Tag Archives: Forestedge Winery

2014/02/10 (M) A Day Of Firsts

It was a near perfect day weather-wise, and a pretty decent day in all other respects. We woke to clear skies with temperatures in the upper 40’s but by late morning it was 70 and gained a few more degrees by late afternoon. Winds were very light from no particular direction and there were very few flying bugs. We had a leisurely morning with our usual coffee and granola. We took showers. Linda vacuumed. I opened the awnings on the coach to let them air out and dry, with assistance from Linda for the patio awning. This was only the second time we have deployed the awnings since we left home, and the first time we planned to leave them open as rain is predicted for only one day in the next 7 to 10 days.

Linda continued with her cross-stitch project and I dealt with e-mail, website, and technology issues. Bill was unable to clear the error codes on Pat & Vickie’s DDEC I engine computer so I e-mailed Butch, who also has a DDEC I, and provided some additional guidance. Bill indicated that they needed wiring diagrams, which Pat did not have. Bill had them, but they were back home in Ontario. Doh! I have the diagrams with us on the Network Attached Storage device. They are all PDFs I got from Bill on a CD. I located the lists of drawing numbers, picked a half dozen that I thought might be what Pat needed, put them in a folder in our Dropbox, and e-mailed everyone back. Dropbox has turned out to be one of the better little pieces of technology in our cyber arsenal.

Around noon we walked to the Grocery Depot to pick up a few ingredients for dinner; a one mile round trip and the closest place to the RV resort to buy groceries. Linda prepared lunch and we ate outside; the first time the weather has been nice enough to do that since we got back to Williston Crossings on January 1st. We then sat outside to work; again, one of the rare days we have been able to do that. Mid-afternoon we went for a longer walk around the RV resort that included our first hike down into the quarry.

We noticed that WCRVR had installed a new sign just inside the new entrance to the resort off of FL-121. This is where the new section of park is being developed with ownership sites that will be available for purchase. The sign said “The Reserve at Williston Crossings” so apparently that is how they plan to market these sites. The sign is framed on either side with a new wood rail fence and plants, all of which looks very nice. The first two sites have had paver blocks added to the concrete pads to dress them up a bit; presumably as demo sites to show prospective owners what can be done if they so choose. It will be interesting to see what else they do in this area before of the park before leave.

When we returned to our coach we continued to sit outside to work and just enjoy the day. Although the park is quiet and peaceful, it is not silent during the day. We rarely hear other residents (talk or music) but there are always folks walking or riding bikes, and maintenance work being done by resort staff and residents. We are near the south/old entrance so when we are here we see all of the rigs coming and going that way. We saw more people out tending their sites or cleaning their vehicles than on past walks. And there are birds—lots of birds—and with the sunnier, warmer weather they have had a lot to say.

Eventually, inevitably, as afternoon faded into evening it cooled off and we lost our light. We retreated inside, had dinner, and watched Antiques Road Show on Gainesville PBS while working on projects (cross-stitch and BCM) before retiring for the night. Linda made a delicious acorn squash stuffed with white rice and mushrooms, and onions and we opened our bottle of Blueberry Rhubarb Wine from Forestedge Winery (LaPorte, MN). We have been spending time at the resort on less than ideal weather days so we could use good weather days to go exploring. We enjoyed finally spending a nice day at home.

2013_12_25 (W) Season’s Greetings From Florida

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Publix grocery store in SW Gainesville, FL.

What do extended-time RVers do on Christmas day? Pretty much what they would do at home, except for visiting/hosting family. It got down to 33 degrees F overnight, so we had the spirit of winter if not the actual thing. That was still above freezing and much better than the 9 degrees F in Howell, Michigan. Linda put her knit cap on and went for a walk before breakfast. With the way people are bundled up here she didn’t want to show off by walking without her hat. We may not be overly concerned with fitting in, but there’s no reason to make people feel bad on Christmas day. We both went for a couple of walks later in the day. There are pictures of the RV resort throughout this post that do not necessarily relate the text.

Looking north from site #439. This will be our front window view.

This was our 7^th day on the road and as we are leaving Williston Crossings RV Resort tomorrow for a week we needed to do a load of laundry. One of the Laundromat buildings is fairly close to our current site and even closer to our long-term site when we get back. Like everything else here it was clean and well lit with commercial washers and dryers in good condition and all functioning properly. I took care of the laundry after breakfast, as I would have done at home, while Linda started working on our holiday meal, as she would have done at home. At some level life on the road is just life, and there’s a certain comfort in that, but with more variety of new experiences which is why people do it. We have been determined from the beginning that our extended-time RVing would not be an extended vacation. Although we plan to do plenty of sight-seeing while we are in Florida, so far we have been quite comfortable with just sitting in one place and relaxing.

Looking south at site #439 in the south section. The trees will provide shade.

