Tag Archives: MN-34

2013_08_03 (Sat) Across The Northern Tier

Today was a travel day, and an uneventful one at that (the best kind).  Linda spent some time last evening and again this morning researching places for us to stay tonight somewhere between Ashland, Wisconsin and Iron Mountain, Michigan.  The choices appeared thin; the Walmart in Ashland didn’t allow RVers to overnight due to a city ordinance, and there did not appear to be a Walmart anywhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  (I know, I know, that doesn’t seem possible.  It turns out there is one in Ironwood, and probably others we haven’t discovered yet.)  As our route eventually put us on US-2 we settled on a city RV park in Ironwood, Michigan, just over the border with Wisconsin on the north side of the highway.  Based on available online information, this park appeared to have a variety of sites from “full hookup pull-thru” to “no hookup tent site.”  (Note: Full hookup in this case meant 20A electric power, barely sufficient to recharge our house batteries, and run the refrigerator, and run the air compressor.)  The sites were first-come-first-served; no way to make a reservation.  And being a city park, there was no one to call for information on a Saturday, the city offices being closed.  So we did something very unusual for us, we started driving with no guarantee that we would be able to get a site, much less one that our coach would fit in, or if the park was even still open.

We left the Forestedge Winery (very reluctantly) at 9:19 AM CDT and headed south down MN-64 towards Akeley where we picked up MN-34 heading northeast to Walker.  MN-34 ends at MN-200 in Walker and we headed east on MN-200 from there.  MN-200 appears on the map to run straight east-west, but in actuality it bends to the left and right, and goes up and down, through lovely forests and past bodies of water, large and small.  The forests eventually gave way to shorter, scruffier growth and marshy areas that reminded us a great deal of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  MN-200 ended at US-2 and we merged on headed southeast to Duluth, Minnesota 52 miles away.

The roads were generally very good, with smooth, quiet surfaces, and we rolled along at 55 MPH except for the occasional idiot who seems unconcerned about pulling out in front of a 41,000 pound vehicle traveling fast enough to turn their sub-compact into a splotch on the highway.  No, we didn’t hit anyone, but one of the things I do not like is having to suddenly get on the brakes.  Buses do not stop quickly (in a short distance) when traveling at highway speeds.  I know that–and I generally try to drive very, very defensively–but I have no control over what other motorists do, and I find in particular that it is not always possible to anticipate what a stupid/oblivious person might do next.  One or my other pet bus peeves?; drivers who wait until the passing lane is about to run out and then decide to try to get around you.  One &%$*(#! did that to me today and he ended up facing oncoming traffic.  I am not going on the shoulder and risking putting a 41,000 pound bus in the ditch for someone that stupid.  I did not encounter the most common peeve situation today, however, as it involves entrance ramps on limited access highways; people who don’t get up to speed and pay not attention to the traffic that is already on the highway and into which they are required to merge, i.e., get up to speed and blend in.

BTW:  The weather today was almost perfect; blue skies with lots of white puffy clouds (enough to create plenty of shaded areas on the highway) and afternoon temperatures in the low 70’s.

Paul had told us to just stick with US-2 east and we would soon find ourselves in Wisconsin, and so it was.  As you approach the northwest corner of Duluth MN-194 splits off to the left and US-2 goes to the right.  Signs make it very, very clear that trucks are to use US-2 to get into, around, or through Duluth; they are NOT to get on MN-194.  One of the interesting things about driving an motorhome that’s really a commercial bus, is there are times when you are not a truck (such as highway weigh scales), and other times when you are, such as any road situation that involves height, width, length, or weight restrictions.  Toll roads are a toss up; some go only by axles, thus treating you like a commercial semi, while others have special fares for RVs and the things they tow.  Also, if you have a Jake Brake (we don’t) local noise ordinances prohibiting their use apply to you the same as they do to commercial vehicles.  If you don’t believe it, try using yours.

US-2 takes you to I-35 south of Duluth.  From I-35 you travel a couple of miles north and onto the Bong bridge which takes you into Wisconsin, or 10th state.  It’s a fairly high bridge, but an easy one to drive over (sorry Nick).

The drive on US-2 across northern Wisconsin was a bit tedious.  The road is rough and noisy in a lot a places, and each town you go through seems to stretch out along the highway for miles and requires you to drive 30 or even 25 MPH.  It will be nice to be back in Michigan where speed limits are almost universally ignored.

