July 28, Day 13: Niagara (part deux)

• Miles Today: 0
• Trip Total: 3236
• Weather: Heavy rain last night and this morning.  Muggy and Hazy.  High 28°C.  RH-90%.
• Today’s Song: “Take Me To The River” performed by The Talking Heads.
• Rodgerism:  "It depends on your definition of 'weird."
• D’oh! of the Day:   More umbrellas
• AWTY?:  8
• Today's Lesson:  Name that bug.

Took the campground shuttle to Niagara Falls to enjoy a few activities, including...

Niagara's Fury (simulation with snow, rain, earthquakes, etc.)
Journey Behind The Falls  (some tunnels and an observation platform.
Maid Of The Mist  (boat ride up to the falls)

 

Journey Behind The Falls

It rained last night, but every activity at the falls gets you wet anyway (quite a collection of colorful disposable ponchos) so we weren't too worried, except that we needed more umbrellas for the walks between attractions.  The photos weren't quite as spectacular either with lack of color and contrast, but the blowing mist makes it very hard to get a decent photo anyway, so that's a wash (and a bad pun.)

An early afternoon back to the campground for naps, laundry, RV maintenance and swimming.

Today's lesson is more of a research project.  Help identify this strange creature that was crawling about at the bus stop.

July 27, Day 12: Niagara Falls Ontario

• Miles Today: 452
• Trip Total: 3236
• Weather: Overcast all day until arrival at RV park. 82F in Detroit.
• Roads: Speed limit all the way. 30 min. to cross border, no problems.
• Today’s Song: “Red Barchetta” by Rush. (Canadian Rock today)
• Rachionary: “Canadia” [can-ay-dee-uh] proper noun, America’s hat.
• Rodgerism: “I didn’t know ‘ain’t’ was a word.”
• Double D’oh!: Wrong video cable for PC-to-TV I brought as backup (because of forgotten remote).
• AWTY?: 7
• Lesson: Get more sleep before planning big days.

It wasn’t our longest day, but we got up pretty early to beat those morning Walmart crowds. Not wanting to overdo ourselves, we cancelled our planned visit to Greenfield Village in Dearborn Michigan and just headed straight for Canada, in hopes of getting to the campground early enough for a proper evening and a good night’s sleep. So please enjoy the sum total of today’s photos below.

 

One peril of dry-camping in an RV for three nights is a full holding tank. We tried to be sparing with our use of the head, but the “FULL” indicator shown brightly, and it became our mission to find the nearest dump station. One of the reasons we picked this Walmart (and eventually found it) was it’s proximity to a Camping World store with an RV dump, according to the exit guide. Turns out to be permanently closed. No problem, google is our friend. “RV DUMP ELKHART” returned the same CW store, but also that “ALL” service stations on the toll-road have free RV dump stations. Back on the road to the next one (36 miles) but the RV dump had been decommissioned. On to the next one (20 miles) which never had an RV dump. We finally resigned ourselves to making pit-stops when needed (always inquiring about a dump station) until we reached our campground (at about 7:00pm) and gave the holding tank (it was really “holding it”) a nice cleansing flush. (ahhhhhhhhh)

We paid for internet access at the campground, but it is so slow that I am not going to be able to post this (or yesterday’s) until tomorrow, if I can get some clear bandwidth before we go site-seeing.

July 26, Day 11: Elkhart Indiana

• Miles Today: 568
• Miles Total: 2784
• Weather: Warm and clear, 88F in Joliet Illinois
• Roads: Lots of construction through Chicago, accident on Indiana Toll Road. Huge delays. Lots of tolls.
• Today’s Theme Song: “Give Me Forty Acres” by the Willis Brothers
• Rodgerism: “I just touched my uvula!”  (while discussing gag-reflex.)
• Lesson: Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three rights make a left.

 

Huge travel day. One of the biggest of the trip. No (intentional) site-seeing. We didn’t need the forty acres we expected to exit the Pollards’ cul-de-sac, but we got to make more than a few creative turns before the day was over.

 

The St. Croix river meets the Mississippi near Hastings. You can’t tell from this photo, but there is a definite line where the clean and clear St. Croix flows into the muddy Mississippi just beyond the bridge.

