Our first Reprise!

September 2019

https://bryrv.blogspot.com/2019/09/homeward-bound.html

The answer comes one year later, September 2020:

We didn't plan for this. Honestly. We are wandering westward with only a vague goal in mind –Wyoming, maybe; we really aren't sure. The next thing you know the map put us in Mitchell, SD and we awakened to find that we weren't sure which was the more exciting: a revisit to the “The World's Only Corn Palace” or dinner at Ruby Tuesday.

So we did both. And John even had his hair cut.

Y'see, we had finally found I-90 and turned in a fairly straight westward line.

Since we planned to laze along only three hours a day at first, our first landing after Winona was in Welcome, Minnesota. It was a very pretty, very green, and nicely manicured RV park –with full hookups. After three days of watching the levels in our fresh water tank move in the opposite directions of our not-so-fresh, and downright-ucky holding tanks, we thankfully pulled in and connected. The flow of electrons also allowed us to recharge the “house batteries” and use the microwave. We could've run the air conditioner, too, if there'd been a need.

Instead we got up in the morning and drove another maybe three hours to the exact same R&R campground we'd used in Mitchell last year, just off the interstate. Then we went shopping and John finally visited the barber he'd been meaning to get to since some shaggy while ago. Debbie bought John's story she'd promised him a steak at Ruby Tuesday the day three weeks ago when they stopped at one in Michigan only for the salad bar. Then it was off to see if the Corn Palace had survived.

A Farmer's Market this year.

If you had read last year's account, you learned that the outside murals are composed entirely of corn kernels in several different natural colors and husks.  They change the design yearly. This year, the building celebrated itself. The first Corn Palace was built in 1892, but this building harks back to 1921 and they launched into the Centennial birthday with Mitchell exuberance one year early.

The lady who'd cut John's hair called it The world's biggest bird feeder. Her embarrassed tone of voice suggested she'd have no future position with the Visitors' Bureau.

The next day found us within 20 miles of a camp/recreation area established by the US Army Corps of Engineers at the Big Bend Dam on the Missouri River.

We're still new to this RVing thing and decided to stop here to see what that's like. No water and no sewage hookups on-site, but we did have 50 amps of electricity for just $9/day ( which is half price for us oldsters).  For that, you get a leveled, graveled site –many of them are pull-throughs– with power.  There are several water spigots throughout the camp, but coaches should have their freshwater tanks filled.  There is a dump station, for emptying when you're done.  Everybody else had their boats on the water and fishing lines in. We don't fish, but Debbie watched watery scenery –a personal thrill, especially as she secured us in site 22B, the nearest to the best water view in the entire area.

We stayed two days and John finally caught up on writing these blogs.

You're welcome.

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More Wineries –& Scenery, too.

Arriving in Polk County's St. Croix Falls (county population around 2,000 –maybe) we were told to put our Covid masks back in our pockets because Wisconsin leaves such imperious decisions up to the individual counties.

Aside from the neat-as-a-pinot facilities at the Deer Lake Winery, the fact that we could sit at a table sipping our wine and enjoying our pre-dinner cheese platter along with other people similarly engaged gave us a good mellow feeling. This is one of the Harvest Host locations that allows your RV to spend the night for free, after registering, in return for the presumption that you will buy something. In this case, we found a bottle of a Pinot Grigio we liked enough that we bought a second one. We know nothing about wine, but do like to sip on occasion, which allows us to feel edumacated and sophisticatory around other people who also know nothing about wine.   

Down the road were a bunch of potholes. We know we're talking to a Michigan crowd and the seemingly obstinate Governor Whitmer, who refuses to hear the Legislature, just indebted us for another $800 million more, allegedly to Fix the Damn Roads

because they wouldn't give her the horrid gasoline tax she wanted, but in this case the potholes are quite ancient and are not to be fixed –nor even necessarily damned– because they were caused by swirling eddies thousands of years ago as the big glaciers melted away, the rivers ran in torrents, and the raging waters carried stone bits sharp enough and in sufficient quantities to cut rock. There was quite a collection of holes beyond these six pictured here at Interstate State Park (again, nothing to do with roads; the WI/MN border is here), safely contained behind fences so as not to swallow little cars and bigger truck tires.

