Tag Archives: pull-through driveway

2014/08/15 (F) On The Level

I got dressed this morning for physical work, but ended up doing very little. I worked at my desk most of the morning, including working through the first chapter of the Intro to Linux course on edX. I came up from the basement to have lunch at 12:30 PM after which I moved my car out of the pull-through driveway. I then started the bus and, with Linda’s assistance, backed it out of the pull-through driveway, drove it the short distance to our straight driveway (which ties into the other end of the pull-through driveway), pulled it up onto the concrete driveway as far as it could go, and parked it. The concrete driveway runs uphill from the road to the garage and, not knowing how long it might be there, I lowered the front end and raised the back end; not enough to level it but enough to make it better. Linda chocked the drive tires while I hooked up the electrical shore-power. The front bay had gotten water in it from the recent rains so we opened all of the bays to let them air out while Linda soaked up as much water as she could with a couple of old towels.

Spreading 21AA road gravel to fix the driveway.

I got out our 8′ step ladder and pole saw/lopper to prune some large (1 – 2 inch) dead branches that were hanging over the pull-through driveway where the rear end of the bus normally sits. I no sooner started this work when Phil from Precision Grading showed up right on time with his dump truck, tracked front-loader, and rolling compactor attachment to repair the damage done to the pull-through driveway by the recent landscaping work.

Phil off-loaded the front-loader from the trailer and then disconnected the trailer from the dump truck. He had a small load of 21AA road gravel (with lots of fines) that he dumped in two different spots in the pull-through driveway. He then put the truck back in the street and set up his laser level to see just what he needed to do. He used the front loader to move the gravel around and distribute it evenly and finished by back blading it with the bucket to level it.

Rolling and compacting the driveway.

Once he had the gravel the way he wanted it, he removed the bucket and attached the vibrating roller/compactor. He went over the driveway several times, always making his final pass going backwards while pulling the roller to smooth out the tracks created by the machine’s drive treads. The roller/compactor worked the fines down into the base and by the time he was done the driveway looked and felt tight; even better than last year when Phil did not yet have this attachment. The machine also shook the entire house, especially the rear deck which is mostly supported by tall 6×6 and 4×4 posts. He indicated that we did not need to wait for rain, or anything else, before putting the bus back in its spot, so after he left that is what we did.

But before Phil left, he used his laser level to check the grade in the back. Although it does not appear to the naked eye to drop very much in the first 70 feet, the laser level indicated that there was a steady down slope over that distance with a total drop of over 1 foot. He checked all the way to the edge of the cattails marsh, at which point the ground was down 4-5 feet from the deck. The surface of the neighbor’s pond looks to be at least two feet lower from there.

The compacting roller really makes a difference.

There are several implications to this. For one, it means the surface of the pond is well below our basement slab (6 – 7 feet) and at least 2 feet below the bottom of the footings for our house, so it is probably not the source of the water that runs into our sump. It also means there is adequate grade to allow surface water to run off once the grass grows in (although it would be better if there was more grade than there currently is in the first 50 feet). Equally important, the grade is more than adequate for a very effective French drain should we decide to have Phil pull up the existing drain lines and replace them. Finally, having a hole dug at least 8 feet deep for the ham radio tower base should not pose a problem as the starting elevation is at least 6 feet above the basement slab.

With regards to the tower base, Phil suggested that I have the rebar cage, mounting bolts, and alignment structure built ahead of time and ready to go. He could dig the hole first thing in the morning with his mini-excavator (up to 8’ deep) and figured it would only take an hour at most. The assembled rebar could be positioned, plumbed, and secured in an hour or so, and the concrete could be delivered and poured in the late morning. He indicated that spreading the work out over more time than that, especially letting the hole sit overnight, was not a good idea

Close up of the compacting roller attachment. This thing shook the whole house!

We discussed how to get the concrete into the hole given its location about 40 feet northeast of the northeast corner of the house. Our two options appear to be the little dump carts or a pumper. The carts would have to drive up the east side of the house between the house and the septic tanks, but Phil thought that would be OK as long as they put down plywood to drive on. He said a pumper truck would be very expensive but that a separate pump is available that can be towed to the job site. With that equipment the concrete mixer truck would simply unload the concrete into the pumper, which would then pump it to the hole. Both the truck and the pumper would be in the east end of our pull-through driveway. Phil suggested that I call Carl Russell in Byron, Michigan as he is a good concrete guy and probably has a concrete pump.

After Phil left we reversed our earlier steps and moved the bus back into the pull-through driveway. It rolled right up onto the level pad area and did not leave any noticeable tire tracks. Nice. We hooked up the “50 Amp” shorepower cable, turned off the chassis batteries, checked that all of the battery chargers were working, and shut/locked everything.

While Phil was working, Linda went to the Howell Library to return children’s books and came back with a card for the Howell Melon Festival. The Festival started today and runs through Sunday. She wanted to go walk around so we skipped dinner and headed out around 5 PM. At the first turn in our road we encountered two workers from Roese Construction. They were working on installing the natural gas main line down the street and said another crew would be coming along behind them in 1 – 2 weeks doing the branch runs up to the meters on the houses.

The Howell Melon Festival was just getting started when we got there but parking was already at a premium. We parked a few blocks away in an empty church parking lot. Some of the smaller side streets were already blocked off but Grand River Avenue and Michigan Avenue were both still open to traffic. They will be closed tomorrow and Sunday and filled with vendor booths.

The weather was perfect and all of the downtown restaurants were very busy with lots of outside seating. In the 16 months we have lived in the new house we have never really visited most of the downtown Howell merchants. We went into Country Squire, a business that sells fireplace logs and inserts as well as outdoor cooking grills. They had a couple of natural gas fireplace logs that were 99%+ efficient and did not require the flue to be open. We thought they were a bit pricey but they were actually capable of heating a room. We don’t use our existing propane logs because they are mostly decorative and require the flue damper to be open, which just wastes fuel and money. The Country Squire also had a couple of natural gas grills that would mount to our deck and attach to our existing quick disconnect.

