McLain State Park, Hancock, Michigan (Upper Peninsula)
We moved again today. It was a 5-hour drive and I was expecting to get some work done on the blog, especially since we’ve been three days without full cell and no internet service, but as you may have noticed by now, that didn’t happen. The roads were just way too bumpy. When I work on travel days, I sit on the edge of the coach and put the laptop on the end of the dining room table. I can do that because the slides are both in. 😊 But when the roads are bumpy, the laptop jumps around all over the place and so does the mouse. Sheesh! It’s entirely possible that I may never get caught up . . .
Blaine wanted to leave Hancock at 8:00am, so he could get us set up, drive to the Jeep parts place and still have time to fix it. Not having done this project before, he didn’t really know how long it would take him. In addition, we knew there was a possibility of rain, which he’s not too keen on driving in. Unfortunately, he sure drove into a doozy of a storm! Torrential downpour, giant drops of rain and even hail! For a good 45 minutes!
In the next video, you can see – and hear – little pellets of hail!
I tried to catch the hail in a photo, but was pretty much unsuccessful.
By 9:45, it had all but stopped . . .
We came across two bikers. Hope they weren’t caught in that deluge!
By 10:00am, I was already restless. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t make phone calls because there’s still no service, couldn’t cook, couldn’t nap (for one thing, I slept good last night, but even when I’m tired, I can’t sleep when we’re rolling – even if it’s not a bumpy road), I was tired of reading . . . The scenery is nice (reminds me a bit of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia), but it’s all the same. As I said earlier, I couldn’t work on the blog either.
I can travel on bumpy roads. I can travel five or more hours. Apparently, I struggle with doing them together. : )
Our travels today took us from Michigan’s UP back into Wisconsin near the Minnesota border, where we’ll be staying for just two nights.
We’re now in the area that had all the washed out roads we heard about.
Well! Would you look at that!
An old (if not original) McDonalds!
Can you believe it?!?!?
More narrow roads with big trucks. Yikes!
This is actually Lake Superior.
For a reason we didn’t know at the time, the water here was brown!
We discovered later that a pretty big river empties into it around here.
Red sandstone, hence the red water.
More road closures
Straight is the way we were originally supposed to go, but the detour was fine.
Blaine gets worried when they take him off the designated “truck” routes.
More road fixing
Clear sailing the remainder of our trip, which wasn’t far.
Northland Camping and RV Park, South Range, Wisconsin
After set up, Blaine headed out to Duluth, Minnesota (Yep! His Macguyvering is still holding!) and the parts department he’d been talking to. It’s a much shorter drive than it sounds. 😊 The guy there was so nice and exceptionally helpful and even took a look under the hood, telling Blaine that if it wasn’t so involved and so late in the day, he would’ve gone ahead and taken the Jeep back and fixed it for him. So nice!
As it was, he sold Blaine the part (told him what tools he needed to fix it?), and Blaine stopped at an O’Reilly auto parts store to buy a tool. He came home and got straight to work.
I was busy being domestic and doing some blog work and so engrossed in my own projects, I totally forgot about Blaine’s, so there are no pictures of him under the hood! ☹
It took him about 2 hours to complete the task, which consisted of taking off parts on top of the engine, including the intake manifold, replacing the bad fuel line, and putting everything back together. With only a few cuts and scrapes, and now we have our Jeep back! He’s the best!!