Time to get ready to head south

It's hard to believe that we'll be on our way south in just 6 days from now.

We've sold our first tow car, a 2004 Ford Focus, with its Roadmaster tow gear and now have a 2008 Chevy HHR

We have switched to Blue Ox tow gear.

One weekend, we drove our car to Cleveland, Ohio to pick up the Blue Ox base plate for the HHR.  From Cleveland we drove to Hershey, PA to attend the largest RV show.  Interesting show!  It was Bev's first visit to Hershey so she enjoyed the view of the street lights shaped like Hershey Kisses!

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit the Hershey museum.  And, of course, we stopped to shop at Camping World in Bath, NY on our way home (too bad they don't have any stores in Canada).

The following weekend, with the help of our friend John, Vic installed the base plate on the HHR and then we headed up to the RV to do a test of towing the HHR with the RV.  All worked well.

Then came the installation of a hitch on the car for our bike rack, wiring of lights to work in conjunction with the RV lights, wiring for our Even Brake system.

Today was 20C here at home so we took a drive in the country in one of our Spitfires before winterizing it with additives to the gas tank for winter storage. 

Tomorrow we start packing our RV for our annual journey south.

Visit to Mackinac Island MI

This was our second summer trip by car -- no RV.

On Wednesday July 25th we drove to Rogers City in northern Michigan to spend 6 days with Vic's brother and his wife at their summer home on Lake Huron. We took our friend Barb with us.  While there we drove north to Mackinaw City to take the ferry to Mackinac Island for the day.

Mackinac Island is a unique place as there are no cars allowed -- only bicycles or horse and carriage.

View along Main Street

There are many ice cream and fudge shops on Main Street so we stopped to shop along the way.

On our previous trip to Mackinac Island we rented bicycles to travel around the perimeter of the island.  This time we walked the trails across the island and visited many sites we had not seen before.  

We visited the Stuart House Museum which highlighted the history of the fur trade industry on the island. Then passed the cemetery on the trail to Fort Holmes and the lookout point.

The 2 forts on the island are Fort Mackinac (founded in 1780) and Fort Holmes (built in 1812) .

Fort Mackinac

The stairway down the hill from Fort Holmes.

The Grand Hotel, built in 1887, held a special event earlier this year to celebrate 125 years in business. The hotel is a very impressive structure with beautiful gardens.

view of the Grand Hotel from the ferry

Barb on the walkway to the Grand Hotel

Horse and carriage topiary in the Grand Hotel garden

Another view of one of the Grand Hotel gardens

There are many other beautiful hotels and Bed and Breakfast Inns on the island.  All the places had beautiful floral decorations. Here are a couple of examples:

The Lilac Tree Hotel on Main Street.

Metivier Inn  (originally a private residence built in 1877)

There are two remarkable rock formations known as Sugar Loaf and the Arch Rock.

View of Sugar Loaf from Point Lookout

Views of Arch Rock

Finger Lakes in our sportscar

On Friday June 22nd, we joined 60 other members of our Toronto Triumph club in a trip to the Finger Lakes area of New York state.

We own two 1976 Triumph Spitfire sportscars.  We drove our yellow one on this trip.

Highway travel was kept to a minimal. We took mainly scenic country roads. Our trip along Ridge Road from Stoney Creek ON to Niagara Falls provided a beautiful view of the area, especially of many of the wineries in the area.

We spent 4 days based at a hotel in Bath NY.  The first evening we enjoyed dinner at the Bath Golf and Country Club.

Saturday June 23rd we spent most of the morning visiting the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport at the south end of Keuka Lake.

Statue of the "June Bug" on the lawn of the Curtiss Museum

From there we drove to the Corning Museum in Corning where we met some of our fellow club members for lunch before touring the museum for the afternoon.  At 5 pm we drove to Branchport to board the Esperanza Rose for a dinner cruise of Keuka Lake. 

Sunday June 24th we drove to the Ventosa Winery near Geneva for a winery tour, wine tasting and a buffet lunch.  The building for the winery was located on the top of a hill with beautiful views of the vineyard and Seneca Lake.

View of Seneca lake from the Ventosa Winery

Our car show was held on the lawn of the winery with judging by fellow participants.



In the afternoon we drove to Watkins Glen to shop around town, then we drove to the Watkins Glen International Speedway.  We drove our cars for 3 laps around the speedway.  Unlike our drive on the Mosport International Raceway track were we drove at a slow pace in parade style, at Watkins Glen we followed the pace car at speeds up to 80 mph! 

