Bull's Eye(s)

Two days on the road, one in terrible weather and one in gorgeous weather and we landed at the Van Hoy Farm Campground in North Carolina. We had been here previously for Cinco de Mayo and found the twice monthly Mexican Community festivals held here are a good time, and have some great eats! REAL Mexican food- no re-fried beans from a can here. It was late in the season, even for this far south, so the pool was closed. I got a kick out of a "must shower" sign on a pool that was closed for the season, but full of dead leaves and algae rich green water still waiting to be drained. Gotta love signs! This is a beautiful property so don't take anything from this image other than an amusing seasonal shot.


Down at the arena, they were getting ready for some rodeo style bull riding. One bull in particular had some serious objections to being photographed and he actually charged me a couple times. Classic: head down, hoof scratching, nose snorting, horns waggering back and forth. I was grateful for the iron fence rail between us, but the charge still made me jump back a bit. It wasn't til I put the shot I took of him in the computer that I saw those devilish Halloween eyes. Bull's Eyes! Focused on me!


I decided that if they asked the Gringo (that would be me) to ride a bull, I would pick this one. Then I promptly left the arena before anyone had the chance to do just that.....

On the way back to the coach, we stopped for some Mexican style "carne" tacos, fresh shaved off the roast, grilled, toasted, hot peppers, pineapple, toppings added...yum. I had two, but found that two demanded that I eat one more before walking back. Oh man that was good! It's hard to find good Mexican food, but there is nothing better when you are able to find it.


There was an important soccer match in the state so the usual crowd that converges for these festividades was late to arrive on this occasion. Plenty of time for the little caballeros to hone their skills with the ropes.

Tomorrow morning we'll head out for a short hop, skip and a jump over to Vein Mountain and the LDMA Gold Camp there for the annual local outing. That camp is one of our favorites and the people there are super. Cell phone service is weak there and computer hookups? Maybe, maybe not. So we'll have to see just how regularly we can keep up with postings. We'll be at the camp for 17 days if the plan stays the plan. So for tonight..., adios, amigos.

What Next?

I've told you a few of our current woes. i shall continue that in this post. but should you discover a lack of capital letters and correct punctuation in this post- it is because now even my keyboard has decided to give me a rash of crap. oh joy! I'm tempted to leave the numeral 1 wherever it pops up for now because since the cap (shift) key became problematic there are no exclamation points- case in point11111.

after nearly three weeks sitting it out while repairs to the coach and quigley van were carried out, the weather was horrid. rain 3.9 days out of every 4. So when the clouds broke and the sun appeared, the geese took to flight and the fall colors hit the trees fast and furious. It felt good. positive energy. encouraging. enlightening. energizing.




so I was a happy camper pulling out of camp and heading back to Tom Schaeffer's RV Superstore for the final piece of the puzzle- the replacement of the cracked windshield which was scheduled for a two day stay....and then onward. Driving was easy. gauges looked good. peace to the world1 it came as a bit of a shock that I couldn't get heat to the dash as the morning temps were a tad on the chilly side. maybe a few more minutes to warm up. then Marilyn smelled something a little funny1 Not me! through the intersection in Ephrata we went. but then the temp gauge shot up to the red zone and the dash alarms started to scream. Without hesitation we pulled over- forget that we were blocking traffic and on a double yellow line representing somewhat of a traffic hazard. call the police; let them know. An inspection quickly showed antifreeze pouring out of every basement compartment. a tsunami of coolant, a tidal wave of terror came over my otherwise happy morning moment. this was a problem. call the insurance company, the auto club, the tow truck, the rv center where we were NOT going to make our scheduled appointment- no matter what.

45 minutes later the tow truck turned up, hooked us up (that was another story in itself) and off we went. whatever was to be was now out of our hands. we followed the tow in to the dealer. way too fast for comfort- also another story. but get there we did and unhooked. Whatever had busted and caused the rapid coolant loss was now complicated by a cracked and damaged front end where the coach had bounced on the boom of the tow truck all the way from the point of the problem to the parking lot of the dealer. stay calm. deal with it....



