the historic buildings that were cool and wandered over and got a few shots of the Mississippi as it flowed by.

A guy paddling his canoe downstream for some fishin’. I hope he has a trolling motor in the bottom to get home as the current was running 5 or 6 knots and it would be no fun paddling upstream.

We headed next to Vermillion Falls Park which contains…naturally enough…Vermillion Falls and is about 3 miles from downtown Hastings. Got a nice shot of the waterfall which is in a side channel next to a hydro electric plant on a tributary to the Mississippi. You can just see the brick wall on the lower right that is where the plant is…and you can see where the top cascade has been reconstructed a bit to add a lip to prevent erosion of the falls. The larger cascade you can see appears to still be a natural flow.

We were getting hungry by this time but it wasn’t lunchtime yet…so we stopped for a Blizzard (Neil) and milkshake (Connie) from a DQ we passed. Good thing we saw it as they were really good and we were running out of gas…we ended up missing breakfast this morning before we headed out.

Second stop was at Hidden Falls Park a bit north and west from Hastings on the Mississippi. Unfortunately the road down to the falls was closed for construction vehicles only so we didn’t get anything from there. We did get a short video of the fast current in the Mississippi River at St. Paul MN.

Our third stop was another 2 or so miles north from Hidden Falls…Shadow Falls State Park. Again, right on a side creek flowing into the Mississippi and while it appeared to be a nicer falls than Hidden Falls would have been…Connie declined to either hike down the path in her street shoes or change into her hiking shoes to go down. So instead we sat up at the top of the bluff and had our wraps for lunch, then took a couple photos of the WWI Memorial to the county citizens that died during the war and the flowers in a small garden nearby.

Finally; we headed home and on the way out of the residential area along the river we happened across Cretin Avenue. Since we’ve long thought that most people are cretins we thought this was appropriate.

From there we had a 30 or so minute drive home then we had a short nap. Woke up and it was getting warm inside as the high today is supposed to hit 90…so we fired up the A/C unit. We can only run one at a time as we only got a 30 amp site here at the KOA…we figured it would be June but it was MN and it wouldn’t be too hot. We can run one A/C fine and we’ll just run the living room one during the day and the bedroom one tonight if it doesn’t cool off.

For dinner we’re off to Mama G’s. It’s a local dive bar that has craft beers for $2.50 during happy hour and decent food according to the reviews. Our original idea was to go over to a place on Lake Minnetonka nearby named Maynard’s…but we decided that although it looked great and it was recommended because of both the food and the great views over the lake…it is 30 miles away and the allure of a 3/4 of a mile back home rather than 30 overcame our desire for the view. Hopefully the dinner will live up to what we had last night…Neil grilled some duck breasts that we needed to get rid of before we get to Canadia and made some maple/berry/balsamic/mustard sauce to go on it and Connie whipped up some mashed sweet ’taters with brown sugar, cinnamon, and pecans. Quite yummy I’m tellin’ ya. 

I also ran out and got a shot of our site here at the KOA…sorry I didn’t do it the last couple of places but we were sort of overwhelmed with the brake issues and Neil didn’t get around to taking one. I got on him about that…after all his iPhone is always, always in his pocket so how hard can it be to just take the darn photo already! Here’s site 43 here at the KOA Minneapolis NW…a nice little park albeit the sites are a bit tighter than we like.

Oh yeah…the good news was that Vermillion Falls was pretty neat and the bad was that Hidden and Shadow Falls turned out to be a bust. Oh well.

Cyas.

Ok, as I reported in my last post it looks like our brake issues are done. Everything on the trailer worked just fine on the way from Elkhart to here at the KOA Minneapolis Northwest in Maple Grove MN but we did have an alarm on our brake controller in the truck that we eventually (after we found the correct manual, New Horizons gave us the wrong one that wasn’t for the ABS brake system we have) determined to be an alarm saying that the driver rear wheel ABS sensor had failed.

As you may recall…we had the guys at MORryde see if they could reroute the ABS cables for more slack…we hoped that they would open up the underbelly access panel and actually reroute the cables. What they did was yank on the cable until they got a little more slack and call it done.

