Travelogue -- 2006

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28 August 2006

We are making plans to go to dinner with Bob and Sharon and Don and Janet tonight (Monday)--sort of a last hurrah before leaving here.

Jimmy and Bob getting ready to sample the ribs.

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25 August 2006

On Thursday we were at Burnside RV at 8am ready to get warranty and repairs made. We got most of it -- the TV satellite antenna now works, the fender skirts were instlled and the damage from the ferry incident in Nova Scotia was corrected. There are still a few minor items outstanding but they will have to wait until we return to Michigan next year.

We towed back to Dimondale in a heavy down pour and set backup.

Friday was e-mail catchup and laundry day followed by a trip to the Eagles for dinner. I joined the Eagles a couple of years ago but rarely use my membership outside of this area.

Summer is coming to an end as witnessed by the sunflowers

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20 August 2006

There were two memorials over the weekend for relatives who passed on this summer. These were both celebrations of the life of loved ones without the dreary overtones of typical funerals.

On Sunday, there was a reunion for a bunch of family that masquaraded into a surprise birthday party for Rosemary.

We visited Dharma on Saturday. She seemed to have a good appetite but was very sensitive around the mid section. They have scheduled a sonogram for Monday evening.

16 August 2006

On Wednesday we picked up camp again and headed for Dimondale and cousin Bob and Sharon's place.

Wednesday evening, there was another party to help Aunt Esther remember her birthday. This time it was pizza at Carol's house.

That's Gene and then Esther as we celebrate her birthday.

We rolled on to Leamington Ontario just ouside of Windsor. We spent the evening and Sunday visiting with Vikki's cousin Linda and Russ. They have a cabin on the north shore of Lake Erie

Dave Vikki and Linda at the Pelee Park near Linda and Russ' Cabin. This is the site of the most southern point in Canada.

We've been nursing a small trailer problem for some time -- our rear left brake on the trailer keeps tightening up and dragging. This issue contributed to our concerns today.

Anyway, we made our way to a place called Prescott in Ontario. There is a bridge over the St. Lawrence into New York here. The park is beautiful and would be a great place to relax for a few days. But, Vikki wants to see another cousin near Detroit so that is the destination for tomorrow

This is the bridge from Prescott Ontario to Northern New York State.

The Mini green egg was back at work on a rack of lamb. This is a change after all of the fish we have been eating.

In the afternoon we took advantage of breaking skys and caught the ferry from Levis to the base of the wall around old Quebec. We shunned the funicullar and climbed all the way to the top of the city. Once again the views are spectacular. Thed population here is very French. Only about 30% understand English. In this way it is even less progressive than Europe. Still, the experience is delightful--sort of like a friendly Paris.

We indulged in another French repast. Vikki had snils and salmon tartar. I had froi grois and a beef tenderloin with citrus finish. The meals were simply outstanding if a bit rich.

We returned to Levis on the ferry under a full moon.

An afternoon break

We are eating again. This time at a side walk restaurant at the St. Anne Hotel. Vikki has a snail appetizer and I am having the foi gras. This may be the last time I get to torment a goose.

A typical street in Quebec City.

A city is a mix of modern and traditional.

We ended the day by treating ourselves to the local version of a French restaurant. I will say the snails were the very best I have ever tasted. The setting was on the south shore of the St Lawrence where we had a wide angle view of the Quebec skyline with ferrys and sailboats in the foreground. Needless to say it was a delightful evening-good wine-good food-and Vikki. My life is good.

The Quebec skyline as seen from a restaurant in Levis.

Mid way on the nine mile Confederation Bridge connecting Prince Edward Island with New Brunswick.

Camping on the St John River at Fredrickton NB.

This evening we had a farewell dinner and then went to the long running Anne of Green Gables musical. These were both exceptional performances and a great way to end the tour.

Back at camp it was hugs all around as we all prepared to depart.

Lobsters prepared for our farewell dinner.

The farewell feast -- and there was desert.

The farms around here apear to be very prosperous; crops consist primarily of potatoes, wheat or barley and clover. We saw very little corn despite the presence of rather large dairy operations.

We had lunch at a golf course club house overlooking one of the fabulous vistas laid out before the Bay of St Lawrence, Afterward we made our way to the Anne of Green Gables site for a walking tour.

Other stops during the day included the Confederation Hall, a quaint property of miniture buildings, and a lobster fishing village.

This is a bedroom in "Green Gables"

This vist is from the Golf Clubhouse where we had lunch.

This is the room where the Confederation conference was held in 1864.

I had an unfortunate incident today as we loaded the ferry. The crew directed me to change lanes before I had adequatly cleared the turning space. I contacted an abutment on the ship and crushed the awnings over two slides and scrapped a bit of paint off. Seems I will have a ne experience finding out how we get this repaired in an international relationship.

