We're free!

Yes, our 14 day quarantine is over! We've been stuck on Ruth's father's property since we arrived here, but now we are free as a bird! Well, as free as anybody else around here, anyhow.

And what is the first thing we did with our freedom? We went for our 5 km (3 mile) power walk at 6:30 am this morning. And it felt GREAT!

Our most memorable hiking experiences Part 3

I didn't set out to have this become a 3 part series! But once I got into it, I realized just how many fantastic hikes we have done. So this is the last of it. Then on Saturday, we can get back to some normal posting because... we will be free!

In February of 2016 we were just outside of Guanajuato, Mexico waiting for the Mexico RV caravan to show up. The day before they did, we went for a hike in the hills opposite the RV park.

Our most memorable hiking experiences Part 2

When Ruth went over yesterday's blog post, she reminded me that I forgot one important hike! And I'm not surprised... there were really too many good ones to remember them all. But this one really should not have been forgotten!

In July of 2011, we hiked up Mount Washington. This is the highest point in North America east of the Rocky Mountains.

Our most memorable hiking experiences Part 1

Our regular readers know that we love to go hiking. After all, hiking is great exercise, you see things that you would not otherwise see, and it's normally free!

We haven't always been as avid about hiking as we are now, but even when we had young children we took them on some good hikes. In fact our first really big day hike was when our son had just turned 6 and our daughter was almost 8.

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Quarantine day 10

Nice day yesterday as the sun came out to dry things off, and the temperature was a comfortable 24C (75F).

I did some more weed pulling and then tackled a more enjoyable job.

This house used to be entirely heated by wood. There was a wood furnace in the basement, a fireplace in the living room, and a wood cookstove in the kitchen. Ruth's father had a 90 acre wood lot where he would cut all his firewood for the winter and bring it back to the house.

Just rambling...

When you live and travel in a motorhome for extended periods of time, you get conditioned to doing things a certain way. And especially when you are boondockers and you have to conserve your resources for days at a time.

The three main limiting factors when we are traveling in a motorhome are water, electricity, and holding tank capacity. So when we get back to a "normal" place to live, we find ourselves still trying to limit these things. Which is of course a good thing anyhow, but it sure makes you think about how much is wasted by people living in houses.

When one job leads to another

Yesterday, I went to do some serious vacuuming of the family room here at Ruth's dad's house. This is the one room that gets used the most here, and it's been ages (years??) since furniture has been moved to be able to do the job properly. I even vacuumed the lamp shades!

Anyhow, when I first started the job, I noticed that the central vac system didn't have as much suction as it should. Hmm.

Quarantine Day 7

We are half way through! And yes, it does seem to be going by quickly. Once again, the only thing that really bothers us is not being able to go for our 45 minute power walk. It will be the first thing we do when we wake up next Saturday morning!

It's a real shame we can't get out and do things though because the weather has been just about perfect. Highs of about 27C (81F) and mostly sunny. Today should be warmer though with a high of 30C (86F), and then rain tomorrow.

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.