We figured we had a bad cable and were making arrangements to get some replacement ones shipped here to Maple Grove when Neil decided to be smart, crawl under the trailer and make sure that he could actually access them to replace the bad one before we spent the bucks to order one. On visual examination…the connector for the driver rear wheel was disconnected from the sensor. The sensor has about a 2 foot cable on it that plugs into a longer cable up in the underbelly, the longer cable leads over to the brake controller. It turns out that the longer cable is tie wrapped to the frame members and wiring bundles so when you yank on the sensor wire you get some more slack in the short sensor attached cable but when you pull the connector comes undone and hence the ABS system detects no sensor. Neil plugged everything back up and got some tie wraps and rerouted the longer cables a bit then dressed everything up nicely so all is good.

That was Sunday afternoon’s job…the morning we went to Mass. Afterward we had some of Neil’s famous Fusilli pasta with bacon, caramelized onions, garlic, pecans and cheese for dinner along with a couple of wine coolers. After that we watched TV and went to bed early to finish recovering from the time zone change.

On the way over from Elkhart we got the ‘time for an oil change’ alert on BAT…so we’ve slightly rejiggered our plans on that one. Originally we were going to get it changed in Dawson  Creek before heading off but we have another 1700 miles to go and we didn’t want to push the oil change interval that long. So…we’ve got an appointment for Tuesday AM to get it done and we’ll just skip the one in Dawson Creek. If our calculations are correct…we’ll need another one right as we get back to Prince George so we’ve scheduled one there. We’ll watch the mileage on the way up and if necessary we’ll get it changed in Anchorage as we’ll be there about halfway through the trip. However, 1,700 miles to Dawson Creek plus 4,800 towing miles on the trip to Prince George plus another 1,000 for driving around miles is just about 7,500…which is about when the BAT computer will want another change…so we’ll play that one by ear.

With that scheduled and the non-need for an ABS cable replacement we did some planning yesterday. Today our goal was to visit downtown St. Paul…the sister city to Minneapolis and the other half of what is known as “the Twin Cities”…basically it’s the part of Minneapolis on the east side of the Mississippi. Tomorrow we’re off southeast of the city a bit to the Hastings area for a quaint little town visit with a waterfall nearby…then we’ll stop by Minnehaha Falls which is right in downtown Minneapolis on the way home…I’ve got some neat info about this fall that I’ll report on when I have the pictures tomorrow. Wednesday we’re off to Fort Snelling for a walk around a pre Civil War fort built back when Minnesota was being settled. Tomorrow night we’re going to a local dive bar for dinner and who knows what for dinner Wednesday night. 

Thursday we’re doing some of that home stuff…which is ok because it’s gonna rain anyway…laundry, groceries and the like and Connie has a bit o’ work to finish up. Then we’re off on Friday AM to somewhere west of Fargo ND and then continue Saturday to Teddy Roosevelt NP (national park) before heading northward into Canadia.

Ok…a report on today’s mission.

We headed off about 0930 or so and drove to downtown St. Paul heading for the Landmark Center…which was the old Post Office and Federal Building until the early 1900s. It then fell into disrepair for a couple of decades and was scheduled for demolition to provide a parking lot in the late 1920s. The locals convinced the Feds to turn it over to the city and it was refurbished to it’s former appearance and turned into a cultural center of sorts. To  give you an idea of how bad it was…many of the solid marble walls had to be stripped of your standard Federal government green paint during the rehabilitation process. Who would paint a marble wall?

There’s some photos below of the building and the nearby river…but by the time we were done with it we (a) only had about an hour left on our parking meter and (b) had only another 90 minutes until the scheduled 1300 tour at St. Paul’s Cathedral so we headed off to our destination for lunch…the Great Waters Brewery.

Great Waters is built in the old Hamm Brewery headquarters building and brews a variety of great craft beers. The site was also the physical location of one of the 3 cathedrals in St. Paul that predate the current structure. When Great Waters opened…they found a natural spring underneath the building and they brew their beer using this water…they call it holy water since the cathedral used to be here. Anyway…we had a pint each of St. Andrew’s Cross Scotch Ale…and I gotta tell ya it was mighty, mighty good. We toyed briefly with the pizza of the month for dinner but on further reflection decided to just split a sandwich as it was an early lunch and we don’t usually eat big lunches anyway. After some discussion and on a recommendation from Kristin our bartender (natch we sat at the bar and were the only customers as it was only 1100 in the morning) we ordered the Grilled Pork Sandwich with French Fried Onions and Bacon Jam…because…hey…Bacon Jam. We figured that bacon improved anything and I gotta tell ya’…the combination of bacon, sugar, vinegar, and onions into a sort of marmalade consistency made a pretty stellar spread for the sandwich on a toasted baguette. Of course…you could have put that Bacon Jam on a cracker, dead lizard, or a bumper and it would taste delish of course…Neil’s already looked up a recipe to make some for using around here. We tried to get our bartender Kristin to pose…but she wasn’t having any of it so we settled for a shot of our pints and the window and brew tank behind the bar.

