Ft. William in Thunder Bay Ontario, and a Waterfall

While in Thunder Bay Ontario, we camped at the Fort William Historic Park. There are only ten sites with water and power, and about twenty non-serviced sites. All of the serviced sites, including ours, were occupied while we were there. 









I had made reservations far in advance. We had 50 amp power and excellent free Wifi for less than $30 US per day. We could see the dry sites from the Alfa, and we only observed a couple of overnighters while we were there, so we assume that it would be easy to camp there if you don't want power, and no events were taking place. (They do have several large re-enactments every summer.)  

This was the view from the front of our coach. The grass was well cut and Craig said he felt like he was camping on the Queen's lawn! 

We took a walk across the grass to see the Kaministiquia River in the evening light. 









This is not the site of the original Fort William. The current Fort is a reconstruction. The original site to the east has long been paved over.


We bought our admission tickets to the Fort in the Visitor Center. From there we had a choice of taking a shuttle or taking a ten minute walk along a wooded path. 

The ostrich ferns were massive

Walking through this area was like eating a bit of melon between courses of a fancy meal. The forest cleared our mind of modern life and helped our imaginations slip into the early nineteenth century.

Before arriving at the Fort, we encountered several tepees. The plains Indians use buffalo hides for the walls of their homes, but the forest people used large sections of birch-bark the were overlapped like shingles.

Because we started our tour at the opening time on a weekday, we felt like we had the site to ourselves. Later in the morning there were a few more people, but at no time was it crowded.

Fort William wast built by the Northwest Company as a headquarters and a trade depot.

The North Voyageurs, French Canadians who worked for the Company, brought furs to the Fort from the North by canoe. Then the Montreal  Voyageurs took the the furs to Montreal. Voyageurs were described as being like today's truckers.

Since it was not a military fort, the enclosing walls were not fortified, and did not have defensive observation walkways. It did have a watch room above the central gate, and a tall watchtower.

Craig climbed the watchtower, 
I did not.

The grounds of the Fort were very large with many structures that housed living quarters, a great dining hall, many work shops, and trading and storage buildings. Most were open and young people dressed in period costumes were there  to talk to us about life at the Fort from the viewpoint of its occupants.  They were delightful because they did not give "canned speeches."

[From Craig] The first two young ladies we encountered were playing the parts of nurses or perhaps physician's assistants of about 1815.  They looked at my shorts and Merikay's pedal pushers, and sympathized that so much of our clothing had rotted away.  Looking at our sneakers, they said we should have more extensive foowear to prevent foot-rot.  Since they were the first period characters we had encountered, we weren't up to saying that people in our country typically dressed like we were.  Later we were more chipper and interactive...

We wandered from building to building looking at things that might have been there when the Fort was in use.

Having skipped breakfast, we were hungry and stopped for an early lunch at the Fort Canteen. I had the yummy Voyageur Stew. Craig had a nice hearty sandwich.

At one point in our day, we were "rounded up" by a guide and told that a trade was about to occur. We all went into watch an Indian woman trade furs for goods. 

The man in the red coat was one of the visitors, and was brought into the enactment to represent her husband and help set the trade values of the furs. He had fun and was quite a bargainer!

In the spirit of a living reenactment, nothing was displayed behind glass, and if a visitor wanted to examine any item he could ask the clerk to bring it down for closer inspection. I enjoyed the way the guides spoke to us as if we were people of the period, not tourists!

Over in the farm area we watched a guide throwing an axe. (He never stuck it in the target!) Craig and I both gave it a try. I was surprised at how heavy and uncontrollable the axe was. Neither of us stuck it either.

A storage building

All in all, I would give Fort William a 10. It was very authentic and the guides kept to their period roles very well. It was, of course, cleaned up to not exhibit things like period sanitation or hygiene. One guide pointed out that the central courtyard would have been muddy and occupied by free roaming livestock instead of grass, and the bedding might not have smelled very sweet! 

After wandering around for much of the day we were glad to catch the shuttle back up to the Visitor Center. It was great to be able to go back to the Alfa right there in the park.

As we explored the Fort we spoke to a man who suggested we go to see the Kakabeka waterfall that is only about a half hour drive away.  

from web

When at the Visitors Center, I had asked for a suggestion of a restaurant that made good Finnish Pancakes. A place called Hoito was reccomended. So, on Saturday, we first went there for breakfast and then went off to see the falls.

Quite a rush of water! There are a series of cascading falls, and we were told the combined height is more than Niagra Falls. It didn't feel that way to me.

