Tag Archives: Wapakoneta (OH)

2013/12/20 (F) Berea, KY

We left Lakewood Village RV Resort in Wapakoneta, Ohio at 9 AM and drove the 231 miles non-stop to the Oh! Kentucky RV park/Campground in Berea, Kentucky, arriving at 1:30 PM.  Even though we encountered light rain at points along the way we were able to travel at 62 mph much of the time, so we did slightly better than the 50 mph average we use when translating distances into travel times.  It turns out that 62 mph is a speed that both the drivers and the bus like.  As was the case back in October, there was considerable road construction through Dayton, Ohio that required us to slow down, but traffic moved smoothly through the construction zones.  There was also still considerable construction along I-75 through Cincinnati, Ohio with posted speed limits of 45 mph, but again, traffic moved very smoothly.

As soon as you cross the Ohio River on I-75 and enter Kentucky you have to climb a long steep grade.  This was the only part of the trip where I had to drop the transmission into 3rd gear as we did less than 40 mph up the grade.  I think the bus could have done better, maybe 50 mph, but the big fully-loaded tractor-trailers could not, and that dictated the flow of traffic for everyone else.  No problem; after owning a large vehicle for over four years, and having crested the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming at under 20 mph in 1st gear, we are very sympathetic to what truck drivers have to deal with.  Eventually the grade became less steep and everyone was able to travel a little faster, or get around the trucks that couldn’t, but it seems that we were climbing for close to 30 minutes after crossing the river.  Kentucky is hilly.

The Oh! Kentucky Campground office and hardware store.

The Oh! Kentucky Campground office and hardware store.

The Oh! Kentucky RV Park/Campground was a modest place, but was perfect for our needs.  The entrance was only 0.3 miles from the exit ramp off I-75 and was an easy turn in for us.  There were more rigs here than at Lakewood Village RV Resort, mostly 5th wheels and trailers, but it was also much warmer than where we were the previous night.  There were also a dozen or so “seasonals” and a number of long-term campers.  We tend to be leery of parks with seasonal (permanent) units as they are often not well kept, but they had a great pull-through site for us with easy in-and-out access and full hookups that included 50 amp electrical for under $30 for the night.  Besides, the temperature was 57 deg F when we arrived and went up to 61 deg F before settling back to 57 deg F as the forecast low for the night.  It was also very windy.

Our easy access pull-through site.

Our easy access pull-through site.

I walked around the campground, which was not very big, and took a few pictures.  I wanted to scope out our exit path and I like to document the places we visit.  Linda and I took a leisurely stroll a little later as we usually do at a new RV park.  Steve (from the office) stopped by while I was washing the windshields to chat for a minute and compliment us on our “camper.”  Linda headed back to the office/store to pick up a few essentials and was addressed as “honey” for the 8th time.  She thought it was quaint.  She met one of our fellow campers on the way back, an older woman out walking her dog.  The woman was traveling solo pulling a small trailer with a pickup truck.  Linda went for a longer walk by herself later and met the woman again, who joined her for the stroll.  She confirmed that it was windy there all the time, not unlike what we experienced in Wyoming this past summer.

You meet some interesting people RVing.  This woman was from Montana, older, retired, and married with adult children.  She had been at this campground since September and wasn’t leaving until April, but her husband was in Florida for the winter.  She had a son who lived in central Florida.  She tried one winter there but didn’t like it.  She had daughter who lived and worked near Detroit, Michigan, apparently also in a “camper.”  Small world.

She picked Berea for the winter because it’s mentioned in the Bible (Acts), she had never been to this part of the country, and the price was right.  She did not do much other research before booking herself in here for 7 – 8 months, however, and was surprised to discover that it was not in the mountains.  The mountains are not far away; you can see the first real mountain range from I-75 southbound as you approach the exits for Berea.  Although we did not unhook the car and go exploring, our research indicated that Berea was an interesting place with a famous college and a thriving community of artists and artisans.  Perhaps not interesting enough for an 8 month stay, but then there may be enough cultural attractions and opportunities for classes to fill the time.  I suppose it depends on what you like to do.

