Three timezones later

When I last wrote we were in Oregon, now we’re in Michigan. Let me fill you in..

We spent a week in Utah.

After leaving La Grande, Oregon, we plotted a course toward Salt Lake City, hoping to be a little more urban for the next week so we could get a few errands handled. Google maps showed it should take just over 7 hours to drive. A big day, but Michele and I have certainly driven longer days than that.

It took us 12 hours.

The last 2 hours involved coaching our son to pump his legs and repeating how much time was left about every 3 minutes. A late takeoff (~10:00am), bathroom and food breaks, lots of gas stops with our 20 gallon 4Runner tank carrying us up the mountains, all contributed to arriving at our camp site in the dark. I couldn’t stomach blinding all the campers with our headlights so I found a mode with very dim orange lights guiding our path, just enough that I could see if I hung my head out the window. One Austin Powers style u-turn later and some not-quite-bickering coordination, my wife and I found our spot and got things setup in the thin mountain air just a ways past the city. Even though it was a gnarly push, we were rewarded with some awesome new moon stars, almost to the level I remember as a kid in Alaska. We hung out outside for a while and took them in as a relieved family.

The campground in Utah was very nice.

We were up there in elevation compared to our previous sea level home in Oregon and could feel it a bit. After the weekend, we were able to move spots to an area with clear northern sky for our Starlink connection. I had moved our service address to the campground in advance, so I should have had the best possible connection. It was reading much lower than in Oregon, around 6 mbps, but regardless it was allowing us all to stream and video call all we needed just fine. I later restarted it (technically it was a forced restart when the AC tripped the breaker in our camper) and we started seeing ~50 mbps. The new spot had us right next to a field with a few sweat heart cows and a nice northern breeze that made it OK to have a fire without smoking out any other campers. We were enjoying ourselves, didn’t even realize we had changed into Mountain time until half way through the week.

Campers are a fun level of self reliance. You have connections to electricity, water, and sewer, but you still operate independently and everything is up to you to manage. The temperatures fluctuated a lot between the day and night in Utah, so at night we’d need the heat on for a bit, in the day we’d need some AC at some point. One day I forgot to turn the thermostat for heat off in the morning, so there was a period of time our AC and furnace were fighting each other (facepalm moment).

By the way..

Thank god for older folks on forums.

Our water heater failed one day while I was working and the family was getting back from the pool looking forward to showers. Most of my 30’s so far has been about learning not to get tilted about stuff like this but this one almost got me. Thankfully after some self motivational coaching and a 30 minute YouTube video of a fella ranting about how awful RV warranties are and that it’s better to fix it yourself, I dug into some forums and found the information I needed. A thermal fuse had popped. I bypassed it for the days showers and would eventually receive a hand full of replacements, per the advice on the forums.

Some cool and crazy stuff in Utah.

I’m going to list this out as I just remembered to include it and this post is getting big ya’all.

• The closest reasonable grocery stores were in Kimball Junction, just north of Park City. The drive there involved some changes in elevation that could get you feeling pretty loopy.
• On one supply drive with the kids, Michele saw a truck that had recently tipped over while carrying a bunch of beehives (news article). I’d later take the same drive and come across a point where 3 big things thumped on the windshield, I thought they must be flying flower buds in the wind or something, they were bees.
• We hiked a trail we almost skipped that turned out to be awesome. When we pulled up it looked like a rugged trail, we drove to a paved trail instead but decided it looked way too lame and went back. The rugged trail was rugged for about 50 feet, then became a beautiful trail along a ridge where folks had signed their names dating back to the late 1800’s.

• When driving to find a pottery place we never found, we saw another truck in peril. A logging truck on the opposite side of the highway freshly and fully engulfed in flames. On the way back, Michele had some quick thinking that allowed us to avoid the huge backup of vehicles behind it.

Other than that we had a nice time in the hills, for the most part.

Is our Starlink pole a lightning rod?

As thunder rolled through a couple nights near the end of our Utah stay, I was pretty wide eyed in bed thinking about if I should take the Starlink pole down at ~1:00am. The imagination can get the best of you when you’re that close to the clouds during a storm. I bought a $30 weather app to track exactly what was happening. I googled how much wind it would take to knock over a camper (about 50 mph if directly on the broad side, assuming no stabilizers were down). Fortunately the wind was coming from the rear of the camper and the thunder was fleeting enough that I didn’t stress for too long.