We passed on dessert as we were headed off to St. Paul’s Cathedral…which turned out to be a pretty spectacular place.

A vertical shot looking at the bottom of the 186 foot high dome.

Looking from the vestibule up towards the sanctuary…the baluscade over the altar is bronze and supported by 6 single piece Italian marble columns.

A shot of the rear window and organ…which we just happened to hear last night on our favorite public radio program Pipe Dreams…which features only pipe organ music…the host Michael Barone calls it the “King of Instruments”.

Here are a couple of shots from our earlier visit to Biltmore Castle while down in Marion, the Linville Falls, and the Mash Creek Falls we saw while at Camp Creek State Park WV. The Biltmore Castle and garden photos are all from Connie.

Overlooking Linville Falls.

Mash Creek Falls at Camp Creek State Park WV.

Butterfly at Mash Creek Falls.

That’s about it…I should have some more photos including waterfalls in the next couple of days.

Cyas.

Well…we’re out of the service bay and back into site 3 here at the MORryde facility in Elkhart IN…and hopefully our brake woes are behind us.

After our pretty uneventful trip from the rally in Marion NC to Elkhart IN we got parked, checked in with the service manager Rob, and headed over to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. Our first choice was our favorite place to eat here in Elkhart…Iechyd Da Brewery but they were closed on Tuesday and we had a hankering for Chinese…so she found the Mandarin Kitchen that had good reviews. We drove over there and walked in the door…followed by walking out the door as it was a take out place with a couple of tables in the front; not our idea of fine dining. The other Chinese place in town Jade Garden was our second choice and it turned out to be a good one. Great food and $30 including tip.

Wednesday we finally backed the house into the service bay in the late morning and Rob’s guys Sergio and Keith started looking at our problems. Here are a couple of before photos of the failed parts.

Rotor…this turns with the wheel, the surface is supposed to be shiny and smooth like glass.

Caliper…this fits over the rotor and does not rotate. Notice the arrows pointing to what used to be little rubber boots that help keep the brake fluid in and the dirt out.

And finally the pads themselves…you can see in the shot of the caliper above that the top pad of the two in the middle doesn’t have any brake material on it. Here’s what the pad that was rubbing on the rotor looks like.

Some discussion with Rob and others here at the factory revealed that back in early to mid 2012 Dexter (they make the brakes) had a problem with pads in that the material separated from the backing plate. The material is epoxied on so it’s either bad epoxy, bad mixing, or bad curing…sure seems like a manufacturing defect on Dexter’s part to us (and Rob as well)…but rather than owning up to the problem they just say “24K warranty and it’s normal wear and tear” so they save money.

So…after some evaluation by Rob, Keith and Sergio here’s what we ended up needing: (a) 2 complete new brakes for the rear wheels, turns out that an entire kit is cheaper than the individual parts so we have a few leftover parts from the two kits in our spare parts bin now; (b) we also needed new springs installed on our IS (independent suspension) since we’re pretty heavy (although still well within the rated capacity of 7,000 pounds for axles…our heaviest axle is 5,700 and heaviest wheel is 3,100) and the original springs (well, they’re actually rubber plates but they call them springs) were fully compressed and Rob replaced them with stiffer/stronger springs to both give us a little more headroom as well as pick up the rear of the trailer just a bit; (c) we needed to have our IS welded to the frame to make it a little stiffer; and (d) a little dress up of the wiring for our ABS system that New Horizons didn’t leave enough slack in.

We told them to fix it right and also check our bearings as that was on our original work list for the Alaska trip…the good news is that the bearings look fine, no excess grease in the caps and nothing looks out of order there. They got to work and finished up the welding yesterday…and since we were up on blocks (like any good redneck, ya gotta have a house trailer up on blocks) we just spent the night inside the service bay which essentially meant that we were inside the 3 shifts per day factory. Luckily they don’t do too much noisy stuff at night. After the day’s work we headed over to Iechyd Da for dinner…and it was another rousing success.