Although it spritzed occasionally, it never really rained so I decided to get the water softener out and fill our on-board fresh water tank.  I also cleaned the four windshields and the front side windows.  Our lower windshield washers don’t work, so I decided to take a look at that.  It’s amazing what you can do when the temperature is 60 deg F!  I did not arrive at a definitive diagnosis (which means I wasn’t able to completely fix the problem) but I rigged up a work-around.  I may have a multiple failure situation.  It appears that the pump for the lower windshields has either failed, and/or the switch on the windshield wiper stalk has failed, and/or the wiring in-between has failed.  Figuring it out exactly will take more time and test instruments than I wanted to deal with today.  I also discovered that some of the small orifices on the wiper arms may have been inadvertently clogged when they were spray painted.  My work-around was to simply switch the output hoses from the two pumps.  That allowed me to turn on the lower wipers and then activate the upper wiper pump, causing windshield washer fluid to spray on the bottom windshields.  We will be driving in and out of rain all day tomorrow, which means lots of road spray, so I hope this works.

2013/12/19 (R) Snowbirds Take Flight

Why do people snowbird?  I don’t know about anyone else, but as we have gotten older we have become less tolerant of the cold and the work involved in clearing snow from our driveway.  We are also not winter sports people, so the main charm of winter for us is looking at the snow.  True, now that we are both retired we no longer have to drive to/from work every day, regardless of how ridiculously dangerous the weather and road conditions are, but that does not equate to a particularly active lifestyle.  And with the change in the way we eat—to a whole-foods plant-based approach —we are both healthier than we been in decades; so part of the decision to become snowbirds was the desire to be in a place where we could be much more physically active during the winter months.

As I have described in some previous post(s), we decided to try Florida for our first snowbird experience primarily because of the Arcadia (Bus’in) Rally held in Arcadia, Florida between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.  Although we would have liked to be headed south around November 1st, family, business, and personal commitments did not make that possible.  Early entry for the Arcadia Rally, however, was December 26th.  We often try to take advantage of early entry dates when they are offered and we wanted to arrive on the 26th and get set up.

Our original plan was to leave on the 20th, drive to Berea, Kentucky and stay two nights.  We would then drive to Cartersville, Georgia on the 22nd and again stay two nights.  The 24th would find us driving to somewhere in Florida and again staying for two nights.  The morning of the 26th we would then drive to Arcadia, Florida.  That was the plan, before the weather forecast strongly suggested a different itinerary.

Based on the national weather forecasts it appeared that if we left Michigan on the morning of the 20th there was a high likelihood we could have mixed precipitation on the first part of our drive.  Me, the bus, and ice don’t mix.  Further, there was a strong cold front pushing south which had the potential for us to drive through heavy rain and experience below freezing overnight lows for much of our trip south.  Leaving on Thursday the 19th offered the opportunity to get somewhat ahead of the rain and avoid below-freezing overnight lows for the entire trip.  Either way it looked like we were going to drive in rain.

As I mentioned in the previous post we had determined that the Lakewood Village RV Resort in Wapakoneta, Ohio was far enough south to assure overnight low temperatures above freezing.  We decided to aim for a Thursday noon departure which, barring any traffic situations, would put us at the RV resort before 4 PM with plenty of daylight left for getting parked and hooked up.  From there we would continue on to Berea, Kentucky and Cartersville, Georgia as planned, but only stay one night in each place, ending up at Williston Crossings RV Resort in Williston, Florida where we would stay for four nights before driving to the Arcadia Rally.

We were up early Thursday morning, had our usual breakfast, and then got right to work loading the bus.  We packed more “stuff” than we did for our summer trip out west.  Our western trip was only two months with mostly summer climate so we only needed summer clothes.  This trip will be closer to four months by the time we get back with temperatures ranging for below-freezing lows to highs in the 80’s, requiring a more extensive selection of clothes.

Although we had 8+ inches of snow on the ground and temperatures in the 20’s when we got up, there was some sunshine and temperatures rose through the morning to just above freezing.  The driveway was already cleared as we hired a snow-removal service for the winter and I had spent several hours the previous day removing a couple of additional inches that fell after the snow removal service was there.  As we did not expect to have overnight lows below freezing we decided to load fresh water on board which would allow us to use the bathroom and then fully de-winterize the rig once we got parked without having to hook up to an external water supply.