Linda’s first culinary task was to make her vegan chocolate cake. She had not packed vegetable oil, so she used avocado oil instead. The batter (I got to clean the bowl) did not have any unusual taste, so we expected the cake to be very good when we finally had some for dessert.

The fire pit in the south section, not far from site #439.

We turned on the dash radio and were able to tune in the Gainesville NPR station with a good strong signal even though the antenna is 20 miles away. Not bad considering that our radio does not have an antenna at the moment! It was removed as part of redoing the roof in 2011/12 and has not yet been replaced. So at this point we have fast Wi-Fi, a good selection of over-the-air TV stations (including the PBS trio), and good radio signals (including NPR). This place just gets better and better.

Walkway from the fire pit to the south section laundry room.

With our outstanding Wi-Fi we decided to try contacting our children using Facetime on our iPads. We connected with our son and daughter-in-law first. Our grand-daughter was having a late morning snack of teething pretzels and “freezy peasies” (frozen peas). She seemed to recognize us and smiled and waved in-between gumming pretzels and peas. She got very excited when our male cat, Jasper, wandered into the frame, so it was pretty clear that she recognized the images she was seeing. Facetime is going to allow us to stay in touch with her development while we are here, which is very nice. We then connected with our daughter and had a nice chat with her. She was baking rolls for later today when she and her husband were getting together with her brother, his family, and a friend.

[R 693 The south section bath and laundry room.]

We bought a Tofurkey yesterday to have for our main dish today. Linda had not tried to cook one in a convection/microwave oven before, and the cooking directions advised against microwaving it, so this was a bit of an experiment. She made cranberry-orange relish yesterday from our remaining fresh cranberries. Today she made a green salad which we ate an hour before our main mean. She convection roasted the Tofurkey and it came out great. While it was relaxing she microwaved a couple of yams and sautéed some asparagus spears to complete the side dishes. We had a bottle of Early Season White Cranberry Wine from Forestedge Winery in Laporte, Minnesota to round out the meal. Of the many non-grape wines available from Forestedge Winery, this is one of our favorites.

Yes, there is a shuffle board court. Isn’t it lovely?

It may be Christmas day, but chores have to be done when they have to be done. Even though we have a full-hookup site at the rally in Arcadia we wanted to leave Williston tomorrow with empty holding tanks and a full fresh water tank. You never know if the facilities you’ve been promised will actually be functional when you arrive. I attended to these tasks after dinner.

Clubhouse on the left, pool house on the right, golf carts in the middle.

After an early evening stroll through the RV resort we had vegan chocolate cake with fresh strawberries for dessert. As expected, the cake was excellent.

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

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There is always lots to do around the house when we return from an RV rally, more so since we are still getting moved in to our new (to us) house and trying to get it ready for an open house / house warming. We decided about a month ago to have the house warming as a way to “force” us to accelerate the moving-in process and so far that seems to be working.

Arriving home yesterday we were able to pull in to our pull-through driveway with the car attached, which was very nice. With the added “fines” (sandy silt) material mixed in with the 21aa road gravel, the driveway is now packing together very tightly and easily supporting the weight of the bus. The planned driveway geometry has worked out well allowing us to pull in and out with the car attached. That means we cook hook/unhook the car in the driveway rather than in the street.

Linda babysat for Madeline on Monday while I worked around the house, unloaded the clothes and bedding from the bus, and started doing laundry; not very interesting, perhaps, but satisfying work in its own way. We both spent a fair amount of time on our computers this week, Linda with household accounting chores and RV park research and me with some CEPI work, our website/blog, and websites for several other organizations. Using WordPress to create/manage websites and blogs has really grabbed my interest. I’m not very proficient yet, but I’m leaning.

We hung the last few pieces of artwork for now and spent part of the week opening and moving boxes. Linda was looking for papers we could take to a shredding company and managed to accumulate quite a few boxes of them. At this point we’ve run out of time to open boxes and sort through the contents, so we turned our attention to finding places to “hide” them until after the open house. We’re not there yet, but we are comfortable that the house will be presentable enough by the time it needs to be.

We decided to harvest some of the apples from our apple tree and discovered that a large branch (3-4” diameter) had peeled loose in three places, probably due to the copious amount of fruit on it, the age of the tree, and the fact that it had not been pruned properly (or at all) for years. We don’t know much about fruit trees, but we know that this is not the time of year to prune them. With the tree obviously damaged, however, we decided to cut the branch off and let nature take its course. We took it off in three pieces to make sure we could handle them. The branches of an apple tree tend to get intertwined, especially if it isn’t pruned, so we really had to pull to get the pieces down. That brought lots of apples to the ground besides the ones on the damaged branch. We left the branches and their apples on the ground for the deer and other animals that frequent our backyard.

