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.

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.  😉

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.

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.

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.

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.