The lowest month we've had since September 2017!

Finally, we had a reasonable month with no unexpected expenses! Let the bells ring out, and the banners fly!

Considering we started the month in Red Lodge, Montana and drove all the way to Galetta, we didn't incur many expenses along the way... except for fuel, of course.

We spent a total of $1,439 CAD ($1,071 USD) for the month. The lowest month we've had since September 2017!

Passing time

But at least there is no shortage of things to do.

I cut the lawn yesterday. That's a half an hour's worth of light exercise right there. And, I've been slowly picking weeds. I'm not great with gardening... it's just not my thing. But I can handle a few minutes at a time of cleaning up some of the overgrowth to make things look better. 

The whole time though, I was being watched.

Quarantine Day 4

We will be free as of 6:30am on Saturday August 8th.

So, 10 days to go. And so far, we're totally fine. The only thing we miss is our daily 45 minute 5 km (3 mile) power walk that we normally do when we're staying here.

There is lots for us to do here though. And, it's a pleasant change for us to have an unlimited source of internet like most people normally do.

Sherman is for sale

Yesterday's blog title was "The final drive", and it may well have been.

Sherman the motorhome has taken us to many fabulous places, but it's time for him to move on. We think he's best suited to become a "cottage" at a rural property somewhere, but if someone wanted to fix him up enough to continue driving him, well that could happen too. And he is priced according to both possibilities.

The final drive...

We were on the road at sunrise on Sunday morning in order to beat the weekend traffic. We still had 300 kms (185 miles) to do, so we planned on stopping for breakfast and then another break later on in the morning, and arrive at Galetta well before lunch.

But with so little traffic, and a bit of a tail wind, we kept going until well past the half way point and ended up stopping for breakfast in Deep River, Ontario.

Back in Canada!

We had the alarm set for 5:30am Saturday morning with a plan to get across the border by 6:00am. We didn't quite make it! It turns out that sunrise is at 6:10am, so we waited at least wait until there was a little bit of light outside.

From the downtown area of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan it is only a 5 minute drive to the International bridge that crosses over to Saul Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Getting ready for our long drive

By the time most of you read this, we will already be across the bridge into Canada and on our way to Ruth's father's house in the little village of Galetta, Ontario.

From Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, it is a 740 km (463 mile) drive that we are prepared to do in one day. Depending on what we are told when we cross, we may be able to do it in two days. We will see.

Beautiful scenery at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

And, it was just an all round beautiful day.

The only downside was too many people. But of course, we were some of them! We tried our best to go to the less popular areas though, including an 8 mile (13 km) hike that we did where we hardly saw anybody else.

If you don't ask, you don't know!

Woke up to rain and drizzle Wednesday morning. First, they said it would stop around noon... then they said, well maybe it will stop around 2:00pm. But it was actually closer to 4:00pm!

We drove closer to Marquette. I was planning on stopping at the Lowe's to wait out the rain with some decent free WiFi, but as we passed through the town of Negaunee, I saw a sign at a propane place advertising 99 cent a gallon propane.

Knock, knock, knock... again!

Tuesday was a bit of a rain day. It actually started off overcast, and when we woke up at 6:30am the rain hadn't started yet. It was coming from the west, and we were heading east so we figured we could outrun it a little. So, we did some driving right away.

We got in 79 miles (127 kms) before breakfast, and pulled into the town of Hurley right before the Michigan border.

That was a fun bike ride!

We had a really nice day, but it's a good thing we're not really on any kind of a schedule because we sure didn't drive very far.

We got up and did some driving first thing... even before tea and coffee! We find that there are a lot of benefits driving at 6:30am... very little wind, and very few cars on the road. And, then you can get parked up early and enjoy the rest of the day.

Well, that was a fun hour!

On Sunday, we did a fairly long (for us!) drive from Foley, Minnesota to Minong, Wisconsin. We had a really strong tail wind for most of the drive, so we figured we might as well take advantage of it. Pretty sure that Sherman must have got at least 12 mpg... felt like I hardly had to touch the gas pedal at all to keep him at 55 mph.