We collected a large bag of apples and Linda spent time during the rest of the week peeling them, dipping them in lemon, and freezing them. She also made apple sauce and apple bread (both of which were outstanding). She commented at one point that “I am starting to understand why farm wives never got out of the kitchen.” Cooking real food with real ingredients (whole-food, plant-based) is a lot of work. Linda finds the work satisfying, however, now that she has the time to do it, and I certainly find the results satisfying as well. Yummy.

Ed and Betty Burns arrived on Thursday afternoon in their Tiffin Phaeton motorhome and stayed until late Friday morning. This was their second visit in about a month and we really enjoyed having them here again. They have been working at the Middleton Berry Farm and finished their tour of duty on Thursday. I moved our motorhome out of the pull-through driveway so they could pull in and park in a level spot with power.

They got here in time for dinner and Linda put out a nice meal. She served a nice Waldorf style green salad using some of our fresh-picked apples with homemade apple bread. The main course was a lentil loaf with a baked potato and homemade applesauce on the side. I chose the Blueberry Wine from Forestedge Winery in LaPorte, Minnesota to go with the meal. (It only occurred to us later than we had an apple wine from the same winery, which would have really completed our apple-themed meal.) Forestedge Winery is owned by Paul and Sharon Shuster, who are members of our FMCA Freethinkers associate chapter as are Ed and Betty.

Linda made apple crisp for dessert, but none of us had room, so we saved it for breakfast the next day. In addition to the apple crisp, breakfast included Linda’s homemade granola cereal with fresh blueberries, fresh banana slices, and raspberries that we had personally picked at the Middleton Berry Farm a few weeks ago and frozen. A little orange juice and a 50/50 blend of Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe and Kona coffee rounded out the meal.

We decided earlier in the week that we would try Florida for our first snowbird experience. (Snowbird is a term used to describe folks who live in northern climates where it snows and head south for the winter to get away from same. If there is a corresponding term for folks who live in the south and travel north in the summer to avoid heat and humidity, I don’t know what it is, other than perhaps Bridwons. Think about it.) Our decision was motivated by the desire to attend a large converted bus rally in Arcadia, Florida that is held each year from December 26 to January 1st. (The actual rally is Dec 29, 30, 31, but you can arrive as early as the 26^th and departure is the 1^st.) The rally was started by Jack and Paula Conrad, who ran it for the first ten years.

Ed and Betty used to live in Florida so we were eager to draw on their knowledge and experience before trying to book a place or places to stay. Earlier in the week we called the Low-Key Hideaway RV Park and Motel in Cedar Key, but they were not able to accommodate us. We knew about Low-Key Hideaway Cherie Ve Ard’s Technomadia blog postings, and it appears that the place has developed quite a clientele, perhaps in part as a result of Technomadia’s publicity.

At the last two GLCC rallies we had talked at length with Pat and Vicky, who winter in Florida. I also had an in-depth conversation this week with two other fellow RVers (Ed and Al) who winter in Florida and got their thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations. Our friends and fellow H3-40 owners, Chuck and Barbara, have spent the last seven winters in Florida and the last several at Pelican Lake Motorcoach Resort in Naples, Florida. We delayed our return home following the Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise in March so we could drive over from Ft. Lauderdale to see the resort and have dinner with them. It was very nice, as you would expect.

We learned a number of things as a result of this quick “research”. Some of it was stuff we knew, or assumed as a form of common sense, but some of it we did not:

The cost per day generally goes down the longer you stay in one place. The usual breakpoints are week, month, 2-month, 3-month, 4-month, 6-month, and year. (You can also purchase lots, but probably don’t want to calculate the per day cost for that.)
The farther south you go, the more expensive it gets.
The reason for the previous point is the average daily temperate range. In northern Florida it is not unusual for temperatures to drop into the upper 30’s at night, and record lows have been recorded in the teens. That doesn’t happen in Key West, and money tends to follow the pleasant climate.
The closer you are to one of the coasts, the more expensive it gets. You pay a price for beaches and sunrises/sunsets.
No-See-Ums, however, can be a real problem near the coasts, and some folks have very bad reactions to their bites.
If the RV park has “resort” in the name, it will be more expensive, with “motorcoach resort” costing even more, and “luxury motorcoach resort” costing even more than that.
Most of Florida is swampy; being inland or staying at a “luxury” resort does not guarantee that you are not camped in or next to a swamp. Think bugs, snakes, and alligators.
You can almost always rent a deeded site at a higher-end park directly from the owners much cheaper than you can rent it through the park management office. Check the classifieds in the back of FMC Magazine.
Moving every week is expensive and tiring, but gets you access to more of the state.
Staying more than one month at the same place can get a bit boring, but that’s a personal thing.
Some parks are in dense urban areas, others are near small towns, and some are in the middle of nowhere. It’s a shopping convenience versus solitude thing. You can end up having to drive 20 miles or more for groceries if you are not paying attention when you choose an RV park.
Not all parks are “big rig friendly” (even though they will claim they are).
Most parks have punitive refunds polices, so be sure before you know what they are before you book.
Make sure your park of choice is located near things you want to do (hike, bike, kayak, fish, watch sunrises and/or sunsets, or have access to highways so you can visit natural and historic sites in your car, etc.) Tallahassee is not a good base camp for visiting Key West.
Many RV parks are adjacent to a major freeway, railroad track, or airport; sometimes all three. If you don’t think the noise will bother you, you’re wrong.
Some RV parks are gated (if you care).
Whether the residents in a park or nice or not seems to have little to due with the physical appearance and amenities of the place.
There are a lot of older parks with mixed use, i.e., year-round “Park Models” in addition to sites for vacationers and snowbirds.
Check the type/quality of the interior roads and parking pads (concrete, gravel, grass, hard dirt, or sand), it might matter with a big, heavy coach.
The spacing of the sites varies greatly; some parks have sites that are small and close together (but they will tell you they are very spacious).
Find out whether there is any landscaping, especially shade trees around the sites.
Find out whether the roads and sites have trees trimmed up and back sufficiently to not scratch your RV.
Check to see if “lakes” on the property actually have water in them (seriously).
Check on the availability and cleanliness of onsite bath/shower facilities and Laundromats.
Check the availability of onsite activities (which could be a plus or a minus) and facilities such as swimming pools, tennis courts, etc. If you don’t want them, why pay for them?
Find out if the park has pet restrictions, and if so, what they are.
Some parks are 55+ operations, others allow/encourage/cater to families with children. Know which type you are signing up for and make sure it’s what you want.
The photos on the website always look beautiful, but somehow manage to avoid showing you views of the parking sites from a vantage point that allows you to assess all of the factors mentioned above.
Google Earth and other satellite image websites/apps are your best friend and ultimate research tool.

Our goal was to book a park or parks for January and February by the end of the day Friday, but we didn’t make it; too much to ponder and no time to make phone calls. We will get back to it early next week as Tuesday is October 1^st, and January 1^st will only be three months away.

Tom and Tom from TOMTEK HVAC were back on Friday afternoon to finish up repairs on our hydronic heating system. They did not have one of the parts they were going to replace but it didn’t matter as they discovered some additional issues that will require a return visit.

The first thing they discovered was that the propane shut off valve didn’t shut off the propane. We had to turn off the supply at the tank so they could replace the valve before doing anything else. When they removed the propane diffuser cone to clean it and replace the gasket they discovered that the end of the cone had large holes in it. These holes were preventing the propane from burning as efficiently as it should, and if they got bigger could prevent the furnace from working at all. Parts like this for a Weil-McLain GV Gold Series hydronic heating system are not common, i.e., they don’t carry them on their truck or even stock them at their office, so they had to special order it.

As long as they had the combustion chamber open, they went ahead and vacuumed it out. They had me look at it, and it had what appeared to be a couple of inches of rusty debris lying in the bottom, the result of a lack of proper (professional) service over a very long period of time (or perhaps any service at all). They put it all back together and will replace the diffuser cone, gasket, and igniter (along with the part they forgot to bring) when they return next week.

I don’t know if this qualifies as serendipity in the usual sense, but we are lucky that we decided to have the system “serviced” in advance of the start of the heating season. If not, we would not have discovered defects that could have led to a wintertime failure of the furnace with serious consequences for the house.

As I was working at my computer Friday evening an e-mail showed up with the PDF version of the October 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine. The article I wrote on the mid-August Back-To-The-Bricks rally in Clio, Michigan was the cover/centerfold article, the fifth one I have had published in BCM. (See the BCM page of the website for the complete list and information about Bus Conversions Magazine.) That was a nice end to nice week.

2013_08_03 (Sat) Across The Northern Tier

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Today was a travel day, and an uneventful one at that (the best kind). Linda spent some time last evening and again this morning researching places for us to stay tonight somewhere between Ashland, Wisconsin and Iron Mountain, Michigan. The choices appeared thin; the Walmart in Ashland didn’t allow RVers to overnight due to a city ordinance, and there did not appear to be a Walmart anywhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. (I know, I know, that doesn’t seem possible. It turns out there is one in Ironwood, and probably others we haven’t discovered yet.) As our route eventually put us on US-2 we settled on a city RV park in Ironwood, Michigan, just over the border with Wisconsin on the north side of the highway. Based on available online information, this park appeared to have a variety of sites from “full hookup pull-thru” to “no hookup tent site.” (Note: Full hookup in this case meant 20A electric power, barely sufficient to recharge our house batteries, and run the refrigerator, and run the air compressor.) The sites were first-come-first-served; no way to make a reservation. And being a city park, there was no one to call for information on a Saturday, the city offices being closed. So we did something very unusual for us, we started driving with no guarantee that we would be able to get a site, much less one that our coach would fit in, or if the park was even still open.