One pleasant surprise was seeing the Sperry Marine logo on the Ship's radar antenna. The logo style was the one we adopted after Tenneco bought Sperry Marine from Unisys back during my watch in Charlottesville. I can remember laying out the idea on my desk pad before it was submitted to Tenneco.

The drive from the ferry on Prince Edward Island was another study in landscape beauty. I was struck by how rural the island is. It is crisscrossed with roads giving the map impression of an urban community. In fact, however, only about 150,000 folks inhabit the whole island.

Tonight we hustled downtown in Charlottetown for more seafood with two other tour couples. We both had sampler plates of oysters on the half shell before the meal. Everything was just wonderful.

Preparing to load the ferry for prince Edward Island. We are just behind the wagonmaster

The wagonmaster arranged for a bagpipe demonstration. An accomplished musician demonstrated how the instrument works and presented several solo renditions. It was a very interesting and professional performance.

Following the performance, we had our briefing for the ferry excursion to Prince Edward Island. We are broken into three groups for departure as the ferry is not expected to accomodate all of us on a single passage. On this ferry, priority is always given to commercial transport operations. Luckily, it will be a Saturday so truck traffic should be minimal.

Rick gets some last minute instruction before trying his hand (and lungs) at bagpipes.

This girl with a china doll face had a beautiful voice.

An expert on strings and a comedic actor as well.

The setting for the restored fortress is very realistic

This is a childrens group in a summer program at the fortress

The gardens are very urban in the style of the day.

She is explaining the role of the servant. Note the goose hanging in the background.

We are both very sad to be leaving this wonderful country and its wonderful people. Reflecting, we have observed a lot of people with little wealth but they are so proud and pleased with their life. The environment of this island replaces so much that we others work so hard for.

We are sailing for North Sydney, Nova Scotia. This is where we left for New Foundland but that was a 14 hour journey to St John's on the southeast corner of the Island. We leave from the south west corner so it only takes about six hours. The sea is a little rough but the sail is very smooth. After breakfast, there is entertainment in the lounge by a man and wife combo from New Foundland. They provide a very pleasant end to a fabulous island experience.

After landing in North Sydney we made our way to a campground on the edge of the quaint little village of Louisbourgh,

All through Canada it seems grocery shopping comes in two varieties. One is the super mega market like Atlantic Super Stores. These markets are eleganly layed out and have huge varieties of supplies from deli to staples. The other variety is the small convenience market/general store. These are a cross between a 7-Eleven and a local butcher shop - without the butcher.

Our stop at Grand Codroy mainly serves to positionus for the ferry back to Nova Scotia. There are not a lot of local sights so our wagon masters are preparing a spaghetti dinner for the group. Vikki made up an antipasta dish to pass. Seems we have a variety of sausage products in the fridge that we have to use up before we head for the States.

As usual for Atlantic Canada, the scenery around here is breath taking. It is hard to adequately describe and few pictures do it justice.

Later in the evening several couples went to a local hotel to listen to a local group. The music was terrific and the Newfie humor was great. You just can't help but like these people.

We made Rocky Harbor about 4 and had dinner (pan fried cod) at a local restaurant. We will be here two nights. Tomorrow, we ar sceduled for a boat tour of some inner fiords.

Some others from our tour wenton a bus tour looking for moose around dusk. They reported seeing 14 but no large racks.

The architecture is mostly simple salt box style buildings accomodating a simple life style. These communities are largely cut off from the rest of the world in the four months of each year when ice prevents ferry travel to the Island of New Foundland. Over the entire route we saw one or two building supply stores, a half dozen small general stores, and a few restaurants.

The whole of Labrador holds barely 30,000 folks most of which live along the southern coast. I doubt that we encountered more than a dozen cars as we toured for most of the day.

This was a long day and we arrived at our hotel at 5:30 in the afternoon. The day finised with a porkchop dinner in the hotel. It was a long day and I have to admit to envying Vikki's decision to skip this part of the tour.

In the afternoon, we toured St. Anthony with stops at several historical sites. In the evening, we attended a Viking feast where costumed players treated us to a Viking court proceeding with participation from the audience. Vikki accussed a neighboring table of not partying hard enough. Her charge was up held and the other table was ordered to by ice cream for the group.

As we have moved north, the local trees have become very scrubby. We are told that the glacier that formed the rock called New Foundland left very little top soil so all of the trees along this peninsula are short. Thed prised tree here is the black spruce.

Two other features are the gardens and piles of furnace wood near the road side. It seems the locals take advantage of the graded soil near the road way for little plots of mostly potatoes. The fire wood is cut in the nearby woods and ranked near the road for later pickup. Each houserhold is permitted to cut 8 cords per year for their own use. Otherwise wood sells for about $100,00 per cord. Amazingly, no one steals or otherwise bothers any one elses garden or wood.