We had a pint each of Stiff Wind Scottish Strong Ale (7.2% alcohol, stronger than most brews)…a dark brown ale similar to Newcastle Brown Ale…quite tasty. Along with that we split a Kidwelly pizza…Rosemary oil, ham, smoked Gouda cheese, mozzarella, arugula, and balsamic vinegar…again quite tasty. We were still a bit hungry so we split an order of Sticky Toffee Pudding with caramel sauce and whipped cream and a snifter each of Walloon Belgian Dark Strong which is a fruity dessert type beer and even stronger at 9.2%. It’s served in a smaller glass…the snifter was about a half pint but it was heavily flavored and that’s about all you would want of it. Here’s a shot of the Stiff Wind.

After dinner we came home…sat in the rig in the factory…and watched TV until bedtime.

Today we were up at 0500 as we had to be ready for Keith by 0600…had coffee and breakfast and got dressed then headed over to the office while Keith and his helper got to work. About 1400 we were finished and ready to pull out of the service bay. After we did that Keith measured our over all rig height as the stronger springs did pick us up a bit…he measured it at 13’6” which is about 2 inches higher than before but he and Rob said the springs would compress an inch or so over the next couple of days so figure we will end up at 13’5”…just an inch taller than before. Not a big deal…we’ll just reprogram the height in our truck GPS and head on down the road.

The final bill for our troubles was almost 3400 bucks…787 for the original repair at Restless Wheels Trailer in Manassas VA a couple backs, 583 for the parts Bill Napier and Neil picked up at Redneck Trailer Supply (what a great name) in Lincolnton NC and another 1990 to MORryde for the parts, labor, and alignment of the IS we needed after the spring replacement

We pulled over and parked (again) back in site 3 and got power on and the A/C fired up as it’s about 80 today. Neil stored away all the spare brake parts we ended up with…along with some spare lug bolts for both our friend Bill Napier and ourselves and some spare hydraulic hoses and limit switch for our Quadra BigFoot jacks that level us when parked and unhitched. The spare hoses will help ensure that we have no issues with hoses on the Alaska caravan.

We also figured out our route between Elkhart IN and De Forest WI (right outside Madison) for tomorrow. We have to pass Chicago and want to (a) miss the traffic, (b) miss downtown Chicago, and (c) pay the least amount of tolls we can get away with without driving 100 miles out of the way. Connie found us a convenient way that does all of that and will only cost $16 in tolls…we could have had no tolls but it’s 100 miles farther and we’ll waste more than 16 bucks in fuel going that way. We’re having dinner tonight at Heinnies which is local bar and steak house…then we’ll get hitched up, tested, and on the road tomorrow morning with an underway time of about 0900 for our 270 mile trip to De Forest. We’ll park overnight at the Madison KOA then head out again Saturday morning for the remaining 270 miles or so to Minneapolis where we’re staying at the Minneapolis NW KOA which (strangely enough) is in Maple Grove and not Minneapolis. Then we’ll do Fun Stuff© along with probably a little work for Connie until we leave next Friday for a 2 day drive via Fargo ND to Medora ND where we will stay at the boon docking campground at Teddy Roosevelt National Park for a couple days…then it’s off to Saskatoon and points west in Canadia.

Cyas.

Well…the rally was pretty wonderful all week; albeit very, very exhausting. Saturday Bill and Neil got under the rig and pulled the calipers and pads off of the rear wheels while capping the brake lines so that the fluid wouldn’t leak out. Then we partied with the rally folks and Howard and Linda Sunday. The highlight activity for Sunday afternoon was a walking dessert tour around the town of Black Mountain about 30 miles away. We met our tour guide and went to 5 different restaurants and ate dessert…then came home to the rally park for a late afternoon ice cream social. Talk about a sugar buzz…we were seriously bouncing off the walls by the end of the campfire Sunday night.

Monday it was back to work on the brakes…we found a place called Redneck Trailer Supply over toward Bill’s house in Belmont NC that had parts available. So…we drove over there and picked up a caliper and a set of pads then came home for…you guessed it…more installation later in the week.

We crawled underneath on Wednesday morning and replaced the bad caliper and pad on the front left wheel and the pads on the front right wheel…we thought they were damaged but it turned out after removing them that they were just slightly misaligned with the rotor and were actually fine. Reconnected the brake lines and bled the system and we had 4 working brakes. That gives us 16K of brakes on the trailer and 14K on the truck which is just about enough for our overall weight of about 30K.

Neil and Bill went out and had some training on how to tow more effectively…Neil has not been using engine braking on the rig so Bill taught him the tricks of the trade to do that and save wear and tear on both the truck and trailer brakes. Afterward Neil rejiggered our route to Elkhart for fewer long mountain downgrades albeit it with another 100 miles…so we decided to change our plans and leave Sunday instead of Monday…which would still get us to Elkhart on schedule.

