Scratch another place off my bucket list: Bois Blanc Island, in the middle of Michigan’s Straits of Mackinac, half way between the Upper Peninsula and the Lower.
As we were rounding the Lake Huron shoreline of the Michigan Mitt and driving through the northeastern town of Cheboygan on our Verizon Great Lakes Shoreline Tour, we saw a sign that directed us to the ferry dock.
The Straits of Mackinac were right off our righthand side as we made our way north on US 23 but this ferry was not for
RVers think of the Mercedes Sprinter van as a great motorhome. Indeed, the resurgence of the RV industry and the boom in Class B sales can largely be traced to the popularity of Sprinter-based RVs, like those sold by Roadtrek and other RV makers.
But for the past several months in in the service bays of American RV in Grand Rapids, MI, a stripped down Sprinter van has been converted into something much more: A mobile medical suite to be sent to Haiti as part of a church mission project.
jonan
When we talk about boondocking in an RV, we usually mean dry camping, off the grid camping in out of the way, wilderness areas, far from civilization and deep in the boonies.
Indeed, for Jennifer and I, that is our favorite place to be.
But that’s not the only place to be.
As I write this, we just spend a night boondocking in the parking lot of a hotel near Memphis, Tenn.
It was a quiet, peaceful night. We parked in an out-of -the-way spot in our Roadtrek Etrek. It was typically hot, as it a
Now this is boondocking. We drove 11 miles off the Interstate, down a forest road lined by brilliant yellows and red birches and oaks. Then we turned off that and went a mile and a half off down a washboard two-track, pulling into a state forest campground on a little circular lake aptly named Round Lake.
We haven’t seen another car in miles. Its pouring rain. The heater is keeping out the 44-degree weather and we are toasty comfy in our Roadtrek eTrek, watching Game 4 of the American League Pl
I now understand what John Denver meant by his song: I’ve now been Rocky Mountain High.
And like Denver, who penned the song shortly after moving to Aspen to celebrate his love for his new state and the awe-inspiring mountains, Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park made me want to sing, too. If I could only have caught my breath. For there, somewhere well above 12,000 feet, a quarter mile up a tundra bordered trail from an overlook off Trail Ridge Road , were three Bighorn Sheep, standing lik
The just-concluded Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., a week after Canada’ Victoria Day, means that summer has begun – even though the official start is still a couple of weeks later. And Roadtrekers were out and about over the last weekend so we did another one of our “One Day in the Life of a Roadtrek” photo shoots.
The rules were simple: Take a picture of your Roadtrek wherever you happened to be at sunset local time. Then email it to me.
We got a great assortment this year from all over Nor
Roadtrekers love to take photos. And while our styles, skills and the things we like to photograph may vary, one thing I bet all of us like to get are images of a sunset.
I’ve used these awkward days of spring before the warm weather travel season really gets under way to organize the thousands of photos I’ve taken over the past two years and 50,000 miles of roadtteking across North America.
The photos could be better. But even my ineptitude is smoothed over by the awesome beauty of a sunset,
Roadtreking RV Podcast 005 – Boondocking and Satellite Internet
If you like getting away from it all, this episode of Roadtreking – The RV Podcast is going to be especially interesting to you. Along with a bunch of RV...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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The RV life is so much fun because you don’t know what adventure is around the next bend. But the people you meet along the way are equally enjoyable.
I don’t think Jennifer and I have yet to return from a Roadtreking trip without making some new friends. On our most recent trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we met interesting people at each stop.
Up at the Historic Fort Wilkins State Park in Copper Harbor Michigan, we found ourselves sharing a campground with husband and wife Roadtrekers Dav
Roadtrek Motorhome’s hot new N-6 Active made its network television debut this week in a starring role on NBC-TV’s ”Take it All” game show.
The N-6 was a top prize for a contestant in the show, which stars Howie Mandel and is based on one of the most popular holiday party games in America, often called "White Elephant" or "Yankee Swap."
In the show, a contestant selects and opens a prize worth thousands of dollars: dream prizes such as luxury cars, exotic trips, jewelry and VIP experiences.
We’ve shared this on our Facebook group but thanks to a reader’s suggestion, I thought I’d better post it here on the Roadtreking blog as well: Roadtrek has made it easy for owners of its various models to keep up with the best operating practices and learn exactly how their motorhomes work by putting new revised editions of its owners manual online.
They can be accessed directly from the company website at http://www.roadtrek.com/manuals.aspx.
The manuals, in convenient .pdf form for easy pri
Question: What’s the difference between a flashlight and an illumination tool?
Answer: About $70. Or more.
And some pretty powerful lights.