On Sunday we went on a sailboat cruise in the Thunder Bay Harbor.  

Check my next post for details.

Two Harbors, Waterfalls and Lighthouses

Sometimes as I slip into sleep, I play with similes to contemplate how I feel about my life as a full time RVer.

Last night I thought of each day being like an agate from the beaches of Lake Superior. No two are the same. Some days are filled with a multitude of interesting experiences, while others just slip smoothly by. When we were young, events and feelings may have had sharp edges, but with age they are tumbled, and memories of each become treasures. It's impossible to pick the best. In my old mind there is no order.

This week we drove east along the North Shore of Lake Superior to Two Harbors. We stayed at the city-owned Burlington Bay Campground. 

The view of the lake from our spot was magical. The light on the water was ever changing. At times it seemed there was no lake there at all, as it reflected the soft white foggy haze.  At sunset it became a smooth pink blanket, and at another time it was a deep grayish purple reflection of the storm clouds above.

Near our campground, there was a small stony beach where we put our toes into the icy water of the lake.

I can't believe people actually swim in it, but I remember when I was a teenager, my mother and I came up to the lake on a road trip, I waded in to my waist. I seem to recall not being able to feel my lower half after a few minutes!



While there, we did what everyone coming through Two Harbors seems to do: 

We went to see the waterfalls and lighthouses.

The Gooseberry Falls State Park is a few miles northeast of town.

The tannin-rich waters rush over a series of waterfalls and rapids.

I sometimes wonder what it is about a waterfall that people, including us, enjoy seeing them so much. Perhaps it is the untamed power of nature. 

Lighthouses also seem to draw visitors. 

The Splitrock Lighthouse is about seven miles from the falls, and when we went there I noticed several of the same people we had seen earlier in the day. 

The tour of the lighthouse and grounds was one of the best we have taken. We learned about a terrible 1905 storm that sunk 29 ships and killed many men. It was after this storm that the lighthouse was built. 

During construction, it was inaccessible by land and all building materials and supplies were brought in by boat and hoisted up the cliff. Although there were homes for the three keepers and their families, the wives and children only lived there in the summer months. In 1924 the road was extended past the light station and it became a popular tourist stop.

We climbed the spiral staircase to get a peek at the Fresnel Lens.

The exhibits made it feel like everyone left it one day in the 1920s. Craig loved this old Oliver typewriter, in which the keys swung in from the sides rather than up from below.

We also went to see the lighthouse in the town of Two Harbors. It was quite different in style.

As full time RVers, we always have to plan ahead to get our mail when we are traveling. 

I knew I wanted to get a package of mail from our forwarding service in Sioux Falls before we crossed the Canadian border. 

Sometimes we get it delivered to the campground where we are staying, and sometimes we pick it up at a post office via General Delivery. After checking out the parking situation on Google Earth,  I arranged for our mail to be sent to General Delivery in Grand Marais. There was a generous shoulder across from the post office on which to park the Alfa, while I went to pick up the mail.

I wanted the mail so I could get the latest shirt I had ordered from a fun company called 6dollarshirts.com. 

Craig and I enjoy it because it indicates my level of interest in sports.















Our next stop is Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Review of our new Bigfoot Leveling System, and a Catch-up Post

I wanted to wait until we had tried them out at several different parks, before I posted my thoughts about the Bigfoot Hydraulic Leveling Jacks, which we had installed by Quadra Manufacturing in White Pigeon Michigan.   Our old Atwood Electric jacks made such horrid grinding noises whenever we tried to retract them from any position even close to full extension, that they just had to go.

In the eight years that we have had the Alfa, we have replaced three of the Atwood jacks when they failed. Also, Atwood is out of business, and replacement legs are hard to find. 

For my non-rving friends, an RV should be level when parked. Not only for the comfort of the occupants, and for frying eggs in a pan, but for the operation of an absorption (electric/gas) refrigerator. It is less important if you have a residential electric refrigerator, which some RVs have.  

The four legs also stabilize the coach so you don't bounce around when someone is walking inside, and an egg won't roll off the counter if left unattended.


Our first campground after White Pigeon had a nice firm, fairly level gravel pad. The legs went down quietly with just a press of the control panel buttons, and Craig had no problem correcting the programed level position with a few manual tweaks. (They set the program at the factory, but it is not quite right and eventually when he gets more familiar with them, Craig will reprogram it.)

Our second campground, in Chippewa Falls, was more challenging. It was a somewhat rough grass spot and since they had had a lot of rain recently, the ground was soggy and soft.

