Changes in a lifetime

We all know things change, but sometimes I don't think we realize how quickly.

When our children were young, we had an RV and through the mid-1980s, we took several 3-week long vacations. We wouldn't trade for them, and I hope the boys wouldn't either. But 'you play, you pay' and catching up afterwards was a chore.

I was reminded of this this week when our younger son had returned from a one week trip to Alaska. He was enthralled and they had had a fantastic time, but the catching up with his work was near-overwhelming. He had taken a cell phone, laptop, and iPad on this trip. While he wasn't always within range to communicate with the rest of us and his world, he wasn't totally incommunicado. How had Dad caught up with his work after three weeks? he asked me.

Oh, I answered, before cell phones? Before laptops? Before email and the internet? You mean, son, when in order to call home, we had to find a pay phone and either call collect or punch in numbers from a calling card? Any of this ring a bell?

On second thought, how did we catch up? Very slowly. No wonder I've put the catching-up out of my mind and just remembered the trips.

RV: 3400 miles: 10 states: 4 adults: 3 rolls of toilet paper

As promised (as if anyone would hold me to it), the best-ofs from our trip:

Best campground, prettiest: Vista Royalle in Bancroft WI. Trees everywhere and a great deal of care taken with the "streets" and layout.

Best campground, bathrooms: Nearly a tie between the last two KOAs, Middlebury IN, and Traverse City MI. Shower stall doors that locked, space on the counters for make-up, good lighting, and they were clean. Plus, there were enough of them. I had visions of repeating our experiences 20 years ago of standing in line at the showers. Either we were earlier risers than then or more people are accommodating themselves in their RVs, but there was only a line once.

Best sunset: Full moon rising on one side of the Pictured Rocks scenic cruise boat, sun setting on the other, Munising MI.

Best laugh on ourselves: Not knowing where the gas tank was until we got out and looked.

Most over-the-top stop: Precious Moments, Carthage MO.

Best winery stop, MO: (my opinion here): Oak Glenn. The white port...

Best winery stop, MI: (again): Brys Winery, Old Mission Peninsula. Eye-popping tasting room.

Most breath-taking view: Chateau Chantal, Old Mission Peninsula. This B&B sets atop the finger that is the peninsula and you can see the lake from east and west.

Best overall day: Mackinac Island.

Best surprise: Gasoline prices steadily dropped as we traveled. With a 60+ gallon tank, that's good news.

Best modern convenience: WiFi.

A bit off-topic, but things to bring next time: TV cable to connect to the campground's outlet. At least we had videos with us.
Broom. Dust-buster. Suction-cup holder for the dining table so our things wouldn't slide all over the place. (We rigged one up out of a shower caddy.) Clock. Calculator. (Although it didn't hurt any of us to do long division to get gas mileage.)

Best idea for the next trip: 4-5 nights in the RV and then a night in a hotel.

M2M and the License Plate Game

We are veteran players of the License Plate Game. It was a way to occupy the children (and ourselves) on cross-country trips and to sharpen observation skills. Until plates became so varied by either the state changing its design every few years or making money off special interests (college, charity), it was easy to spot a familiar plate two car-lengths behind. On only one of our 6 megalithic road trips did we capture all 50 states. The last into the fold? Nebraska. Go figure, as we were touring the western states.

So on this trip to Michigan, it was a given we'd play. At first it was easy, then there were days without any entries. Surprisingly, we were treated to RVs with tags from British Columbia and Alberta and what must have been an exodus of such from Massachusetts. By the end of the trip, though, we had only gathered 42, not including the Peoria and Cherokee Nations of Oklahoma.

It wasn't surprising what we didn't see: Hawaii, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada (okay, a bit surprising here), Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut. What was surprising was that we never saw much of anything.

For example, California, Colorado, and Florida are always easy. I don't think those people stay home in the summer. But this year they did. This year, with the price of gas as it was (and the prices were dropping as we rolled along; we paid more at home but at one other place), people either stayed at home or stayed close to home. As such, the Michigan campgrounds were covered with Michigan cars, a stray Indiana or two and one lonely (and our only find) of New Jersey.

I'd like to think we were someone's Texas because we sure didn't see many of those either.

Day 11: M2M: Sliding in on a wing and a prayer

Well, we really didn't come in that way. For starters, the RV didn't have wings, not even at 70 mph. What it didn't have either is air conditioning much beyond the driver's seat for 3 days. But we did fine, starting early in the day and keeping our travel time relatively short.

Once home, we spent 90 minutes unloading the thing (how did we get so much in there?) and then cleaning the interior. Then this morning before it was driven back, it got an outside bath. It needed it because we only had bad weather one day, then it was a drizzle and a week ago. Meanwhile, at home in north Texas, they'd been (ahem!) blessed with close to 6 inches of rain early in the week.