We left the Forestedge Winery (very reluctantly) at 9:19 AM CDT and headed south down MN-64 towards Akeley where we picked up MN-34 heading northeast to Walker. MN-34 ends at MN-200 in Walker and we headed east on MN-200 from there. MN-200 appears on the map to run straight east-west, but in actuality it bends to the left and right, and goes up and down, through lovely forests and past bodies of water, large and small. The forests eventually gave way to shorter, scruffier growth and marshy areas that reminded us a great deal of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. MN-200 ended at US-2 and we merged on headed southeast to Duluth, Minnesota 52 miles away.

The roads were generally very good, with smooth, quiet surfaces, and we rolled along at 55 MPH except for the occasional idiot who seems unconcerned about pulling out in front of a 41,000 pound vehicle traveling fast enough to turn their sub-compact into a splotch on the highway. No, we didn’t hit anyone, but one of the things I do not like is having to suddenly get on the brakes. Buses do not stop quickly (in a short distance) when traveling at highway speeds. I know that–and I generally try to drive very, very defensively–but I have no control over what other motorists do, and I find in particular that it is not always possible to anticipate what a stupid/oblivious person might do next. One or my other pet bus peeves?; drivers who wait until the passing lane is about to run out and then decide to try to get around you. One &%$*(#! did that to me today and he ended up facing oncoming traffic. I am not going on the shoulder and risking putting a 41,000 pound bus in the ditch for someone that stupid. I did not encounter the most common peeve situation today, however, as it involves entrance ramps on limited access highways; people who don’t get up to speed and pay not attention to the traffic that is already on the highway and into which they are required to merge, i.e., get up to speed and blend in.

BTW: The weather today was almost perfect; blue skies with lots of white puffy clouds (enough to create plenty of shaded areas on the highway) and afternoon temperatures in the low 70’s.

Paul had told us to just stick with US-2 east and we would soon find ourselves in Wisconsin, and so it was. As you approach the northwest corner of Duluth MN-194 splits off to the left and US-2 goes to the right. Signs make it very, very clear that trucks are to use US-2 to get into, around, or through Duluth; they are NOT to get on MN-194. One of the interesting things about driving an motorhome that’s really a commercial bus, is there are times when you are not a truck (such as highway weigh scales), and other times when you are, such as any road situation that involves height, width, length, or weight restrictions. Toll roads are a toss up; some go only by axles, thus treating you like a commercial semi, while others have special fares for RVs and the things they tow. Also, if you have a Jake Brake (we don’t) local noise ordinances prohibiting their use apply to you the same as they do to commercial vehicles. If you don’t believe it, try using yours.

US-2 takes you to I-35 south of Duluth. From I-35 you travel a couple of miles north and onto the Bong bridge which takes you into Wisconsin, or 10th state. It’s a fairly high bridge, but an easy one to drive over (sorry Nick).

The drive on US-2 across northern Wisconsin was a bit tedious. The road is rough and noisy in a lot a places, and each town you go through seems to stretch out along the highway for miles and requires you to drive 30 or even 25 MPH. It will be nice to be back in Michigan where speed limits are almost universally ignored.

We arrived at the Wisconsin/Michigan border around 3:15 PM CDT, returning to our state of origin. As advertised, we found Curry Park right where it was supposed to be, and it was open for business and mostly empty. We spotted a pull-through site with good ingress and egress and made pulled in. It appeared to be an electric only site, so Linda filled out the form and put the required $15 in the envelope. Turned out that it was full-hookup site, which is $20 per night and the camp host came around later to collect the extra $5. Even though we only needed the electrical hookup, we were not about to move.

Our neighbors on either side appeared to be off doing whatever it is RVers do in the late afternoon, so we ran our generator for a while to at least bulk charge the house batteries before switching to shore power. Linda went for a walk around the park and I put the finishing touches on the blog posting for yesterday while keeping an eye on our batteries.

We have to be very thoughtful about how we use the coach and its various (electrical) systems when we only have a 20A electrical connection. Not cooking dinner avoids having to use power, so Linda (the smartphone/Google queen) found a well-reviewed restaurant in town that was a four block walk from the park on the same side of US-2, and had pizza on the menu; Federico’s MIKES. Winner. Well, maybe. Since we don’t eat dairy products we order our pizza withOUT cheese. That is guaranteed to get some strange looks and even questions, and the outcome is always a bit of a gamble. (We had a fabulous vegan pizza in the Black Hills of South Dakota back in June but we have had others that just were not very good.) The waitress took our order—16” thin crust, no cheese, with onions, mushrooms, olives (black and green), and pineapple—and a young man in the kitchen who obviously loved making pizza threw himself into the task. He even came out part way through our meal to see if we liked it. We did, and we told him so. We saved a few pieces for lunch on the road tomorrow as it will be another travel day for us, boxed it up, and walked back to the park.

Tomorrow we have another travel day, and then plan to stay put for a couple of nights before our final leg back to the house.