We walked through the food vendor area but did not see anything that interested us. After walking past the starting gate for the Howell Melon Run we ended up at Uptown Coffee, on the northeast corner of Grand River and Main, where we had some brew and Sabra hummus with pretzel chips. We started back towards our car and paused at the Old Courthouse long enough to hear the first number by the band. They sounded good and not too loud. We had our folding camp chairs in the car but decided to pass on the concert.

We stopped at Walmart on the way home to buy a microwave popcorn popper bowl and stock up on flavors of ICE brand sparkling flavored water. Meijer’s sells a few flavors but Walmart has the broadest selection, including my two favorites (pineapple-coconut and blueberry-pomegranate). Our final stop was at Lowe’s for a 100-pack of bright orange marker flags. I will use these to mark the powerline that runs under the driveway to feed the RV outlet, the propane line to the house, the drain pipe from the corner of the house into the first septic tank, and the drain pipe that connects the outlet of the second septic tank to the beginning of the drain field.

It was a long day but a good one. We watched another episode of Doc Martin and then called it a night.

2014/08/12 (T) Popcorn And A Movie

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It rained long and hard all day yesterday and into the evening past bedtime. Today brought more rain, though not as hard and not quite as persistent. Although we have low spots around our yard that turn into small temporary ponds when we get this kind of rain we are not in an area that is prone to flooding. That’s because we live just south of the boundary between two watersheds–the Huron River to the south and the Shiawassee River to the north–so water tends to flow away from here, eventually.

Phil (Best Precision Grading) stopped by around 10:30 AM to look at the pull-through driveway he built for us last year. He said it looked solid enough to drive the bus on it, but was obviously no longer level and had a low spot in front of the new front stairs. He will need a half day and a small load of 21AA road gravel to repair the damage done by Village Landscape Development while building our front stairs and sidewalk. The cost won’t be too bad (although it shouldn’t have cost us anything) but getting him to find the time to come do it could be a challenge. He’s had a busy summer and suffered the same delays as other contractors who do outdoor work due to the wet spring and summer we’ve had.

He was also here to see the work Village Landscape Development had done. He agreed that the hardscape work looked good but the grading in the rear did not look right and the tracks in the yard from the equipment had not been raked out properly. He suggested I let the grass grow in and the ground dry out before assessing whether anything needs to be done.

He also looked at the west end of our property, which sits lower than the east end where the house is located. The timing of his visit was good as all the low-lying areas had water standing in them, allowing him to see clearly the exact nature of the (lack of) drainage problem. His suggestion was a “French drain.” Basically it’s a trench that is shallow at the far/high end and gets deeper as it goes towards the place where the water needs to end up. Plastic drain tile, the kind with perforations and a nylon “sock” covering, gets laid in the trench and then the trench is filled to grade with pea gravel. The dirt that came out of the trench gets spread around to cover the pea gravel and blend in to the undisturbed soil on either side.

When completed, the drain would take all of the standing water plus much more out of the surrounding soil and allow it to flow to a culvert that runs to the southwest under the road just west of the culvert along the side of the road that will eventually be the entrance to our bus barn driveway. A French drain is cheaper to build than hauling in large truck loads of top soil and re-grading that part of the yard. We probably should have had Village Landscape make a French Drain around the two plastic drain lines they ran out into the yard from our basement walkout. Oh well, “can’t should‘a done it.”

We had tofu hot dogs for lunch and then Linda left to meet up with Diane to see a movie (Boyhood) and then go out to dinner at Bahama Breeze. I stayed home and worked at my computer, taking a break mid-afternoon to make popcorn. The worst weather of the day was happening at that time, so I stayed upstairs for a while and read the new 2nd edition of The Mobile Internet Handbook that I had just downloaded this morning. I worked until 7 PM and then stopped to have a light dinner consisting of chickpea spread on whole grain toast and half of a small watermelon. Linda got home as I was finishing my watermelon.

In spite of AT&T switching our phone and DSL service to all new wire pairs our Internet service went out occasionally throughout the day and evening, although it usually returned quickly. I think the sad truth is that their landline infrastructure is not as tolerant of wet weather as it should be and most of their money is going into expanding cellular service. We had the same problem over the years at our house in Farmington Hills.

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_09_01-04 Driveway Success, Raspberries, And Old Friends

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Sunday September 1^st found us at our son and daughter-in-law’s house for a Labor Day family pot luck along with our daughter, son-in-law, and step-grand-daughter. Grand-daughter Madeline handled the crowd pretty well, but still was still wary of Grandpa Bruce, so I had to be content with mutual admiration from a distance. She is starting to crawl and pull herself up to a standing position, and is fascinated by books, especially ones she can try to eat.

We awoke Monday morning (Labor Day) to overcast skies and the threat of rain. We had planned to drive to Middleton Berry Farm near Ortonville to pick raspberries and decided to go in spite of the weather. Ed and Betty, our RV friends, were working/staying there and we had said we would try to stop by. The rain never materialized and the overcast skies made the picking experience more pleasant.

Neither of us had ever picked raspberries, or anything else other than apples, pumpkins, and Christmas trees. We enjoyed the experience, collecting 12 pints of fruit between us. At $4.00/pint it seemed expensive until we checked raspberry prices at the grocery store and Door-to-Door Organics and saw them ranging from $5 – $6 for 6 ounces. We didn’t weigh our pints, but Linda estimated that it would take three of the 6 ounce contains to match one of our pints.

It seemed appropriate that we were laboring on Labor Day, even though this is the one day of the year that labor typically doesn’t labor, but rather relaxes and celebrates importance those who labor and the work they do. Although we have been sourcing fresh fruits and vegetables from local farmers markets when we can, it was very satisfying to personally harvest even a small portion of our own food from a living plant. It also gave us an appreciation for those who do this kind of work for a living. As we were checking out we also bought a fresh pepper and tomato.

When we got back to the house Linda washed, dried, and froze all put three of the pints of raspberries. With that task initiated, we turned our attention to the pull-through driveway. It had not rained for the past several days, and it was time for the BIG TEST. We unplugged the electrical power from the bus, pulled the chocks, fired it up, and backed it out of the driveway and down the street, positioning it to drive in to the pull-through driveway. Linda watched the tires as I drove in, and seeing nothing more than tread marks I brought in, across the pad, and out the other side, back on to the concrete driveway. Success!!!

