Shell Lake and surroundings

We ended up driving to Iowa for Kevin’s hearing aids on Wednesday 18 August. It was a long drive down to Iowa City, but he really likes the hearing aids. The technician made five separate programs for him, and two were for music! One is for crowded spaces like restaurants, and another is for normal conversation. I do t remember what the fifth one is! We spent the night at home in Cedar Falls, then drove back on Thursday. The cats survived us being gone a day, though Luna followed Kevin everywhere he went for a few days!

On Friday we drove into northern Minneapolis to get n alignment done on the motorhome only to find out they couldn’t work on it because of the SafeTSteer! I was pissed! I drove the MH over 200 miles round trip for nothing. They recommended another shop, and we made an appointment there for the next week. I am really glad we decided to stay in Shell Lake more days since it gave us time to do a bunch of sightseeing and get un-pissed. Kevin’s last day of arm movement and weight restrictions expired, so we spent a couple of days running around in the RZR. One day we took the Wild Rivers Trail which is an old Chicago Northwestern rail line bed. Wisconsin has totally embraced UTVs, and this trail is one example. Very well maintained with good signage and surface. It is an old rail bed though so not a lot of curves or ups and downs! It was beautiful though – so very lush and green.

Cathedral of trees
Just a touch of color

Surprisingly we saw very little wildlife. I am guessing the habitat is so rich they don’t have to be around people to find food and shelter. The deer and sandhills were about all we saw.

Wildlife
Sandhill canes

Another day we wandered north and spent time in the Washburn County Forest. Much more interesting riding, mostly on fire roads. Lots of ups and down and curves along with a more varied scenery.

Clearcut
Partially restored

We even took a train ride just north of Spooner in Trego. A scenic train runs over old Chicago Northwestern tracks a a very slow speed, but they had a dinner train reservation available so we took it. Dinner was actually very nice with white table cloths and napkins plus good service. The steaks was nice, but the carrots and potatoes were fabulous!

Dinner
From our train window

We left Shell Lake on Wednesday, 27 August and spent the next two nights at the Grand Casino RV Park there. Very nice place, and under $50 with tax! Great laundry room too. We were here to be closer to Blaine’s TruckAlign shop where I had a Thursday morning appointment. The MH has been pulling to the right, so I got it aligned front and rear, swapped the weird wear tires on front for a pair in the back, and got the SafeTSteer perfectly set. It took 6 hours, and the bill was only a bit over $700. I commented to the guy it was rare to pay less than $1000 for anything MH related, and he said they hear that a lot. Today we left Hinckley and drove to Whiteface Reservoir campground. It is so rural I can’t even give the name of a nearby town! Awfully pretty though. The white bucket is where Kevin stores our potable water hose which is doubling as a stand for the Starlink dish. We even have electricity!

Site 46

However we weren’t aware we can’t use the RZR here, and even if we could there aren’t enough trails to make it worthwhile. So we will be checking out of her on Sunday and heading to Tower and the Soudan Underground Mine ATV campground. The sites look nice, and there are a lot more trails up there.

Finally finished a quilt and back on the road

A good friend of one of my sons had a baby in April. Knowing this was coming, I started a quilt for the baby in February. Then we decided to rush moving and buying the motorhome, and the baby quilt didn’t get done on time. 😢 Little Roman (it turned out to be a boy) was born in April, and he just got his quilt yesterday. It did come out cute though.

The pattern is called Irish Chain. The parents chose not to find out the gender, and they didn’t have a theme or color picked out, so I went with the simple two color quilt. The colors aren’t true in the picture; the red is a brick red and the lighter color is a creamy golden.

I quilted it with a variegated King Tut thread with red, brown, green, and cream.

I used a feather stitch on the binding. I really like the look of this.

We also took off today for a trip! We are headed to Ely, Minnesota tomorrow. Tonight we are staying part way there at the Hinckley Grand Casino campground. It is a really nice campground with asphalt pads and patios but with grass and trees or so, but nice. We had dinner at the Casino buffet because it was easy. Food was standard “nice” buffet, but not great.

We will stay in Ely until Friday morning when we gradually work our way to the FMCA rally in Gillette, WY. Then off to Hot Springs, SD for a few days. We haven’t decided what to do after that.

I did drive the motorhome well over half the trip so far. We stopped for a CAT scale weighing to see how heavy we were. The front axle was just barely under the 12,000 pound capacity with full tanks of both diesel and water. The back axle still has 800pounds of capacity, and we are pretty full of “stuff” so I feel very comfortable with the residual capacity. Getting a real axle weight means we could adjust the tires appropriately for the weight they are carrying. The front tires were 118 pounds each, so they got lowered to 110 pounds. The rear tires were about the same, and they got brought down to 100 pounds. Wow but does it handle better! Much less tiring to drive. The motorhome is still more tiring the the truck and trailer, but it was certainly better than the first 1000 miles we drove.