Wednesday was a fun day for Connie and Linda…they went over to the Biltmore mansion for a tour and lunch. Pictures are on the file server which Neil didn’t startup today as we have to hitch and get into the service bay tomorrow so I’ll post them later on for ya.

Thursday was a work day for Connie while Neil, Bill and Linda headed about 40 miles north for a white water rafting tour on the Watauga River just over the border into Tennessee. After a nice lunch we launched and floated downstream about 8 miles with up to Class C rapids in a couple of 6 person rafts. The water was really cold…we knew because each raft was equipped with Magnum Super Soaker water cannons with which we pelted the other boat throughout the afternoon. We made it to the take out point right in front of the storm…it poured rain on the bus ride back to where we parked the cars then poured again on the way home to Marion.

Friday was a nice hike with Bill and Linda up at Linville Falls about 20 miles north. As expected in the NC mountains…it rained off and on and the hike was pretty steeply uphill then back downhill to the visitor center. We got some great photos of the Linville Falls…but again they’re on the file server so I’ll have to post them later when it’s started up.

Saturday was scheduled to be the grand finale for the rally…so mostly we rested after a continental breakfast until the luau scheduled for the evening. After a great dinner of slow cooked pig we sat around the campfire until dark then hit the sack early.

Sunday we were up for the final rally activity…another catered breakfast at which we (again) ate too much…then Howard and Linda said their goodbyes to all of us and we to them…then there was a series of “Cyas down the road” as most of the 61 rally attendees headed for their next stop.

During the week we had 3 catered dinners, 3 breakfasts, ate dinner up at the Swiss Chalet restaurant on the Blue Ridge Parkway with Bill and Linda as well as our friends James and Cindy, had pizza at a local place with Bill and Linda, and grilled burgers with Bill and Linda the other two nights. We went to about half of the official campfires and spent the remaining evenings outside our rigs talking mostly with Bill, Linda, James, and Cindy.

We finished packing and hitching and hit the road about 1000 for our 220 mile trip to Camp Creek State Park in Camp Creek WV for the evening. We had one small navigational issue on the way into the campground causing us to have to drive another 12 miles or so on narrow curvy mountain roads…but they weren’t nearly as bad as Connie thought they were (says Neil anyway). On arrival we did minimal setup…power only, ate left over pizza and went to bed. Up early the next morning…we had a quick breakfast and were on the road by 0830 for a 350 mile day through Charleston WV and Dayton OH to our overnight stop in Wapakoneta. We were pretty tired so just had bacon and frozen Eggo waffles for dinner then watched TV until bedtime. Both of these stopping spots were pretty nice…Camp Creek a nice spot on Mash Creek and a nice little KOA campground in Wapakoneta.

Tuesday morning we hit the road about 0900 for the remaining 180 miles to Elkhart and pulled into the MORryde parking lot about 1330. We filled up with water and parked in the free spot they provide for customers. Neil did a few odd jobs around the house for the afternoon then we went over to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. Our first choice would have been Iechyd Da Brewery but it was closed today…Connie picked this place that had several rave reviews named the Mandarin Kitchen. Unfortunately…this turned out to be a take out place so we walked in the door…and then walked out the door and headed to the other Chinese place in town…Jade Garden. Soup (egg drop for Connie and hot and sour for Neil), a Kirin for her and a Tsingtao for Neil, an order of steamed pot stickers (steamed dumplings) and an order of Crispy Orange Beef quickly were ordered, delivered, and just as quickly disappeared. Truly great food and the bill came to a total of 24.30 (30.00 with the tip)…can’t gripe about that price for dinner especially as we have leftovers for lunch one day.

Tomorrow we’ll get the rig into the service bay and get things sorted out…it appears that there is a common cause for our failures…I’ll elaborate more on that tomorrow after the service guys look at things to verify. Our current plans are to head out from here Friday morning for an overnight in Madison WI then onto Minneapolis MN for 6 days.

We do have a few photos for ya today though…after our arrival and setup at Camp Creek State Park we wandered over to the Mash Creek Falls and grabbed a couple of shots of them as well as a blue and black butterfly we spotted on the way back to the rig for our leftover pizza dinner.

Cool little butterfly or moth…I have no idea which it is and no idea how to tell which is which.

Mash Creek Falls.

I’ll get the file server up in a day or so…process the Biltmore and hiking pictures…and post those as well.