We inspected the pull-through driveway. In some places there was no evidence that the bus had just been there, in others only tread marks, and in a few spots a slight channel of not more than 0.5 inches. Phil had told me previously that compaction of up to 1 inch might be possible but would indicate that the driveway was finally locking together, so we were very pleased with the result. I pulled the bus out and around again, but this time I tried to go back and forth over slightly different paths on the approach and then again on the parking pad area. I did not pull the bus all the way this time, but got it lined up on the pad with Linda’s help and parked it with the entrance door opposite the front door of the house.

I e-mailed Phil Jarrell (Precision Grading) to give him the good news. Phil has been an absolutely outstanding guy to work with, standing behind his work, and doing what was needed to fix what turned out to be a problem with the load of 21AA road gravel used in the project. Besides building this pull-through driveway for us, he dug up and repaired our septic tanks and regarded an area in the back yard to help move water away from the area outside out basement doorwall. We plan to eventually put up a bus barn to house the motorhome, and we plan to have Phil do the site prep, driveway(s), and final grading.

Linda spent Tuesday baby-sitting Madeline while I worked around the house, trying to clean up and arrange the ham shack/office and get all of the technology hooked up and working. I made good progress, but I didn’t get it done. It’s never done. I took time out to have a long chat with my best friend from high school. J. C. has lived in Olympia, Washington for years with his wife, Julie and their three girls, but we have managed to stay in touch. He was my best man at our wedding and I was his best man at theirs. In the early years we corresponded by letter with an occasional phone call, but that was in the days before cell phones and “unlimited local and long distance” plans. Eventually it was by e-mail. We tried instant messaging, but it doesn’t work well for me. We’ve even Skyped once or twice, but it requires broadband to work well, and we don’t have that at the new house. We’ve even had an occasional but all-too-rare face-to-face visit. I drove to Ypsilanti to meet up with Linda and our good friend Kate de Fuccio for dinner. Kate is a former colleague from my educational service agency days, the graphics designer for the agency and a very talented photographer. She is also a kindred spirit traveler, excellent researcher, and perhaps the most considerate person I know. We don’t see her enough.

Kate had suggested Nirmal Indian Cuisine in Ypsilanti and Linda had checked out their menu online, which has become standard practice for us. Nirmal has several vegan dishes, and others that can be made vegan, so we agreed to give it a try. They also serve chicken, but their specialty appears to be goat. They place is a bit “preachy” about the health benefits of Indian food, but the way they do it is kind of innocently cute and we enjoyed that aspect of the place; it’s true after all, and we are sympathetic to the sentiment. Most importantly, the food was excellent, and the staff was very attentive. We had a leisurely dinner which was fine with us as it gave us lots of time to talk. We adjourned to the Starbucks just up the street and continued our conversation.

Wednesday was errand day for us. We picked out stain and paint colors for the rear deck, which Jim Pipoly is going to redo later this month. Jim did all of the painting on our old house and new house. He’s the only guy we use, and friends and family use him too. When you find a good contractor you stick with them. We dropped off old prescription and over-the-counter drugs at the Livingston County jail, where they have a special “no questions asked” collection barrel. The Howell Recycling Center is only open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so we stopped there. We don’t have curbside recycling like we did in Farmington Hills. We’ve been recycling for so long that it doesn’t feel right to throw things in the trash that can be recycled so we gladly paid the $22 annual membership fee. We picked up some drawer cabinets for the office, a free-standing cabinet for the basement bathroom (which has no other storage), and unpacked the wine refrigerator and plugged it in. We always seem to have just enough bottles of wine that they can’t all go in the regular refrigerator so they end up in the pantry where they take up space we need for other things. They are not cooled, which is bad for storage, but even worse in terms of limiting our choices when we decide we want to open a bottle. It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted and it just wasn’t that expensive. I am now trying to figure out where the popcorn machine will go in the basement rec room. After dinner Linda continued to work on finding an RV park/campground where we can meet up with her brother and his wife in October and I worked on configuring our e-mail SpamExperts and updating this blog.

2013_08_27-28 Babysitting And Our First RV Visitors

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Linda has signed up to babysit our youngest grand-daughter, Madeline, on Mondays so our son and daughter-in-law can attend to their professorial duties at the University of Michigan. (Our step-grand-daughter, Katie, is 16 and does not need a sitter.) However, Linda sat on Saturday the 17th. This week she sat on Tuesday because of our Monday dental appointments. Next week she is going to sit on Tuesday because Monday is Labor Day. Like I said, she is babysitting on Mondays.

We both left the house early, Linda for Ann Arbor in rush hour traffic and me for Dearborn in rush hour traffic. As retired people we are not supposed to be in rush hour traffic; it tends to spoil that special, relaxed mood that is the hallmark of the happily retired. Morning rush hour traffic headed south on US-23 into Ann Arbor is always bad. Morning rush hour traffic headed into the northwest suburbs of Detroit on I-96 is always worse. I was late for my 9 AM dental appointment, but only about 10 minutes. I won’t be making any more 9 AM appointments in that part of town.

When I was done at the dentist in west Dearborn I headed for Ann Arbor, looking forward to spending some quality time with my grand-daughter. As I was nearing Ann Arbor I got a call from W. W. Williams in, where else, east Dearborn, letting me know that my special order part was in. Life really is all about timing. I continued my journey to babyland. When I walked in the front door, Madeline was sitting up in the middle of the living room playing with Grandma Linda. She turned, looked at me, and started crying. You can’t take anything an 8-month old does personally, but it wasn’t quite the reception I was hoping for. She got herself all worked up. Linda tried feeding her, but she was not to be consoled, so we took her for a walk in her very spiffy stroller.

We peeled back the sunshade so she could turn her head and look up at me, which she did frequently. She stayed calm for the whole ride, and even babbled for a while, apparently satisfied that I was at least doing something useful. Or perhaps I am less scary when viewed upside down? As soon as we got back to the house, however, she got herself all upset again. Having no other plans for the afternoon, I made my exit and drove back to Dearborn to get the special order part for our bus. Linda told me later that Madeline settled down as soon as I left and had a nice lunch. It won’t always be that way, of course, and it’s not a contest to see who wins. Eight month olds are spontaneous, irrational beings, and you just have to accept that and work with it as best you can. That’s why she has parents, aunts, and grandmothers.