With the Atwood legs, Craig would have had to put blocks on the ground under the feet so the coach didn't sink and get stuck. At the Sioux Falls Fairgrounds, he had to dig the blocks out of the ground when we were leaving! 

We bought the optional snap pads for the feet. They are made of a "tuff stuff" type material and stay on permanently. No need to kneel in the mud to slide blocks under the coach! 


We are not sure how long they will last, but replacements are only $50 each and can be installed by the coach owner.

After we pulled out of the spot in Chippewa Falls, I went back and looked at the impressions left in the soft ground. The Bigfeet had come up easily. By the time we were at the next campground all the mud had dried and blown off, so they looked as good as new.

Our next park, in Saginaw MN, was pretty level, but Craig still had to make a few manual adjustments.

Finally our spot at Indian Point in Duluth, was a bit uneven with grass and older gravel. It too would have required the use of extra blocks with the Atwood. No problem with the Bigfoot system. 

We know there will be more challenging locations in the future, but for now I think we have a pretty good sample, and arrival or departure is far less stressful without the worry of "will the jacks go up or down one more time?"

[From Craig] My main complaint about the Bigfoot system also applied to the Atwood Levelegs.  I don't believe that there is any one "level reference" setting that I can accept for "fully automatic" leveling at all sites. What I think is the fault of both systems is that when they compute the jack extensions necessary to level the coach, both systems seem to do MOST BUT NOT ALL of the necessary extension(s).  For example, on both systems, if what's needed is raising the back and the passenger side, in order to achieve good leveling I have to manually do a little more extension on the back and a little more on the passenger side.  Considering how corporations use common technology nowadays, I wouldn't be surprised if this similar behavior is because Bigfoot's leveling is descended from Atwood's. Before I get sued, I don't mean that Bigfoot copied stuff from Atwood. But the Atwood control module that I removed to send to another Alfa owner, looked really similar to the Bigfoot control module that I see under my dashboard.

So, all in all we are satisfied with our decision to replace our leveling system. However, our installation experience was not the best. The factory tech tried repeatedly to get the program to level the coach. Since we were not hooked up at the time, and the area was in the midst of the heatwave, the coach kept getting hotter and hotter as they tried to tweak it. Craig finally accepted it as "good enough", knowing he could reprogram it himself in the future.

Then, after the techs left, he discovered a couple of wiring problems in the coach dash. Both our phone dock and our Tire Pressure Monitor system were dead. Craig traced the phone dock problem to a blown fuse. He had another and was able to change it. But the TPS wiring had been disconnected from the power connection and was just hanging loosely from a piece of electrical tape. Fortunately Craig knew how to fix it.  He has a small soldering iron among his onboard tools, and was able to rewire it.  I suggested he call the tech back, but he didn't want them to touch anything else. 

I hope that in time we will come to love these jacks. 

Back to our RV travels:

It took us a couple of days to drive to the Duluth MN area,  our next destination.  We ran into a horrendous rain storm while I was driving through the south end of the Chicago area. I hate when that happens. I was driving in a very tight freeway area with semis on either side, when I inadvertently caused my side mirror to clack into that of an adjacent truck. No damage, but the driver was not happy with me. He really blasted me with his horn as he sped up to pass us! The plus was the rain washed the bugs off the windshield!

This seems like a month for things breaking. This time it was the monitor screen on Craig's Apple laptop. We ended up driving 150 miles, from Duluth to the Apple Store in Minneapolis (in the Jeep). That was on Monday, Craig had to go back for it on Saturday, but there was no charge for this repair, as for the previous keyboard replacement in Colorado.

Before our appointment, we had time to go downtown and see the Mill City Flour Museum in Minneapolis. Neither of us had known what a big flour mill center the city had been. The Flour museum was in an old Gold Medal mill that had exploded and been rebuilt. 

Lots of old machines were on display along with some excellent information about the milling process.

A look into the past

We took a glass elevator up to an observation deck overlooking the walls of the old mill, which had burned out after it had been closed.

We had a beautiful view of the bridges and river. One of the complexes on the other side was Pillsbury. Not much milling is done in Minneapolis anymore. But many of the wheat silos still stand. I don't know if they are still used.

The next day, back in Duluth, we went to the Duluth Railroad Museum.
It is housed in the old depot, and the outside architecture was charming.

Many of the old engines and cars have been maintained in working order by numerous volunteers.

This snow removal equipment made us glad we do not live in the Northern states!

