blog update starting Aug 22nd

To the blog readers,

For pictures with descriptive captions click here...

August 22nd 2010 finds us at Sault Ste. Marie, pronounced Soo Saint Marie, Michigan's oldest city founded in 1668.  This is our 24th day on the road.  The temps have cooled off some and the weather is very pleasant.  We have really enjoyed our time in the upper Michigan Peninsula.   We are still in the United States but just a mile separates from the Sault Ste Marie, Ontario port of entry.  This will be our port of entry for the Canadian leg of our journey.  An easy description of our location is on the most eastern end of Lake Superior.

We had planned to spend some time here in Sault Ste. Marie because of the many points of interest, therefore we needed a cheap place to hang out.  We choose the Kewadin Casino RV Campgrounds.  It gave us water, electric, and the important wifi internet connection.  The Casino also gave us cheap meals and even a free one.  Hard to beat and deal like that.  We spent 3 nights here.  During the  time  we spent in the many POIs in the downtown area, I would say that the area of the Soo Locks was the most interesting.  We spent several hours watching the great lakes ship pass through the Soo locks.  More  than 11,000 ships pass through them each year and we were fortunate enough to see one of the 1000' foot talanite cargo ships pass through with only 3 feet clearance on the side and about 10 feet on the front.   The locks drops or raises the ships a distance of 21' between lake Superior and Lake Huron.  The locks are on the Saint Marie river also the home to 3 hydro electric power plants. The Edison electric plant was built in 1908 and has 36 turbines still running after 102 years.  Another historic POI is the Mackinac Bridge and Mackinaw city that connects Michigan Upper and Michigan Lower Peninsula.  Some of our time was spent at the museums arounjd the locks.  We took a tour boat ride around the different parts of the Soo Locks and even traveled through the Poe lock.  The locks are part of the Corp of Engineers.  I enjoyed a 5 hour tour of the Valley Camp, an old Great Lakes steam powered coal freighter taken out of service in the 70s and made into a floating museum. 

Just a note... Lake superior is a exciting place because of the important history all along its shores.

Our next adventure starting aug 24th will be spent alone the Canadian north shore of Lake Superior.  We traveled highway 17, scenic and historic route  alone the east and north toward a town called Wawa, ON.   It is best known for the many natural waterfalls located alone route 17 and the fact that it was the connection point of the of the Trans Canada Highway some 50 years ago.  It is also the home of the Famous Wawa Goose a often photographed landmark in north america. We stayed at the Rabbits Blanket Provincial park and the Wawa RV Resort.  From Wawa we took route 101 toward Hawk Junction, Timmins, ON and Val-d'or in Quebec.  We did a nice hike to the Pothole Falls near Hawk Junction.  Just a note about the highways along here...  A lot of nice road and lot of very poor roads some worse than anything  on our Alaska trip. Timmins has an active gold mine that has scheduled tourist tours.  Our travel plans are changing somewhat, the original plan was complete our Canadian leg and then come into the Bangor Maine area to visit my cousing and start our travel leg down the east coast.  We made the decision to drop down into New York state via Ottawa, on to the Cornwall port of entry. This puts us in the Robert Moses State Park, in New York.  We visited the Eisenhower Locks, 40' rise or lower of the Saint Lawrence Seaway.  We spent 2 days on the Barnhart Island Beach campground.  We visited the Power Project center at the St Lawrence FDR Hydro Power Project, a 2000 megawatt plant.  Its length is 3300 feet and is divided into two sections, one half for the US and half for Canda.  Just a few miles into NY is a GM power train plant and a Alcoa Aluminum making cylinder heads for GM. These are located in Messena Township, New York.

From Massena we traveled the 160 miles toward Altona, New York, the home of my second cousin Sandra.  She lives just outside of the Androdack State park on a farm with 5 huge 3 megawatt wind turbines.  She worked for Nobile Power, the company that owns and installed the turbines.

From Altona, NY, along with Sandra, we traveled 2 hours south to Hague, New York to spend 5 days with my cousin Dick Dykstra and his wife Rena.  They live on a heavily treed mountain top in the Adirondack State Park.  We have a great place to park the RV that gave us 360 degrees of scenic beauty.  One evening we sited 5 deer, a fawn and a wild turkey in the yard next to the house.  We took a day trip to Lake George for a ride on the Minnie Ha Ha steam powered excursion boat  for a ride around the lake. Lots of visitors there because of the Labor Day weekend. 

From Hague, our travel plans take us back north on I87 to Plattsburg NY and then back into Quebec, Canada to continue our adventure toward Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

For now that is all

John and Barbara on the road heading east into  Canada



 

Blog update starting Aug 1 2010

To the blog,

I have also posted pictures here with descriptive captions.
Here is another picture link with descriptive captions
Please view these as they will help understand just where we have been.