By the time Phil was done working on the driveway on Monday evening he had mixed 14 tons (yes, that’s 30,800 pounds) of sandy silt into and on top of the 6 inches of 21AA road gravel that forms the top layer of the pull-through driveway. What we really needed at that point was a good, soaking rain and starting late Tuesday evening and overnight into Wednesday we got our wish. The rain helps the fine particles work their way down into the gravel and lock it together to form a dense mass that will not spread out when driven on, even by a heavy vehicle. At least that’s the theory. I drove on it again with the car Wednesday morning and it seemed to be packed pretty hard.

The first test of the pull-through driveway came when the UPS truck showed up with our Centramatic dynamic wheel balancers for the bus. He pulled the truck right up on the pull-through driveway and backed it out with no difficulty. That was a good omen. The next test came when Ed & Betty arrived around 1:30 PM in their Tiffin Phaeton motorhome. They unhooked their car just after pulling onto our street as I needed them to be able to maneuver the RV to get it parked. They were also going to have to back out when they left and you cannot do that with a car attached to the rear end of the rig. I met them at the end of the street, led them to our house, and got them positioned to turn into the pull-through driveway. Betty drove their car and parked it in our regular driveway. Ed gave me one of their walkie-talkies and I guided him in to the pull-through driveway with voice and hand signals. Their motorhome tires did not even leave visible tracks! Finally, success. Their rig has 6 tires and weights about 33,000 pounds, so the weight on each tire that is similar to our bus, except that our front tires carry a couple of extra thousand pounds each. Once they were parked and settled they came inside and we quartered a small, round watermelon and had that as a light lunch/snack.

We had the pull-through driveway built for our own use as a convenient place to park the coach while we load/unload it. We installed an electrical outlet so that we could also run the refrigerator and maintain the batteries while it was parked there. We plan to eventually have a “bus barn” to store it in, but for now the pull-through drive is where it will live when we are home. That meant that we might also want to run the air conditioners while it was parked, so we installed a full “50A” RV electrical service since that is what our coach is designed for. We also had in mind, however, that it would be nice to have RV friends be able to come for a visit and have a level place to park with some nice shade and decent electrical service. We also have water available, but we do not currently have a way for folks to dump their holding tanks. We eventually hope to be able to dump ours using a macerator pump connected by a garden hose (reserved for that use only) to a fitting on the first septic tank. We can’t use a normal gravity drain hose because we have to pump the tank contents uphill to the septic tank lid. If we get this to work, guests could do the same as long as their rig is equipped with a macerator pump.

Some of the RV clubs we belong to allow members to list their home or place of business as available for no-cost overnight stays. FMCA calls these “Stop’in Spots” and the SKPs include them in a list of free and low-cost camping. There is also a program called “Boondockers Welcome” that our friends Butch and Fonda joined. We are members of Harvest Hosts, but can’t be a host site as we are a residence not a business.

Ed and Betty originally planned to stay two nights, but they are on their way to some temporary work at the Middleton Berry Farm, a pick your own (PYO) operation east of Ortonville, Michigan. They have worked summers there for some years, usually during the strawberry season. At one time they owned a strawberry farm in upstate New York and were the secretaries of the National Strawberry Growers Association. Ed has a PhD in plant pathology and has done extensive extension service work as a plant pathologist. The owners of Middleton Berry Farm needed Ed & Betty’s assistance ASAP as the raspberries have come in very well this year.

We did our usual first time visit thing and gave them a complete tour of the house, yard, and bus. We got to see their motorhome as well, and spent some time trying to tune in over-the-air TV stations with their roof antenna. The only station we could get was FOX out of Detroit, so Ed turned the system off and put the antenna back down.

Ed and Betty are pretty avid cyclists and have a pair of very interesting tricycles. They are Spike models made by Trident Trikes and purchased from Craig and Linda Current of http://www.boomersbentsandbikes.com in Florida. It’s a two front, one rear wheel design with disc brakes all around. The two front wheels steer and the central structural member is hinged to allow the rear wheel to fold up between the two front ones for storage. They got the 24-speed gearing option. I test drove Ed’s and Linda test drove Betty’s and we both found them very comfortable. Linda can’t ride a bicycle because of occasional balance problems related to her loss of hearing in her left ear, so a tricycle or quadcycle is her only viable option. At this point in my life, I would just as soon have the stability of a 3-wheeler as well. Another alternative for us would be a side-by-side 2-seater, which might be a lot of fun, but would probably preclude either of us going for a solo ride.

We sat and talked like old friends and enjoyed a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Eventually Linda and Betty set about making dinner. Betty had prepared a “vegan cheese” out of cashew nuts and served it on Saltine crackers. It was very good, and it reminded Linda that she had purchased a vegan cheese book on our last Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise, but had not yet used any of the recipes. Linda prepared a nice green salad. The main course was quinoa with mushrooms and Swiss chard. She served it with a side of fresh corn, cut off the cob. We opened at bottle of the 2009 Egri Merlot to go with dinner. This wine is a little sweet for red wine aficionados, but it is one of the few red wines I will drink. It lacks any hint of tannin, and is full-bodied enough to stand up to the earthy grain/mushroom/greens dishes that Linda often prepares. After dinner we sat on the back deck for a while and continued to enjoy our Merlot. The mosquitoes appeared about the same time we were ready for dessert so we went back inside and enjoyed the last of vegan chocolate cake Linda had made on Monday served with fresh strawberries. It was still as moist as when she baked it and you would not know it was vegan. We washed it down with the end of the Merlot, which also goes very well with chocolate cake and strawberries.

The rest of the evening was a free- and far-ranging conversation about life, travels, kids, health, careers, and interests. We looked at maps and old copies of Wilson’s Free And Low Cost Camping directories and talked about getting large rigs into National Forest campgrounds, which Ed and Betty have done successfully on numerous occasions. Being full-timers, they are by necessity knowledgeable and skilled when it comes to finding places to park for the night.