2013_08_02 (Fri) To Hibbing And Back

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The west is high, dramatic, stunning, stark, “gorgeous”, awe-inspiring, etc. It is also dry, hot, and barren in many places. Northern Minnesota and the Great Lakes Region in general, are beautiful, wooded, lush, green, cooler, and wetter. Not as good for the sinuses, but every place has its tradeoffs.

We fired up the generator at 0630 CDT to recharge the house batteries after using them all night to run the refrigerator, auxiliary air-compressor, and any small miscellaneous loads that were still on. I always like to bring them back up to full charge, and I have been determining that by waiting until the remote control/display shows that the charger has gone into “float” mode. Yesterday I figured out how to find the State Of Charge (SOC) meter, so I can now monitor directly the SOC of the battery bank.

One of the outside buses…This must be the place!

Since Paul and Sharon offered to let us remain boondocked at the winery beyond the normal 1-day Harvest Host period we decided to drive the car to Hibbing, Minnesota to visit the Greyhound Bus Museum. I have wanted to visit this museum for a while but Hibbing, quite frankly, is not really on the way to anywhere. Besides the museum Hibbing is home base to the Hull Rust Mohoning iron ore mine, largest open-pit mine in the world. Up the road at Tower is an underground state park that houses an advanced physics laboratory where scientists are catching quarks.

The Greyhound Bus Museum, Hibbing, MN.

The drive to Hibbing took 2 ½ hours. We spent two hours at the museum. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but we felt like we more than got our monies worth for the $5 adult admission. The museum is housed in a nice building with seven buses inside, a nice display of Greyhound artifacts, and lots of information about the origin and development of Greyhound, specifically, and bus transportation in the U.S. more generally. They have another six buses or so in a fenced lot behind the building. Most of the buses are open so you can go inside them. Here are some photos:

They started with a Hupmobile.

The museum has lots of model buses.

An early route map. It didn’t take long for the business to expand beyond Hibbing.

Uniforms for drivers came early and changed over the years.

A 1956 PD4501 Scenic Cruiser. This is the iconic Greyhound Bus.

A DD 8V71 with numbered parts and a key.

The Detroit Diesel 8V71 series engines are pre-computer control machines and are still in operation today.

(See http://www.technomadia.com ; they have just had theirs rebuilt and have reported on the experience.)

All of the inside buses lined up in a row, oldest to newest, far to near.

The lobby features an old time ticket office diorama.

An MCI MC-12 that operated in Canada. I have never seen an MC-12 converted into an RV.

An MCI MC-5 specially made for use in Saudi Arabia. Note the double roof. Its purpose was to “shade” the main roof and dissipate heat to help keep the interior cooler.

A pair of 1947 ACF Brill buses in a terminal mockup.

Greyhound used Yellow Coach buses in the 30’s and some ACF buses, but eventually used GMC buses (many different models) until GM stopped making them in the 1970’s. Somewhere along the line Greyhound started using MCI buses (MC-5, 7, 9, 12, and later 96- and 102- series) and over the years bought and used a lot of them. The MC-5 and MC-9 were particularly popular with bus converters. Commercial converters, like Custom Coach in Ohio, also did MC-9, as well 102- series, conversions.

An Eagle Chassis and Complete Bus.

Greyhound also ran Eagle coaches. These became popular with some do-it-yourself motorhome converters because, unlike the GMC buses, the skin was non-structural and could more easily be removed and replaced. The chassis (skeleton in picture) was made of mild steel, so it was easy to cut and weld to replace rusted pieces or make modifications. The problem with mild steel, of course, is that is very prone to rust.

A Caterpillar 170 ton mine hauler with 10.5 ft diameter tires. They also make a 240 ton with 13 ft diameter tires. I don’t feel as bad now about replacing the 315/80R22.5 Michelins on our rig.

The Hull Rust Mohoning Mine Visitor Center is just a mile up the same little road that leads to the bus museum so we drove up there. To get to the visitor center we drove through a city park that had nice shaded RV electrical hookups. It was empty except for one tent. We saw the same thing Wednesday evening in Buffalo, North Dakota; a nice little city park with nine RV sites with electrical power, and it was empty. These parks seem to run $15/night, cheaper by the week or month. Not that we would want to stay that long, but the price is right for what you get, especially if there are things you want to do in the area. The challenge is finding these facilities.

The 2,200 HP 16 cylinder Cat engine that moves the mine hauler.

The wheels on the mine haulers are driven by electric motors. The Caterpillar power module consists of a 2,200 HP 16 cylinder turbo-charged diesel engine that drives an electric alternator (the large cylinder lower left in photo) and a radiator and cooling tank. The power module with radiator, as shown, weights 28,000 pounds. In operation it burns 28 gallons of diesel fuel per hour. The hauler can reach a top speed of 30 MPH while carrying 170 or 240 tons of mined material. I think the 6 MPG we get from out bus is pretty good!