 

I have no idea why the GPS thought that highway 10 through Wisconsin was a faster route than the interstate, but I am glad that it did. It was a beautiful drive through rolling corn fields with big red barns and hardwood forests. I was the only one awake for that couple of hours, so everyone else has to rely on these through-the-windshield shots.

 

I have never been through Chicago without a major traffic delay, so I chose to add a half-hour to the route just to get around the western part of the Metro area by going all the way down to I-80, but it still took over two hours just to get through Joliet due to one narrow lane under a bridge causing all that delay. The local radio traffic reports mentioned what a terrible commute it was becoming, yet the Garmin GPS traffic report still showed green all the way through the mess.

 

Once into Indiana, I realized that Illinois spent their toll money on road maintenance and not traffic updates, while Indiana did the opposite. Damaged and rutted roads, but spot-on traffic reports on the GPS, right down to the exact location and number of emergency vehicles on the scene. (We don’t get that much detail in Seattle). Total delays cost us about 3 hours of extra driving by the time we got through it all.

 

 

Tonight was an experiment. We had no reservations and were just planning on driving as far as we could, and possibly camp out at a Walmart. We made it as far as Elkhart Indiana, and tried to find the Walmart promised by the Exit Now Guide. We couldn’t find it, so tried the Points of Interest in the GPS. The nearest one it found was about eight miles away, taking us through every section of Elkhart. If it was daylight it would have been a good tour. The Walmart we found was definitely not the one the Exit Now Guide would have suggested for RV’ers. I got online with my 3G-modem and googled the Walmarts in the area. It found one on “Country Road #6” in about the area we left the toll-road, so we put that into the GPS, but it couldn’t find even the road. I checked the Walmart website, and it showed the same address as google. The manager of this store told me how to get to the one we sought (pretty much back where we got off of the toll-road) and it was on county road #6, not country road #6. One more look at walmart.com and google still incorrectly showed country road, which of course the GPS could not find. It did find county road #6 (but not the address of that store) so we eventually found the place we were looking for, and called it a night at about midnight. That’s why no blog update.

 

 

Today’s lesson is some GPS trivia. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore claimed to have “[taken] the initiative in creating the internet.” While that is now everyone’s favorite Al Gore joke, at the time it sounded more impressive to young voters than helping to make the Global Positioning System more available to consumers, as it was not in wide consumer use before 1998.

July 25, Day 10: Hastings MN (part 2)

• Miles today: 0
• Miles Total: 2216
• Weather: Partly cloudy or clear. High 83F.
• Today's Song: "Bicycle Race" by Queen.
• Rachionary: "Thirbsty" [thurb-stee] adjective, So thirsty that your lips stick together and you can't talk right..
• Rodgerism: "You really don't look as bad as usual." (one of today's kinsults)
• D'oh! of the day: Charger for Rodger's phone, bicycle cable oiler.
• AWTY?: 6
• Lesson: Bicycles rust quickly.

 

Took the bikes down for a ride with the Pollard family through historic downtown Hastings and along the Mississippi river, followed by linner (between lunch and dinner), ice cream and beef jerky (a winning combo anytime).  They have been on there for a few weeks (we took them to Sandpoint Idaho) and that's all the time it took with a couple of rains to seize the brake cables on Rodger's bike and the rear deraileur on Rachael's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We rode about 12 miles today.  The last mile had Rodger and Evonne walking uphill, Don and Andrew in first gear, committed to making it to the top on pedals, and a quick glance over the shoulder showed Teresa keeping pace on her e-Zip electric bike, not even breaking a sweat.

 

An evening visit to the Mall of America, which has four floors and an amusement park in the middle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another performance of "The Dragon" by the kids.  They are improving with each go, and should be ready for the studio next weekend.

 

 

Many thanks to the Pollards for putting up (and staying up) with us, even as their own vacation came to an end after their busy family reunion.  We were the second phase of the invasion.



