TRAVEL WITH THE BAYFIELD BUNCH:))

Friday, July 16, 2010

WHATEVER

I am so much looking forward to the weather pattern shift in mid August when pleasantly cooler days will signal the very early stirrings of Autumn.

Started my utility trailer project this morning & managed to remove 3 sides of the rotted wooden side panels. Next I will throw a coat of paint on the steel frame & see how that goes. Aside from a trip to town for paint the day was spent just puttering with the trailer, weed whacking & consulting with my recliner.

GROANER'S CORNER:(( In just two days from now, tomorrow will be yesterday.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

STORMY SKIES & A VISIT TO MITCHELL

STORMY SKIES OVER A NEIGHBORING WHEAT FIELD

Every time I drive that little lumber wagon Jeep of ours the more I am liking it. I'm past the early stages of herky jerky cornering & big bumpity bounces. I've got the 6 speed shift pattern smoothed out & am beginning to slide through those gears like a hot knife through butter. One of the extra bonuses I hadn't expected is the power of this little Snagglepuss. It's big 6 cylinder engine coupled with the manual transmission really torgues the light weight Jeep body off the line. I imagine it would be a real S.O.B. to drive on icy & hard packed snow though. Throw some high wind gusts into the mix & I'm sure it will be like handling a para-sail with a pair of broken roller skates on while trying to stay upright on a glass smooth lake of frozen ice hockey water. Even the downdraft from a herd of sparrows flying over rocks the Jeep from side to side & the wind sheer from a Turkey Vulture flying over this morning nearly blew me off the road. Yep, it's a fun vehicle to drive alright & I am just loving every minute of it:))

JEEP'S FIRST RUN PULLING THE UTILITY TRAILER THIS MORNING.......we are lucky to have our own area within the Park to dispose of yard clippings.

Now that the convenient & totally logical mini-van is gone I have decided to upgrade our little utility trailer back into road worthy shape. It has been let go over the years but I am already seeing a new & necessary use for it now that the van is gone. It has a solid steel frame but just needs some new side panels made & some tail light wiring replaced. We bought that little home made trailer nearly 8 years ago before moving to Bayfield when we realized we were going to have to move a lot of household stuff by ourselves. That handy little trailer has turned out to be one of the best purchases we ever made & it has well earned the upcoming extra TLC about to be bestowed on it. Gotta get Bruce to help me this one though or the trailer could end up looking like, 'The Wreck Of The Asparagus' by the time I would be done with it.

NEXT PROJECT WILL BE THIS UTILITY TRAILER

Had a few questions about the Canadian Flags on our rig & also the graphics on the back. Also, about the 'Bayfield Bunch' lettering on the Jeep's windshield. Lucky for us one of Kelly's Son's owns his own sign company & graphics business. We gave him the flag decal measurements & he made up the decals & put them on for us. Same with the 'Bayfield Bunch' graphics on the back. He has some kind of machine that does all that stuff & when we wanted lettering for the Jeep he just whipped them up for us. The graphics & letters come on some kind of paper that is carefully peeled off as the letters go on. He specializes in 'wrapping' cars & trucks which means he can put all that fancy logo stuff on vehicles that you see going down the road. We have a big blank white spot on the back of our rig & just this morning I sent Ben an email asking him what kind of graphics design he thought might look good in that spot. His company is called, FLORENCE SIGNS & GRAPHICS and is located in Cambridge, Ontario Canada.