A small portion of a big hole in the ground, currently about 600 feet deep.

We spent about 45 minutes at the mine looking at the equipment displays and the big hole in the ground. Our GPS says it’s a huge lake, and at one time it had water to a depth of 325 feet, but it is still an active mine and they pumped most of the water out so they could work. Part of the original town of Hibbing had to be moved because of this mine, and it was the split into two pieces that led to the formation of the business(es) that became Greyhound Bus Lines and successor companies.

Hibbing is also the home town of Bob Dylan so Linda pulled up some information about his childhood home on her smartphone. It was supposed to be at 7^th Avenue E (Bob Dylan Avenue) and 21^st St., but we could not locate the house. On the drive up and back we passed through Grand Rapids (Minnesota, of course) and discovered that it was the birthplace of Judy Garland. Everybody is from somewhere.

An interesting note about Hibbing and the mine; if you look at the Minnesota state highway map and peruse the area around Hibbing, you will see brown lines that demarcate the boundaries of the three watersheds that are found in Minnesota, namely: the Mississippi River, the Atlantic (via Great Lakes / St. Lawrence Seaway), and the Hudson (Bay). About two miles NNW of the mine visitor center and viewing area is the point, unique in North America, where these three watershed boundaries meet. Depending on exactly where a raindrop falls, it will end up in one of three very different places (assuming it doesn’t evaporate and soak into the ground).

[18 L We were parked next to this aspen grove while at Forestedge Winery, a most appropriate name for the place.]

We were parked next to this aspen grove while at Forestedge Winery, a most appropriate name for the place.

We got back to Forestedge Winery before they closed and sampled some of their Plum wine, which we had somehow missed yesterday. Sharon had left for Iowa for her mother’s 93^rd birthday so we invited Paul to dine with us and he accepted. Linda made a nice salad and a Farro dish with sun-dried tomatoes, kale, onion, garlic, and Italian seasonings. Paul brought a bottle of Headwaters Red wine, his rhubarb and chokecherry blend. The meal was yummy, the wine was just right, and the conversation went on for quite a while. This is one of the reasons we retired and decided to hit the road. It isn’t just about spectacular scenery and historically interesting places; it’s about encounters with spectacular and interesting people. Thank you, Paul and Sharon, for your hospitality.

2013_08_01 (Thu) A Short Drive And A Winery

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Jasper on the couch.

We only had 168 miles to travel today to get from Red Trail Vineyards in Buffalo, North Dakota to the Forestedge Winery in Laporte, Minnesota so we were in no particular hurry to leave. I was up by 7 AM, however, so I could turn the generator on and top up the house batteries before we hit the road. I also wanted to add air to the driver-side front tire as I noticed yesterday when I checked the Pressure Pro Tire Pressure Monitoring System that it was starting to read a little lower than I would like.

Juniper by the windshield.

Since I was up I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the property to replace the ones I inadvertently did not take yesterday and updated yesterday’s blog post with a few of them. I also took some pictures of our two cats, Jasper and Juniper, who have been with us on this whole trip, but have not received the attention they deserve in this blog.

Adding air to the tires accurately, however, requires that they are cold and all at the same temperature. It also requires the main engine to be running to get the air tanks up to 120 PSI. We were parked facing north, and by the time I got around to this task the passenger-side tires were already reading 5-6 PSI higher than the driver-side due to the heat of the morning sun.

I checked the pressure in the driver-side front tire with my tire gauge, and it was reading 110.5 PSI. This was adequate, but the lower limit of what I want to run, and at least 3 PSI lower than the passenger-side tire. I hooked up the air hose and chuck to the auxiliary air fitting in the driver-side front bay and tried to raise the pressure in the tire. In spite of the manifold gauge reading 120 PSI, all I managed to do was lose a few PSI from the tire. Although the tires have held their pressure fairly well, they have lost a little bit over the course of our trip. It has become very clear to me that we need to travel with an auxiliary air compressor that is capable of producing at least 150 PSI at the air chuck if we are to have any ability to adjust tire pressures while away from home.

We pulled out of the Red Trail Vineyard around 9:15 AM and continued east on I-94 towards Fargo, ND and Morehead, MN. Just three miles shy of the border, detoured south on I-29 for ½ miles and exited to go to the Pilot / Flying J truck stop where we topped off the tank. They have air pressure lines at each pump, and I started to get the air hose, chuck, and gauge out but decided not to. We have had our PP-TPMS longer than we have had the bus, and in general it works quite well. It has one major downside, however, namely, that the “baseline” pressure for each tire is determined by whatever pressure is in the tire at the time the tire pressure sensor is threaded onto the valve stem. Had I removed the sensor at the truck stop, added air, and reinstalled the sensor, it would have reestablished the baseline pressure at a value that was way too high due to the tire already being hot from being driven 35 miles on I-94. Later, when the coach sat overnight and the tires cooled off, it would have given us a “low tire” alarm, which would have been annoying. Newer competitive products have addressed this issue by making the baseline pressure something the user programs into the receiver. The other major downside to the PP-TPMS sensors is that the batteries are not user replaceable. At some point they will stop working and have to be replaced at a cost of $35-$50 each. At that point, we will probably just buy a different system with programmable baseline pressures and user replaceable batteries.

