And the road goes on forever...

Thursday, June 25, 2020

Summer Update

What with Covid, it’s been a relatively quiet spring and summer for us. Marc continues to adjust to his new company (his old company sold out to another and was absorbed), although one huge advantage has been for him to work from a home office. He still travels daily but is able to get his day usually started from his desk in the sunroom and end it writing his reports from the same spot. His hours are now much more regular as well and he isn’t being nearly as taken advantage of since he works on salary. Before, he often would work 60 hours for “45” hours of pay. 

With the demise of any volunteering, functions, or event planning with the Humane Society due to Covid, I’m spending time primarily gardening and doing yard work. We’re now close enough to some vacation time that I have been planning for that, which is a nine-day stretch in mid-July. RVing has apparently been a big deal to a lot of folks lately as a safer way to travel and vacation, so I have found many of Wisconsin’s better-known spots pretty well booked. But that’s OK; we’ll just go to Plan B.

They’ve done surveys which suggest that around 60% of RVers like having full hookups. Larger state and county campgrounds usually have at least some electrical sites but it’s almost unheard of in Forest Service camps. So, first step: look only to those without any hookups or services, which I figure eliminates at least 60-65% of the competition. (Commercial campgrounds for us aren’t even in the equation). To that end, Marc worked diligently on making room for and hooking our trailer up with four batteries for longer boondocking! In addition, he bought the connector cable to tie both of our 2200-watt generators together, which will give us enough power to run A/C if necessary.

The second and third step was to look for areas less trafficked; more remote and farther afield. Add in dirt road travel necessity to reach those spots, and we expect to eliminate 90-95% of the competition. We don’t like no stinking reservations! We’re skipping Wisconsin and will head directly to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is filled with state forests, county parks, and national forest areas. We’re going to mix things up a bit on this summer’s recreation and try and get more active in the rustic spots we find. We dug out our metal detectors, which we purchased in the late 1990’s but have hardly used and hope to dig our way through some interesting spots.

Since it’s a shame to have so many thousands of lakes and rivers available and not be able to get out on them, we’ve switched up our way to do that. Marc decided he just didn’t like trying to fish out of the inflatable boat I bought a few years ago, so we just sold it and are replacing that with two new pedal power angling kayaks. These should arrive next weekend so we have time to get them set up and figure out the transportation mechanics of carting them along. This should make for an interesting story since neither one of us has ever kayaked in our lives. These nudged out the idea of ever getting a pontoon boat, so hopefully we, like thousands of others running around with kayaks on their roofs, will find the sport engaging and fun.

As being solely at home restrictions lifted, we slipped away one four-day weekend in May to the county park campground I found last year figuring it wouldn’t be too busy as yet. We scored our favorite site once again and cozied up to the lakeshore for a wonderful stay and great weather. Fishing was a bust but it was a wonderful break and only wetted our appetite for what we can find this summer on new adventures. I’ll try and be better about posting those!

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