Weather can be an intimidating force in a small camper. On one hand we are free to move away from something major like a hurricane or fire. On the other hand, when you have a paired down life without a lot of redundancy, there’s certainly a feeling of vulnerability. I was reflecting on what it must be like to be a sailer on the open sea and the extreme level of vulnerability those folks contend with. I guess it’s all about knowing your systems and being adaptable, keeping your cool goes a long way as well.

4 days to make some progress.

4th of July was coming up, so I’d have a monday off. During the week preceding, our team at work decided we’d all take Canada Day off as well, which was the Friday before. Looking at what came after Utah and really wanting to make progress, we decided we’d try and do a big cross country push during the 4 day break. There had been a couple people I knew who independently suggested that we should live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So we decided that would be a good spot to hang out for a while, get my son his next vaccine and get all situated before crossing into Canada. 4 days seemed like enough time to get there.

Day one, Friday.

We took off early from Utah, having just about gotten tired of it. I think we got on the road at about 8:00 am, possibly earlier, and this paid off as the first few hours of driving flew by without much issue. Lesson learned, start driving days early!

We hauled through Wyoming, landing in Cheyenne around 3 or 4 pm where we stayed at a busy little campground with just water and electricity. Michele had the foresight to suggest I don’t bother unhooking the camper from the 4Runner since we were fully intent on another early start on the road the next morning. Watching my new weather app, thunder storms were scheduled to come in sometime around 10:00 am the next morning, surely chasing us from Utah.

Day two, Saturday.

Leaving Wyoming bright and early after dumping the tanks, we started to see trees again in Nebraska.

At one point, Michele and I wanted some hot coffee. We found a starbucks that ended up being in a grocery store about 3 minutes off the highway. I’d run in to get some coffee and supplies. For some reason I had expectations that I’d encounter some typical country folk who were probably deeply republican, would scoff grumpily at me still wearing a mask in stores (we’re holding out until our son has had the Covid 19 vaccine, no man left behind!), and the dusty looking place probably wouldn’t have the sorts of vegan/gluten free products and produce we look for.

Right when I walked in the store, a dude with a mask passed me a cart with a friendly “good morning” like I hadn’t heard in years. It must have been a fluke. The store was beautiful. Smaller grocery store but everything was clean as a whistle and well stocked with vibrant vegetables and everything else. Rounding the produce, a grumpy looking older woman came around a corner, I braced for the scoff, but again she lit up and gave me a “good morning” as if she were the sun rise herself. Another woman walked by, wearing a mask, and said “thank you for wearing a mask” with so much kindness in her voice. The nicest people I had ever seen! An older fella waiting for coffee after me asked if I was the one from Oregon, he had seen the camper and plates, we had a nice conversation about campers and how unreliable they can be and he wished us luck on the road.

You straightened out my prejudice, Nebraska.

We drove until we just crossed the border into Iowa and stayed at a somewhat run down little spot by some corn fields that turned out to be peaceful enough. There was one camper there with hey bales stacked around it for insulation that looked like it had been there a while. Instead of assigning a spot, the guy in the motel office just said to pick one in the middle. After two laps we decided on one. When we’re all hanging out in the camper, you sort of forget where you are anyway. Nice to have that sense of home and consistency even while traveling around.

Our clocks had changed again into central time.

Day three, Sunday.

We had about 8 hours remaining to get to Grand Rapids, Michigan. That would make for two 4 hour days, which seemed like nothing compared to the previous pushes. At this point we were conditioned to get going early and were eager to leave the corn field spot anyway, so we took off bright and early.

Iowa was a gorgeous state to drive through at this time of year. Endless fields of young green corn, the largest wind turbines I had ever seen, big broccoli like trees dotting the landscape.

We drove to Davenport, actually just across the border into Illinois, and stayed at a lovely KOA campground. There was a pool for the kids and I could try and get some errands taken care of.

Annoying errands.