20130819-26 E-mail Problems

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It seems there is less to blog about when we are at the house, or perhaps there’s just less time to do it. It’s not that we are less busy; it’s just that what we are doing seems potentially less interesting. Besides the usual chores that go with owning a house, I spent the last week dealing with our pull-through driveway, ham radio stuff, and a serious e-mail problem.

By Wednesday the 20^th it had become clear to me that we were not getting replies to e-mails we had sent out; not a couple of e-mails to a couple of people, but lots of e-mails to lots of people. Most of these were e-mails to people who normally reply in a timely manner, and they were e-mails seeking information or continuing a conversation, and thus replies were expected. I started making phone calls and sure enough our e-mails had been received and replied to. We never got the replies, and the senders never got bounce-backs; the e-mails just vanished into cyberspace. In one case I sent a single e-mail to two recipients, both of whom had gmail accounts. They both replied. I got one reply and not the other. We also had a couple of folks send us e-mails while we were on the phone with them, but those e-mails never arrived. Not good.

I opened a support ticket with our hosting service and spent the last week trying to communicate with their off-shore technical support people. I don’t have prejudice towards off-shore support, but in this case they turned out to be neither sufficiently technical nor supportive. Every time I updated the support ticket I got a reply from a different person. I explained repeatedly and in considerable detail the difficulties we were having and they repeatedly sent replies apologizing for the inconvenience, asking me to send them information I did not have, performing simple but irrelevant tests of our e-mail accounts, and then informing me that everything appeared to be working fine. Arrrgh. As of this post the problem persists and I have lost any hope of it being resolved. I hope to accomplish this with minimal downtime or disruption of service. Our apologies to anyone who was affected by this; we have not been ignoring you and we now know that you have not been ignoring us. We will be moving our domain to a new registrar/hosting service at the end of this month.

We have a tower that sits at the east end of the house. It was already installed when we bought the house, and I estimate its height at about 38 feet; not that tall by ham radio standards, but tall enough to treat with respect if you are going to climb it. It’s an older design and has obviously been there for a while. It has an over-the-air (OTA) TV antenna on a rotor at the top. The rotor is not connected to a controller and the coax is not connected to anything inside the house. There is also a Direct TV satellite dish (single LNB). The cables from that are also not connected to anything in the house. The previous owners left the SAT-TV receiver behind, but it is obsolete. The base of the tower is set in concrete but the tower was not secured anywhere else. On Friday we rigged up a couple of support arms and attached them to the side of the house in anticipation of climbing the tower on Saturday to remove the old antennas and install our 2m/70cm ham radio vertical antenna.

On Saturday we went to our ham radio club (SLAARC) breakfast in South Lyon. It’s always good to visit with this group. Many hams are tech savvy about a lot of things besides amateur radio so I got to bounce our e-mail problem off one of them. Thanks Larry (K8UT). After breakfast Linda and I went to Mike’s (W8XH) QTH (location) to look at his ham radio tower as we are trying to figure out what to do for base station antennas. He has a Heights Tower with a motorized fold-over base. It is a very nice all-aluminum tower and a very nice installation. Nice antennas, too, but that’s another story.

Mike then came to our house and brought his professional grade climbing harness. We got it adjusted to fit me and I climbed up as far as the roof, probably 10 feet off the ground. (Our tower is only an inch from the gutter.) As I started up the tower from the roof, the tower had more movement than I was comfortable with, so we abandoned the climb. I removed the old Direct TV antenna, which was at my shoulder level when standing on the roof, and installed our dual band VHF/UHF (2m/70cm) vertical ham radio antenna at the same height. The dual-band is lower than I wanted and very close to one of the tower verticals, but it was the best we good do at the moment. We routed the coax to the back deck, connected it to our Icom 7000 go box, and started looking for 2m and 70cm repeaters. We were able to activate the K8VJ 2m repeater in South Lyon without difficulty, as well as the Livingston County LARK 2m primary repeater. We were also able to talk to two guys on the Clarkston 2m repeater, which, according to the ARRL repeater directory that Mike installed on his smartphone, was over 22 miles away to the northeast. Not bad for 2m on 50 watts with a less than ideal antenna location. We tried a number of other repeaters but were not able to raise them.

While we were out taking care of ham radio business during the morning, Phil (our pull-through driveway contractor) brought a large load of sand (silt, technically) to the house, pulled the top 6 inches of 21AA road gravel out of the new pull-through drive, and mixed in the sand as he put it back. As I noted in a previous blog, our bus got stuck in the driveway a couple of weeks ago and had to be winched out. The problem turned out to be an inadequate amount of “crusher dust” in the 21AA road gravel. Without a sufficient amount of fine particles, the larger stones don’t bind together and pack to make a hard surface that resists blowout and further compaction.

Mike spent the rest of the day at our house helping us with some computer issues. He is a retired HP tech and now has an active business of his own working on personal and business computer systems and networks. By the time we were done it was dinner time, so we treated him to dinner at Olga’s in Brighton. Thanks Mike.

Sunday is our day to go to the Howell Farmers Market. The fruits and vegetables are now plentiful and we picked up an assortment of yummy things. We also got some pointers from Marjorie about apples and pears as we had discovered just a couple days earlier that we have an apple tree and a pear tree, both of which are laden with fruit.

On Sunday afternoon I used our Honda Element to “roll” the pull-though driveway. The car only has about 1,000 pounds on each tire, so it is in no way equivalent to driving the bus, which has 7,000 lbs on each of the front/steer tires, 5,000 lbs on each of the four drive tires, and 3,750 lbs on each of the two tag axle tires. Still, the car did a nice job of compacting the surface. Phil had suggested that I carefully pull one of the front tires of the bus onto the pull-through driveway, but even after rolling it with the car I was nervous that it wasn’t locked together quite as much as it needed to be. I had also heard from Ed & Betty Burns that they would be arriving on Wednesday in their Tiffin Phaeton, so I was anxious to make sure the driveway would support their motorhome. I discussed it with Phil Sunday evening and he said he had a plan and would check in the morning to make sure it was going to work. He was confident, however, that Ed & Betty would not encounter any driveway difficulties.

Monday saw us in west Dearborn for our summer dental checkups. One of my old fillings was starting to separate from what remained of the tooth, and I was informed that it was time to get a crown. They had a 9 AM appointment slot available the next day, so I signed up. Dental work doesn’t bother me the way it does some people. The sooner it’s fixed the better.

