Michigan Is a State of Mind Pt. 2, Northern

A Mushroom House in Charlevoix

 I must say, we were really looking forward to our first visit to Traverse City. I must also say, we were pretty disappointed overall. We'd been hearing the hype from "celebrity" chefs and the like about all the great food and cool places to visit. Don't misunderstand, it's not a complete wash out, but this is not another Santa Fe or some other food centric place like it! We did the usual hard nosed studying of places to hit and tried quite a few...only to keep striking out to the point that our favorite regular stop was the local natural food grocery for cooking at home. Another interesting point, mostly for you fellow RV'ers is that RV parks are few, expensive, and many do not offer full hookups. We figured this out quickly as we began our trek up the Lake Michigan Coast. It's a very short tourist season. The parks have to make it on their open months, so they charge accordingly. We ended up staying the first five days in T.C. (Traverse City, as nick named by locals) in the RV and big rig lot at the new and beautiful Turtle Creek Casino/Grand Traverse Resort complex just outside of town. It was a cool way to test how long we can stay off the grid completely too. In other words, we were simply parked in the lot with no external power, water, or sewer...off the grid. Our amazing solar panel on the roof, which is the newest black quartz, high amperage output type, kept us with TV, lights, and other essentials the entire five days,  without any effort. Our large capacity fresh and waste water tanks were not even close to being spent after our stay. We had a safe, attractive, and fun place to begin our visit, and the cost? Zero! (Although we did manage to spend a few fun hours in the gaming area). We moved over to a little RV park next, called Everflowing Waters. It's on the outskirts of Traverse City, and it gave us a chance to explore the whole Grand Traverse Bay area, which is really pretty large and diverse. We travelled up all the peninsulas to places like Suttons Bay, Leelanau, Glen Arbor, and then all way up the Western Lake Michigan Shoreline to Charlevoix and then Petoskey.

Sunset view from our RV park in Petoskey

 The highly publicized Traverse City Cherry Festival was fast approaching at the end of June (by the way, there are NO cherries ready for picking in the entire area this early in the season...just another strange idiosyncrasy here. A cherry festival..without cherries!), so we had an extra reason to say of the area, "been here, done this." Besides, we quickly fell for the natural beauty and charm of the Petoskey area, and knew right away it's more our kind of place. It is the week before Independence Day, 2013, and we      thought finding a good landing spot for H2 there was not going to be easy. There's an amazing little city owned RV park right on the lake, right in town, and as luck is often on our side, there was a space for us (and our buddies Craig and Linda for one last Michigan visit!). This place is sitting, as I said, right on Lake Michigan, and about three blocks from the center of downtown. Petoskey has to be experienced first hand. It's not enough to say "charming" or "historic" anymore. This town is still a summer playground for those lucky enough to have been left one of the homes that were built in the late 1800's to early 1900's, or just lucky to know this is one of the gems of the entire area and make it an annual summerstop. We saw cars from Texas, Arizona, Montana, Florida, Georgia, and other places..