Upon coming home, cats Tuxedo and Pyewacket were a bit stand-offish. After all, we had deserted them, leaving them to only lap up twice daily visits from their "aunt." They were hardly neglected nor inconvenienced, but try telling that to a spoiled housecat. The flower beds are overgrown, the butterflies are having a field day, the house needs to be dusted (gag!) and vacuumed (immediately if not sooner), and I did laundry for 7 hours. I can barely see over the ironing pile. All this, bills and mail and checking on my dad, and, gee, it's good to be home!

Always good to go and have new experiences and see new things, but, you know, it's great to be home, too!

Photos are excellent and I'll post some later.

Day 10: M2M: The Home Stretch

As the generator has decided to take a vacation from us (I called the rental agent to warn him said RV was not road worthy), we have decided to treat ourselves to the Embassy Suites in Little Rock for our last night on the road. Traveling in a non-air conditioned camper is a bit warm as the afternoon comes in, so we think we deserve it. We plan to be home early afternoon tomorrow.

Then we have to empty and clean the RV in order to take it back Friday. The laundry mounts, the mail is a cascade, the cats will be unforgiving through the weekend... and next week we'll wonder we were ever on the road.

Wrap-up by the weekend.

Day 9: M2M: Making our Marks!

Started the day in another Presidential award winning KOA in Middlebury IN near the Shipshewana Amish lands and their trade fair. Guess who didn't get to go?

No, today we had goal: the Maker's Mark Distillery south of Bardstown KY. The last tour is at 3:30 and we got there at 3. No lie. At the conclusion of the tour, you may buy small bottles and "make your mark" by dipping the bottle in red "wax." Not that we did that.

Not much.

Embassy Suites tomorrow night and then home. Photos to come and wrap up remarks.

Day 8: M2M: Good-bye to Michigan

Today, I must have been in charge because we got to go antiquing in Traverse City while the guys checked out a golf course and the resort town of Elk Rapids. I found a few goodies , including one special mah-jongg item. I also took a photo of the snow depth in 1996-7, which will tell all why, lovely as it is in the summer, we do not live in Michigan.

The on-the-road quest has been for fabled Michigan tomatoes. We have stopped at several roadside stands in search of such and have come up empty handed each time. Finally, we struck gold and have two plastic bags full from an Amish farmer.

We have a new side trip, destination the Maker's Mark distillery near Bardstown, KY. Tomorrow we hope to traverse the length of Indiana as we are near Elkhart tonight, and make it in time for the final tour.

ETA home is Thursday, early afternoon. We've already racked up over 2000 miles and have made a hobby of viewing all the RVs in the campground for the next adventure.

I plan to do a best-of at the end of the trip.

Day 6/7: M2M: Michigan at its best

Didn't get to post yesterday because the WiFi at the St. Ignace MI KOA was so sloooow. I was fighting an uphill battle so today, you get two (yes, two!) adventures for the price of one. And I won't be as long-winded because of it.

Yesterday we drove from Munising to the Mackinac Island area. Got there before lunch and took the shuttle to the ferry dock. Gorgeous day with blue, blue skies. Arriving at Mackinac is a bit like finding oneself on Main Street USA of Disney World. No motorized vehicles are allowed on the island so it's only bikes, feet, and horses. Also, it's very clean and crowded. We walked up to the Grand Hotel, where the entry fee to walk through the building and grounds is $12/person. We paid and went to the Cupola Bar for a grand view.

Worth the price of admission, and if I'm saying that, you know it was.

There are flowers enough everywhere to turn a July-Texan green with envy. All ours are dead and it is too beautiful for words in every flower box and on every street corner.

We played an 18-hole executive putting course and while the Golfer won, the rest of us tied respectfully at second place. Dinner and a trip back across the straits.

Today we took the scenic road to Traverse City. Out on Old Mission Peninsula, we visited several wineries and are bringing "samples" home.

Cooking brats from Missouri on the griddle and starting home tomorrow afternoon after we antique.

There--I'll be in charge again!

Day 5: M2M: Fogged!

So we get to the first place we're going to sightsee, Munising MI and Pictured Rock National Lakeshore. Until an hour ago it has misted and been so foggy we couldn't see the lakeshore! We did plow on though and go to Miner's Falls (really nice) and then the Miner's Castle rock formation. What did me in was two of my traveling companions saying, "Oh, it's just a little mile trail to the lakeshore!"

Yeah, right. I'm sure it was a mile. It's the climbing over dead trees and roots and the 45 degree angle that had me fearing I'd coast down on my rear! Then we sloshed through deep sand in the fog to get a picture on the seashore, where we could see some water. And, yes, I do have pictures, but my camera is back in the RV and I'm at a wireless cafe.