And a couple of funnies we ran across this week.

Cyas.

Man we’ve been busy. As of my last post we had transited to Midlothian and gotten settled in for our 6 day stay to visit the human kids, see grand baby Alex, drop off some stuff at the storage unit and drop off our Mazda 6 with the kids while we’re off to Alaska.

After our brake repairs last week things proceeded pretty normally and we got to Midlothian in short order.

We spent the week soaking in as much Alex time as we could…photos below… and working on our various other jobs. Stayed pretty busy at it too…dinner with the kids a couple of nights (Neil cooked once and we got a pizza the other time)…went out to a bar named The Hard Shell for Neil’s birthday and had raw oysters, crab dip, and Legends Brown Ale which was pretty outstanding.

We dropped off the Mazda and did laundry on Thursday before the birthday dinner, said our final CYAs to the kids, gave Alex too many hugs and then packed up the house in the afternoon for our 330 or so mile transit to Marion NC for the RV-Dreams Family Reunion Rally. RV-Dreams is run by our friends Howard and Linda Payne who went on the road as full timers at the ripe old age of 42 and have been it 10 years now. In 2006 they started doing educational rallies to essentially teach people how to become full time RVers…nothing like that was available when they were figuring it out and they wanted to pass along their lessons learned for other people to realize their dreams.

They do 2 or 3 educational rallies a year and in 2013 started an annual boondocking rally to teach folks that already have RVs how to boondock or park without hookups…learning to manage power, water, and waste water tank capacities to extend their ability to park at really beautiful but out of the way spots.

Naturally…there are a bunch of folks that have attended numerous of these educational rallies despite long experience in the RV life…they keep coming back because they like Howard and Linda who are good people as we say and because they’ve met friends at the rallies and want a chance to catch up.

This year…Howard and Linda decided to have a reunion rally…the only criteria for attending was that you had to have attended a previous educational or boon docking rally (Neil and Connie have been to 3 prior to this one…2 educational and the 2015 boon docking rally). This one is different in that it’s entirely social oriented…no seminars, no training, just Fun Stuff©, paddling, white water rafting, zip-lining, cookouts, potlucks, campfires, and various organized tours.

We arrived Friday afternoon about 1600 and parked next to our friends Bill and Linda Napier…with some planned work on our rigs. Things were going well until the folks that were checking rigs in came over and told us that we had some grinding noise coming from our wheels…and that a brake pad had fallen out on the road on the way into the rally park area here at Tom Johnson RV Park.

Neil and Bill hopped under the rig…and sure enough…more brake problems. Both of our rear trailer wheels have lost the inside brake pad and caliper as well as damaging the rotor…eerily similar to the failure we had fixed up in Fairfax 2 weeks back. One other wheel has a bad caliper and almost gone pads and one other one (for a total of 4 out of the remaining 5) has the initial signs of damage.

All appear to be the same…the calipers locked up somehow and wore away the inside brake pads. Our immediate solution was that Bill and Neil disconnected and capped the brake lines for the 3 known bad calipers and pulled the calipers off the wheel…this reduced us to 3 brakes out of 6…which while not ideal should allow us to limp up to Elkhart IN to get them fixed properly. We did modify our planned route to Elkhart to eliminate all the long downhill mountain grades and will leave Sunday after the rally instead of Monday and take 3 days to get there.

Tomorrow we’re going to order parts (or perhaps pick them up semi-locally if things work out correctly) and we’ll get up to 4 brakes working for the trip to Elkhart. Then it will be up the the MORryde folks to figure out why the inside pads are failing and fix things correctly. Bill and Neil ran down numerous ratholes this afternoon trying to figger out why but came to no definite solutions.

We’ll continue rally activities around the repairs…yesterday we went on a dessert tour around the city of Black Mountain NC about 20 miles away…ate way too much sugar over the course of 2.5 hours but it was a really good afternoon. Our reward was ice cream for dinner:-)

Connie and Linda are going over to the Biltmore House on Wednesday for a tour and lunch…Neil and Bill don’t are about it so they’re skipping. Thursday Bill, Linda, and Neil have a half day white water rafting trip scheduled and we’re going hiking on Friday if it doesn’t rain. The brake repairs will get fit in there somewhere depending on parts arrival, rain, and rally activities.

You may recall that Ozzie the Fort Myers eagle was injured back in April before we left and was at the Crow Rehabilitation Center. Neil checked today and Ozzie’s wing has healed sufficiently that he’s been moved to the large flight enclosure so that he can fly and 

Ok, on to the photos.