We arrived at the Wisconsin/Michigan border around 3:15 PM CDT, returning to our state of origin.  As advertised, we found Curry Park right where it was supposed to be, and it was open for business and mostly empty.  We spotted a pull-through site with good ingress and egress and made pulled in.  It appeared to be an electric only site, so Linda filled out the form and put the required $15 in the envelope.  Turned out that it was full-hookup site, which is $20 per night and the camp host came around later to collect the extra $5.  Even though we only needed the electrical hookup, we were not about to move.

Our neighbors on either side appeared to be off doing whatever it is RVers do in the late afternoon, so we ran our generator for a while to at least bulk charge the house batteries before switching to shore power.  Linda went for a walk around the park and I put the finishing touches on the blog posting for yesterday while keeping an eye on our batteries.

We have to be very thoughtful about how we use the coach and its various (electrical) systems when we only have a 20A electrical connection.  Not cooking dinner avoids having to use power, so Linda (the smartphone/Google queen) found a well-reviewed restaurant in town that was a four block walk from the park on the same side of US-2, and had pizza on the menu; Federico’s MIKES.  Winner.  Well, maybe.  Since we don’t eat dairy products we order our pizza withOUT cheese.  That is guaranteed to get some strange looks and even questions, and the outcome is always a bit of a gamble.  (We had a fabulous vegan pizza in the Black Hills of South Dakota back in June but we have had others that just were not very good.)  The waitress took our order—16” thin crust, no cheese, with onions, mushrooms, olives (black and green), and pineapple—and a young man in the kitchen who obviously loved making pizza threw himself into the task.  He even came out part way through our meal to see if we liked it.  We did, and we told him so.  We saved a few pieces for lunch on the road tomorrow as it will be another travel day for us, boxed it up, and walked back to the park.

Tomorrow we have another travel day, and then plan to stay put for a couple of nights before our final leg back to the house.

2013_08_01 (Thu) A Short Drive And A Winery

Jasper on the couch.

Jasper on the couch.

We only had 168 miles to travel today to get from Red Trail Vineyards in Buffalo, North Dakota to the Forestedge Winery in Laporte, Minnesota so we were in no particular hurry to leave.  I was up by 7 AM, however, so I could turn the generator on and top up the house batteries before we hit the road.  I also wanted to add air to the driver-side front tire as I noticed yesterday when I checked the Pressure Pro Tire Pressure Monitoring System that it was starting to read a little lower than I would like.

Juniper by the windshield.

Juniper by the windshield.

Since I was up I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the property to replace the ones I inadvertently did not take yesterday and updated yesterday’s blog post with a few of them.  I also took some pictures of our two cats, Jasper and Juniper, who have been with us on this whole trip, but have not received the attention they deserve in this blog.

Adding air to the tires accurately, however, requires that they are cold and all at the same temperature.  It also requires the main engine to be running to get the air tanks up to 120 PSI.  We were parked facing north, and by the time I got around to this task the passenger-side tires were already reading 5-6 PSI higher than the driver-side due to the heat of the morning sun.

I checked the pressure in the driver-side front tire with my tire gauge, and it was reading 110.5 PSI.  This was adequate, but the lower limit of what I want to run, and at least 3 PSI lower than the passenger-side tire.  I hooked up the air hose and chuck to the auxiliary air fitting in the driver-side front bay and tried to raise the pressure in the tire.  In spite of the manifold gauge reading 120 PSI, all I managed to do was lose a few PSI from the tire.  Although the tires have held their pressure fairly well, they have lost a little bit over the course of our trip.  It has become very clear to me that we need to travel with an auxiliary air compressor that is capable of producing at least 150 PSI at the air chuck if we are to have any ability to adjust tire pressures while away from home.

We pulled out of the Red Trail Vineyard around 9:15 AM and continued east on I-94 towards Fargo, ND and Morehead, MN.  Just three miles shy of the border, detoured south on I-29 for ½ miles and exited to go to the Pilot / Flying J truck stop where we topped off the tank.  They have air pressure lines at each pump, and I started to get the air hose, chuck, and gauge out but decided not to.  We have had our PP-TPMS longer than we have had the bus, and in general it works quite well.  It has one major downside, however, namely, that the “baseline” pressure for each tire is determined by whatever pressure is in the tire at the time the tire pressure sensor is threaded onto the valve stem.  Had I removed the sensor at the truck stop, added air, and reinstalled the sensor, it would have reestablished the baseline pressure at a value that was way too high due to the tire already being hot from being driven 35 miles on I-94.  Later, when the coach sat overnight and the tires cooled off, it would have given us a “low tire” alarm, which would have been annoying.  Newer competitive products have addressed this issue by making the baseline pressure something the user programs into the receiver.  The other major downside to the PP-TPMS sensors is that the batteries are not user replaceable.  At some point they will stop working and have to be replaced at a cost of $35-$50 each.  At that point, we will probably just buy a different system with programmable baseline pressures and user replaceable batteries.