The sight of the drive axle laying on the parking lot next to the disabled coach made for a sinking feeling in the head and the stomach. But not to worry. Tom Schaeffer RV to the rescue...and another three days and some few more bucks got things back under control. negotiations with the tower eased the concerns and so now we are about ready to head out once again.

can't say enough about Tom Schaeffer RV service. Phenomenal! over and above. anything and everything you need- provided by a fleet of master mechanics and a support staff second to none. fair. always fair! i hope not to have more problems, but if i do have them, i hope i have them VERY close to them. if everyone ran their business like they do- then no businesses would ever have any trouble staying in business and being a profitable and thriving entity. kudos to all you guys (and gals)... and thanks for everything1111! hey i got at least one exclamation point1

In The Beginning...

Back in Thousand Trails, Hershey (actually the camp is in Lebanon but only a short hop to Chocolate-ville) and still licking wounds from the last big Alaska trip- but gaining! Had the occasion to sit at my old 'puter and look back at some of the nearly 6000 digital pics I took since our full time travel adventure began three years ago. This is one of my favorites (Marilyn's too for obvious reasons) That first post was made in November of 2006. It went like this:

Shake Down Cruise:

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and Deer Lake Fossils

Well sir, the coach is in the shop for a couple weeks worth of repairs. Ouch! The Quigley is in the body shop to repair the "hit and run" damage the Fifth Wheel driver did to it in the Yukon on the way to Alaska. But problems with turkeys are no reason not to soar with eagles, so off we went to see the sights from the vantage point of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Some of you will remember a few posts back I mentioned that my father had been given the Warden's Award for a lifetime of contribution and achievement from this prestigious wildlife preservation organization. I had accompanied my dad with the rest of the family many times as a child to hike up the mountain and look out over the ridges and valleys through a pair of binoculars, and watch the eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, and whatever else happened by on the seasonal migrations. The place hasn't changed much, ("The rocks are still all in the same place," said to ranger on the ticket counter) although it is clear that the number of visitors who avail themselves of the magnificent collection of trails and lookouts has increased 10 fold or more.

It's only a mile hike to the north lookout (a not too difficult rocky climb if you will) and a much shorter easy walk to the south lookout. We carried our walking sticks and one child asked us, "Hey where did you get them?" When we told her we brought them from Alaska, she remarked: "Oh I didn't know they had trees there...." You learn something every day.

It was fun visiting the mountain again. We saw some ospreys, some Sharpie hawks, one Redtail and a few other non raptor species. But for us the visit was more about the mountain and the views than it was about the birds. One of the nicest things about traveling all the time? We see hawks, eagles, all kinds of birds, nearly every day. On a wire, a pole, a fence, the brush by the side of the road as we cruise on by. It's a neat way to go birding and does NOT require getting up with the sun to get out in the field with the old binoculars.


Hawk Mountain Slide Show:



Once we drove back down the mountain, we decided to try to find a spot nearby where my family used to go fossil hunting. We found Deer Lake and the adjacent rock quarry just as I had remembered it. Well, almost- enough to recognize right off. And we were finding fossil shells, aquatic plant life, even a few trilobites almost from the moment we got out of the (rental) van we are using while our repairs are being done. It was good to put our geology picks back into rock and ground...and we have a few small pieces to add to the collection. If you watch the slide show, you may see the praying mantis that was (I guess) looking for fossils as well. He kinda looked like a living fossil!

Deer Lake Fossil Hunting:

Back In The US of A

There are some days when if you didn't have bad luck you wouldn't have any luck at all. I suppose a day or two like that every once in a while wouldn't be too bad, but it seems like the last half of our cross Canada trek was one day like that after another. I mean: my eyeglasses broke down the middle , my windshield is cracked, my door awning quit working and had to be pulled off the coach, floor tiles cracked when the coach twisted from an excess slope at a campground in a province that is otherwise flat, went to bed one night in a wooded camp site and woke up to find the coach sitting in 8 or so inches of water from overnight heavy rain...and then had the rear axle sink into the soft sand thereby leaning the back slide awning up against a nearby tree that should have been removed a long time ago and damaging it way too much trying to extricate the coach from the heavily wooded campground, which in turn made the slide impossible to open now. Did I mention that the pots and pans are in the closet which cannot now be accessed behind the closed slide? So shopping trips are limited to buying supplies that can be grilled (we can still get at the grill) or eaten raw. Mmmmm. Celery and lunch meat. The Magic Fan ceiling fan crapped out too. Bummer! There's more, but what the heck....

So it feels like "limping home" at the moment even though we are still rolling. At least at this point! All these concerns made the drive by Lake Superior seem less than superior to me. Lake Huron and Ontario much the same.

