It has been a long time since there was an update to this journal. During the last post here we were paddling in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in September 2013. Well, tomorrow we expect we will be doing the same, but I digress.
While "The Adventures of Myron and Dorcas" is woefully behind, Myron and Dorcas have still been having adventures. Here is a brief list of some trips we have done since our last post.
- September 2013: 5 nights in Galax VA with the Safari Trek Fun Cub. In addition to usual rally activities (partying) we biked on the New River State Trail and enjoyed the mountain music at the Blue Ridge Music Center.
- October 2013: 5 Nights at Hanging Rock State Park with the Lumber River Canoe Club. Here we paddled a section of the Dan River each day and brought home 10,000 stink bugs! Yuk!
- November 2013: 4 nights at Stone Mountain State Park with the Charles and the Benners.
- November 2013: 3 nights camping on the Lumber River with the Charles and the Millers.
- November 2013-May 2014: Winter in Florida. We spent about half the time at our property in Titusville and the other half wandering about Florida. We spent a week at Juniper Springs paddling with friends, a couple of weeks in the Keys and a motor home rally or three. I broke away from Dorcas for a 6-night camping trip on the Suwanee River with the "Dumb-But-Tough Canoe Club, of which I am a founding member. While I was on this trip, Dorcas moved the coach about 140 miles from Titusville to Jacksonville by herself. She stressed mightily and long over this chore, but she did good. While in Florida we triked, hiked, paddled, played pickleball (Myron) and yoga-ed (Dorcas) almost every day. While at Titusville we watched the nesting, conception, hatching and fledging of a pair of great horned owls and their two chicks. We had a ring-side seat right by our house. It was very cool. We finally came home to Winston Salem the first week in May because the doctors were calling.
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| Great Blue Heron on the Hillsborough River near Tampa |
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| Great Horned babies in the nest |
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| Fledglings |
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| Sleepy head |
- May 2014: Back to Hanging Rock State Park for 5 more nights, paddling on the Dan River with the LRCC. We dropped off our left-over surviving stink bugs there.
- June 2014: 11 Nights at Grindstone CG in the Jefferson National Forest in the Mt. Rogers area of VA. We hit the mountains to escape the heat. We biked on the VA creeper Trail and hiked a few days with the Wilburn Ridge ponies.
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| Matilda watching a pony |
- July 2014: 2 nights camping on the Lumber River. Boy was it hot! We took plenty of swim breaks.
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| Matilda camping on the Lumber River |
In addition to these adventures we have been doing some home and coach chores. We replaced the counter tops, back splash and fixtures in the kitchen with quartz and tumbled stone tile. It looks really good. We also bought a new refrigerator. I changed the oil in the coach (28.5 quarts!) and both cars. I replaced the solar controller in the coach with a better one and moved it inside so it is more convenient to monitor the solar gain. This involved extensive wire-snaking and removal of the fridge. I replaced all the fluorescent lights in the coach with LEDs and installed a circulating fan in the fridge.
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| Before | | | |
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| After | |
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| Deco tiles showing Dorcas' dragonfly and my gecko |
Back to the Adventures of Myron and Dorcas. We have been working very hard on these home chores, so we could leave home for our next adventure. Yesterday, July 30, we left home heading for the upper Midwest, specifically the upper peninsula of Michigan and Minnesota for our annual Boundary Waters trip. We managed to escape about 2:30 PM and drove north through Virgina and West Virginia. We crossed the Ohio River and made camp at the Super Walmart in Gallipolis OH. It was a very quiet stop, and this morning we walked to Tudor's Biscuit World where I enjoyed the world's largest ham biscuit. It was so big I couldn't even eat the cinnamon roll we bought, which was almost as big.
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| Our camp in Gallipolis |
We broke camp at Gallipolis about 9:00 and continued diagonally NW across Ohio and through Columbus and Toledo. We crossed into Michigan and stopped briefly in Ann Arbor to buy a Michigan paddling guide book at a Barnes and Noble store. By this time we realized that if we drove steadily, we could catch up with our friends Wayne and Lynda who were camped in Wolverine in the upper lower peninsula. After a very long day we arrived at Sturgeon Valley Campground on the banks of the Sturgeon River. We enjoyed a happy hour with our friends. Tomorrow we will cross the "Mighty Mac" and land in the UP, where we will travel with our friends across the UP paddling as many rivers as we can. In two weeks we will land in Ely MN and then start our Boundary Waters trip on August 19.
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| Biscuit World, home of the worlds largest ham biscuit and cinnamon bun |
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Don't forget to check out the "Where The Heck Are We?" and "Has it Stopped Raining Yet?" tabs.
Later,
Myron