One piece of gear all RVers have is a flashlight. Usually several. I most often relay on a small headlamp that I picked up at REI. It lets me have hands-free use when I arrive at a campsite after dark and need some illumination to set up.
But we also have a couple of regular flashlights in our motorhome.
They are nothing like the “illumination tools” m
We’ve been talking all week about winterizing our RVs.
Yes, the time has come .... Those living in the northern states and those who live where the temperatures drop below freezing, can’t put it off much longer.
But people still have a lot of questions and as we wrap up our winterizing series, Jennifer and I answer some reader questions about topics that haven’t yet been addressed.
In this edition of How We Roll in our RV, we talk about the need to re-winterize when folks head south and then
We’ve been traveling about two weeks out of every month and a nagging worry that doesn’t go away is the safety and protection of our sticks-and-bricks house.
So this past week, I just installed an alarm system on every door, every window, as well as motion detectors, water detectors, freeze monitors and carbon monoxide and fire alarms on both levels of our two-story home. All of the alarms are monitored 24 x 7 and I have a remote app for my smartphone and computer that lets me check in on what’
Protecting your digital assets
In this information age, gathering up and securing the most important information – the critical passwords, user names, insurance, savings and important documents we have – is a vital task...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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We're in the midst of prime time for RV shows.
Starting in January and running until early March, dozens of RV shows are staged in cities across the country. Jennifer and I have attended a slew of them this year as we, along with tens of thousands of other RVers, await warmer weather.
One thing you can expect to find at just about any RV show – besides motorhomes, travel-trailers, fifth-wheels and lots of salespeople to haggle with -- are exhibitors like campground operators, RV accessory make
It’s not just the snow and ice that have been setting records in northern states and provinces this winter: So have potholes.
Before setting off on a long trip south yesterday, I stopped by my local tire shop to check the air in my Roadtrek eTrek’s tires. While doing so, I noted how busy the place was. The guy behind the counter beckoned me to take a peek in the garage, where a huge pile of rims were taking up a corner of the workspace. “Potholes,” he said. “We’ve never seen so much damage,” h
Pomona RV Show
I’ve been hanging out at the Pomona RV show here in sunny California. As with most trade shows, it’s stocked with the really cool, the really impressive, and the really...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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Please Don’t Water Your AGM Batteries
Class B owners are a diligent bunch. They want to do maintenance to head off problems. This is very commendable, but there are occasions when you can maintain your unit...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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Jennifer and I went to the local office supply store over the weekend and picked up a new planning calendar for 2014. It’s one of those big, poster-sized ones with the entire year laid out in neat little blocks for each day of each month. It’s erasable – a good thing with our propensity for last minute trips and change of plans – and right now, it’s blank.
But we’re about to start filling it in. We’ve gone through and listed all the places we want to go, the things we want to see, the people we
Places the guidebooks ignore
I’m one of those eclectic travelers. It’s not that I disdain tour guides and “must see” sights. It’s more that I am amused by, and interested in, the funky, the...
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It was a day of superlatives as our Roadtrek eTrek literally took us to the heights of RVing – climbing Pikes Peak.
Making it even better because it was our wedding anniversary and we were spending it with family in one of the continent’s most beautiful regions.
Pikes Peak surely is the most accessible big mountain on the continent, with a first rate road all the way up, despite some hairpin curves with little or no shoulder or guardrails. The only issue we had was on the descent, where at the
RV rallys can be small or spectacularly huge. FMA's 88th Family Reunion and Motorhome Showcase in Gillette Wyoming, in June 2013 was one of the big ones. There were more than 2,300 coaches, 5,000-plus RVers and several hundred other vendors, dealers and exhibitors. Gillette’s massive 1,100-acre CAM-PLEX exhibition center was jammed with motorhomes literally as far as you could see in any direction.
Big rallies like this are not for everyone. Camping spaces are cramped, with rigs parked just a f
Remember that new Samsung Galaxy 4S that I wrote about two weeks ago -- RVing and My New Smartphone -- Well, that smartphone did a dumb thing: It up and died on me.
It won’t charge, won’t power up and is totally dead. And I’m in the middle of a two-week RV trip in the Rockies.
I tried all the reset tricks, like removing the battery. Its certifiably dead.
Yesterday was the first time in two decades that I was without a cell phone and … I survived.
I had my calls forwarded to Jennifer Wendland
With more and more RVers heading to the great outdoors this time of year, it’s time to sound two warnings. Depending on where you are, it’s now either snake season or tick season.
For some parts of the U.S., it’s both.
Both creatures post particular problems with pets. And humans, too, if they get bit. And both are very active right now.
And RVers, who are out there camping in the woods and wilds and deserts and fields, could very easily come into contact with them. RVers with pets need to be