But, there sure was a lot of traffic. Fortunately, most of it was in the opposite direction. Still, you really have to watch out for people who are in such a rush that they want to pass at what might not be exactly the right time!

More quarantine confusion, and a visit from the police

Saturday morning, we drove into the small city of Saint Cloud (pop 68,000). No ambition to hang out at all... we were only there because it was directly along our route and there was a Walmart at which we could do our weekly grocery shopping.

A couple of interesting things we noticed. A much higher population of Muslim residents shopping in that particular store. In fact, I doubt we have seen that many obvious recent immigrants in total over the last three and a half months as we saw at that one Walmart yesterday. Might be because we are so close to the big city of Minneapolis.

Finally got the kayak out!

We've been doing lots of biking and walking... but it was time to mix things up a bit. We did the short drive from Spicer to Paynesville and used the free RV dump station there, then headed over to the shores of Lake Koronis.

We've been taking a page out of the Tioga George playbook. Anybody who followed Tioga George knows that his way was to find a great place to hang out with his RV during the day... and then around dusk go to his "Night Camp" that he would have already scoped out during the day.

Oh well... it's only water

As some readers have mentioned, there are a lot of bike paths in this part of Minnesota. Yesterday morning, we drove back to the park in Willmar where we got the bikes off and tackled a pathway that leads about 40 miles (65 kms) up towards Paynesville.

We didn't do the whole thing... but we did pretty well!

Hello Minnesota!

When we crossed the border yesterday into Minnesota, both Ruth and I thought "we haven't been to Minnesota for a long time". But then we thought again... we were actually here last summer! When we returned from Australia, our oddball flight routing took us from Hawaii to LA to Minneapolis to Saskatoon. So, we were actually in Minnesota last August 23rd!

And when we crossed into Minnesota, we also remembered that it's not as easy to find free overnight spots as we get into the eastern area of the U.S.. Minnesota State Parks are expensive, and even county and municipal parks we are seeing some at upwards of $30 USD ($40 CAD) per night.

Long bike ride!

Well, yesterday's blog post was an interesting diversion. Even if you disagreed with me, the many comments give you an indication of what other people think about the situation as well. I found it an worthwhile commentary. But today, we are back to our regularly scheduled programming!

On Monday we drove from Tulare to Redfield, only a distance of about 10 miles (16 kms)! It was supposed to be a fairly windy cross wind day and Sherman doesn't like driving in the wind. We are in no rush, so we sat in the motorhome by the library, and got some work done.

My thoughts on Covid-19...

We don't normally comment on world events, or our health, or politics or religion because opinions are almost always too divisive. And sure, of course we have an opinion on all of those things. But this blog is about our life and travels, so those things mentioned above are usually just noise and so we consider them unrelated.

But of course Covid and the reactions to it has affected almost everybody's life, including our own.

Our little buddy

Not much in the way of scenery to show you today. We drove from Pierre to Tulare, South Dakota and it was pretty much flat and farmland. We ended up in the town of Tulare because I had read of a town park that offered three RV sites with electric hookups, and I thought maybe we could waste today there because it's supposed to be too windy to drive.

And I thought maybe with only three sites we might not get a spot, but when we arrived there was nobody there... except for our little buddy who was quick to greet us.

Fresh air and exercise

Saturday was a beautiful day here in Pierre, South Dakota. High of about 86F (30C) with blue sky and sunshine. Only downside was a bit of wind.

We took the bikes out in the morning and went across the causeway to the trails on the island. We planned on doing the other trails in town as well, but found it too windy. Maybe things would calm down later.

Detour!

It was a bit of a late start from the town of Faith as we didn't head out until almost 10:30am. And as we were leaving town, we saw that there was some kind of horse event going on at the arena. So we stopped in to see what was happening.

But we had to walk across a field to get to the side of the fence to get a better view. We really didn't want to walk around to the actual entrance, and we're not big horse people so it's not like we were going to pay to go in. We just wanted to see what was going on.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Why?

No particular reason. It occurred to me last night that I always look forward to tomorrow! What's the point of living if you don't have anything to look forward to?!

