The 2018 Meandering season has begun!!!

The 2018 Meandering season has begun!!!

This past 7 days were a flurry of activity and preparations for our min-vacation to New York State.

The RV was in the shop for a couple of weeks to install the wiring kit so that we could tow the Jeep. We also asked the mechanics to give it a general check up and and change the oil. Everything checked out perfectly! The next step was to get the temporary permit so we could take it for an Emissions test. This was required so we could get our plates renewed. We also had to get our propane tank re-certified so both appointments were made for the same day - 1 week before we were to leave. We were not anticipating any problems with the emissions test, after all mechanically the rig checked out just fine. The propane tank, on the other hand was a little questionable, since our rig is 24 years old and still has the original tank.

Needless to say things don't always go as planned. The first appointment was with the local Ford Dealership to get our Drive Clean certificate. Much to our dismay it did not pass. We made an appointment for the following Tuesday to have the codes checked and any necessary repairs done and to try the test again. when pressed, the mechanic that had tested it said he thought it was a problem with the gas. So we stopped at the local Canadian Tire and picked up a couple of cans of stuff to help clean the gas and drove the RV around to use up the nearly full tank of old gas. Our second appointment was to have the Propane system looked at and certified. I was really very nervous about this test since the morning certification had not gone so well. In the end, the tank passed with just one part having to be replaced. I have to say the mechanic who worked on it was wonderful! When he came out and said there was a part that needed to be replaced he said if we wanted a new one he would have to order it in and it would take about a week. Plus it was not exactly a cheap part. He then said he happened to have a really good used part that he could install right away and then certify us. No brainer! After about an hour we were on our day with a complimentary tank of propane to boot!

Tuesday Rick took it back to the dealership to get the emissions re-check. It passed! Then there was a paperwork screw up and a machine malfunction and finally Meander had her licence plates which are good for the next 2 years. Yeah! Things are coming together!

Thursday, the day before we left, was a very busy day. I had already gather many of the items that needed to be loaded so it was time to put them on board. I had every listed out by category - his clothes, my clothes, toiletries, food (that list was done by meal) and general stuff. Then I made a shopping list for anything I was missing.

We also attached the Jeep to the RV with the new set up. We tested signal lights and break lights and....yikes!! they don;t work! Found out we blew a fuse so that was replaced. Plugged it in and.....same thing. So. went back to Canadian Tire and purchased a set of lights and wires that could just be mounted on the back of the Jeep. Worked like a charm! Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

So by end of day Thursday everything was abord except a few odds and ends (already packed in a bag to go out), our food from the fridge and our meat from the freezer (also bagged and ready to grab!).

 Friday is go day! We planned to leave between 8:30 and 9:00 am. Our cats were on house arrest because we were leaving for a couple of days. That did not sit well with our youngest and he tried to get out at every opportunity. as a result, we did an express loading - me showing everything quickly out the door onto the orch and Rick putting it on board. By 7:45 we were ready to go. a quick stop at Tim Horton's for our caffeine fix and we were meandering!

What is Next?

For 2018, we are planning two trips. The first one is to New York State which will only be 2 days long. This will be at the beginning of August and the first day we are going to visit a museum that has recreated the sets from the original Star Trek series. The second day we will be attending the State Fair in Malone and attending the REO Speedwagon Concert that night. 

Our big trip will start in mid September and will take us down the old Route 66 to Tulsa Oklahoma. We are going to visit the crew building SV Seeker in Tulsa before heading north to Grande Prairie for Connor's second birthday. 

So stay tuned! Lots of pictures and adventures are yet to come!

Two Days in One

Our last day on the trip home was a 14 or 15 hour marathon.

We planned our trip home the second week in Grande Prairie. This time Rick chose the route and told me where we would be stopping each night. It was my job to find a place to stay each night. When he said we would be stopping at Syracuse on the final night I found us a park for the night but I knew if we got that close to home we would make a final push rather than stopping. I was not wrong, even though we fell a 100 miles short of our goal the day before.

We got an early start, leaving Defiance Ohio between 7:00 and 7:30 am. We had 2 major cities to get through - Cleveland Ohio and Buffalo NY and we had no idea what that would do to our travel times. we decided to take the toll roads around each of them and it definitely helped.

We started to see advertisements for vineyards and wineries in eastern Ohio and throughout Pennsylvania. At first I thought it strange as I had never heard of these areas being referred to as wine regions. Then I realized how close we were to the Niagara wine region on the Canadian side of the border and it suddenly made sense.

We also watched a large helicopter transporting parts of power lines and lowering them into place, Mother Nature was once again dressed in her fall splendor which made for a scenic afternoon.

New York State showing her fall colors. These pictures do not do it justice..

We stopped at a service center just outside of Syracuse at around 4:30 and plugged in an address in Ogdensburg to judge how far from home we were. It showed we were 250 kms away. So I made dinner and Rick had a rest and off we went. We arrived home just after 9:30 at night.

A Five State Day

On the fifth day of our trip home we got underway around 8:30. We had to wait for the campground to open to pay for our night. It was almost 9:00 pm when we pulled in the night before and the office was closed. 

The plan for the day was to cover over 800 kilometers and cross Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.

The day was misty and it drizzled on and off for most of the morning. We traveled through a lot of small to medium size towns in Illinois until we reached Chicago. It was a pleasant drive and there were some interesting sites to see. 