With mom Jen.

Cutie Pie.

Doesn’t quite know what to make of Neil’s Granddad beard.

Wondering what’s goin’ on.

He’s got a secret…it’s poop:-)

Laughin’ at Grandma.

I’ll go ahead and post this for now. We’ve had some interesting times at the rally and went on a white water rafting trip and hike…I’ll do another post tomorrow for those and get more Alex photos from Connie.

Cyas.

Well…for not doing anything it was a really busy week. I figured I better post and let ya’ll know that we wuz still alive and give you the trials and tribulations of our week.

As mentioned in the last blog…we had the center left brake caliper fail on our trip from Dam Neck to Fairfax last Friday. We got it looked at on Saturday and the parts came in Wednesday; so Thursday AM while Connie went off to the college for a lunch meeting Neil headed over to the repair place and got the repairs completed.

Sunday we drove down to Midlothian to have dinner with Bryan, Jenn and Alex as well as both sets of Jen’s parents…Tom and Marilyn and Wayne and Kim. We had an excellent dinner at The Melting Pot…first time Bryan had his Mom for Mother’s day since high school and the first time all of the parents were together with them since the wedding.

Monday we headed off to our dentist Doug Wooddell for cleanings and a scheduled crown on Neil’s lower right rear molar. When we got there…turned out that he actually needed 3 new crowns. Lower left rear molar the porcelain had chipped out and food gets stuck in it so that one needed replacing…upper right rear molar had a cavity under it and so it needed replacing. The insurance declined to cover that one as it was only 5 years old…doesn’t make much sense to me but that’s the insurance company leeches for ya. He went ahead and got those two crown preps done for installation on Friday. Dr. Wooddell had him come back on Tuesday morning for the crown prep on the one that was originally scheduled.

While all that was going on Connie took BAT over to the Ford dealer to get a recall completed that required some reprogramming of the computer system. Easy peasy for her.

Wednesday we stayed home…Connie worked and Neil laid around and hurt from the dental work on Monday and Tuesday.

Ditto Thursday except for the brake fix and Connie’s meeting and lunch down at the college.

Friday Connie worked again and Neil went off to get his 3 new crowns installed and finished up his cleaning…that got rescheduled from Monday as Dr. Wooddell needed the time that would have been cleaning to do the second crown prep.

With all that done…we came home Friday and just rested the rest of the day from our very busy but not much fun week.

This morning we got up and checked out of Bull Run campground…hitched up and were on the road for our 140 or so mile trip right around 0920. We battled serious traffic on I-95 south…stop and go with construction, merges, idiots, and general unfriendly drivers. We finally got here to Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield near where their human kids live about 1420 and discovered that coming into a state park campground on Saturday is generally not a good idea. There were a total of 4 sites (between already empty and leaving today by 1500) available. One we wouldn’t fit in, two we would have fit but had a heck of a time leveling and had no satellite visibility and then there was site 121. We almost stayed in this one last time but weren’t quite sure that satellite visibility would work fine. 121 had somebody in it but he was packing up to leave so we parked at the front office and had lunch then came back just as he was leaving. We got pulled in to a tight entry quite nicely and parked with the best satellite visibility chances we could get…turns out that we get 2 of 3 of the DirectTV birds so we still get most of the channels we watch.

It was seriously hot so we setup, turned on the A/C, cooled off, had a shower, and ate leftovers from Connie’s lunch on Thursday and are now resting until bedtime. I’ll get Neil to take a shot of our site tomorrow and put it in the blog later in the week.

Ok…only one more thing to report today…and it’s kind of an interesting story.

Last Sunday night after our Mother’s Day dinner we were headed up I-95 on the way home. Got stuck in two really serious accident backups and about half way through the second one we looked up and noticed that we were passing the exit for US-1…we were due to get off at VA-234 which is the next exit past US-1. So…we decided to jump off the freeway and take US-1 up to 234 to get out of the backup. Turns out that US-1 actually runs through the US Marine Corps base at Quantico. We turned up the road and started accelerating. Came around a bend at about 35 or so and passed a speed limit 35 sign. Neil says that we might have been going 35-40 but definitely less than 40 since he was still in third gear in the Mazda. Well, the blue lights lit up and these two cop trucks start chasing the 4 cars that had just passed them. All 4 of us stopped…we actually thought that the cops were going somewhere and were trying to get out of their way. They sent the other 3 cars on their way and got our registration and Neil’s license and military ID as they were military police.