July 24, Day 9: Hastings Minnesota

• Miles today:  562
• Miles Total:  2216
• Weather:   Partly cloudy over Badlands.  85F in Mitchell SD. 60%RH.
• Roads:   Some construction, no real delays.  75mph.
• Today's Song:  "In The House Of Stone And Light" by Martin Page.
• Rodgerism:   "I'm a boy.  I like things that blow up."  (when asked by mom if he knows what a Minuteman Missile was.)
• Lesson:   At least 52 gallons
• AWTY?:  6

Big driving day today, with minimal site-seeing planned, so we got an early start.  Our "quick" drive through the Badlands Loop still took about three hours.  We weren't able to get a decent tour-time for the Minuteman Missile complex, so in the interest of time we skipped it and moved on.

Time for a fuel stop at Mitchell South Dakota, so why not check out the world's first Corn Palace, and home of the world's worst corn-dogs and corn-on-the-cob.

 The building's facade is decorated entirely with corn and wheat.

 On to Minnesota...

 ...where our friend Evonne

helped us taxi into our parking space

 in front of their house when we arrived

 at about 10:00pm.



Today's lesson is about fuel range.  Not wanting to spend too much time on stops (and get to the Pollards' even later) I ran the tank a wee bit past the "E" (for "enough") mark.   When the fuel-gauge on a 2008 Ford E-450 chassis looks like the photo below, there is room for 52.8 gallons of go-juice.

July 23, Day 8: Wall South Dakota

• Miles today:  102
• Miles Total:  1654
• Weather:   70's and partly cloudy in Black Hills. 92F in Wall SD.
• Roads:   One lane and 45mph several times from Rapid City and Wall.
• Today's Theme Song:   "Back In Black" by AC/DC
• Lesson:  Confirmed!  Run the generator and coach A/C.

We decided to skip the planned excursion up to Lead and Deadwood so we could get to the campground in Wall earlier.  It's time to catch up on laundry.  This gave us a much shorter mileage day and a more leisurely pace for the Black Hills attractions we couldn't miss.

Don has been through South Dakota several times, but never to the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is very close to where we camped last night. 

 

 

If you don't know the story behind the project, check out the link.  It is much more than a giant statue (the largest in the world) or a native-american memorial.  It is a multi-generation artistic labor of love that has been ongoing for nearly 60 years, and will likely take another 60 years to complete.  Work is slow because of the sheer magnitude of the project, and the fact that it relies solely on private contributions and donations for every aspect of funding.  They have turned down huge government money several times, stating that it would muddy the humanitarian mission of the project if taxpayers were compelled to pay for it, and that if the project is worthy of support, it must be supported by those individuals and organizations who will benefit from it.

 

We found our first perk for driving a huge RV to a national monument when we got to Mount Rushmore.  The annual pass doesn't pay for parking there (neither does plastic) but $11 cash allowed us to skip the search in the parking garage and get a golf-cart escort to dedicated RV parking, quite close to the entrance.

The kids ate buffalo burgers and we hurried outside for photos before it threatened rain.  No rain fell and it started to clear, so Don and Rodger ventured around the path that gets much closer to the carvings. 

 

 

 

 

There were about 50x the people at Mt. Rushmore than at Crazy Horse.  You have to do both if you are in the area (only about 20 minutes apart) but I would have to say that Crazy Horse was the more enjoyable and fulfilling experience, even though (or maybe because) Mt. Rushmore was more polished and refined while Crazy Horse Monument seemed to connect more with the visitors.

 

Now we are at the campground in Wall.  Rachael gets some alone-time with her laptop in the RV, while Teresa does that laundry and Rodger inspects the pool and I type this. 

 

We'll go to the famous Wall Drug later to see if it imprints on the kids' minds like it did mine when I passed through here for the first time with my parents when I was 13.

 

Today's lesson is from yesterday's breakdown and this morning's refuel...  The coach A/C stopped working yesterday due to a generator fault.  It was 99F outside so we had to keep the inside cool enough somehow.  We used the air conditioner for the cab, attached to the drive motor.  We had heard that this method was much less fuel efficient than just running the auxilliary generator for the coach and the coach a/c, so that is what we had been doing up to now.  We now have solid numbers to show that our "average" fuel efficiency without any A/C is about 8.0-8.5mpg and with the generator running and the coach a/c about 7.0-7.5mpg.  When running the cab a/c (when the generator was malfunctioning) we went down to about 6.0mpg (maybe even less) when I factor the amount of fuel we used during the time the generator was kaput.