Going back up was better. I'm more a climber than a slider.

Lunch, laundry, antique stores (hey--I must have been in charge!), then the fog lifted like a curtain and we're going on the 6:30 sunset cruise to see the Pictured Rocks. Which is what we came for in the first place.

Tomorrow we meander to the Mackinac area.

Day 4: M2M: Generate-ing

12 MORE things to do while waiting for the generator to be fixed in Escanaba, MI: (And no, I'm not kidding)

1. Be thankful for cell phones to call for advice.
2. Be thankful you just passed an RV service center.
3. Be thankful they'll actually look at it and try to fix it. (They do.)
4. Make that second cup of iced coffee because you couldn't enjoy the first worrying about why the generator was all of a sudden DEAD.
5. Start this list.
6. Do handwork.
7. Read.
8. Exchange horror stories with the gals in the service center who rent their vehicles.
9. Run down the cell phone battery calling the rental company and the next RV reservation site.
10. Contemplate exchanging this RV out for another and putting on the rental agency's credit card.
11. Be glad it's turned cooler and you don't really need that generator for a/c until you start home on Tuesday.
12. Smile and wave to the mechanic as you slowly pull away.

It was a bad generator ground wire.

PS: We're in Munising, MI, and no, I haven't been in charge yet!

Day 3: M2M: A Tire-ing experience

Fifteen things to do in a Springfield IL Starbucks for 2 hours while waiting for new front tires:

1. Dry and curl hair
2. Split coffee cake
3. Tell everyone else's funny (to you) honeymoon stories. Wonder that some of these didn't doom marriage from start.
4. Watch grandparents and 3 kids at next table. Wonder if this is your future.
5. Tell your dad's war stories. Wonder that he survived.
6. Walk to Walgreen's.
7. On to Super K-Mart.
8. Lament that there are no antique malls within walking distance when you could go guilt-free. (Not that guilt will stop me.)
9. Solve the problem of cup holders on the dining table by buying a shower caddy.
10. Get a USA Today at McDonald's.
11. Back to Starbucks.
12. Buy water. What do they think this is--coffee?
13. Read the paper.
14. Read the book you (thankfully) brought with you.
15. Stand in front of McDonald's and be picked up by two guys in a rented RV.

On to the middle of Wisconsin to a family-owned RV park amid the pine trees. WiFi in the lobby. Spouse cooking chicken on the griddle. Travel companions doing laundry.

I sense an early night.

Spotted eight more state licenses and 2 Canadian provinces.

And... it's hot.

Day 2: M2M: The Wine Tour

Seven Missouri wineries later, we are winding down! Saw some lovely countryside, but only added 5 states to our license plate collection plus two Canadian provinces. I found that a bit amazing considering the number of winery parking lots we were in.

We cooked breakfast today, omelets, bacon and toast. Very good. Traveling down the road we passed antique mall after antique mall after antique mall. Operative word here is passed. I smell a girls' trip to the innards of Missouri.

Gas prices are $2.69/gallon. No lie. And when one has a 60 gallon tank, that is very important.

This KOA, West St. Louis, is also nice, but very different from last night. Only 4 showers per gender and the laundry doesn't open until 8 in the morning! We plan to be well on the road by then. Yogurt and cereal for us when we have a lot of ground to cover to get to central Wisconsin. (I've never been to Wisconsin, but once we do, I'll only have three states left to visit: Oregon, North Dakota, and Minnesota.)

Taking photos when place is considered photo-worthy, such as Oak Glenn Winery in Hermann. Whole town worth a second trip.

Don't know about Wi-Fi over the next three nights, but I'll try.

PS: Soon it'll be my day to be in charge. You'll know it is when we go to used book stores and antique malls.

Day 1: Moseying to Michigan

Ah, sitting in the RV at the Springfield MO KOA doing email and blogging. I think times have changed camping.

Today, we started at 8 with a photo in front of the RV, pulled out of the driveway and started our adventure. An hour or two down the road, the important question became: where's the gas tank. No one seemed to know, but a stop at the first gas station found it. ( Whew!) Then we learned we had to turn on the water pump before we used the toilet. Doing handwork I realized it's really, really hard to thread a needle bumping down the road and the roads in Oklahoma are very bumpy.

We started the license plate game and found 18 states, Ontario, and the Army-Air Force Exchange Service. Who knew?

Sandwiches for lunch, a stop at Precious Moments in Carthage, MO (verrrry interesting), dinner out (didn't want to push the cook-out issue), and we're at the KOA. Very nice and quiet except the trains every hour and the proximity to the airport. A couple of bottles of wine, the coffee pot set up for the morning, and the beds made.

Day one, over and out.