Jim and Kristine Gullen came over for dinner on Monday, the first time they have been to the new house. Linda made a mushroom risotto using Farro, a wonderful, ancient, high-protein Italian grain that is earthy, slightly nutty, and has great “chew”. She used mushroom “broth” instead of stock, of course, but that just added to the earthiness of the dish. She served the risotto with a side of mixed green and “long” beans lightly sautéed in olive oil. We got the long beans from an Asian vendor at the Howell Farmers Market who told us they are usually stir-fried. How long are they?; about 2 feet, on average. They taste like green beans although subtly different. Linda also made vegan chocolate cake that was excellent and served it with fresh strawberries. Jim and Kristine brought a couple bottles of wine and we had a wonderful visit over a lovely meal.

Phil came back late Monday afternoon and added some more sand to the edges of the pull-through driveway and also to where it ties in to the concrete driveway. He had borrowed a compactor device that mounts on the arm of his backhoe and used that to compact the driveway. I don’t know about Linda, Jim, or Kristine, but the sound of Phi’s equipment working was music to my ears. The song was “Our bus ain’t gonna sink no more.”

2013_08_17 (Sat) BTTB Rally – Day 3

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We continued to have a good weather streak for our rally. Cool temperatures overnight made for great sleeping and the brisk morning air made the coffee taste especially good at 7:30 AM. The breakfasts are simple, help yourself, affairs with enough variety that everyone can find something they like while no one is burdened with fancy preparation. A toaster and bagels ensure that a warm breakfast choice is available.

Carl and Cara Muntean’s MCI MC-8.

As soon as we left the coach to get coffee, a distance of 40 feet from where we are parked next to the pavilion, we realized that two additional buses had arrived since we turned in last night. Carl and Cara Muntean’s MCI MC-8 was parked alongside the other building, and behind the building we could just see the nose of a late model Prevost H3.

Coach Quarters (Mike Middaugh) Prevost H3-45 Marathon Executive Coach.

The Prevost turned out to be the 2007 H3-45 executive coach that belonged to Coach Quarters from the Columbus, Ohio area. Mike Middaugh had the coach in the Detroit area representing Prevost and NASCAR at the Woodward Dream Cruise, and came on up to our rally when he was done with that work. Mike is a member of GLCC and CCO.

A water distribution manifold, Marathon style, where function becomes art form.

This particular H3-45 is a Marathon conversion with an interesting history. It was in a bad accident and was further damaged while being towed under a low overpass. It was considered a total loss, and Coach Quarters acquired it. Mike, however, has been in the converted coach business for a really long time and knew how to get it repaired and back in service.

Marty explaining to Graciella who John McCann is and what it meant for his campaign to use this H3-45 executive coach as their presidential campaign tour bus.

The final result was a very nice executive coach that Coach Quarters rents out for day use by up to 14 people who need to conduct business while being driven somewhere. The coach is used to represent Prevost at events, including the Woodward Dream Cruise. For example, Prevost is the official motorcoach of NASCAR. The most famous use of this coach, however, was as John McCain’s presidential campaign bus.

The H3-45 galley features high levels of craftsmanship and style.

Mike positioned the coach by the pavilion and opened it up for rally participants to see, including the interior, the engine compartment, and all of the bays.

Late morning I drove Linda back to our house as she had agreed to babysit our 8-month old granddaughter this evening. I contacted our driveway contractor to see if he’d had a chance to come look at our problem. He had been there, and had already formulated a game plan for fixing it that involved some additional material with finer particles to help lock the gravel in place followed by compaction by some heavy roller. Due to current commitments it will take a week or so for him to get back to the house with material and equipment. I drove back to the rally site and arrived around 2 PM.

Don tracked me down to see if I was still interested in going to see Bill’s bus barn. I was, and so were three other folks plus Don. He arranged with Bill for us to head over. Bill’s barn has doors on both ends, and a concrete floor with a pit. The pit is not full length, but more than adequate to work on the underside of one end of a bus at a time. It’s a “pole barn”, but the main poles that support the 12 foot ceiling are set in from either side, with lower sections on either side for storage. I’ve looked at enough bus barns at this point to see that a concrete floor with a maintenance pit is probably a necessity. It would also be nice for it to have an 18 foot ceiling so I can work on the roof, and be long enough for a 45 foot coach with a car attached behind it. A pull-through design with access roads on either end would also be nice, but not necessary. What I don’t think we need is the extra square footage for storing as much stuff as the barns I have seen.

GLCC president Larry Baker (standing, rear) conducting a chapter information meeting immediately following dinner.

From 4:00 – 5:30 PM was the official “open house”, although most of us had already seen each others’ coaches earlier in the rally. Dinner was pot luck, with grilled chicken provided as part of the rally fee, and there were lots of good things to choose from.

Pat Lintner, GLCC National Director, addressing the members.

Immediately following the meeting GLCC president Larry Baker held a brief information meeting. Pat Lintner, the chapters National Director, also spoke and gave a brief update on the national convention that was held in Gillette, Wyoming in June and the upcoming GLAMARAMA rally scheduled for mid-September in Goshen, Indiana.

CCO meeting about to convene following the GLCC meeting. President Mark Reid seated, right.

As soon as the GLCC meeting was done most of us moved our chairs over to Mark Reid’s coach for a CCO business meeting. There was discussion of the upcoming Halloween rally in mid-October, and further discussion about rallies in general.

Some of the CCO members at the meeting.

All of the RV groups/chapters we belong to are facing the same challenge of getting members to host and attend rallies. No doubt the two things are related and determined in part by peoples’ personal financial circumstances and their general feelings about the economy. This seems to be a particular problem for groups that are formed around common interests, such as converted buses, rather than a limited geographic area, although even geographic groups are struggling. Several of us continued to discuss this informally after the meeting, but no one seemed to have a full grasp of the problem or any really good ideas as to what to do about it.