We're not traveling very far each day mainly because pushing this monstrous motor coach bus is more stressful than driving a car and two-to-three hours seems about the limit before yawning. We recall we were driving longer shifts on the way back last year after four months on the road and suppose that may happen again. For this next leg, we just went down the road 130 miles to Winona, Minnesota and pulled into another Harvest Host. This was at the top of a steep hill, 600 feet above the Mississippi River flowing by its feet, and we were in an asphalt parking lot. But we had a vista for our evening aperitif and easy access to local sights.

We stayed two nights and spent the intervening day driving another 120 miles: upstream to Red Wing, MN, crossing the river, and back to Winona on the Wisconsin side.

We also tried a few of their wines and bought two glasses with some cheese curds to be polite. The wines tasted okay, nothing special, but the whites were a strong yellow –the yellow-almost-orange you see in the bowl when you haven't hydrated sufficiently. John firmly believes that eyes are as connected to tasty enjoyment as is nose.

Neighbors Greg and Katie had told us we would not be disappointed with the scenery around this area southeast of Minneapolis. We skirted the big city, as you can see on our recorded GPS track captured on the bigger map up there and tested their word. They are honest and truthful. For one, John was amazed that the mighty Mississippi was so broad this far north, albeit widely fringed with shallow, marshy areas; we had arrived from the north in Wisconsin, crossing the water via four or more bridges on Highway 54.   For two, our pre-dinner conversation looked over vines and trees falling to a deeper valley. The next day we jumped on US-14, which becomes US-61, headed north and west toward Red Wing, passing by a KFC on the way. **

The Mississippi is just a mere shadow of its former self, born in the gushing runoff from the mile high glaciers of ice that carved the Great Lakes area into what it is today (and are carving still, we suppose, despite political promises of mankind's puny efforts to restore and sustain). Yet the wide river is deep enough for actual boat traffic.

On this Monday –the 14th– several sailboats were on Pepin Lake, which you might suspect to be just a misnomer for a wider, deeper pool between faster moving portions of river but several signs (and our Harvest Host winery proprietor) explain that it is an actual lake.

Or was, once upon a geologic time, before all that glacial meltwater cut new channels here and there and connected it to rushing waters on either side. John read once where Pepin, aside from being one of the original tourist attractions of this area, is an area that Minnesotans watch for the spring IceOut. When the last of the solid water disappears, they drag out the boats and put the ice shanties away. Unless, of course, they're buying the new Ice Shanty RV trailers that we've seen in the campgrounds in this area but no where else before this year in our travels. All the amenities of an RV (kitchen, fridge, toilet, bunks) and holes in the floor for fish retrieval. Here's one brand, by way of example:

But it's not that cold yet. We see some of the trees are just now beginning to get a tinge of fall color and we are closing the windows at night for the most part. The river is lined with sharply defined high limestone cliffs.

Maiden Rock, named after an Indian legend, is one of the many such hills –this one on the Wisconsin side– that Debbie says she “really likes” for the way they spring suddenly from the lower land.

Frontenac State Park provides nice views and hiking trails ranging from flat to serious hill climbing.  John's smiling here because he's walking downhill.

** Headed to Steven's on our first day out of home, we could not avoid stopping at the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Big Rapids. We've always had a fondness for their salad bars and other meals and cannot possibly begin to understand why the company allowed its Grand Rapids store to close a couple decades ago without opening another somewhere in our metro area. The point is, we ate out for lunch that day then took Steven to dinner two nights later (complete with ice cream!). John was looking askance at the wantonly spending woman who'd replaced his wife but she settled down through the UP and up along Lake Superior's northern shore, forcing him to eat whatever she cooked in our mobile kitchen. Then, in Duluth she suggested going to a barbecue place called “OMC” (it stands for “Oink, Moo, Cluck”) even if they did force us to sit outside in the cold, eating our animal parts on ToGo ware, and grumbled about bringing a salt shaker when requested. The very next day found us sitting inside the Deer Lake Winery with a professionally assembled cheese 'n' fruit tray (and two bottles of wine on the bill (one was to take for another day; please don't get the wrong idea of our alcohol consumption) and then, two nights later, Debbie suggested that we get fried chicken at a KFC, of all places! John's not sure what the Universe has in store to make him pay for this edible largess, but he is just as sure that there's another Ruby Tuesday in his immediate future! It would be a spoiler to reveal when/where at this point, so Stay Tuned, as he once was paid to say at times.

We finally escape Michigan!