By noon the bus and car were ready.  We rounded up the cats, put them on board, and then finished prepping the house.  We checked the light timers, stopped the grandfather clock, set the thermostats at 55 deg F (we can monitor and control the main one via the Internet), winterized the toilets and sink traps so they would not evaporate (and just in case), opened cabinets with water lines to aid in keeping them at room temperature, turned off the well pump, closed the water valves, and shutdown the water conditioning equipment.  We locked the doors and pulled out of the driveway at 12:30 PM.

Our site at C2C Lakewood Village RV Resort in Wapakoneta, OH.

Our site at C2C Lakewood Village RV Resort in Wapakoneta, OH.

We drove about four miles to get to Grand River Avenue, picked up I-96 eastbound for about four miles and then headed south on US-23.  It took about 90 minutes to reach the Ohio state line and another 30 minutes to swing around the west and south sides of Toledo, Ohio to reach I-75 in Perrysburg, Ohio.  We had an easy run south from there to exit 111 at Wapakoneta, and just another half-mile to get to Lakewood Village RV Resort.  We arrived at 4 PM, having traveled 166 miles in 3.5 hours.  But it was almost due south of our starting point and got us out of freezing temperatures.

Why there aren’t more RV’s here?

Why aren’t there more RV’s here?

The resort was open for business but mostly snow-covered with very few guests.  The resort roads and parking lots, however, were clear of snow.  We were allowed to pick our spot and found a nice pull-though that just accommodated our motorcoach/car combination and would provide for an easy exit the following morning.  We had an early dinner and turned in for the night at 8 PM.

 

2013_10_22 (T) A Good Day’s Drive

Today was the final leg of our 12-day trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and back by way of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and the mountains of West Virginia.  We had 276 miles to travel and figured it would take us 5.5 hours as our planned route was mostly US highways with some Interstate highway legs and a little bit of surface roads.  We planned to leave around 10 AM and arrive home between 3:30 and 4:00 PM.  We actually left at 11:19 AM and arrived home at 5:00 PM.  Although we were approaching Ann Arbor from the south around 4:15 PM and encountered increasingly heavy traffic, we slowed down to the posted truck speed of 60 MPH and sailed right around.

The drive from Chillicothe, OH to Columbus, OH on US-23 was very pleasant.  The highway was 4-lane divided most of the way, and often limited access.  The terrain was still gently rolling and was very pretty with fall colors under nice sunlight.  Lunch hour traffic around the outskirts of Columbus on I-270 was moderate but not congested, even in the construction zones.  We exited I-270 at the northwest corner of the Columbus area onto US-33 headed northwest.  Again, an excellent multi-lane divided US highway that rolls through some lovely countryside and passes just next to the highest point in Ohio.

We stayed on US-33 until it intersected I-75N at Wapakoneta, OH.  From there it was 90 miles to Toledo, OH but we exited before reaching Toledo, heading west on I-475/US-23 which turned north towards Sylvania, effectively bypassing Toledo.  Crossing the border into Michigan it always feels like we are almost home, but we are not.  The shortest distance to a border from our house is about 60 miles, which gets us to the bridge or tunnel from Detroit to Windsor, Canada.  But the shortest route to a bordering state is US-23 to Ohio which is straight north/south shot to our community.  Even so, it was 70 miles and another 80 minutes of driving, or about 25% of our trip today.

While it is always nice to return home, it is often the worst part of the trip in terms of roads.  Many of Michigan’s roads are not in the best shape, and US-23 from Ohio to Ann Arbor is one of those roads.  It’s not only annoying (our tax dollars not at work), it’s embarrassing.

We pulled into the driveway around 5:00 PM, plugged in the electrical shoreline and unloaded much of our stuff.  I got a load of laundry started while Linda put groceries away.  We still had some daylight, so we grabbed our box of yellow plastic stakes and a 100 foot tape measure and marked the approximate location of the proposed bus barn and driveway.  While Linda fixed dinner (black beans and rice from leftovers) I called Phil at Precision Grading to let him know he could stop by at his convenience to measure the layout for estimating purposes.

On balance it was a good 12-day outing.  We learned quite a bit about using our digital SLR camera in conjunction with powerful but free image editing software.  We were in scenic parts of the country at an ideal time of year for photography.  We got to do some sight-seeing, hiking, and captured some nice photographic images.  We got to spend time with new friends and with family.  And the coach ran well.