I wanted to get Michele a new phone since she takes so many of our pictures. I started to realize we weren’t in Nebraska anymore. I went to a Best Buy, they wouldn’t let me just buy an iPhone, telling me some weird reason around international travelers that required me to bring my wife’s phone in and work with their cell carrier representative. When I did, it wouldn’t work anyway because we have a business line. So I went to our carrier’s store where a loud rep was helping another customer, ripping into how expensive and stupid it was for people to buy iPhones. It was kind of great to then ask for an expensive version of an iPhone and pay in full (we had recently sold a house so we had some cash). I also tried to get an ATT internet hot spot, the rep at the ATT store said they couldn’t sell me one and I had to go to Walmart. So I went there and asked if it worked in Canada, they said yes, then I googled and that was false. They didn’t have any in stock anyway. As I drove around I realized how run down of a town it was.

It’s really wild when you’re traveling so hard and see folks that are just staying in a rugged town. It feels so easy to leave and go to a nicer place with more resources. Of course that’s not entirely the case and people have their lives.

Day four, Monday.

Today was the day, we’d wrap this trip up in Grand Rapids.

We took off at a decent hour, a little later than the previous days. We drove through the more congested parts of Illinois south of Chicago, the roads were pretty beat up. I thought about how Bernie Sanders always talks about America’s “crumbling infrastructure” and how that might be the case in certain places but not all.

We dipped into Indiana for a short while and made it into Michigan.

Michigan is somewhat flat feeling, but wildly covered in enormous fluffy green trees in every direction. We were officially back at close to sea level and getting tuns of oxygen. We typically would scout out a camp area we knew we’d be staying at for the week, carefully making sure we have northern sky exposure for Starlink. Wanting to be close to the city and the state being so densely covered with huge trees, we didn’t have a lot of options, our 4 days of driving made us abandon meticulous planning for whatever was nice and available.

We made it. We were officially in the Eastern Standard Timezone.

Starlink was not going to happen. Fortunately my genius wife gave me a great idea. Our 4Runner has an inverter in it with a 3 prong outlet in the back. I setup Starlink on the roof rack, ran the cable through the rear window that can roll down, and plugged it in. Parking where there wasn’t tree coverage, I was all set. I learned that 4Runners will automatically turn off when idling unless you lock the doors from the inside or engage the break every so often. This setup unlocks pretty much any camp ground now, as long as I can stay comfortable in my air conditioned cabin with adjustable seats. I might buy a battery bank so I don’t have to keep the vehicle running all day though.

Michigan is wonderful.

Everyone has been so nice and friendly. We’re getting to hear some of the lovely midwestern accent, it’s already rubbing off on us. The camp ground here is like an ideal community we’ve talked about wanting to live in. Kiddos running around, people hanging out outside of their dwellings and talking to each other. Camp fires at night and lots of pretty nature. This campground also features a pool and giant bouncy “pillow” for the kids to have a blast with.

We’ve explored a bit. Downtown Grand Rapids, where there are tuns of pretty houses for sale at really low prices compared to other towns, was a bit deserted and worn down. It reminded me of Fresno, California in some ways. Around the university there was a single street where all the sudden the ethnic makeup shifted and the houses became obscenely pretty. Never quite like to see that, but there was some middle ground in there as well. Everywhere around the city is beautiful, peaceful, friendly. We’ve visited Lake Michigan once, which really feels like an ocean, it was a beautiful golden hour visit that we intend to do again before we leave. We also went blueberry picking for their first open day and loaded up.

While we have some time here, we’re looking into upgrading our setup. We love our 4Runner, but she struggled in the mountains quite a bit. Truckers would pass us on the up hills and we’d pass them back on the down hills. I’ve since learned that towing capacity is not as important as payload capacity, which we’re maxing out right now. The small camper has had lots of benefits when traveling. We love being able to park our whole setup within two parking spots when stopping at a restaurant, having total confidence flying under bridges or in tunnels, and having very little concern when driving city streets or needing to turn around on a dead end road. That said, we hang out in the camper quite a bit and we’re getting tired of stepping around each other and the dog constantly. Any bit of clutter becomes intolerable fairly quickly. Our tiny fridge is.. challenging.

We (I) named our tiny camper Yolonda, because we were yolo’ing-on-da better things. The current working name of the next one is Flyonda, because we’re ready to spread our wings a bit more and commit to some good road life for longer.