But we did not escape the Political Pandemic; Governors in Wisconsin and Minnesota appear simply convinced the world is ending and somehow got it into their heads that their jobs include the power to stop it by ordering us to wear do-nothing masks. Here near Duluth and north along the Lake Superior shoreline, Hipsters and slightly older Millennials are running around on their joggers and bicycles with masks on their chins right out in the open air; some of them even wear the cloth over their noses. And they've got 'em on their children, too! We estimate about a third of the older-than-21 crowd were masked-up on the nature walks, in the parks, and on the bird-watchers' lookouts. Some consider the six-foot “social distance” rule to be the Eleventh Commandment, stepping far aside when we pass. Even non-hunters must recognize the wind blows. Don't they?  Six feet downwind in a stiff Lake breeze is just silly and even the least under-educated must see that. Don't they?!

Beyond the air that we breathe, we found more ever present waterfalls in this part of the planet. Here are Wisconsin's Pattison State Park Manitou Falls and Minnesota's low-water season Gooseberry Falls. The latter is a set of three falls, and the spring-melt pictures make them all look wondrous. At this time of the year, the lower and middle falls are barely wet enough for Debbie to wade in. The Visitors' Center was closed to the public for our safety.  At least there was restroom access but no water to drink.

Aside from the tourism, the industry here is all about the Great Lakes shipping and that means it's mostly about the ores and the businesses surrounding them. As enticing as the scenery was in northern Wisconsin, we were most gratified to watch a seemingly graceful (at hillside distance!) ore carrier arrive in the Duluth channel. Huge iron ore docks abound there and up the coast toward Grand Marais (MN) and beyond. We had our chance to study these unfamiliar things at one ore dock at Agate Bay in Two Harbors.

John finds the subject of How These Things Work totally fascinating and finally deduced the infinite collection of tall tubes lining the docks' sides were loading chutes for dumping tens of thousands of pounds of rock chunks and refined pellets directly from rail cars into the floating cargo holds. The technology is over a hundred years old and they used to be made of wooden timbers. Today is Sunday of the holiday weekend, though, and we missed the live action.  Later we found several instructive vids; here's one –https://youtu.be/rzWwTOt39Es– and watch between 3:00 and 5:00, at least.

At this farther-away dock in Agate Bay, the Presque Isle presumably was taking on cargo. Just for perspective of how giant all this equipment is, allow us to mention that this “tug-barge” is larger than three football fields end-to-end --and still it is dwarfed by the gigantic dock. Boat info here: http://duluthshippingnews.com/ship0322/

We followed the Skyline Parkway north through the Duluth area for one of our sightseeing days (unhooking our towed Honda CR-V for local trips). Scenery is gorgeous and we expect has been for a long time. This five-story Enger Tower is atop one hill

overlooking the ports. The Norwegian immigrant-turned-furniture-magnate who built it was honored by that country's Crown Prince and Princess at its dedication in 1939. Not everyone was Depressed. We are, though, because the visitors' center with its expected information and the several restrooms for males and females were closed as a government-directed Covid safety measure; it was replaced by three unisex portable potties in the crowded parking lot, stinking mightily and badly in need of pumping. We've noticed this sort of stupidity at tourist locations frequently. How's that healthier? Ewww!

At Two Harbors, we stayed at Penmarallter RV where Penny and Stan go out of their way to make you feel welcome. He even hauled out his pruner-on-a-pole and lopped a few branches from a tree that he worried might scratch our paint.  There are a few touristy attractions nearby (including artisans and even Tom's Logging Camp so you can get a feel for Paul Bunyan's lifestyle), but while it's remote it is not all that remote. The word camping covers a wide range of hardships (and we admit our forty foot long mobile house is not much of one), but even we were shockingly amused when this Schwan's delivery truck showed up for the guy in the trailer a few sites away!

Our next campground up the coast was the Grand Marais Municipal Park, facing onto the prettiest little sheltered bay we'd seen since visiting Maine in our younger lives. The park was laid out very nicely for RVs and tents, as well. Debbie even found a secluded cove with a nice bench for one of our 5pm wine & nosh pre-dinner peaceful times.

Now it's just about Friday the 11^th and John had Debbie promise to find us an RV park with a strong internet signal.   While we shopped to stock our RV's larder, two states away back home in West Michigan some acquaintances were putting on their fantasy roles, ready to play a Dungeons & Dragons style game online after work. 

We meet in cyberspace once every two weeks and the Indian Point campground in Duluth faded away from John's focus for a few hours that night on other Fantasy Grounds. We successfully defended against four rampaging Ogres, despite John's Warlock not having many high-number dice rolls for his Eldritch Blast magic. Bless the Internet. It's like never leaving home! (Illustrative art from the Sword Coast Adventurers' Guide).