Downtown Petoskey

lots of them. Not normal for the rest of Michigan. Until we got here our Texas plates got a lot of stares! We definitely felt like foreigners but not in Petoskey! It turns out that Earnest Hemingway spent quite a bit of time around here as a young man. His parents had one of those summer houses. Craig and Linda made another trip up from their home in Three Rivers to join us. We hit another couple of local microbreweries (they're EVERYWHERE, all over Michigan), and one has better brews than the next. Michigan's the fifth largest beer producer in the country, and the industry employs around 6,000 people in the state! We also dined at a few local eateries like Palette Bistro and The Twisted Olive, with their great lakeside views. We found a little bakery called Suzys Pies http://www.suziespies.com/, which is a small storefront in a strip center. Two ladies were there working, making scratch pastries and fresh fruit pies. What we tried, especially the Canadian Butter Tarts, were totally excellent! We took a day trip and a ferry ride up farther north to Mackinac Island. This one's on most peoples' hit list, including us, and the journey is quite worth the time. The iconic Grand Hotel there, made more famous from the movie "Somewhere in Time" actually charges an admission fee just to get close. I guess they figure it keeps the riff raff out. Fortunately, the rest of the island is free to explore. There are more ancient (for this country at least) homes and mansions and a very Disney like downtown area (it came before Disney though!), which must contain half a dozen fudge shops. We drove over the 5 mile long (still the fourth longest expansion bridge in the world) Mackinac Bridge to the little Upper Peninsula town of St. Ignace. That is the farthest north in Michigan we've travelled so far. Another trip, this time down, to another charming water town took us to Charlevoix. We specifically drove there to lunch at Roquette Burger Bistro, where everything, even their soda! is homemade. We also drove around in Boulder Manor, a unique neighborhood made up of whimsical stone homes (see the pic at the top of the story), mostly built during the 1930's. One of the more notable people who lived there was a fellow named Norman Panama, who wrote such famous screenplays as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and White Christmas. These homes are amazing, and the entire area is filled with them! They look like something that The 7 Dwarfs might have contacted their real estate agent about purchasing! (Snow White might have already been living in the neighborhood).

Some Lilac Festival revelers in Mackinac Island

 We had mixed feelings about not climbing farther north into the U.P. of Michigan, but sometimes you have to set a limit, and this was it. The U.P. is a pretty vast geographical area, and we would have had to circle back around to head ourselves eventually into the eastern part of the U.S., so we made the decision to visit there sometime in the future, maybe when we head into Northern Wisconsin some time, coming over from the west.

Roquette does serious burgers!

Our week in Petoskey went by faster than even usual. We said goodbye to Craig and Linda again and headed H2 and Smarty south for our final stop in Michigan, Detroit and it's educated neighbor, Ann Arbor.

Michigan is a State of Mind, Part 1, South & West Michigan

During our extended stay in Forest City for H2's punch list to be completed, it turned from late winter to full blown spring. The place literally exploded with colorful blooms overnight. Spring in Iowa is something to write songs about. The front porches of the old Victorian homes were lined with flowers of every imaginable color. In the yards, trees and shrubs in all shades of green, purples, white, reds and oranges, yellows, and even blues showed their brightest looks of the year.

Spring in Iowa

  Since H2 was polished up, tightened, and reworked inside and out, it was time to head east towards Three Rivers, Michigan, and the home of our RVin' buddies, Craig and Linda. The drive from North to Southeastern Iowa and in to North Central Illinois was pretty uneventful. We were mostly paying attention to all the systems on board that had been tweaked, to make sure all was well. So far, it was. With Mary Ann captaining the rig now, I navigated us through the south extremities of the giant Chicagoland area and around Lake Michigan, through a small piece of Indiana, and then into Southern Michigan. We really had no idea what to expect. Mary Ann has never been here, and the only experience I have with this place is a couple of family visits to South Haven from St. Louis when I was around five or six. (Lots of Midwest families headed to the cool waters of the Great Lakes back in those days). Craig and Linda are in the rv business...they own a rep company that sells to many of the rv manufacturers, so they are well equipped to host H2 and us. We pulled in behind their lovely home in Three Rivers, about 40 miles south of Kalamazoo, to what they call The Barn.

H2 & Smart at The Barn

Actually, it's a very large metal structure that houses their motorhome, G2, an exact matching model of H2 except for the exterior and interior colors and a few minor variations of equipment. There is an additional 50 amp electrical hookup there for us, so we could stay with our friends, behind the house, which is actually about two or three acres and a wooded area away from them. We visited a little in their guest room and split it up by sleeping in our own bed in H2. Michigan boasts an abundance of micro breweries, but there's a small one in Northern Indiana that is actually our hosts' favorite. It's Iechyd Da (pronounced simply..Yacky Da). We tried some great Porters, IPA's, and Stouts here! Cheers!!

H2 with Cousin G2

 A trip up to Kalamazoo took all of us one evening to a locavore restaurant called Food Dance. Most everything they serve is from farms in the area, and we were to find that Michigan is indeed a local farm to table kind of place. They've been doing it that way forever and don't make too big a deal of it. We also got to visit the Elkart, Indiana area, with probably the most concentration of rv suppliers and manufacturers in the country (and the reason our buddies live nearby!). The RV Hall of Fame Museum and complex is there and a special stop of interest to us, of course.