Minnesota, our 9th state on this journey.

Minnesota, our 9th state on this journey.

We returned to I-29 north to I-94 east and crossed into Minnesota, our ninth state (including Michigan) since we left in early June.  We had a very pleasant and uneventful drive through very pretty country; the best kind.  Eastern Minnesota was a combination of green rolling crop lands, lovely lakes and ponds, and northern mixed forests.  Our route was I-94 to MN-336 to US-10 to MN-34 to MN-64, and the roads were all very good except for a short stretch of MN-34 with seams at regular, and annoying short, intervals.  The bus ran very well, and the transmission even behaved the way I think a transmission should, shifting between gears on hills as needed with the cruise control set and no intervention from me.  This primarily occurred on stretches of MN-34 and MN-64 where the speed limit was 55 MPH.  Apparently the transmission is willing to drop out of D into 4 (or at least out of torque converter lockup) when climbing hills, something it does not do as often when I am cruising at 62-64 MPH.

The one thing I noticed on this trip was the auxiliary air system pressure gauge I had installed in the cockpit was indicating that the system would reach 120 PSI and then fairly quickly bleed down to about 105 PSI and then re-pressurize to 120 PSI, over, and over, and over…  At the same time the primary and secondary tank gauges indicated that these tanks were holding 120 PSI until I applied the brakes.

Entrance to Forestedge Winery near Laporte, MN.

Entrance to Forestedge Winery near Laporte, MN.

We arrived at the Forestedge Winery around 1:00 PM, pulled around back per Paul Shuster’s e-mailed instructions, got the car unhooked, and got the bus parked and leveled.  We went over and introduced ourselves to Paul.  He was busy serving wine to potential customers, so we went back to the coach and had a bite of lunch.  We then went for a stroll around the property and worked our way back to the tasting room, where we were able to sample most of his wines.

This driveway goes behind the winery, which is where we parked.

This driveway goes behind the winery, which is where we parked.

Paul and Sharon have a very nice operation in a beautiful setting at the edge of the Paul Bunyan State Forest, and across the road from Lake Benedict.  It’s a tourist/vacation/recreation area, and there was a good flow of traffic through the winery.  There is a nicely gardened sitting area outside and besides tasting and purchasing bottles, you can buy a glass of wine and sit outside and drink it.

 

Our coach and car parked by their Bluebird next to the forest.

Our coach and car parked by their Bluebird next to the forest.

Forestedge makes only “fruit” wines, and has 13 or 14 products.  Although grapes are obviously fruit, this label is used to indicate wines made from any other fruit than grapes.  (Mead, of course, is wine made from honey.)  They started with only rhubarb, and their rhubarb is still grown on the property, but their offerings now include raspberry, strawberry, cranberry, blueberry, chokecherry, black currant, apple, and pear in addition to rhubarb, as well as blends of some of these.  We sampled most of these, and purchased some of the white cranberry, blueberry, chokecherry, black currant, plum, and rhubarb/blueberry.  We won’t be able to do this at every Harvest Host location where we stop, but Paul and Sharon are also members of the FMCA Freethinkers chapter which Linda and I belong to, so there was an additional connection here.  Besides, we liked their wines!  And we decided early in our trip that we were going to purchase wines as our major travel “souvenirs.”  We can enjoy them while traveling, or once we return home, but eventually they are gone and we don’t have to find a long-term place for them in the house.

I finally shut the generator off around 3:30 PM.  I did not let it run long enough this morning to bring the batteries back up to full charge.  In generally it is not good for the batteries to only be partially recharged so I wanted to make sure I did so this afternoon.

The tasting room, art gallery, and patio.

The tasting room, art gallery, and patio.

The weather here was wonderful; blue skies with puffy white clouds and temperatures in the mid-70’s.  We are parked behind a winery, alongside what appear to be a grove of white birch (paper birch) trees, in view of orchards and gardens.  This is no part of this not to like.  While I was resting outside in one of our folding campchairs a Bald Eagle soared overhead.

 

The tasting room and patio looking towards their house.

The tasting room and patio looking towards their house.

Paul invited us for dinner, so we had to explain “the vegan thing.”  Sharon rose to the challenge, making a green salad with fresh picked greens from her own garden, zucchini and onions sautéed in olive oil, and black beans and rice accompanied by their own Raspberry Rhubarb wine.  We had a long, great conversation over this meal, including some tips on what to see and on our visit to Hibbing, MN tomorrow.  As we left their house to return to our coach his final words for the evening were to not be surprised if we heard wolves howling.  We can only hope.