But, tomorrow hasn't happened yet, so let's talk about yesterday. We left our spot by the lake and made our way into the town of Newell where we used their free library WiFi to get caught up on things.

Nice quiet spot by the lake

The sun comes up at about 5:20am in this part of the world right now, so we like to get up early and do some driving. There is hardly anybody on the road, and there's very little wind, if any at all.

So Wednesday morning, we were on the road by about 6:15am and headed further east. The only problem with getting up at that hour and heading east is that the sun is shining right in your eyes!

Nice visit to Devil's Tower, Wyoming

Woke up Tuesday to a windy morning in Moorcroft, Wyoming. It looked like we were going to have a heavy crosswind for our drive up to Devil's Tower, but once we got on the road we were pleasantly surprised to find that we had a nice tailwind helping us along.

Devil's Tower is located kind of in the middle of nowhere. Arriving at the entrance, we found ourselves in tourist land. A big KOA campground on one side, and a tourist trinket shop on the other side.

We found a local park with a big tree...

The eastern part of Wyoming (and Montana for that matter) is not very exciting. The mountain scenery that we so enjoyed for the month of June is gone.

And so it wasn't a very photogenic day yesterday as we made our way further east towards South Dakota.

More beautiful Wyoming scenery, and some nice bike paths...

We were on the road at 6:30am Sunday morning in order to do the steep climb into Bighorn National Forest. At that hour, temperatures are much lower and Sherman would have less risk of overheating.

In fact, now that we've done it I have little doubt that we would NOT have made it had we tried to do it on Saturday afternoon. Sherman had to work hard for a solid 8 miles (13 kms) while he climbed another 3,000'and there was very little opportunity to pull over and let him rest.

Well, that was a pretty good day!

We set off at about 10:00am Saturday morning. Used the nice clean dump station at the free Lovell municipal campground before we left and filled our fresh water tank with the available potable water.

Thanks Lovell!

And then we headed up to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. I had never heard of this place before, which is kind of surprising. When you see the photos, you'll understand why we are surprised that it's not more popular.

Happy 4th of July!

We wandered over to the local grocery store here in Lovell, Wyoming to pick up a few things. Things are typically a bit more expensive at these independent stores, but they have sales too, so you never know what you're going to find.

First stop in the produce aisle, we saw iceberg lettuce at $1.69 USD ($2.29 CAD). A bit pricey, but you have to eat! We hummed and hawed between that and the romaine, but eventually grabbed an iceberg.

The strange people you meet in a laundromat

So I was looking at the map the other day, planning our route east. I saw that Lovell, Wyoming has a free campground in town with a 3 day stay limit and I figured that might be a good spot to ride out the American 4th of July long weekend.

With that in mind, I started to look for things to do in the area. We had been through these parts back in April of 2016 but we were on a mission at the time and so we didn't stop to see anything along the way. This time, we are in no real rush.

Red Lodge, Montana is a nice little town

We woke up on the ridge above the town and the forecast was for mostly sunny skies with a high around 70F (21C). So we decided to stay one more day in the area around Red Lodge, Montana.

We were doing some internet work first thing, and I got a text message from Telcel (we still have a Mexico SIM card in our phone) saying that our data had run out, and so had our balance. I'm usually pretty good at keeping an eye on it and recharging it the day before it runs out... but I missed it this time. And normally a screen comes up asking how you want to recharge, but this time I couldn't get it to do that.

June Expenses

Well, it was a pretty good month other than the fact that Sherman needed a water pump and a battery at the beginning of the month. That's 3 expensive months in a row, averaging $2,845 CAD per month. Good thing the first 3 months of the year were fairly reasonable while we were in Mexico. (They averaged $1,715 per month.)

We spent a total of $2,785 CAD ($2,047 USD) for the month of June.

Blizzard at the end of June

Well, yesterday was officially the day we begin the trek east to Ontario. And did we ever start it off with a bang! We knew the scenery heading east through the northern part of Yellowstone park would be spectacular, but the weather forecast was far from great.

It turned out that overall it was a little better than expected... until we got to the top of the Beartooth Pass where we encountered near blizzard conditions!