A Flight of beers from Iechyd Da

  After several days of visiting, we left Craig and Linda temporarily, and headed over to the shore of Lake Michigan. Our plan was to see as much of the western side of the state as we could, since that would take us up to the UP (Upper Peninsula). South Haven, where some of my oldest vacation memories are from, is typical of many towns that line the western side of Lake Michigan. These small summer holiday places, with brick streets and small shops and restaurants, and a sizable marina with lots of sizable (some ocean going!) boats, have been entertaining people on holidays since the 1800's. In fact, a lot of the second homes there belong to Chicagoans, Detroiters, and other Midwest folks. One exception is a fireman we met from Dallas, whose family has had a lake house near Traverse City for years. He said the small house was probably worth $80,000 and it's small lot right on the shoreline...maybe another $1,000,000! We found a nice little off the radar rv park right in South Haven and spent a week there, enjoying the beach and using it as a launch area for a few trips south towards more lake towns; St. Joseph, Benton Harbor, and as far down as New Buffalo (which is almost a Chicago suburb). For one of these trips, we'd heard of a legendary bakery in Stevensville, Bit of Swiss (http://www.bitofswiss.com/) . Naturally, if there's a Danish or other goodie within reach...I'm there. Well, it turns out the legend is true. The chef has won awards here and in France for excellence, and this is probably the culinary highlight of our entire Michigan visit! The array of pastries there is mind boggling. Everything is made from scratch in the European tradition. I was like a kid in a pastry shop! Not since Chocolate Maven in Santa Fe have we seen the likes of this place. Our only regret is that we didn't take more for our freezer. Craig and Linda

Linda, Craig, and M A in South Haven

drove over to South Haven from Three Rivers on one of their inaugural cruises in their new coach. All systems tested well for them, and when we'd all seen all there was to be seen of South Haven, we headed in a caravan up to another cool lake town, Pentwater.

Bit of Swiss Bakery in Stevensville..mmmm!

 Pentwater and other towns along the western side of the lake are idyllic places that reminded me of New England. Of all the places in this area, the little water town of Saugatuck has the most charm, but the others are close runners up, with B and B's, little bistros and bars, great walking venues along the water, and quaint little shops lining the perfect streets. As usual though, we wondered what these towns look like in the dead of winter! Again, Craig and Linda headed home, and we headed inland to Gerald Ford land, Grand Rapids. This place surprised us because it has a whole healthy and serious food thing going on. We ate at Trillium Haven (upscale, casual, total farm to table) and Marie Catrib's (http://www.mariecatribs.com/), a really eclectic mix. We shopped at a small but very well stocked store called Nourish, and we found some bread and buns from a bakery named Little Rooster (http://www.lubbersfarm.com/), which is a part of a farm that does healthy meats and eggs as well. Grand Rapids is a nice sized town, old but mostly well kept, and has a good feel. The east side is especially inviting, with neighborhoods that look like the picture book of The Quintessential Midwest.The people were warm and mostly very friendly. Again, think favorite son, Gerald Ford.

Trillium Haven

   From Grand Rapids, we travelled back over towards the lake and drove through places like Ludington and Manistee. Our next major stop, towards the northern part, and our next posting, is Traverse City and beyond.

Heading To the Mothership

It's the middle of April in Yuma, and most all of the Snowbirds have headed North. Like the geese, the Canadians and Yankees from places like Nebraska, Michigan, and Ohio, are settling in to their summer routines already. We, on the other hand, are hanging back, knowing from experience that Spring weather can be fickle, and we don't really want to get surprised by something unexpected, left over from Old Man Winter. The town of Yuma is shrinking down like a balloon losing air, so I finally decided that the right course for us would be to just head up I-17 to Flagstaff and hang a left over to The Grand Canyon, one of Mary Ann's favorite places, for her birthday! It's not too far north for bad weather, but just far north enough to get out of the heat that's already revving up it's summer engine in South Arizona. So like late leaving geese, we're on our way. We spent just three nights at The Canyon, long enough for some beautiful sunsets and long walks along the rim. It made M A's day a memorable one.