Our first look at Lake Superior:

There were literally thousands of small lakes in addition to the "Great" lakes too. Below is a look at the GPS passing through Ontario- more water than land or so it seemed.


Back in the USA, nothing had really changed as far as the conditions I just told you about- BUT, it felt a little better to be in the homeland. Help is much closer here, or so it seems, than it is in rural Canada. Right now- that's a good thing. We crossed the border at Niagara Falls, put the concerns behind us for the time being and headed off to see the falls. Parked on the US side, walked across the Rainbow Bridge ( you'll see from the slide show why it's called that) and strolled along the Niagara River to the Canadian or Horseshoe Falls as well. Then down the canyon wall to the river to ride the Maid of the Mist into the spray, the fury of the base of the falls. What a ride!




I'll close today with a slide show of the stroll by the falls....

Amber Waves of Grain

Saskatchewan and Manitoba are one big wheat field- at least from what we saw crossing Canada on Rt 1 and flying right along. Flat. That is except for the place we parked in a couple nights back, which was a downhill slope just steep enough that the coach couldn't level out properly and we did some damage to tile and trim when the slide outs wrenched putting them out...and then immediately right back in. Too late, but nothing to stop us or put us at risk, so on we go.


If you check out the Provinces Visited map you will see we have now added Manitoba and also Ontario where we landed tonight at Anicinabe Park on Lake of the Woods. In contrast to the recent provinces we have visited, Ontario is more like the Canada I know from the past. Big trees, lakes everywhere, rich greens and dark blues under a pastel blue sky- very beautiful. Below is the view out the front window of the rig at our first stop in Ontario. Had a nice walk down to the lake- boating, fishing, snorkeling, swimming all going on down at the lake...


The rest of our journey through Canada will be around the area of the Great Lakes and we are really looking forward to that.

Dino-topia

We had hoped to visit the Royal Tyrrell Dinosaur Museum on our last day in Alberta and Drumheller, but the museum had just moved to its winter schedule (closed Monday) and since it turned out to be a little further from our campground near the HooDoos than we realized, we decided we could not fit it in Tuesday morning before continuing on. Instead we walked around town, which is loaded with dinosaur replicas of all shapes and sizes. There are plenty of fossil shops, other museums of a lesser stature that the Tyrrell, and other attractions. They have a neat suspension bridge nearby so we took a walk across that and the Red Deer River. Neato. A couple stills and a slide show to mark the occasion.

I told Marilyn to get out of the way of the T-Rex, but would she listen???



Then on to Saskatchewan today. Another province added to our Canada map. Looks a lot like the prairie states so far- hot and seemingly very dry as well. Nothing in particular to write about yet....

HOO DOO: You Think I'm Fooling?

There are some days when, if it weren't for bad luck, you wouldn't have any luck at all. Yesterday was pretty much one of those days. An RVers nightmare, the electronic door awning left open over night refused steadfastly to retract in the morning as we prepared for departure on a day that called for a run of about 6 hours. Now running down the road with an awning out is not the best of ideas. In fact, it's about the worst. Passing trucks, crossing bridges, passing close to telephone poles just doesn't work with the awning out. It'd be like an eagle with a 6 foot wing span trying to fly full speed into a pigeon coop. Not good for the eagle or the pigeon coop. It was a Saturday. Four hours of trying everything to get that awning back rolled up failed to produce a solution. And even though we found two RV repair services within a possible emergency commute- one had another job he could not leave, and the other guy had, get this, a sick horse, and wouldn't come out. What are the odds? So with little else to do, we got out the installation manual for the awning and DE-INSTALLED it- cut the wires, removed the mounting screws and slid that baby right off the track. Tied it all up, threw it in the car and off we went. We had started to get ready to depart at 6:30 AM. By 12:30PM we were on the road. Stress went along for the ride! Got in late, so the pull through we had reserved was gone, the power was 30 when we had pretty much planned on 50 amp. I know there are gonna be days like this, but I've had my quota for the year now, so.....

Which brings us to the destination for today. Drumheller, Alberta. Home of the Hoo Doos. An early and different form of VooDoo - where the evil spirits were believed to have turned into rocks. They call this the Badlands of Canada and for obvious reason. But the hard hat, soft sandstone rock pillars are everywhere and in every size and stage of development. Was it the Hoo Doos that gave us trouble with the awning? Who do, I say Hoo Doo you think you're fooling?




