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Blogs

Roadtreking Blog
 

How We Roll in our RV: Finding Rental and Used Roadtreks

You can tell winter is wearing thin and folks are starting to think about spring and warm weather because we’re getting lots of questions about people wanting to rent a Roadtrek or find a used one to purchase. So in this edition of How We Roll in our RV, we try and answer both. Bottom line is – you will have to work at it. Roadtreks are in high demand, both for rental units and for used ones to purchase. The main Roadtrek website has a dealer locator feature that you can use to find the neare
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

An RVing Trip to the Beargrease Dog Sled Marathon

I think I have become a big fan of winter RVing. And dog sled races. Last year, we reported on the Michigan UP 200 dog sled race. Our friend and fellow Roadtreker Gary Hennes met us up there and told us about the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Duluth, which is the longest such sled dog race in the Lower 48 states. And so we went this year. We boondocked overnight in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere and I volunteered and worked on the communications team, using my amateur rad
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

Yes, You Can Happily Boondock at 21 Below!

We just hit the road after a long weekend boondocking in our Roadtrek eTrek in the wilderness of northeast Minnesota, spending the weekend in it miles from civilization when the overnight temperature dropped to -21F/-29C. Call us Ice Station eTrek. Those frigid temperatures in the woods were the ambient, real temperature. But we had a very stiff northwestern wind that not only swirled up snow drifts all around s but made for wind chill readings of -50F/-45C. We could not have been more comfor
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

How to Dress for Warmth on Winter RV Trips

We’re in northeastern Wisconsin and Minnesota in the midst of what the news media says is the coldest stretch of prolonged frigid temperatures to hit the continental U.S. in a century and yet, everywhere I go around here, the locals seem to shrug it all off and continue with their winter activities of snow shoeing, cross country skiing, hockey playing, hiking, ice fishing and dog sled racing. They seem to actually embrace the cold in an area where the snow is three feet deep and the snow drifts
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

RVing Into the Arctic Vortex, Part 2

It took two days and 700 miles – all of it in the face of bitter cold and most of it on snow covered and slippery roads – but we finally made it to Minnesota and saw not a single other RV on the road. “They don’t know what they are missing.” I said to Jen as we dodged logging trucks, snowplows and snowmobilers in the Great White North. Truly, now we know how that saying came about. I have never seen so much white. Not the slushy, dirty snow of the city and suburbs but sparkling clean, pure, dee
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

RVing Into the Heart of the Arctic Vortex in Michigan’s UP

I’m not going to lie to you. We didn’t sleep in the Roadtrek eTrek last night. We spent the night in a motel in Escanaba, at the far western end of the Lower Peninsula’s northern Lake Michigan shoreline. I suppose if I looked around long enough I would have found a place to camp. But all the state and federal forests where we normally boondock up here in the UP were all but inaccessible because of unplowed roads. Somebody told me there was an Indian casino a dozen miles out of town but they we
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

Driving the Sprinter RV in Extreme Cold

What a winter this has been. The arctic vortex or whatever we call the cold air that has been making repeated appearances throughout the Upper Midwest has kept many an RVer housebound before the fireplace. Not us. We’re about to head up to Northern Minnesota along the Lake Superior northern shore where the temperature is expected to be -26F/-32C. I wrote about it earlier when the bitter cold forecast was causing our plans to waver. Many of you offered advice. Most said don’t go. Some said head
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

The Ghostly Mystery of the Paulding Light

Every place, it seems, has its own ghosts and mysteries. So it is just north of the tiny Upper Peninsula town of Watersmeet where, for generations, people have gathered at the end of a gravel road to watch some mystery lights. The lights appear nightly, year round near a crossroads community called Paulding. The first reported sightings were back in the 1960s and various investigations have been inconclusive, though a university team from a Michigan Technological University claimed the lights w
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

When is It Too Cold to RV?

I am beginning to have some serious doubts about the wisdom of taking our Roadtrek eTrek to the wilderness of Northern Minnesota next week to report on a dog sled marathon from Duluth to the Canadian border. The long term weather forecast predicts lows of -20F/-28C along the Northern Shore of Lake Superior, where we would be boondocking with no outside power. I had really looked forward to this but it seems foolhardy to do camp out under such extreme cold. We handled -5F/-20C last year in Febru
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

Anticipation: A Month of Travel Awaits

Anticipation, they say, is half the fun. I think there’s a point there. Thinking, planning, dreaming and looking forward to the next trip is indeed pretty exciting. And as Jennifer and I look at the calendar, we have a lot of miles we’ll be traveling in some pretty diverse places. Here’s what’s on our Roadtreking road map for the next month: Northern Minnesota – A Jan. 23-29th winter camping trip to Duluth, MN via Michigan’s UP from, and then north to the Canadian border as we do reporting
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

RVers' Health Risk: Sitting Disease

If you’re like me and the pounds have been hard to get off lately, maybe you have sitting disease. Yes, there really is such an disease. And it’s reached epidemic proportions, linked to all sorts of other ailments, the first and foremost of which is obesity. Blame it on our sedentary lifestyle. Our desk-bound working days. Our computer and Internet use. TV watching But the fact is, the average American these days sits — at a desk, in the car or RV, on a couch – eight to 10 hours every day. Sit
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

Warming Up the RV When It’s -12F Outside

My Roadtrek has been encased in ice and snow for the better part of a week now with several days of subzero temperatures. Inside, shielded from the wind with the sun helping to mitigate the extreme outdoor temperature, it was about 15 degrees. So, I got to wondering, how long will it take to warm it up, if, indeed such a thing was possible? Slipping on my boots, a parka and my fuzzy warm hat with ear flaps, I donned my Google Glass and set out to video a first-person experiment. Everythin
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