M A relaxin' on The Rim

 The next stop along our intended route for a punch list visit at Winnebago World Headquarters in Forest City, Iowa, where H2 came off the line a few months earlier, is Gallup, New Mexico. We stopped off there for a quick visit to Perry Null Trading and our friend there, Barry, for a birthday gift. Nothing strikes Mary Ann's fancy more than a piece of fine American Indian jewelry. She walked out this time with a new bracelet and matching earrings (which she'd be happy to show you since she usually has them on!). The route, now along I-40 East takes us to very familiar territory, Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Our stop in Albuquerque is where that fickle spring weather caught up with us. For the few days we were there, the winds peaked to gusts well over 50 miles an hour. We blew up to Santa Fe for about a ten day visit, just long enough for Mary Ann to work on her Yoga practice with her instructors, Tias and Surya Little, and for me to keep up my practice of searching for the best Danishes and Cinnamon Rolls in the country, which in Santa Fe are, in my opinion, at The Chocolate Maven. We did manage to pull me away from those long enough to hit a few of our favorite eating places there like Counter Culture, Joe's Diner, The Tune Up, and one new one for the list in this great Foodie town, Jambo Café. It's a really eclectic place that features African/Caribbean dishes with wonderful spices and very bright flavors. One of their drink offerings is a whole Coconut with the top sliced off, served only with a straw for the milk and a spoon for scraping the sweet coconut meat. 

Chocolate Maven's Danish

.
 Our trajectory next is to head right along the old Santa Fe Trail, to Dodge City, Kansas. As we got closer to Dodge City it became clear that some things don't change much with time. In the old days, it was the cattle drives along this ancient route that brought millions of head from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas into Dodge City for transport East by train. Now, the eighteen wheel drivers are the Cowboys, bringing the cattle along the same road to the feed lots and holding areas in the same places as a hundred and fifty years ago. Dodge City is still a major connecting point for the beef, pork, chicken, and other meat industries, and you see it the closer you get to town. You'd think, as we did, that such an iconic place...Dodge City, why the name itself wreaks of the Old West, would have it's past on display proudly. We figure that somewhere along the line, the city government lost it's way, and there is very little evidence of the old Dodge City we expected to find there. We had to dig around to see what was left of the original part of town and even then discovered that they had actually moved the iconic Boot Hill cemetery to another location! Not much here for the tourist or history buff in you.
 After that disappointing stop, we headed to Wichita, where we caught up with cousins Wayne and Marilyn. They showed us around a town we had very little info on, and we were really very surprised. First, the place has some really good eating places. We weren't around long enough to sample a lot, but Tanya's Soup Kitchen stands out in the memory. Wichita also has a good array of grocery stores, where we were able to reload the rolling stock we like to have on hand. We hit Fresh Market and Natural Grocers, to name a few. Ok, back to that pesky weather situation mentioned earlier. Now we had to hang back for a while longer than expected in Wichita due to heavy SNOW falling in Northern Iowa (we're into the beginning of May!).
 Once the storm finally cleared, we started the last leg of a fifteen hundred mile trek, now through Kansas City and Northwest Missouri and in to Northern Iowa. H2, Smarty, and we reached Forest City the evening before our May 6th appointment. We pulled into the Mothership at the Winnebago headquarters, headed for an empty parking space, hooked up, and waited for the next morning when we walked into the customer service department. What happened next is still astonishing to us. When you take your motorhome back to the manufacturer for service, you hope that the experience will be a positive one. After all, it is a major expenditure and in this case..our home. From the moment we

walked in the doors, the customer service exceeded our expectations! Just think, if you could actually take a new car back to the manufacturer for service...instead of a dealer. This is what we were doing. A really unique idea for most consumer items to begin with (no auto manufacturer allows such a thing, for example). We spent about ten days all together with the service people (at one point, even left and drove up to nearby Minneapolis to visit friends Sol, Sue, and family), and they did everything they could to totally complete our punch list of items and make us feel that all was perfect with our coach...Amazing! What a great experience, and now we were ready to head to Michigan in our upgraded, 100% good to go H2...Winnebago Really Rocks.