As with every other evening of this rally, the temperature cooled off quickly after the sun went down. Someone had a “Chinese lantern”. They lit the firepot and turned it loose. The flag at the rally site indicated no wind, but as soon as they turned the lantern loose it took off to the west. It rose to quite an altitude and we estimated that it was moving west at 20 – 30 MPH when we finally lost sight of it. Most folks turned in for the night after that except for a small group that stayed up and talked until sometime after midnight.

2013_08_14 (Wed) No Way To Start An RV Outing

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We planned to leave today around noon for an RV rally in Clio, Michigan, about an hour’s drive north of our house. We spent most of the morning with final preparations, loading food, clothes, technology, toiletries, and finally the cats. We also put fresh water on board and checked/adjusted all of the tire pressures.

The tires were holding their pressures fairly well, but I discovered that the Pressure Pro Tire Pressure Monitoring System was reading 1 to 3 PSI low on most of the sensors compared to my tire gauge. I have a very good gauge and had its calibration checked a couple of years ago at the Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally, so I tend to trust its readings. Besides, when it tells me two tires have the same pressure and the Pressure Pro TPMS tells me the pressures are different (from each other) I tend to go with the gauge.

The rear end buried up to the frame.

The last thing is always to disconnect and stow the shore power line and lock up the house. I fired up the engine, put it gear, and got stuck in our brand new gravel driveway! We tried to extricate ourselves, but that only made it worse and the drive tires ended up buried in the loose gravel. I called the guy who did the driveway work for us to let him know of our predicament and see what he could suggest. He didn’t have the equipment needed to get us out, but recommended a towing company that could handle vehicles our size. He also indicated that he would stop by the house tomorrow evening and survey the situation. Clearly something (else, additional) will have to be done.

The winch really worked!

I called Woody’s Towing, and they said they would have someone there within 45 minutes. While we were waiting for the tow truck, I engaged the level low system and aired the suspension all the way up. This got the chassis up enough that we could dig out some of the gravel from around the tires and under the rear end. The tow truck showed up on time. It didn’t look like a big enough truck to do the job, but it turned to be up to the task. The secret was the very substantial winch and the use of multiple pulleys to multiple the pulling force.

Impressive tires holes. We clearly were not getting out of this situation by ourselves.

The technician had to position the truck three times to finally get us out. This was because we had to make a hard left turn onto the concrete driveway that would then take us out to the street. The first pull was straight forward using both attachment points under the front bumper with the bus engine running, the transmission in 1^st gear, the tag axles UP, and me applying power as directed. This was the hardest pull as we had to get the drive tires out of the rather deep holes they had made for themselves. The second pull was from the driver side attachment point at an angel toward the driver’s side to get us started in that direction. This got our steer tires onto the concrete driveway. The third pull was again from the driver’s side attachment point at an angle, pulling straight out towards the street. This pull finally got our drive tires off the gravel and onto the concrete. The holes where the tires had been were very impressive.

The technician from Woody’s clearly knew what he was doing. He got us out without any damage to the coach, and we were glad to pay the $175 charge. We hooked up the car and were on our way around 1:30 PM.

We made it less than four miles from our house and encountered a major construction-related traffic jam on M-59 just west of US-23; a one lane road with a flagger. With no way to turn around and no alternate route there wasn’t anything to do put patiently move ahead when we could. In what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only 15 minutes, we cleared the construction zone and were northbound on US-23 at 62 MPH, my preferred highway travel speed. US-23 merged into northbound I-75 at the southwest corner of Flint and we continued on our way. Things were looking good until about six miles south of our destination exit, when another construction zone had the left two lanes (of a 3-lane highway) closed down. There was a warning sign some miles before, but almost no indication of the actual lanes closures. No barrels placed a mile or so before the work to close down one lane at a time; just the sudden loss of two lanes of the highway. Highway work crews should not be allowed to do this.

Some folks, most perhaps, get on their brakes and stay/merge to the right. But there are always those “other people” (who are obviously more important than the rest of us) who try to speed by on the left for as long as possible and then merge in at the last moment. Well, not today bunky. I was already in the right hand lane when I became part of the traffic crawl and I watched with some delight in my driver side rear view mirror as several vehicles teamed up to block all of the other lanes, including the left shoulder. We patiently worked our way through the blockage for what seemed like our second eternity today, but was again probably no more than 15 minutes.

All set up at the Clio Fireman’s Park.

We exited I-75/US-23 at M-57 and made our way east through Clio, Michigan. On the east side of town we headed southeast on Saginaw Road. About three miles down the road we spotted the Fireman’s Park and made our turn. The Clio Fireman’s Park is a nice little rally site. It has an open pavilion with power surrounded by fairly level grass and gravel surfaces, all hard packed. There is a long driveway leading in that provides an excellent place for arriving RVs to stop and unhook their towed vehicles. We did just that and while Linda parked the car and went and found Marty Caverly to find out where we should park. Marty and his wife, Pat, are one of the two that organize and conduct this rally.

All of the other early arrival buses except ours.

Today was early arrival day and there were only five other motorhomes there (all converted buses) so we had our pick of spots. We chose one we had used before, next to the pavilion and with good access to 20A power. Marty is an electrician and had been working for days to install permanent and temporary power drops so everyone would have a legitimate 20A connection. In warmer weather we would not be able to function on a 20A connection, but the weather has been, and is forecast to be, cooler than normal for this time of year with highs in the 70’s and lows of 50.

Part of the protocol of RV rallies is that folks tend to leave you alone while you get parked and set up, but once you are done there is lots of meeting and greeting. We are expecting 22 converted coaches, and the balance of them will be arriving tomorrow, so there will be lots more meeting and greeting.

Sullivan’s Black Forest restaurant and brew pub.

The pre-planned dinner event for this evening was the Black Forest Restaurant in Frankenmuth. The 13 of is figured out car pooling arrangements and we rode with Paul and Claudiene Elbisser.

The 13 early arrivals at dinner.

I had a raspberry/strawberry Belgian wheat dessert beer and it was freaking awesome! (I am not generally a big fan of beer and have finally figured out that I don’t care for the bitterness of hops.) It made a great “cocktail beer” too; think strawberry daiquiri with a hint of beer after taste. Linda and I ordered a 16” think crust pizza, no cheese, with mushrooms, onions, and pineapple. What they brought to the table was a pizza with a crust 2” thick. 15 minutes later we got the pizza we ordered, and it was pretty good.