When driving through Illinois we were stopped at a traffic light and a truck pulled up beside us. Rick spotted a dog in the front seat and yelled "bark" This is the look he gave him back.

Chicago! Holy traffic!! It took about 2 and a half hours to go through the maze of roads and highways and it was not even rush hour.

Once we cleared Chicago and entered Indiana we went through a stretch of highway where it seemed there was just us and transport trucks. 

Another case of mistaken song lyrics.

I took this picture of an Indiana swamp, immediately thinking of "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers but it turns out the song does not mention an Indiana Swamp. Oh well, it is still a nice picture.

The traffic eventually thinned and we could relax a little bit. It was exhausting though and so we drove into Ohio and decided to call it a night in Defiance Ohio, 100 miles short of our goal.

Another Long Day

When you drive for 10 or 11 hours in a day you start to do very silly things. The part of Wisconsin that we travelled through names their highways by using the letters of the alphabet. Fore Example Highway Q. They weren't in any order, either, You would cross highway P and The next one Would be highway C. We started to name the roads as we saw them. Some of them had double letters like FF or OO. In those cases we just tried to make the sound of the double letter.

Then there was the town of Menomonie. Every time we saw a sign with that town we burst into the Muppet theme. If anyone had herd us that would have thought we lost our minds!.

We say this strange looking building in a town in Minnesota. It looks like a huge drainage pipe with Brick extensions on each end. I have never seen anything like it before,

On those rare occasions that I seriously dip into my Sangsters Creamed Rum, Rick likes to call me a "Liquor Pig" Imagine our surprise when we saw this sign while gassing up in Wisconsin.

In the area that we live in, seeing Solar Farms and Windmill Farms is very common. We did not see a single Windmill or Solar Panel on our trip until we spotted this one huge Windmill in Minnesota.

A Late Start and a Long Drive

We were late getting underway on day four due to my shower. We made the decision to eat breakfast at the hotel and then hit the road at about 10:30. We had a long drive ahead of us. We were heading for Madison Wisconsin - a 750 km drive across Minnesota and Wisconsin before stopping for the night.

Although we crossed through both of these states on the way out, our track this time was farther south so it was just a bit different than before.Mother Nature was showing her full fall colours and the scenery was really beautiful!

One of the things you see a lot of, particularly in Wisconsin is billboards on the side of the road that are quite entertaining and we looked forward to reading them. Some said "Smile","Be Kind"and "Have a Nice Day" as well as "Release Your Inner Otter" I was so busy reading the signs that sometimes I forgot to take a picture of the,/ One in particular that I thought was clever was "Got Fiber? We Do!" from a company that sells Fiber Optic cable. we also saw a Water |tower painted with a smiley face.

Minneapolis was the largest city that we traveled through this day. Most of the large cities have a bi-pass or ring rod that takes you away from the main traffic in the city. | did manage to snao a picture of the sky line.

The last place we got gas had some wood carvings near the gas pumps. One was a bear, one was an eagle and the other was a very big Perch.

Someone once told me that our on the prairies that it was common to see Tractor trailers with 3 and 4 trailers being pulled by a single unit. In fact, we rarely saw any trucks pulling 2 trailers. We were driving in Minnesota when we saw a Fed Ex truck with 3 trailers. They were shorter trailers but there were 3 of them. This was a pretty common siting during the rest of our trip.

Back Into the States

Day three of our trip home brought us into the US as we crossed the state of North Dakota and ended the day near Fargo.

We crossed the border at North Portal and a nice young man asked us the usual questions and then came on board to take a look around. We were then given our release ticket which had to be scanned to get out of Customs and we were officially back in the United States.

One of the things we noticed along the way is that people advertise their business by putting a model of what they are selling on their sign. We saw this immediately when we entered North Dakota and then again later in a small town.

In the early part of the journey through North Dakota we again saw signs of the oil and gas industry, although not to the same extent that we had seen in Southern Saskatchewan. The scenery quickly changed to typical Prairie lands and we saw the larges grain bin ever! There was also an old style grain elevator - the first like that we had seen in the US and many more modern ones. It was odd to see the trains lined up at the elevators bearing the CP Rail and Canadian wheat emblems,

Leaving the Prairies behind, w entered a valley surrounded by hills the glaciers had created many years ago. Some of the hills had numbers on them, although I have no idea why. My searches on the internet have not yielded me any information so maybe it is proof of aliens again?

I want to give a shout out to the staff of the Days Inn in Casselton North Dakota where we stayed tonight. They really went above and beyond to make sure we had a great experience while staying at their RV park next door.

Let me explain, Since the car accident showering is no longer a solo activity - but not in a fun way. I can not stand on my right foot at all and crutches are useless in a shower. We bought a shower seat and used it while in Grand Prairie, but Rick going into the women's showers in a camp ground would not only raise eyebrows but might even be illegal. That meant Sponge bathes for me for the next week. YUK!

When Rick was registering us at the desk in the Days Inn, he and the young lady behind the desk got talking about the accident (probably started by explaining our empty car carrier) and my situation. No problem, she said. They have family showers near their pool where we could both go in and he could help me. There are plastic chairs in there that I can sit on to make it easier. The next morning the allowed us to pull the RV up close to the building and even provided us with a wheel chair so that I could get from the RV to the shower pain free. I can not remember the last time I enjoyed a shower so much!

So if you are in the area please given them some business. I know we will stay there any time we travel in that area.