The 3:10 to Yuma

When we finally headed east from I-15 in san Diego to I-8, out of the Southern California in mid March 2013, we set our clocks in H2 to arrive in Yuma, Arizona, at about 3:10. We were off by an hour or two, but after all..we weren't coming by train anyway! The drive along I-8 is an up the mountain, down the mountain affair that winds right along the U.S. Mexico border. The most interesting part is that almost the whole way, you see fields of produce like lettuces, asparagus, artichokes, and citrus fruits. I thought Yuma was a sandy border town, and it is once you get away from the agri areas that are visible from both sides of the highway, about as far as you can see! Once you get into town, there are refrigeration warehouses everywhere along the roads, with convoys of 18 wheelers waiting to pick up their loads at all hours of the day and night. It's a major industrial farming hub. We never realized the California produce machine extended this far into Arizona. Yuma is also a major snowbird area and is one of the most RV centric places we've been to. In winter the town swells to two or three times it's usual size. There are dozens of huge motorhome parks all over town which cater to the snowbird crowd, a large percentage from the Western half of Canada. Food wise, Yuma's a blank on our rating scale. The few times we actually tried to get something local were pretty much a disaster. One Saturday night we ventured in to a local pub that we noticed always had a big crowd. We stayed after looking inside at the crowd, even though our instincts told us to run. Lots of overweight, pasty looking folks who usually frequent places like this. Anyway...we stayed! I ordered a Kobe Beef  burger. Yep, that's what it said right on the menu, and they wanted about ten bucks for it, so I fell for the marketing. When it arrived, it looked ok, until I bit into it...FE! It tasted like a cow patty burger! Mary Ann was smarter and stuck to a plain salad. She must have been hoping I'd say "Let's beat it out of here," but when I didn't, she hit her auto pilot and opted for something safe. The salad was a bunch of iceberg lettuce with a few wilted tomatoes and some bottled dressing...FE again. Well, we were hungry again the next day...and stayed close to our own kitchen! Even the local Mexican places were pretty dismal, at least by our standards. Their "Salsa" would best be described as tomato flavored water..yechh again.

What passes for Salsa..Tomato Water!

 When we did finally venture eating out again, it was the local In N Out or Chipotle. If it hadn't been for a decent Frys Grocery and our imported stash from Whole Foods and TJ's, we would have needed to move out faster. As it was, we stayed in Yuma about a month until it began to get hot in April. We visited the old army fort, which was there for settlers moving west toward California in the mid 1800's. The Colorado is at it's narrowest there, so it was an easier place to cross to head west. There is also still a key Navy Air station in Yuma, and it is one active military base! Los Algodones

When not visiting the dentist in Los Algodones

is the little Mexican town on the other side of the border. It's famous because there are hundreds of dentists and pharmacies within a few square blocks in this little town. People come from all over the country, mostly for dental work at very discounted prices. No one we spoke with who had been there complained of shoddy medical care. In fact, most everyone said they'd been coming for years and they all had a "favorite dentist" to recommend.  The best part of staying there were the amazing citrus fruits we ate almost every day. They claim that about 98 percent of our winter lettuces and a great percentage of citrus also come from this area to all parts of the country. We're still in the habit of slicing oranges or grapefruits every day, even though we've been gone from there for months. For you Date lovers, this is also the major source of almost all of the Medjool and other varieties available. A really fascinating place in this amazing country of ours!

             M A among the Artichokes

Phoenix/Scottsdale

The month spent in Scottsdale was interesting, to say the least. Mary Ann's glad she got time to spend time with her two best friends from high school, Rika and Ty. They were her cheerleading and best running buddies.