While the one guy was looking at the paperwork the second one asks Neil if he knew what the speed limit was. He replied 35. Cop says how fast were you going. He replied he thought 35 but definitely less than 40 due to the gear he was in. The cop says with a straight face “well, you were going faster than the car in front of you.” Neil says “I didn’t know that was illegal.” Pretty soon the first cop comes back…noticed that Neil was a retired officer and sent us on our way.

Long story short…no idea why they stopped him. He didn’t notice that he was going faster than the guy in front of him…and that’s sort of a self limiting thing anyway since you’ll run into the guy in front if you don’t slow down. No idea how fast we were actually going other than 35-40 in third gear (manual 5 speed transmission). 

Very, very strange I’m tellin’ ya. Never knew that driving faster than the guy in front of you was a vehicular violation on a Marine base…live and learn I guess.

Sorry no photos in here…but as we did no Fun Stuff© this week there aren’t any to post. I will get a shot of our site 121 tomorrow for ya.

Tomorrow is Mass then we’re off to the human kids to see grand baby Alex.

Cyas.

Bad I’m tellin’ ya…Bad with a capital B.

Everything started off so well though…

We got up, had breakfast, hitched up and hit the road about 0930 or so for our planned 240 mile trip up to Northern VA. Heading up I-64 and then US-460 we arrived at I-295 around Richmond right on schedule and  turned north. Stopped at the TA for fuel right north of Richmond and filled up BAT along with grabbing some lunch. So far…so good.

Continued up 95 to VA-234 and exited heading westward toward Centerville and then the fun began. After 10 miles or so we approached a red traffic light and NEIL DISCOVERED WE HAD NO BRAKES.

Yup, no trailer brakes at all. He was able to get stopped by downshifting BAT and using the truck brakes and we pulled over to check things out. Tested break controller…seemed to be working. Checked brake fluid…sure enough, empty. Looked under the rig at the brake calipers and discovered a leak on the center left brake assembly.

After a bit of discussion we decided to continue on to the campground as it was only another 10 miles or so. We kept the speed to about 35 mph max and Neil kept an eye out ahead to start slowing with engine braking and the truck brakes as necessary and we made it to Bull Run a little later than originally scheduled but without hitting anything.

Checked in and pulled into our site 113 (sorry, no picture as we were frazzled but 113 is the same site we were in last time so if you really want to know what it looks like look back around September or October last year and I’m sure there’s a shot in there). It turned out that we had parked a little too close to the power pole…we had plenty of clearance but that was a more steeply angled section of the site so we were unable to get the jacks to level us…it kept complaining about excessive angle. Sooooo…we ended up having to rehitch BAT and jockey forward and back to get into a flatter portion of the site and then used manual leveling instead of auto and finally got leveled.

Today we got up and called a local trailer maintenance place and they had an opening…so that meant hitching up and limping over to their location with no brakes. We left the hazards a’blinkin’ and got there fine. We spent a couple of hours there while they troubleshot the problem. Turned out that somehow the caliper had gotten stuck with the pads against the rotor. This wore the pad completely away and the pad metal backing plate gouged/grooved the heck out of the rotor…then the piston came out of the caliper and all the fluid ran out which meant no brakes. We need a new rotor, caliper and pads of course plus labor. They thought it might be covered under warranty and will call and check on Monday as well as ordering the parts.

The tech pulled the brake line off of the broken caliper and capped it…which meant that after he refilled the brake fluid reservoir we again had brakes on the rig…only on 5 out of the 6 wheels but 5 out of 6 is way, way, way better than 0 out of 6 I’m tellin’ ya.

We came back to the campground, got reset up which went pretty quick as we had marked where to park the rig in the site before we left and left all the hoses hooked up to the site utilities but out of the way. Came in, had a nap for a couple of hours, and went out for sushi for dinner…we had originally scheduled a visit to our favorite restaurant but Neil was feeling kinda down with the mechanical troubles and we decided that spending that much for dinner he wouldn’t enjoy was nuts…so went for the sushi instead which was cheaper and closer.

Looks like we have a plan though…it’s a couple hour repair job once the parts are in hand and we’ll adjust our schedule as necessary if we need to…but hopefully it won’t be necessary.

Tomorrow we’re off to Midlothian for Mother’s Day…Bryan and Jen invited us so we’re heading down to eat out with them.

Monday we’ll continue with our previously scheduled appointments here in the Fairfax area.

Cyas.