What RVers Need to Know: Weather Lingo

All the winter storm advisories, alerts, watches and warnings that we’ve had lately can be confusing. The National Weather Service does a great job of disseminating weather predictions but sometimes it can be hard to know just what is what. So, for your future reference, here’s a weather lingo tutorial. Weather watches A watch means conditions are right for dangerous weather. In other words, a “watch” means watch out for what the weather could do, be ready to act. For events that come and
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

Trying to Beat a Blizzard

We’ve been riding hard up I75 today, trying to get to our southeastern Michigan home before yet another big winter snowstorm dumps another predicted foot. All the way north, traffic has been unusually heavy in both directions. Lots of other northbounders are returning from long holiday breaks. The southbounders seem downright frantic, fleeing the cold. I’m fighting a strong urge not to turn around. Early afternoon, I did an mobile phone interview from the road with the Internet adviser show on
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

RV Destination: Southwest Georgia

We visit Southwest Georgia about every two months, and have been for about ten years now. The big attraction for us is that thus is where our son and his family live but besides that, we have found lots to recommend here to RVers looking for a great place to get away from the RV travel routine and connect with the true deep south. In the winter, the sun shines most of the time and daytime temps in the 60s are pretty normal. Sometimes even in the 70s. They have to start cutting the grass in Marc
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

My New Roadtreking Tech Tool: A Phantom 2 Drone

I’ve messed around with some low end flying helicopters before and found them to be lots of fun. But I’ve just, gulp, added a big ticket item to my photographic and video arsenal of tools to be used while Roadtreking: A Phantom 2 drone. I’ll be using it for AVC, or aerial video cinematography. It’s really a flying machine, a quadricopter, with four opposing blades sending it up and our as far as a kilometer (3,240 feet) from where I’m standing with the controller. The unit I bought carries
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

0
Roadtreking Blog
 

My New Roadtreking Tech Tool: A Phantom 2 Drone

I’ve messed around with some low end flying helicopters before and found them to be lots of fun. But I’ve just, gulp, added a big ticket item to my photographic and video arsenal of tools to be used while Roadtreking: A Phantom 2 drone. I’ll be using it for AVC, or aerial video cinematography. It’s really a flying machine, a quadricopter, with four opposing blades sending it up and our as far as a kilometer (3,240 feet) from where I’m standing with the controller. The unit I bought carries
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

0
"Gramps" Blog
 

The "It's a Wonderful Life Rally" part 2

On Christmas night, Diane and I met Gary and Janis for dinner and a movie. We got together at the Commodore Theater in Portsmouth for smoked chicken salad and fruit, ice tea and popcorn. We had not seen each other since the rally so we chatted about that before the show started. We all came away from the rally knowing that everyone who attended, including us, had a good time. Many, including Gary, learned to appreciate “It’s a Wonderful Life” more. Gary watched it again when it was aired just la
-Gramps-

-Gramps-

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Beck's travels
 

Winter travels

It's New Year's Day and the coach is loaded and ready to head out with Scottsdale, Az being our first stop. From there we will go to Las Vegas to attend a trade show. At the conclusion of the show we will make our way to Florida for the balance of the winter. We will not be using the most direct route from northwestern Ohio to Florida but it should be an interesting trip. I will attempt to post regular updates to inform family and friends of our progress.
dbeck

dbeck

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"Gramps" Blog
 

The "It's a Wonderful Life" Rally

Part uno of duo. Before I started writing this, I was sitting at my computer browsing recipes online. I am planning my menu for Christmas Day brunch with my family. I have narrowed my entrees to Blackberry French Toast Casserole, Lump Crab Meat and Shrimp Quiche and a fresh fruit and honey yogurt salad. Diane plans on making some oatmeal and date muffins. They are a tradition every Christmas day. This party will be for eight adults including my parents. Not as much preparation will be needed
-Gramps-

-Gramps-

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Travels with the FMCA Prez
 

Are We Having Fun, Yet?

You should have been here yesterday. When we got Gucci (the pigmy goat) we did not realize how tame she was. We didn't want her to run off so I kept a rope on her collar so she could acclimate to her surroundings and not run off. She was in the barn out of the weather and had company with our cats and the cows when they get under the shed. She has not paid attention to either. She thinks she is human. As long as I am with her she follows behind and never runs off. I asked a friend to come
AmerEagle07

AmerEagle07

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BoondockersWelcome's Blog
 

The Three-Week Test Drive (Contributed by Malcolm Sandy)

After several years of nagging, I finally managed to drag my wife, kicking and screaming, into retirement. I don’t know if it was because she’s a workaholic, or if she just didn’t want to be around me 24/7. Probably the latter. Regardless, we quickly bought a used 28-foot travel trailer and spent the next few months fitting it out. Our plan is to spend the winters in Arizona and points similar, spring and fall at home in Delaware, and summer up in Ontario. We discovered the Boondockers Welcome w
BoondockersWelcome

BoondockersWelcome

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Roadtreking Blog
 

My RV Has Turned Into an Igloo

This is only temporary. That’s what I keep telling myself when I look out in in my snowy Michigan driveway and instead of seeing our Roadtrek eTrek out there, we only see an igloo. Look for yourself at the accompanying photos, below. We got our first big snow over the weekend and while it indeed is looking a lot like Christmas, it just seems, well, wrong, to see the RV covered under all that white stuff. I snowblowed the driveway and then took some photos before I removed as much of the snow
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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