M A,and friends Rika and Ty

We had a great visit with my cousins, Wayne and Marilyn, while they were in town for The Fiesta Bowl from their home in Wichita, and we got to visit some other friends as well and an occasional dinner or movie with Don and Greta. As it turned out, we spent the better part of our visit to Scottsdale exploring the area on our own. So here are our thoughts.


Hiking right in town! (Phoenix)

Being mostly attracted to eateries that steer away from the norm, we found that we had to travel mostly away from the more touristy areas to get what we wanted. Almost all of the Phoenix area can be considered touristy...After all, it is a major winter destination. But it seems like the places we liked best weren't right in the middle of the ritzy/chi chi parts of town. That's ok by us! We found La Grande Orange Grocery and ended up going back several times, mostly for breakfast. It takes up the better part of an entire strip center. Based in Santa Monica, California, this Arizona outpost of the chain also includes the pizza place next door, a party space across the street, and the bakery inside the grocery part, which really isn't a grocery at all. It's more a take out/sit down, inside/outside bustling eatery that has to be visited in-person to be understood fully. The coffee and bakery goods are really above average. The negative is that lots of the salads and sushi are premade and looked to be sitting around a bit too long. The place has lots of character (that word again!). The next winner we found is Rusconi's American Kitchen. This place perfectly exemplifies what we mean by "weren't in the middle of the ritzy/chi chi parts of town." If choosing restaurants by outside appearance only or address is important to you, Rusconi's could be skipped. If you are adventurous enough to step inside, the interior is beautiful...and most important, so is the food. This chef run place produces dishes on par with any we've tried anywhere, and was the best meal we had in Phoenix, period. Table 56, Becketts Table, and Ncounter in Tempe were all pretty notable too. We did a little hiking, some shopping, and had a good time checking out some areas of Phoenix we hadn't seen before. We stayed at the Fort McDowell RV Park in East Scottsdale until January 2, 2013, and headed to Palm Springs for two weeks off the road, using some of our timeshare time and attending the Palm Springs International Film Festival for almost two weeks of new foreign movies....heaven for us (in fact, the photo used on our header is Mary Ann and H2 in front of one of our timeshares, The Palm Springs Tennis Club)! We saw movies from Germany, Ireland, France, Holland, Norway, and Sweden, and managed to get in a few games of tennis in between screenings too! We always try to connect with cousins Marilyn and Steve, who split their time between PS and their boat at Newport Beach. We had a good catch up visit at our Shadow Ridge timeshare clubhouse, again in between screenings. As far as food goes in Palm Springs, we've been so many times now we seldom eat out, but we did hit a couple of favorites. We always manage a meal at Tylers in downtown PS. 5 star burgers! (You'll probably see somebody famous there.)

Tylers Burger..mmmm!

 

Spencers, the restaurant connected to our timeshare, The Tennis Club, is always reliable for a wonderful high end meal, and we had a great lunch there. After two weeks in Palm Springs we moved down to Escondido, California, for a third bonus week at the Welk Resort,

...with aLawrence aWelka

which Mary Ann found at the last minute. While there, we mostly recuperated from the pace at the film festival by soaking in the hot tubs, sweating in the saunas, and walking the beautiful grounds. In case you're wondering, yes it's the same Welk as in Lawrence Welk !..."and a one, and a two!" He was a savvy investor and owned lots of good real estate..this being one of those locations, a real 4 star property. From Escondido, it was time to get back home to H2 (we were really ready to be in our rolling house!), and we headed to a town in California that many natives have never even heard of, Aguanga. It sits high in the mountains, northeast

Jojoba Hills pool

of San Diego, and we spent a month at an
Escapees park called Jojoba Hills. They have a nice clubhouse with a big pool, hot tubs, tennis courts, and shuffleboard courts. The closest town is about a 15 mile drive to Temecula. There's a Trader Joes, Sprouts, and a good Ralphs (Kroger) for food supplies, and it's big enough to have about one of any type store you need, so it was fun to be a bit off the grid in a nice location, but close enough to civilization. Anyone who tells you about perfect California weather though, must not be referring to Aguanga. We had some bitter cold nights, heavy rain, and strong winds during our month, most of February...punctuated by an occasional nice day. Aguanga is located at the high point of a triangle between L.A. and San Diego, so we took the opportunity to drive into L.A. a couple of times. We spent the night one time in Beverly Hills and ate at a couple of favorites there too, The Farm on Beverly Drive and Kate Mantilini on Wilshire.

