Torn cartilage and a job offer!

Well, after tripping and tearing the cartilage, I went into North York General Hospital to get it attended to. I bumped into the lead trainer outside the elevator and she asked me if I wanted to come back to work for a while. So here I am back at NYGH working on an as needed basis as a Cerner Powerchart trainer. At least I will earn enough money to pay for gas when we travel South in December.

Valens Conservation Area - Teenage weekend

September 10th, 11th and 12th

Well, teenagers sure have changed since I was a teen. Even since our kids were teens. There were a LOT of hormones hanging around that campground!

We were very lucky in that the site had a 50 amp electric box on it, so we were able to plug ourselves in and the Krugers also had electricity. It really does make a lot of difference. It was an interesting weekend to say the least, but we had fun. The weather was relatively good with only a little of rain. Bobby put up the big dining tent and we all sat in there for meals. Up to 16 of us at one meal. Great!

The weekend ended with me tripping on a tent peg and tearing a cartilage in my knee. Not funny at all.

The Kruger's Trailer

Campsite with our RV in the background

We left mid afternoon and headed back to Cedar Beach Park where we were again going to squat on our friend's (Tom and Sunita's) site until the end of October.

Back into Ontario

Here we are back in Ontario, Canada. The border crossing was quick and uneventful. We have pulled into our friend's driveway in Cambridge so that we can go through some of the boxes of stuff in storage there. We are going to stay here (inside the house) for a few days and then go with them to Valens Conservation area on the weekend. It is one of the kid's birthday, so a group of teenagers and some adults are camping on the group site. Should be fun.

To view all our trip photos, here are the links to our Facebook albums:
Album 1
Album2
Album 3
Album 4

Very windy day. Almost got blown into Michigan!

My goodness. The wind today was very intense. We left Bemidji fairly early and drove South of Lake Superior, through Duluth and along secondary roads. The drive was lovely and thank goodness that the wind was behind us for most of the day. I would have hated having to drive into it. Our gas costs really do drop right down with a following wind! Even better if we are going downhill!. I thought we would see some wild life, but apart from the odd chipmunk and squirrel and one dead deer, there was nothing. Late afternoon we started looking for a campground and found one on the North Shore of Lake Michigamme called, appropriately enough, Michigamme Shores. It was OK. Quite expensive. We just slept there and left in the morning to make the crossing over into the lower portion of Michigan via the Mackinaw Bridge. We got to the bridge at around lunch time and the wind, by this time was so strong that we were pulled over and had to wait until we and other RVs could be escorted across. The water on Lake Michigan was churned up really fiercely. I am glad that we were not on a boat out there. After a wait of about 45 minutes we were eventually escorted across the bridge at 5 MPH. Lake Michigan on one side of the bridge and Lake Huron on the other side. We had now seen 3 of the 5 Great Lakes in 1 day.

A pretty uneventful trip down Michigan Hoping to see some Elk as we went through a couple of Elk Preserves, but nothing.

Our next stop was at Camping World in Houghton Lake where we bought some goodies for the RV, including a Winegard portable automatic satellite dish. In the past we have spent hours looking for satellite signals. Hopefully this will help!

A free night's camping at Camping World parking lot. The wind is still blowing like crazy and it is now raining really hard. Fall is definitely on the way!

Back into the US

Wednesday morning we had every intention of leaving early. Well, Michael went to get the propane tank filled as we were probably going to need the furnace because it was definitely cooling down at night. He was directed to the local Co-op place where they fill propane tanks. The young guy who came to fill the tank did not know what he was doing. First he was "bleeding" the tank for close to 2 hours and then he tried to fill it and told us that it was full. No it wasn't. Every gauge tells us it it is almost empty, but he insisted that he was unable to put any more in. We decided that we would just leave and get it filled at Camping World in Michigan. We eventually got away at about midday.

Crossed the border at the Eastern end of Manitoba and turned to go into Minnesota at Grand Forks, North Dakota. Most of the way it was cool and rainy. Interesting route, in that we stayed off the interstates, choosing instead to take Route 2. We got to Bemidji KOA and booked into a nice RV site. They also had Pizza for delivery right to your RV, which we ordered.

This was a very nice park, with a great swimming pool in which I had a lovely swim.