I have used links to some of these locations because I do not have the time and the talent to properly describe them.


Aug the 1st found us in Bennett Springs state park, a Missouri state park located about 20 miles north of Lebanon MO built by the CCC during the 1930's. Along with us was our friends Paul and Jean McClure from Lake Livingstone, TX and Jim and Fonda Hatfield from Shongaloo, LA. We had a nice site with services and a private front yard. We were planning to spend 5 days at the park. In the evening hours we would attend the 42nd annual Brumley Sings at the convention center in nearby Lebanon.
Bennett Springs is a popular fishing lake that has a fish hatchery and is fed by one of the many springs in MO. Many folks come from all around the US for the Fly Fishing school held on the river.

Aug 9th we stayed at the Lake Michigan State park at Zion, just north of the Great Lakes Naval Base. We spent a few minutes at the navel base visitor center. At this point we were traveling north on the west side of Lake Michigan through Chicago, Il Milwaukee Sheboygan, and then toward Green Bay Wi. Our target was the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the home of the YOOPERS'. There we would spend about a week. Our overnight stops were Green Bay, Carney Lake State Forrest near Iron Moutain, Marquett, and then the National Forrest Bay Furnace campground for 6 nights. We met up with friends and visited historic Christmas, MI, and Munising. We really enjoyed our 6 days around this area. We met several folks in the Bay Furnace campground that became our special friends. These were folks that know the area well and gave some of the secrets of the area. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is full of scenic waterfalls, museums, and things to do. The town of Iron Mountain was the home of a Ford Motor assy plant that converted during WWII to building the CG4A cargo glider, one of the only remaining ones is at the Silent Wings Museum in Lubbock. We spent the morning touring the Iron Mountain attraction. We went down into the mine shaft for a close inspections. I spent the afternoon at the Cornish Pump Museum, featuring the largest Cornish pump in the US and many other exhibits. We also took a trip south on park road 13 to the historical town of Fayette, MI. Fayette was founded in 1867 by the Jackson Iron Company. It was once a busy industrial town that produced pig iron from raw iron ore. It is now a Michigan Historic site.

We had the pleasure of meeting Peter Bensing and his friend Melody. Peter has worked at the local hardware store for 40 years and has a talent for great outdoor nature photography. He also has connections all over this area, therefore he can go anywhere to take these pictures. He gets up early and works late for some of the special shots. I will place, with permission, some of his pictures on our Picasaweb site at a later date. We met Ron from Tennessee. He fell in love with the UPPER early in life and still comes back each summer to spend time in his playground. We met Kathy and Mike from Florida who grew up in the Detroit area, buts come back to the UPPER to fill up on the magic found in this area. Mike and Kathy picked a lot of wild blueberries around the area and made a blueberry pie. In addition to the blueberry pie they made an apple/rhubarb and an apple then invited us to their site for pie and ice cream. The pie night was enjoyed by all. We met Tom who retired early from working at a Chicago Power Provider and has since found life on the road very satisfying. Tom has an mailing address at the Escapees in Livingstone TX, but winters in Mexico and travels the UPPER during the summer.

Munising is a interesting port town on Lake Superior that served as a iron and coal port during during the early 1900's. We spent time there visiting the local sights and points of interest. Great Lakes shipping was important then, as it now.

From the Munising area we traveled to Andrus Lake State Forrest where we met up with Mike and Kathy again. She had saved a great camp site for us on the Andrus lake. The next day we attended the annual Wild Blueberry Festival in Paradise, MI. We traveled to Whitefish point to the Shipwreck Wreck Museum and spent most of the day there. Then off to the blueberry patches for more berry picking, what a day.

That is all for this update...
The next update starts at Sault Ste Marie, Michigan... (Sue St. Marie) The location of the Soo Locks...

new blog updates for friends and family from John and Barbara Harris

To the Blog. update from April to July 30th 2010

I have a lot of catching up on past vacation days. So lets get started.

My last blog update was from the Casita Rally held Bandera Texas

I have posted pictures with descriptive captions here

After the the Bluebonnet rally we moved to Canyon Lake Corp of Engineer campground called Potters Creek. It is a campground where can use our Golden Age pass, therefore $8.00 per night was a good deal. It was a convenient stopping point on our way to Houston where our friend Jack Reed was going for his annual eye checkup on the 4th of May. We used Potters Creek for a base camp for visits to several towns around the area. We stayed here until Friday the 30th.
We had reservations at Stephen F Austin state park on Sunday the 2nd of May.
After leaving Stephen F Austin we headed to the Dallas area to visit Keith and Beverly Sims in Grandview and then to Jay's house in Dallas. We had a great time with Keith and Beverly.