Kate Mantilini..Beverly Hills

At the end of February, we headed east, toward a place we'd heard of, were curious about, and, as it turned out, had lots of misconceptions of. Stay tuned for our impressions of the western town of Yuma!

Rollin' On the Shakedown Cruise...Deming,NM & Scottsdale,AZ

After staying in Dallas for over a month and finally getting to see some of our close friends, Ivan and Bunny, Chuck and Jan, and others, we even spent Thanksgiving with Mary Ann's Aunt Willie Mae at cousin Dee Dee's house and met up with lots of other long lost relatives.


They line up at Hard Eight..no wonder!

 Since we were parked out in the "boonies," we really didn't get much time to catch up on the eating out food scene in Big D. I guess the news would be....BURGERS! There are new burger places opening as fast as you can blink. We managed to try a few of them, Hopdoddys (lots of similarities to Shake Shak in Miami and NY..except for one small thing, flavor!), Liberty Burger, Beck's Prime, and they were mostly all ok, but for the most part underwhelming. It seems the harder they try, the less interesting they get..to us anyway. We did get over to Hard Eight in Coppell. We'd heard about this Llano Texas style BBQ place but were skeptical from the start. We were wrong! This place does Hill Country smoker style BBQ as well as any down there we've been to..and do they line up for it!! If you're a true barbeque fan, this is not to be missed. Brother Eddie would go wild for it! We are still amazed at the myriad of food stores in Dallas. It rivals anything, anywhere we've been so far. We do really still miss having the incredible selection...there's Central Market, giant sized Whole Foods, Sprouts, Natural Grocers, Eatzi's (here's a scoop that almost never gets mentioned in Dallas foodie blogs...their grill has an "A" list burger!), and now TJ's (Trader Joes). Even some of the local Krogers are gourmet oriented stores due to the heavy competition. It's as if the grocery store gods all got together and chose DFW as their center of the universe! We kept our dueling convection cooktops going, and whipped up lots of serious dishes with all those great available foods. HEADLINE: "H2's New Galley Exceeds Expectations!"


 

 There is a whole list of new restaurants we missed, and other than a quick bite at old favorites, R&D and La Duni in Highland Park, we'll have to wait for our next trip to check out more of them. We wanted to start working in the new galley in H2, so we did do lots of grocerying.
 We took H2 to our dealer a couple of times to work out some "baby bugs," and finally on November 30th, 2012, we pulled out of the urban trailer park like place we'd been having to call home ( there are no really nice rv parks right in Dallas or many large cities, for that matter ), and headed out I-20 for West Texas.

M A captaining H2 on his inaugural run 

The shakedown rollout was finally underway! Now, H2 is truly a rolling home on wheels. He not only sports the luxury amenities mentioned earlier, but has capabilities which allow us to stay off the grid for extended periods. We wanted to test this new capability on our first night out, so we cruised to just before where I-20 and I-10 converge and landed in Mary Ann's birthplace, Pecos, Texas. We found a more isolated spot in the local WAL-MART lot, asked the manager if it was ok to stay, and set up house. We turned on our powerful generator, cooked a nice dinner, watched a French movie on our new big screen tv( HEADLINE: H2's New Home Theater Lounge Exceeds Expectations"), took showers, and settled in for a good nights sleep....in the parking lot......at the WAL-MART! What a great country!
 The next morning, we rolled out towards Deming, New Mexico. This time, we actually stopped at one of our Escapees Parks ( the folks based in Livingston, Texas, who are our full timer support for our snail mail, etc.) and hooked our shorelines up to the grid. Deming has a really neat combo movie theater/bowling alley called Starmax, and it was Saturday night after all, so after the movie we went and rolled a few games, all the while quoting quotes from one of our favorite movies, The Big Lebowski.
You see, it's a movie that has a lot of bowling....well if I have to explain, you probably won't get it anyway ( I'd suggest you watch it, if you haven't seen it*). By the way, Mary Ann's a natural bowler! The girl can roll! I, on the other hand, only know how to rock. A fun Saturday night in Deming....when in Rome. On December 2nd, H2, smoothly as silk, continued across New Mexico and into Arizona, until we reached our destination, The Eagle View RV Resort, at the eastern edge of Scottsdale. While we were setting up H2, our friends, Don and Greta, who live in Scottsdale, drove over to surprise us. We'd spend the next month there until just after New Years 2013.