Everyone (except us) enjoying ice cream under the pavilion.

Back at the rally site, we got a tour of Paula and Claudine’s MCI MC-5 conversion. We last saw it two years ago at this same rally, and they have made a lot of progress on it. It‘s a very nice design, and Paul is a superb craftsman. Ed Roelle set up to serve ice cream with toppings, and everyone brought their camp chairs to the pavilion and set them up in a big circle. Ed and his wife, Janet, are the other rally organizer couple. We passed on the ice cream, of course, but enjoyed the camaraderie. As the sun set it got very cool, and folks gradually peeled off from the group to hunker down for the night.

2013_08_06 (Tue) Back Home (For Now)

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Today was the final leg of our summer 2013 extended RVing trial run. We had less than 250 miles to travel, all of it in Michigan, so we were in no hurry to leave the Tiki RV Park in St. Ignace. We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, checked e-mail, visited favorite websites, and eventually prepped the rig for travel; a typical “retired and RVing” kind of morning. 🙂

We dumped the waste tanks and added our usual cleaning solution and some water, and put a ¼ tank of fresh water on board “just in case” we needed it. We didn’t; there were plenty of rest stops on I-75. We had spent the last six nights not connected to fresh water or sewers. We had not been conserving fresh water or minimizing waste water as we had water and sewer available on three of those six nights, but we wanted to see how long we could go to try to gage our ability to boondock. Water, both fresh and waste, is our limiting factor for boondocking. Our fresh water tank had just reached empty this morning and our waste tanks were not completely full, so it appears that we could go 7 or 8 nights, possibly 9 or 10 with careful resource management, before having to dump and fill.

The Mackinac Bridge connects Michigan’s two peninsulas.

We left Tiki around 11 AM and headed north out of St. Ignace, the same way we had come in. It’s only a few miles to the I-75 interchange and this approach avoids driving through downtown St. Ignace. Large profile vehicles can make it through Main Street with no problem, but there is a steady flow of traffic that stops frequently for pedestrians and for vehicles making turns. About three miles after getting on southbound I-75 we crossed the Mackinac (pronounced “Mac in naw”) Bridge, affectionately known to Michiganders (or Michiganians, depending who you ask) as the “Big Mac.” I believe it had that nickname long before a certain fast food chain introduced their heart-attack-on-a-bun by the same name. The bridge is five miles long and spans the Straits of Mackinac. The speed limit for “loaded trucks” is 20 MPH, and this is one of those times when we chose to consider our bus to be a truck. It doesn’t sound like anything special, but the bridge crossing took 15 minutes at that speed. That’s either a long time to enjoy the view, or a long time for the navigator to keep her eyes closed. 😉

The coach in the new pull-through driveway in front of the house.

In times past crossing the bridge with a 3-axle motorhome towing a 2-axle car was expensive as they charged by the axle, making the price for the combinaton the same as for an 80,000 lb semi. As a result, many RVers would disconnect their towed vehicle form their motorhome before crossing the bridge, drive them across separately (if they had two drivers), and reconnect them on the other side. More recently, the Bridge Authority changed the toll for a 3-axle motorhome to $19. The normal price for a 2-axle car is $4, and they now charge $23 for the combination, eliminating any reason to disconnect the toad.

Ahhh, electrical power. The bus likes to be plugged in.

The day was cloudy to overcast with a threat of rain that never materialized. It was cool when we left St. Ignace, and afternoon high temperatures climbed into the mid-to-upper 70’s as we traveled south. There were several construction zones along the way, but we were able to travel through most of them at 60 MPH, which is the speed we like to travel even when the speed limit is higher. All-in-all it made for another pleasant travel day, with the added anticipation of returning to our house. The largest construction zone was over and past the Zilwaukee Bridge near Saginaw where the southbound lanes are closed and southbound traffic is being re-routed to the northbound lanes. The southbound road south of the bridge is gone and being completely rebuilt for several miles. The northbound traffic is being re-routed onto I-675 through Saginaw, a relatively short detour.

The coach in front of the house, waiting for its next trip.

AT the southeast corner of Flint US-23 splits from I-75 and heads due south towards Fenton, Hartland, Brighton, Ann Arbor, Milan, and eventually Sylvania, Ohio and on to Naples, Florida. We took US-23 to the M-59 exit near Hartland and headed west for two miles to Hacker Road. A short trip south on Hacker and we were back to our street. The last ¾ mile was slow as our street is dirt and has potholes, but we finally arrived at our house around 3:30 PM. We stopped in the street to move the barricades that blocked access to the new pull-through driveway and pulled the coach in; the first time it (or any vehicle) had parked on the new driveway since it was finished in early June (just before we left).

We unhooked the car, repositioned the coach slightly, and plugged it in to the 50A power outlet we installed as part of the driveway project. Ahhh, power. We unloaded the cats and reminded them of where their litter tray, food, and water were located in the house. We then started unloading the house portion of the coach, bringing in only those necessities that we did not also have in the house. With the front door of the coach parked opposite the front door the house and the coach plugged in to electricity, there wasn’t any urgent need to unload it. As much as we liked our previous house, the easy of arriving and unpacking confirmed that we had made a good decision to move.

The view from our front porch, just the way we like it.

We had been tracking the weather while traveling, and it appeared that S. E. Michigan was having a cooler, wetter summer than normal. This was the first time we had seen our new property during the summer, and the trees, plants, and grass were all lush and doing well. Linda added some Swiss chard, mushroom broth, and garlic to the end of the Farro dish she made some days ago, and while we enjoyed that with the end of our bottle of Yellowstone Howlin’ Pear wine three young deer chased each other back and forth through our backyard.

The Phase Place

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Tag Archives: pull-through driveway

2014/08/15 (F) On The Level

2014/08/12 (T) Popcorn And A Movie

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

2013_09_01-04 Driveway Success, Raspberries, And Old Friends

2013_08_27-28 Babysitting And Our First RV Visitors

20130819-26 E-mail Problems

2013_08_17 (Sat) BTTB Rally – Day 3

2013_08_14 (Wed) No Way To Start An RV Outing

2013_08_06 (Tue) Back Home (For Now)