Day .5: Moseying to Michigan

We named all of our RV trips: North to New Jersey, Rockin' West, Mission: Maine. So Moseying to Michigan will do until the minds I'm traveling with figure out what I've done and change it for me.

Yesterday, we picked up the rental. All I have to say is this: four ah-retentive adults combing over an RV for all its faults, videoing everything including the instructions on how to use it, and I'm surprised we made it out of the parking lot. The man in charge was more than glad to see us go.

Now that we've moved in and looked around, I am quite impressed. It's a 31' Class C, which means two of us sleep over the cab. That's fine and we'll trade for the back bed halfway through. Either we're underpacked or there is way more room than there was in our 23' Shasta from 20 years ago. The a/c has been running since last night and it is much cooler than the house. We were tempted to stay!

The one bug is the TV. Color though it is, it is playiing in black and white. There's a new VCR/DVD for our use which is very nice but it's still doing b/w. I'll report it in the morning. I thought it might be a cable problem, but even rearranging ins and outs didn't solve it.

So we'll be back to the 50s. I'll have to think of it as film noir.

RV-ing

In the early 1980's we had the opportunity to buy a used Shasta motor home. At 23' long, it sat on a Chevy chassis and drove like an oversized van. A tiny kitchen, a tinier bathroom, a back seat that made into a bed and a bed above the cab were the essentials. We took our sons, ages 4 and 6 at the time, on America-crossing vacations every summer until we sold it in 1988.

We started with a small adventure to S Padre Island. Our first night at a KOA in Austin had us buying plugs and hoses from the office because we didn't have the right things. The second night found us doing a bit better near Corpus Christi and after the third night we were in a condo with friends. Whew!

An inauspicious start to be sure. After that though, we got into this and over the next 4 years racked up miles to Disney World, Washington DC, the Amish Country, Maine, Hot Springs, Arkansas multiple times, the Grand Canyon. On two of these trips we traveled with friends in their borrowed RV and the stories there could fill more than one blog post.

It was fun, those trips. The spouse learned all about generators and overhauling them, sewer lines and dump stations. I learned not to cook inside and to cool everything down before it goes in the fridge, which is a bit of an oxymoron, but was a fact of our RV-life. If the a/c worked for the entire time we were gone, we chalked it up as a miracle.

We had our last trip in it in 1987, spending our 15th wedding anniversary eating sandwiches at Niagara Falls and noting that given a multiple choice question on our wedding day, this choice of anniversary celebration would have been our last. (We have since celebrated in higher style, but this is the one I remember vividly.)

We hated to sell it in 1988, but the trip for the summer was not going to be RV-friendly (a conference at Estes Park YMCA of the Rockies) and then, because we were nearly there, a trip on to Yellowstone. We waved good-bye as a young family with a son about 7 picked it up and drove it away. Occasionally, we'd think we'd see it and quirk a smile.

Now, twenty years later, we're going to embark again on an RV adventure. This time, we're renting a 31' with friends and heading to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I hope to blog along the way since campgrounds now advertise they have WiFi. We'll see.

Stay tuned.

RVing: It's not what it used to be

It's going to be better.

I'm writing that with a hopeful grin on my face. Over twenty years ago, we bought a used Shasta motorhome, 23 feet long on a Chevy chassis. For five summers we loaded up our two young sons and trekked off to the unknown. We were a turtle, traveling with our home on our backs. I always knew where the clothes were, where the toiletries were, where my beloved pillow was. We had great times, especially when we traveled with friends in their motorhome. We ventured from Maine to the Grand Canyon to Florida and Washington DC.

I recently revisited those times when I took our old VHS tapes and converted them to DVD. And this summer, I get to do it all again.

We are renting a 31-foot motorhome with another couple. They have never RVed and we are 20-year behind-the-times veterans. How behind? Well, I'm the one in charge of reservations and it's a new world out there.

First of all, I bought a Woodall's Guide. Twenty years ago we had successfully blown through two or three in our search for the ultimate campground experience. After a couple of less than happy stays, we developed our personal set of standards: the more diamond-Ws (their rating guide), the better, and less than three, we drove on.

Happily, our route this summer, which will take us through Missouri to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and back home through Kentucky, has lots of diamond-Ws along the way. Also, there are so many options: internet access for example. Wireless in many instances. FREE. I'm in charge of reservations and therefore, I've set a personal set of standards: laundry, pull-thrus (backing up is such a problem), hot showers (free), and internet. I'm hitting about 90% right now. I can make reservations online now for about half the places, view the campgrounds for almost all, even if online reserving isn't available.

So here's your warning: I intend to blog from the highways and byways. Post pictures. Take my reading audience along with us. If it's anything like the last times, it won't be dull.

Stay tuned.