And since it was close, we opted to drive just a bit further down the road and visit the famed Atlas Coal Mine. There was a very interesting outdoor museum walk of old coal mining equipment, something on the order of what I think is planned for the new museum in the works for Chicken Gold Camp. It was great. We had a trip planned to the dinosaur museum on Monday, but the brochure says it will be closed that day, so we'll just have to see if we can still fit that in...or if the Hoo Doos have their way with us one more time!

A Bad Day For Glass...

It seems like our gigantic windshield luck done run out! For three years now we have been roaming the hemisphere with only a few repairable dings and chips- all fixable with today's glass technology. We've repeated stories on Glass Magnum out of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory who has a technology unrivaled in this day and age for repairing chips and even large cracks in windshields. But on a clear and dry day, and on a clean and dry road, a small car threw a rock at us that first chipped the windshield, then, as we watched in absolute horror, send a crack across our left side windshield at the rate of about an inch every 10 minutes or so. It was kinda neat to watch at the same time it was an ohhhhh nooooo momen. What shall we do? Rural BC, Canada- not likely o find help here! But then Marilyn saw the sign.
"Stop" she yelled.
"What, is there an emergency?"
No, just a sign for windshield repair in a small town on the side of a building reading "Space For Rent."
What were the odds? Who cares, frankly?Good fortune is good fortune... and that is what we MAYBE had. The cell phone worked. What are the odds of that here? Poor. But it did.
"Are you in business? We are on Rt 16 by your sign....."
"Yes, I can see you..."
Within minutes Cory Jackson CiCi Auto Glass Repair, Vanderhoof, BC, CA was at our service. All we had to do was pull around the corner and we were there..... He did not have the advanced technology of Glass Magnum, but at this moment that did not matter in the slightest and he was hot on the job within a minute or two. The crack was stopped from progressing to the point where it could become dangerous. We breathed a sigh of relief. Whewwwwwww. Even his wife and baby came out to supervise the job on the grand windshield. Then with less that an hour of delay, we were once again on our way.

x

Now if this was the only thing to report about glass, I would not have selected this topic for today. But you see, shortly after we pulled out of there, we noticed another crack working its way across the other side of the windshield. Where this one came from we have not a clue! But there it was...and here it is. End game for the both windshields in the long run- but hopefully they hold up til we are back where replacement is a more than reasonable option.

And even a second crack in the windshield may not have prompted me to write about this, excepting my eye glasses decided to break right down the middle as well...and this for the second time, their having been laser welded in California a while back. Backup pair? Sure. Laser welded also. Uh- oh! Notice the trend here. Pretty much all down hill?

Nope. We are crossing the Canadian Rockies. Past Jasper, and the scenery is a-ok whether your windshield has some cracks, or your eye glasses are falling apart or not. Mt. Robson is the highest point in the Canadian Rockies at over 12,000 feet...and here we are cruising on by. Is it any wonder the glass can't cut it, so to speak?

There were lots of pictures that we could have stopped to take along the way. But this was a long day anyhow and we are bookin' it back to PA once again.

Gun & Run

Now that our visit to Hyder is accomplished, we are in gun and run mode as we travel, for the next four days or so. So sleep, eat, and drive - make up pretty much the entire day's itinerary, although today we pulled over by the Skeena River for lunch and took the time to pick another dehydrator full of rose hips for this winter's vitamin C tea drinks. It was rainy all day, heavy at times, but when we find such a nice crop by the roadside, we try to take advantage of the discovery. Luckily for us, the bushes are almost always untouched when we find them. Apparently there aren't a lot of people who pick and save them. Boiled for a short time and then steeped overnight, they make a delightfully earthy beverage which is excellent hot or cold. I love the "tea" they produce, but the whole process is nice as the drying and dehydrating produces a sweet and very pleasant aroma that wafts through the coach for the several days it takes to dry each batch. The hips, or berries, can be sun dried as well, so we move the dehydrator to the shower stall, and under the skylight, right next to our traveling herb garden while we travel for the day, and then plug them back in at the end of the day's travel. Each night the coach fills with the warm scent of the drying berries, and oh how sweet it is!

The hips come in all shapes and sizes, and even the color can vary from species to species of wild rose, but the basic color is red when they are ripe and ready for picking, although pink and orange are to be found at places as well. When we have our crop stored for the season, we will have collected hips from Chicken Alaska all the way back through New England. We actually still have a few giant hips from the Canadian Maritimes left over from last season. Think of it as an International blend or an All States blend. Delicious no matter what you call it....