Park of our visit to the Railroad Musem included a 90 minute ride along the shoreline in an old train.

After boarding, we walked through several newer cars that were air-conditioned. They were pretty full, and the fogged-up windows did not open.

Further back there were several older cars that were not cooled, but the windows opened for much better views and photography.

Half way through the ride the engine is detached and is run back on a siding to the other end of the train. After it is reattached it pulls the train back to the depot.

 

I was able to hold the camera outside the open window for these shots as the engine came alongside.











After an ice cream treat back at the depot, we walked across the bridge over the freeway to the Lake Superior Aquarium.

It had some very nice tanks and interesting fish. I was a bit disappointed that it didn't have many educational displays about the changes and environmental disasters that have occurred in the Great Lakes.  Thje priome cause is the invasion of non-native species into the lakes through the St. Lawrence Seaway and in the ballast tanks of large ships. This spring I read a lot about this in  "The Death and Life of the Great Lakes" by Dan Egan.

Another highlight of our days in Duluth was a visit to a "Super 1" grocery store, where we were able to buy several things that we had eaten as Milwaukee children. Marrow bones, several kinds of sauerkraut (I only bought one), turkey thighs in July (sometimes found elsewhere close to Thanksgiving), smoked fish, and fresh,  fresh, fresh Lake Superior white fish.

Thunderstorms are common in the afternoons. The above image should have been a movie. I watched this huge plume of clouds grow in a very short time. 

Finally

I hope this is not a sign of our future. I recently read the value of the dollar has gone down a bit, but is still strong. All I see is increased prices so that a dollar doesn't go as far as it did a few years ago.

Shipshewana and Elkhart

The drive over to the North Park Campground and Amish Log Cabins, in Shipshewana Indiana, was smooth and uneventful. I thought the campground might be manned by a nice Amish couple, but the man and woman at the office were both from India. The campground was small, a bit worn around the edges, but otherwise quite ordinary. On one of the three nights we were there, we sat outside playing Gin while listening to the clip-clop of the horse-drawn buggies going past. 

Pretty much everything is closed in Shipshewana on Sundays, so we decided to go over and see the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart. 

I have seen pictures of some of the classic RVs they had on display, and it was fun to see them in person.

They were all open for inspection, some with a rope across the door, but many that you could go into and "feel" their space.

This was touted as the "oldest" RV in the world, from 1913.  

The display did not include any newer models. Most were trailers, but a few early motorhomes were included.

Our modern cushioned leather drivers lounges are a great improvement over these wooden seats.







Notice the stove pipe above Craig's head. The heat in this truck-like vehicle was provided by a miniature cast iron woodstove.

This was the longest trailer on display. It even had bunk beds.

The RV Hall of Fame was interesting, and they are working on a large expansion. I would have liked to see more about the future of the industry. Perhaps it will be in their new wing.

I didn't take any pictures around Shipshewana. I just didn't feel like carrying the camera around.

Image from web

Monday we went to the Menno-Hof center. It is not really a museum, in that it does not display artifacts and collections. It is a very well done series of rooms with visual presentations about the history of the Anabaptist movement, which includes the Amish, the Mennonite and Hutterites. 

Picture from Trip Advisor on Web

In the evening, we had an excellent Amish  buffet dinner at Das Dutchman Essenhaus restaurant in Middlebury.

The food was good, plentiful, and reasonable.

On Tuesday, we went over to the Shipshewana Flea Market for a little while.


It is very large and it was starting to rain so we didn't walk it all. I didn't need anything, and just shopping is not one of my interests. 


We did buy some fresh Georgia peaches and took them back to the Alfa, where we ate them with ice cream for breakfast!

So now, on Tuesday afternoon, after an eleven mile drive, we are parked and hooked up in the Quadra Manufacturing parking lot, ready for our Wednesday morning appointment to get our new Big Foot leveling jacks installed.

The Midwest weather has been somewhat hot and humid, but we may be getting used to it. Well, not really. We usually turn off the air conditioning and open the windows at night, and this morning I felt very hot and sweaty when I first woke up. The air seemed almost "thick".  [From Craig] She felt that way because I had to close the windows in the night, when heavy rain started falling. I turned the air conditioning back on, but it can't produce that nice summer-morning feeling when cool 6 AM air comes in the windows.

If you ever want breakfast in White Pigeon MI, the Country Kitchen has nice home-style food. We both had Breakfast Burritos, so can't talk about any other offerings. Travel well or stay well, whichever applies to you.