Arriving in St. Anthony we caught up on Laundry, prepared a couple of steaks on the mini Big Green Egg and went to a birthday party for one of our caravaners.

We will be in one spot for four nights -- a rare treat on this tour.

As for us, our trailer brake controller was indicating a failure in the brake circuit not soon after we left Botwood. I stopped several times to checkit out and had to negotriate some severe down grades in low gear. I finally found the problem when we stopped at a park information center, A wire was broken at a crimped splice near the axle on the trailer. I have to admit to great relief at getting the problem solved as we are seeing some very big grades on this route.

Tonight's campground is in a woods with well spaced pull through sites. A couple of others in the group had a root beer float social this evening and we all relaxed after a long day on the road.

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24 July 2006

More rain on the trip from Gander to Botwood NF but not much wind today. We are parked in a municiple lot here.

In the afternoon there was a short tour of the town and a cance to pick local wild blueberries. Botwood is a town of about 3500 but with a big history especially as a strategic base during WWII. We must be a rare sight in town as all afternoon the citizens have been driving slowly past looking at our group.

We have been reminded of the kindness and outpouring of support that came from Gander during the 9-11 attacks. The people of Gander took in four times their own population from diverted aircraft when the US airspace system was closed.

Tonight we had a grilled T-bone steak dinner cooked by the local park staff. The steak was very thin but quite large and very tender and cooked just right. The owner then gave a briefing on local history and lore.

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21 Juky 2006

The weather is absolutely CAVU for this excursion which we are told is very unusual. The trip out of the cove reveals major sea bird habitats including the puffin. This is quite usual. What was unusual if the grand sighting of a large pod of whales. The crew counted 16 and I got about 200 pictures of spouts, fins and tails.

On the cruise back to harbor, Vikki and I both went through the "Screech" ceremony to become members of the Royal Order of Screechers.

The day ended with a traditional NS Cod dinner and strawberry shortcake. We returned to camp on the same bus but tooka different scenic route to look for moose and local flora.

On Friday we toured St John's and surrounds. We visited Signal hill and its light house, Cape Spear and its light house and St John's Basilica. We had lunch at a local hotel. This time it was baked, stuffed cod-- delicious as usual.

The day ended with a power failure at the campground. Apparantly, a transformer failed in the park.

We had private state rooms for the crossing; Dude and Dharma were quarantined to the trailer. We were able to visit the dogs for ten minutes four times during the trip.

The weather was fairly calm and we crossed to Argent NF without incident. We arrived at exactly midnight and were setup in a school parking lot by about one am. Here we have to add another half hour to the clocks as Newfie time is 1.5 hours ahead of New York. Curoious, eh?

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18 July 2006

We are now in the north east islands of Nova Scotia. The area is known as Cape Breton. We took a bus tour over the Cabot Trail through Ingonish and a huge national park. The views are breathtaking but the ride was long and tiring. At one point the bus had to navigate a curvy 18 degree downgrade ending in a hairpin turn. A bus driver that was having difficulty finding gears in his standard shift bus added to the day's stress. Near the end of the trip, we finally saw our first moose making its way across a swampy marsh.

We ended the day with a groupwide potluck and then got ready for our ferry ride to New Foundland. We are to break camp by 5:15 tomorrow morning so all unhooks and packups are complete by bedtime.

The bus tour took us around Peggy's where there are several monuments related to the Swiss Air crash. We also vixited the light house and saw more incredibly beautiful scenery. Then we headed to Halifax and to the Citadel. The multiperiod history of the area is reenacted by players in period costume. I tried to catch the canon firing at noon on video but just missed it. Too much anticipation, I guess. I think I can edit a couple of scenes together and add some special effects.

We had a "Tracks" luncheon at a local hotel and then had a couple of hours to hit the waterfront shops.

On our catchup day, I did laundry and we found the local Costco so Vikki could get her regular shopping fix. The day ended with an imprompto social at the campground and a special entertainment put on by the campground owners and staff (family). They served coffee or tea and delicious ginger bread cake.

By the time we arrived at Peggy's Cove, the rain was slowing but the campground was soaked. We were able to back into our spot with minimal jockying around. Still, our trailer wheels are sunk well into the sod. One of the motor homes is definitely stuck. Other incidents during the day included one trailer that got off the road, blew a tire and damaged the tow vehicle, another that got stuck along the way and had to be pulled out by a tow truck, and one motor home that managed to hit a utility stanchion when parking. Overall, this was a day that tried marital relations and called for a stiff drink at the end.

We also toured the tidal generating station here. The idea is to capture the movement of the tides and generate electricity. This is an experiment that only uses the desending high tide to produce power. It works but has a potentially bad environmental footprint.

We bought some Digby scallops at a local market and cooked them at home. They were outstanding.