The following are links to a video of the cars lined up to enter the Watkins Glen race track and a video taken by Bev of our first 2 laps around the track!

Lining Up Before Lapping
Watkins Glen Lapping

Our awards dinner was held at the Watkins Glen International Raceway.  Vic won first place in the Spitfire Class.  All the ladies received a beautiful piece of fused glass artwork from the gift store at Corning Museum.

High Relief Fused Glass artwork by Anne Nye -- perfect decoration for our RV!

Monday June 25th we drove home via a different route to enjoy more of the scenic countryside in the Finger Lakes area.

Home Again

We arrived at the border crossing at the Bluewater Bridge in Port Huron, MI about 4 pm Friday April 13th.  Must have been our lucky day. There was a brief 5 minute stop to export the RV at US Customs, no lineup at Canadian immigration and only 15 minutes to complete the import formalities at Canadian Customs.

We stopped in London for dinner (mmm...pizza) and then joined 10 other RVs at the Flying J for the night.  That is the only place  with RV dump facilities open at this time of year on our route home in Ontario.

Saturday noon we arrived back at our home to be greeted by friends and family.  We travelled a total of 7,572 miles this winter -- 300 more than last year due to our trip from Tucson to Phoenix and back to Tucson.

We are enjoying our newer RV.  For short people like Bev, the 6-way power co-pilot seat, automated controls for the fantastic fans, the power visors, the electric awning all come in handy.  We appreciate the metal containers over the slide covers and awning, especially in high winds. We're still getting used to the side-view cameras when changing lanes -- they can be a little distracting.  Since the cupboard for the washer/dryer is just shelving, we have way more storage in this RV.  The increased insulation and dual pane windows reduce the sound from outside and keep us warmer on cool nights.

Vic added a tire monitor system which will ease our mind after the blowout we had in El Paso on our journey south.  Our Pursuit carried a spare but this RV has the larger 22.5" tires.  Since each tire weighs 90 lbs without a rim, there is no provision for a spare tire as they are for all practical purposes not user replaceable.

Many thanks to our daughter and our neighbours for looking after our home each winter while we follow our dream!

The River Walk

We truly enjoyed our visit to San Antonio, Texas.  We stayed at a lovely little RV park called Hidden Valley on the southwest side of the city.  With our PA discount, it cost $66 for 3 days and we were only a 15 minute drive from the downtown area.  The park was quiet -- no highway or street noise. Nice.....

We spent 2 days in the area.  First we visited the Alamo and enjoyed the tour very much.  Free unless you want to rent the audio tour devices which were just $6 per person.  Very interesting historical site.

The River Walk is a beautiful area of San Antonio, and likely unique in the world. You stroll the sidewalks around a loop in the river located in the downtown area.  We took a few photos but you have to visit there to truly appreciate it. 

It is hard to believe that the River Walk area was first re-developed in the 1920's but most of the current hotels, etc were added in 1968 at the time of the HemisFair. 

For further information, go to this link:  History of the San_Antonio_River_Walk

Tour boat passing by while we were seated at a restaurant for lunch

Ducks join the noon time diners

After the River Walk, we decided to hike to the Mexican Market Square and passed some beautiful  historical buildings along the way.

The Court House

Tiny house built in 1800s.

note the faded Cocoa Cola sign advertising a bottle for 5 cents!

San Antonio

After months of research and visiting private sellers and dealers in Tucson and Phoenix, we found a newer motorhome to our requirements.  We got a good trade-in value and ideal price for a 37' 2006 Monaco Monarch motorhome in Tucson.  The people at Pedata RV Sales were very nice in dealing with us. They responded promptly and accurately with our concerns.

It didn't start out well. On our initial test drive the transmission would not shift out of second (limp mode). The embarrassed salesman returned to the lot and could only apologize. We continued to look at other rigs in Tucson without find something that "turned our crank". We moved on to Phoenix for two days..and still didn't find anything that could beat the quality, features, price, and mileage of the Monaco Monarch at Pedata. While we were in Phoenix, Bob, the salesman at Pedata called to relate that the rig was taken to an Allison transmission specialist who found nothing wrong. The rig was ready for another test drive if we were to return.  We did.