Minnesota, our 9th state on this journey.

We returned to I-29 north to I-94 east and crossed into Minnesota, our ninth state (including Michigan) since we left in early June. We had a very pleasant and uneventful drive through very pretty country; the best kind. Eastern Minnesota was a combination of green rolling crop lands, lovely lakes and ponds, and northern mixed forests. Our route was I-94 to MN-336 to US-10 to MN-34 to MN-64, and the roads were all very good except for a short stretch of MN-34 with seams at regular, and annoying short, intervals. The bus ran very well, and the transmission even behaved the way I think a transmission should, shifting between gears on hills as needed with the cruise control set and no intervention from me. This primarily occurred on stretches of MN-34 and MN-64 where the speed limit was 55 MPH. Apparently the transmission is willing to drop out of D into 4 (or at least out of torque converter lockup) when climbing hills, something it does not do as often when I am cruising at 62-64 MPH.

The one thing I noticed on this trip was the auxiliary air system pressure gauge I had installed in the cockpit was indicating that the system would reach 120 PSI and then fairly quickly bleed down to about 105 PSI and then re-pressurize to 120 PSI, over, and over, and over… At the same time the primary and secondary tank gauges indicated that these tanks were holding 120 PSI until I applied the brakes.

Entrance to Forestedge Winery near Laporte, MN.

We arrived at the Forestedge Winery around 1:00 PM, pulled around back per Paul Shuster’s e-mailed instructions, got the car unhooked, and got the bus parked and leveled. We went over and introduced ourselves to Paul. He was busy serving wine to potential customers, so we went back to the coach and had a bite of lunch. We then went for a stroll around the property and worked our way back to the tasting room, where we were able to sample most of his wines.

This driveway goes behind the winery, which is where we parked.

Paul and Sharon have a very nice operation in a beautiful setting at the edge of the Paul Bunyan State Forest, and across the road from Lake Benedict. It’s a tourist/vacation/recreation area, and there was a good flow of traffic through the winery. There is a nicely gardened sitting area outside and besides tasting and purchasing bottles, you can buy a glass of wine and sit outside and drink it.

Our coach and car parked by their Bluebird next to the forest.

Forestedge makes only “fruit” wines, and has 13 or 14 products. Although grapes are obviously fruit, this label is used to indicate wines made from any other fruit than grapes. (Mead, of course, is wine made from honey.) They started with only rhubarb, and their rhubarb is still grown on the property, but their offerings now include raspberry, strawberry, cranberry, blueberry, chokecherry, black currant, apple, and pear in addition to rhubarb, as well as blends of some of these. We sampled most of these, and purchased some of the white cranberry, blueberry, chokecherry, black currant, plum, and rhubarb/blueberry. We won’t be able to do this at every Harvest Host location where we stop, but Paul and Sharon are also members of the FMCA Freethinkers chapter which Linda and I belong to, so there was an additional connection here. Besides, we liked their wines! And we decided early in our trip that we were going to purchase wines as our major travel “souvenirs.” We can enjoy them while traveling, or once we return home, but eventually they are gone and we don’t have to find a long-term place for them in the house.

I finally shut the generator off around 3:30 PM. I did not let it run long enough this morning to bring the batteries back up to full charge. In generally it is not good for the batteries to only be partially recharged so I wanted to make sure I did so this afternoon.

The tasting room, art gallery, and patio.

The weather here was wonderful; blue skies with puffy white clouds and temperatures in the mid-70’s. We are parked behind a winery, alongside what appear to be a grove of white birch (paper birch) trees, in view of orchards and gardens. This is no part of this not to like. While I was resting outside in one of our folding campchairs a Bald Eagle soared overhead.

The tasting room and patio looking towards their house.

Paul invited us for dinner, so we had to explain “the vegan thing.” Sharon rose to the challenge, making a green salad with fresh picked greens from her own garden, zucchini and onions sautéed in olive oil, and black beans and rice accompanied by their own Raspberry Rhubarb wine. We had a long, great conversation over this meal, including some tips on what to see and on our visit to Hibbing, MN tomorrow. As we left their house to return to our coach his final words for the evening were to not be surprised if we heard wolves howling. We can only hope.

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Tag Archives: Forestedge Winery

2014/02/10 (M) A Day Of Firsts

2013_12_25 (W) Season’s Greetings From Florida

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

2013_08_03 (Sat) Across The Northern Tier

2013_08_02 (Fri) To Hibbing And Back

2013_08_01 (Thu) A Short Drive And A Winery