We'll start our push south and west on September 12^th. Two wineries up next!

On The Road Again

We finally hit the road. Son Steven is the first stop, in Traverse City. Debbie has lined us up for a two night visit and we stayed one, each, at a Harvest Host winery. This organization lines up farms and

wineries to host a free night of glamping by self-contained units. In return for occupying part of their field or parking lot, they expect we'll buy a bottle of wine or something else from their business. Brengman Farm north of Traverse city, low on the Leelenau Peninsula, parked us on a high hill overlooking acres and acres of nascent wine-on-the-vine. It took a small bit of getting to, up a farm's dirt road, but was a nice location for the night after consuming the bottle of sparkling wine for our pre-dinner relaxing time. The next night saw us in an asphalt parking lot nearer Suttons Bay. Hawkins Farms has a roadside commercial presence that included a Thai restaurant. We didn't buy the wine, but we had a fine meal with Steven. Debbie was so impressed with the tomatoes and fresh basil in her meal --both from the cook's own garden-- that she suggested an ice cream dessert! We scooted up the road to Scoops 22 in Suttons Bay before she could change her mind.

Steven had just added to his arsenal with a handgun purchase, a Walther P22, more for target shooting than personal defense, he said. So he took us to the local DNR shooting range with a friend of his to

put several holes into paper targets. John E. used a .357 magnum, six shot revolver. Both people allowed Debbie and John to shoot, too. Lots of fun. Most of our bullets even hit the paper.

After the first two cheap nights on the road, Debbie allowed us to spend actual dollars at RV parks in the UP. We could have made the trip clear to the Wisconsin border in one day, but remember our motto: We're Retired, We Have Time To Relax. And, as John amends frequently, “You got a problem? Keep it!”   Munising has a city campground we've used before when coming to this area for backpacking trips. It's right on the bay in Lake Superior and usually great. This time, the park's superintendent told us they'd had rain –a lot of rain– during most of August. Puddles were everywhere even though it didn't rain on us that day and the ground was soft. We were happy that our latest tent has six wheels --and a kitchen, couch, reclining chair, shower, flush toilet, queen sized bed, lights and a TV screen. Sort of a step up from the last time we were there.

The next three nights we spent at the very beautiful Lake Gogebic State park in Iron County. There's not a lot of tourist infrastructure, being in the UP and all, but we love this part of

Michigan even if we don't fish or even hike very far anymore. “The world's highest ski jump” (referring to the ramp, not the mountain) is nearby at Copper Peak. Also several of the picturesque waterfalls that dot Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We started with Rainbow Falls, a US Forest Service hunk of river cascading over primordial rock. They'd even built steps down to the river level. John counted two hundred two of them coming back up.

We had a terrific view of Lake Gogebic from our coach during our time there, too. Several campsites are on a small bluff at lakeside. Remember the rain and the subsequent soft ground?

Yeah. We had backed up looking for level ground before realizing that we literally had mired our fifteen ton selves there. The Rangers were prepared, though, with steel ramp plates and said it was no big deal. Two of them spent half an hour getting the plates under our tires and our rig back on solid ground.

We feel terrible for the mess we left behind, but nobody yelled at us so we guess it's just part of doing business in the UP.  We were still looking at Lake Gogebic State Park mud on our tires for the next week.

2020: THE NEXT BIG TRIP

All this past winter, Debbie pined for the motorhome which was tucked away securely in storage

waiting for the Next Big Trip which we wanted to start the day after her tax-preparation job was complete on April 15^th. She and John had agreed to a two year trial run in the big bus, this time to the East Coast. She had signed us up for a “guided tour” package as part of our Back East experience. We were to spend ten days in the Washington DC area, the highlight of which would be the Smithsonian Institute.

We'd each grown up in within a half day's drive of the Smithsonian, but somehow never got there, although we both did see the '65 World's Fair, many Revolutionary- and Civil War battlefields, Constitution Hall, more Washington Slept Here places than you can shake a stick at, NYC and Philly and vacations in most of the coastal states with our families. After DC, we had planned to head to Virginia to visit one of her old–– that is, erstwhile girlfriends, then her other brother in North Carolina, and John's sister in New Jersey, winding up with a hoped-for tour of the Hershey plant in Pennsylvania which John remembers dimly from a family trip when he was maybe ten. We know the company is still in business, but sixty years is a long time between tours and maybe they don't give 'em anymore?