H2 relaxing after his long run to Scottsdale

 HEADLINE: "Three full days of hard driving, and H2's Ride Exceeds Expectations!" We'd hoped that it would be a significant tradeoff for our venture into the rv life. After more than three years (two full-timing), trading Harvey, a 32 foot C class coach sailboat, for the much larger and way more complicated H2, a big A class land yacht. The tradeoff, at least in this beginning, is a really good one.

"The Dude Abides!"

*DISCLAIMER...The Big Lebowski is NOT a family movie! But...The Dude really does Abide.

Finally! Smarty's new BIG Brother!

Monty's (Healthy!!) Diner,Madison

 It's March, 2013. It's been months since the last post, and there's BIG news...Smarty's new, BIG brother, H2! We were at Moose Creek Lodge in Victor, Idaho last summer, when we decided that it was time for a larger "house." We'd been kicking the idea around with our RV'n buddies, Craig and Linda, and after lots of discussions and weighing in on the pros and cons with them, while we were all sitting together at Moose Creek, we pushed the button. The new coach, a 2013 Itasca Suncruiser 37f,  would give us two bathrooms, a much larger galley (with a dishwasher and washer/dryer), a true home theater set up in the lounge area, and lots of other amenities that would make full-time traveling and working on the road more comfortable. In fact, the idea was so compelling that Craig and Linda left us for home in Michigan and ended up placing their order for a Suncruiser soon after us!!



Biking The Mississippi!

 It was going to take about four months to build, so we changed course, headed out of Idaho for Western Montana, Eastern Washington State, then back across Wyoming, and South Dakota. We made it to Forest City, Iowa, where Winnebagos are built, and stayed there until we had absorbed enough info to adjust our ordered rig one last time before it went on the assembly line. Then, we headed across Southern Minnesota and had a chance to visit with long time friend, Sol and his wife, Sue, from Minneapolis. We trekked into Southern Wisconsin and stayed in the Madison area long enough to find a bunch of total foodie places to eat, then turned South through Illinois, following the Mississippi, and ending up in Hannibal, Missouri. It was really educational and fun to hang out in Mark Twain Land for a few days, as we kept a steady course right into my home town, St. Louis. The place has really changed alot over the years...for the better! Downtown St. Louis is buzzing with activity. There are tons of cool restaurants, the two new sports fields, people hanging out in clubs at night, and the food! Italian delicacies on The Hill, Mavrakos Chocolates, fresh pretzles, healthy gourmand delights at Winslows Home on Delmar...too many others to mention. We rode our bikes along a path that heads from the iconic Gateway Arch, north along the river..for miles! We also got a chance to visit with our good friends, Denny and Karen. What a great revisit. Who says, "You can never go home again?"

 

Winlows Home, St.Louis

 

 Next, since we were just killing some time waiting for H2 to arrive at our dealer in Dallas, we kept our southerly track and headed for Tulsa, where Mary Ann got to see her cousin, Jennifer and her husband Doron for a nice visit. Then it was right back to Dallas. We ended up waiting for well over a month, but finally the big day arrived, and we took Harvey up to our dealer, said goodbye and thanked him for almost three years of near perfect sailing! What a great RV! Hope he finds a good home with folks who appreciate him as much as we have. Moving from one rig to another is about as mind boggling as moving into a brick and mortar house. It took almost two full days, but we were finally ready to head out. Next stop..our maiden cruise toward Scottsdale, Arizona in H2!

The new galley