The second test drive went a little better and  Vic even got a chance to drive the rig. But...it was "backfiring like crazy" as quoted by salesman on the service report. We were not frightened off by this set-back and bought the rig conditional on all out fixes being met. There were only 22 items to get fixed:

-Engine backfiring like crazy under full throttle (bad ignition wire)
-Levelers not functioning (took two tries but they added fluid which correct problems...still not 100% yet)
-Awning not extending properly (sticking on one arm (fixed)
-upper right corner of interior slide frame bent and facia cracked (fixed)
-convex rear view mirror on right side missing (replaced)
-seal on roof cracked on front driver's side (re-sealed the whole roof!)
-shower doors free to slide while underway (added strap to hold doors open)
-rearview camera not functioning sometime (claimed to have fixed loose connection but still an issue)
-cap on leveler hydraulic reservoir cross threaded ( re-threaded but not a long term fix...I will replace later)
-vinyl on dash loose (re-glued)
-fridge hinge loose ( repaired to our satisfaction)
-tires cracking on sidewalls, out of date (we paid for upgrade to Toyo tires rather than offered lower quality tires)
-light lens missing on main salon and bedroom (all replaced)
-missing bladder and air pump for sofa bed mattress (will ship to our Indiana address)
-AC/DC breaker/fuse panel loose in bedroom (repaired)
-ice maker not making ice cubes (replaced with new unit but still not sure working 100%)
-window valance loose (fixed)
-wires hanging out of rear upper right marker light (weird...removed)
-new chassis and coach batteries
-hitch electrical connector broken and painted over (replaced with new)
-small chip on windshield (repaired)
-Bonus...used 4" drop down hitch adapter included at no charge

 Vic spent a day flying with stopover from Tucson to Toronto, a day to wire the money to pay for the RV and then another day to fly back to join Bev in Tucson.  After the deal went through we spent 3 days to transfer all our "stuff" over and make sure everything worked properly.

We are finally on our route back to Ontario with target date to cross the border on April 13th.

We have booked into an RV park just south of San Antonia, TX to spend a couple of days visiting the Alamo, doing the River Walk and the boat tour. We are staying at Hidden Valley RV Park which is located about 15 minutes from downtown. What a great park! Quiet, secluded, wooded,  friendly place, and well priced. Nothing special, no pool or hot tub, no showers, but good 50 amp hook-up, water and sewer connections. Free internet. Did I say quiet? Nice. And there were fireflies this evening which we haven't encountered for years at home!!!!

Here are the pics the dealer had on their web site:

 

 

 

Front left showing main slide room.

Front left showing bedroom slide,

 Note the electric awing on the left slide. Cool!

The arse end. Cute butt!

Passenger side showing computer desk and rocker chair.

 Microwave convection oven will take some getting used to. No gas oven saves space that can be used for storage.

Kitchen and dinette.

 We are happy with the dinette setup as we saw some issues with separate table and chairs being bounced around while under way.

Dinette and sofa bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View looking forward. Both driver and passenger set power adjust.

The bedroom queen walk-around bed.

Lots of storage here but even more not shown.

Bathroom is small but functional.

Good size shower.

Boy toys: Workhorse chassis, Chevy engine, Allison transmission, 22.5" wheels, less than 12,000 miles

Currently in Phoenix

We had a safe trip from Lo de Marcos to the Mexican/US border at Nogales. We left Lo de Marcos on the morning of Sunday, March 18th and arrived in the Tucson area on Wednesday, March 21st.

Sunday we stayed in Mazatlan at San Fernando RV Park and went to dinner at Fat Fish (rib specialty place!), followed by a relaxing time in the pool and hot tub afterwards. 
Monday night we stayed at a Pemex truck stop south of Los Mochis.  You stay free but tip the guard to watch over you in the locked compound.  It was surprisingly quiet considering we were right on the highway! (100% better than our experience at the Pemex near San Louis Potosi 2 years ago)
Tuesday night we stayed in San Carlos at Totonaka and met up with other friends who had left Lo de Marcos the week before us for dinner at the marina.
Wednesday we crossed the border at Nogales with no issues.
We stayed 2 nights for free at the Desert Diamond Casino south of Tucson while we shopped around Green Valley and Tucson.
Friday we moved here to the Phoenix area.  We are staying at the Arizona Cowboy RV Park in Mesa.  After a day spent visiting around Phoenix (population 4 million) we relaxed at a community campfire after dinner this evening. 
Tomorrow we head back to Tucson.