Anyway, plans were set in motion and then Covid happened. In the Political Pandemic that ensued, most of the East Coast pulled in the sidewalks... and just you try to visit Washington! Please see the footnote for our restrained condemnation of the Panic.   Or not.   If you've already drunk that particular flavor of Kool-Aid, we'll probably just arouse your anger.

With the feds extending the tax season to Mid-July, Deb's job continued to pay her (bonus!) and our coach remained in storage (boo!). Meanwhile, the Fantasy Tours people offered some alternatives to the Smithsonian, and we settled on one comfortably out West and many, many months distant, where/when we thought the Extreme Coast politicians would not be panicking. Silly us! New Mexico Covid'd out its Balloon Fest, too! And it doesn't even happen till October yet! We're convinced more coercion that rational thought went into that decision.

When our Governor decided the pressure against keeping the Michigan state parks closed was indefensible, we ended up taking a long weekend to the Hoffmaster State Park with friends and kids (we recognized them as ours because they didn't wear masks, either, being intelligent and educated) just to make sure the thing still worked.

We also put the first cork in Steven's Christmas gift to our coach.

The third cork went in forty minutes later. We weren't the only ones drinking.

Then we called our siblings and Debbie's friend Dianna to discuss 2021 –fingers crossed!  For this year, though, we hear South Dakota still is an American state . And, gee, it's been since the 1990's that we've seen the Badlands. Maybe we'll get there. We were thinking of visiting Colorado because we blew it off for our spring trip in '19 due to being too early and their roads still having snow in April. But then forest fires happened this August. Ahhhh, geez! as Archie Bunker used to say.

So we headed north at the end of August, after Debbie substituted a week of maskless bike riding in northern Michigan with her two-wheeler girlfriends for the Covid-canceled Shoreline West Tour to the tip of the mitt that she takes each year. The general plan is to visit our son in Traverse City, head across the UP, Wisconsin, and into Minnesota where a neighbor lauds the scenery (and suggests we avoid the wrong-headed looters and property destroyers in police-defunded Minneapolis with its new "holistic" approach to public safety). From there we'll go West and turn left somewhere before or after the Rockies but without the hope of making Bugs Bunny's mistaken turn at Albuquerque. We have every intent of arriving at home just before the November election so we can cast our one ballot each.

One final note: our first Bry RV Name That Mascot contest.

Last summer, in Oregon, Debbie was backing the coach by herself (without anyone spotting from behind) and thought she had stopped before hitting the white fence. The splotch on the left rear reminds us both to have external guidance. Over the winter, we see that the splotch has developed a definite character. John believes it's sort of penguiny although a bit more like a Puffin, and reminds him of Opus from the Berke Breathed art in the Bloom County comics of the last millennium. Freely comment with your suggestions.

If you wish, please continue to join us here on BRY RV. We'll try to minimize acerbic political comment. Maybe.

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We here in West Michigan keep trying to see the sense of it, neither of us knowing anyone who's even caught Covid, although we know of some people who worry about it mightily because they evidently watch too much TV and believe the mythical reports of people dying in droves. Educated reporters are a very, very rare thing these days. Debbie and John frequent the federal and state health websites and read their data, use our education, and scratch our heads but cannot get the dire sense of doom that Michigan's Governor evidently had been directed to. Her ever more seemingly panicked unbalanced and unchecked Executive Orders continue to bloom headed into the fall while our elected representatives sit on their side of the Constitutions' see-saw sucking their thumbs, continuing to pay themselves with our money while not doing a damn thing about the Governor Who Wants To Be Vice President But Was Born The Wrong Color. Even using the state government's intentionally Covid-bloated database, we cannot agree with her Administration's assessment that anyone attacked by the virus is “lucky to survive.” Just more than one percent of Michiganders have been infected and, of those, more than 94% did not die (pretty good odds, yes?). However, ten million people live in our state, so use your arithmetic to find that the survivors who were infected and those who never ever caught it comprise 99.999% of those millions. And, no, we're not all wearing masks in spite of her claims to rule her “protection” over us.

p.s.: Gretchen Whitmer ordered that school kids may, indeed, play some sports this fall but they must wear a mask while on the field! The state's polluted database shows that not even one person under the age of twenty has died of/with/about/near Covid.  Explain yourself, Whitmer! 

p.p.s.: She did make exception for swimmers –while in the water.

{That strangled noise is us trying not to laugh derisively.}