June 16th 2010
Next we decided to beat the heat and head to Red River NM. We stayed at our favorite campground, Columbine. We had good weather and a very nice site within 10' of the river. Brad and Bev joined us on the 19th, spent the night and left Sunday evening. Jean and Tony Boeckman from Medford OK came by on their way to Santa Fe and camped across the road. They followed us to Brad and Bev's house in Santa fe. We had a delightful 3 days visit with them all. We left for Lubbock on Monday the 28th.

Now fast forward to July 30th 2010
We packed up the trailer and head out for the north east and south east Canada. Our first night is a 450 mile trip to Hugo Lake COE in southeastern Oklahoma. We are headed to Queen Wilhelmina State Park near Mina Arkansas. We were camped in QWSP on monday when we noticed some friends that we know from near Livingston, TX walking up to our camper. They saw our rig and came by to say hello. Just a by chance meeting. They were in route to Bennett Springs State Park in Missouri to attend a gospel music event called Brummley Sings in Lebanon. We left Lubbock in triple digit temperature and all the way through Arkansas we drove in record breaking temps.

I think I will end this update and start the next on August 1st... More to follow

John n Barbara on the road

Our Texas Hill country rally and adventure

For more updated pictures click here

Hi to all,

We left Lubbock on the 8th of April heading to Bandera, Tx in the middle of Texas Hill country. Stopped by Chuck and Susan Lewis's new home in San Angelo very near the State park there. We spent several hours with them talking about old times. Chuck and I worked together for 30 years.
We spent the next 4 days at South Llano State Park south of Junction, Tx. This is a very nice park for hiking and birding.
Next we went to Garner State Park near Uvalde and spent 3 night there. This a old CCC park built in the 1930s. This park feature over 500 sites an has been a generational rec spot for many. The Frio river flows through it.
From there we went to Lost Maples State natural area. Features a big grove of Big Tooth maple trees and a lost of scenic hiking trails. While we were there, it rained very hard and closed all the roads outside the park. Mostly the low water crossing but the road to Bandera was closed by a rock slide. We left on Sunday for the 45 minute scenic drive on highway 337 to our annual rally at Bandera. Our 7 days went quickly at the rally. We renewed friendships and met new people as well. We also visited our neighbor from Lubbock Donna who now lives in Kerrville.
At the present time we are camped at Potter Creek Corp of Engineers Campground on Canyon Lake about 45 minutes due north of San Antonio. Very nice place so we decided to extend to Sunday the 2nd of March. We then head to Stephen F Austin State park.
Will try to update when I have time.

John and Barbara on the road again

Caught in Homer Alaska by the Google Camera and other

To our blog following friends,

Some of you may remember a picture of the Google camera car that I took while in Homer Alaska. Barbara and I were walking in downtown Homer and the Google car drove by, so I took a picture of it. We later passed it on another road. I was sure that it was taking pictures, so I checked the street view and I found myself.

Just to do a quick update...
Our last outing was the first of November 2009 at Davis Mountain State park. We had several home projects and then a trip to Dallas for Thanksgiving.

While in Dallas for a few day, I got the opportunity to go for a ride in Scott Carter's new experimental Extra EZ airplane. Very nice and a ~200MPH 4 seat plane. For pictures and descriptions of the plane click here. Some of the first pictures were taken by my son Jay, from a chase plane. Jay took this one for the cover of October 2009 Contact Magazine. His plane won Reserve Grand Champion at the Oshkosh flyin in October 2009. Scott started his Extra EZ in 1997. This was his second home built with his first be a Long EZ that began around 1980.

After that, we were back in Lubbock and back to the home projects. I finished a long standing tile project, did some painting in the utility room and repairs to a backyard deck. I still have several remodel projects but they are not pressing. The end of 2009 has come and gone and we are making plans for 2010. We have plans to spend time on the road again, maybe traveling to the eastern part of the country. Our first trip will be to the annual Bluebonnet Rally in Bandera and then to Dallas for a few days.

I have a hard time with the idea that I have been retired for over 13 months. The time has disappeared very quickly. I just don't know how I ever had time to work a full time job.

I've been upgrading the suspension on the Bigfoot, along with replacing the tires. I figure I had around 28K miles on the Marathons. I also replaced the worn spring shackles with heavy duty ones. I also replaced a broken window glass and a rearview camera.

We look forward to the Bluebonnet rally this year and visiting with friends from all over the country.

John and Barbara from Lubbock