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8 july 2006

We are more or less at the mouth of the St John river as it dumps into the Bay of Fundy. The tides are very large going plus or minus up to 25 feet, twice each day. The river is narrow enough that the captured water creats a wall of water going up river at high tide and down river at low. This is the effect called the reversing falls. The effect is so strong that normal boat traffic is allowed for only 20 minutes at each slack tide - that time midway in risng or falling tides when the river and sea are at the same level.

As one might expect, the great whirl pools and eddies at this site attract kayakers and other thrill seakers. Yours truely had to ride the jet boats through rapids. This is a sleeked up pontoon boat with a 400 cubic inch diesel driving a jet pump. The boat seats up to twelve plus the driver. The twenty minute ride is gauranteed to get you wet and keep you laughing. Best 40 bucks I have spent in a while.

We also looked at lots of architecture, flowers, history and markets. A lovely town

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6 July 2006

We are forming up at this campground with pretour briefings and time to meet our fellow travelers. Sue and Devere, our long time friends from Phoenix are joining us on this tour. That leaves 46 other folks to get to know.

There are 21 tourist rigs plus two more for the wagon master crews. There are big class A motorcoaches, fifthwheels, Class C motorhomes and a pickup overcab camper. Most (but, not all) of the travelers are retired seniors. Every rig is assigned a number and we coordinate departures and arrivals over our CB radios. We are provided approved routing with stopovers and optional tours along each traveled route. The first wagon master leads off and the second forms a sort of sweeper action to make sure no one gets left behind. Other than that the tour is very flexible. Just arrive before dark.

Only 18 of the 33 days involves driving the rig. Other days have bus tours and an array of other activities. While we had time before the tour gets underway, we made our way to Bar Harbor for lunch and shopping. We were there on the day the Queen mary II was visiting. Things were a bit crowded.

I used some of our homemade wine and beer as the core of our second social gathering on the night before we left on the formal excursion.

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2 July 2006

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25 June 2006

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15 June 2006

Vikki's Aunt Esther landed in the hospital while we were there and Here Uncle Gene is scheduled for a bunch of tests. It all reminds us of how precious these visits are.

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2 June 2006

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29 May 2006

As luck would have it, the two remaining lots in this corner of land were for sale and we decided to buy one of them in the name of Creating Alternatives. We expect to close sometime in August before we return west again. If it is still available, we may buy the remaining lot as well.

This picture is taken from the southwest lot looking back at Gary and Gloria's trailer. You can see their storage barn under the trees on the left side of this picture. Our trailer is parked behind that to the west of Gary and Gloria.

Gary and gloria own the two north lots. We are buying the south west lot and are considering buying the other. In any event, we will clean and develop the southwest lot first. The property has a rather steep rise to the west so will need a bit of grading. There is a fairly dense woods covering the east side of this lot as well as most of the south east lot.

Gloria is on the road that borders the peoperty on the south. She is standing about where the two south lots join. The road belongs to the county and will have to be graded and graveled.

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26 May 2006

The day was far from uneventful as we had an outside sheetmetal piece fall off the side of the trailer as we were cruising alon I-40. It looks as though the panel (about 2 feet by eight feet) had never been properly fastened to the trailer. I picked up the pieces and plan to get it fixed in Michigan when we get there.

From OKC it was North little Rock Wednesday and Lebanon TN, just past Nashville, on Thursday. That left us a short day,140 miles, on Friday for the last leg to Lake Cumberland at Montecello, Kentucky.

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22 May 2006

Here is Allison teaching her new brother about respect for water.

We spent the weekend enjoying the kids and getting our fill of excellent New Mexico quisine. It is so pleasant to find many of our favorites from 20 years ago still thriving. If you are there don't miss the El Patio near the University.

The Reef park is a new park with fairly wide campsites. We were lucky enough to get a site that backed up to the beach.

The Reef also sports a new world class restaurant.

The next picture of Vikki, Dude, and Dharma demonstrates why the place is called the Reef. But not all of the beach is that rough.

The port side tires on the Cambridge were going flat as we pulled into camp. Subsequent investigation revealed that the cast aluminum rims were leaking. I had a tire shop install tubes in the tires so we could get home.

All seemed to be going well until we were about 19 miles from Gila Bend in the middle of the Barry Goldwater Air Force Gunnery Range. We were cruising about 55 when we heard a bang so loud I thought for a moment that we had lost the trailer. As I hit the brakes and headed for the shoulder, one of our tires went rolling past. The tire went about a quarter mile ahead of us before tipping over in a ditch.

As you can tell, the rim was really trashed. We got help from Good Sam to change the tire and bought a steel tim to get us the rest of the way home with a spare. All the rims were replaced under warranty so we were able to start our summer sojurn just a week late.

We stayed at a camp-ground called Playa Bonita.