THINKING OF PUTTING SOME GRAPHICS IN THAT WHITE BLANK SPOT BETWEEN THE TAIL LIGHTS

We headed down to Mitchell this afternoon to visit with Uncle Harry & Aunt Jean. Jean will be flying back to Florida early Sunday morning. Harry's doing pretty good but it will be a very sad day Saturday when brother & sister say goodbye because they both know there may not be many more goodbyes left:((

I sometimes click on blogs I see in other blogger's lists & the other day I clicked on one but only got a few words into the blog & had to turf it. Why? The print was too small for me to read!! Obviously the blogger had excellent vision & never thought about readers who didn't. It was the smallest print size I've seen so far & I now wish I could remember who's blog it was because I should have dropped a helping comment on the blog about the small print being hard for some folks to read. When I started out my font size was too small as well & it took me awhile before I went with a larger easier to read font type & size. And while I'm on the topic of blogs I have another opinion which I've blogged about in the past. If I click on a blog & it has music blaring I don't go any further. I don't scramble around looking for a 'mute' button either. 'Click' & I'm gone. On the up side I'd like to remind fellow bloggers of the advantages of putting a 'search' gadget on your blog. People can type in key words & find your older posts. I use it a lot when looking for things on my own blog whether it be from a week ago or a year ago. You can find the 'search option widget' in your 'Blogger Dashboard.' Go to Layout/Design & look for the the phrase, 'add a gadget.' This is where you will find the 'search' widget plus other goodies for your blog.

'OH OH' I THINK SOMEBODY JUST HEARD THE RUMBLE OF THUNDER

And guess who popped up in the blogging world today after a pro-longed 4 month absence. Yes indeed, it's our old blogging & traveling buddy WANDERING WILLY. Nice to see you out here again WW:))

THE ROAD JUST OUTSIDE OUR PARK

GROANER'S CORNER:(( With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person, which almost went unnoticed awhile back. Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey", died peacefully at age 93. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in. And then the trouble started. And, just to add to that......What if the Hokey Pokey REALLY IS what it's all about!!

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Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

Until one has loved an animal, part of their soul remains un-awakened

OUR BLOGGER WEBSITE http://thebayfieldbunch.com/

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/

AL'S SMUG MUG PHOTO GALLERY http://stargeezer.smugmug.com/ (a work in progress)

The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...... AL.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

TOOK THE RIG FOR IT'S MONTHLY SPIN TODAY

JUST A FEW OF THE BOATS IN BAYFIELD'S BUSY SUMMER HARBOR

A sunny dry day greeted us this morning so figured it was a good opportunity to take the rig out for it's monthly summer drive. Headed off to Goderich to fill some gas cans & take on a little fuel for the rig itself. Wanted to run the generator for a bit to give it some exercise too. A stop at Tim Horton's & the grocery store rounded the morning of. I have taken a liking to Vanilla Soy Milk so picked up some of that plus a carton of 'Peach-Tangerine juice. I find two thirds of a glass of vanilla soy milk with a third of Peach-Tangerine thrown in makes for a real fine smoothie. I also use the Soy milk in my morning shakes with a good slug of PT juice as well. As Jackie Gleason used to say, "how sweet it is:))"

Bruce came over today & we did up the final paperwork, ownership, etc on the mini-van we sold him last week so after 5 years it is officially gone:((

FUEL STOP IN GODERICH THIS MORNING...I generally fuel the rig here because it is easy to get in & out of. We gas up here before heading for the southwest & it usually gets us well down into Indiana. (and they put the gas in........ and I really like that!!)

THIS SEEMS LIKE A RATHER PRECARIOUS WAY TO DREDGE THE RIVER

Took Max out for a spin in the little Lumber Wagon today & he did really well. He really liked all the extra air coming in with the Jeep's top partly down. Today's pics are from Tuesday's drive down around the harbor.

A GOOD DAY FOR DOING SOME PAINTING ON THE FISHING BOAT

Sometimes I pick up ideas for the daily blog from something I've read in another bloggers post. Rick mentioned this morning about normally writing his blog in the evening. For the most part I have been doing the same thing but a bunch of months ago I began to write bits & pieces starting earlier in the day. For example, right now it is 6:30 a.m. Wednesday morning & I am writing this to include later in tonight's blog which I will finally put together sometime after supper. I have a laptop beside my recliner so during the day I periodically flop into my chair for a short snooze. Sometimes the snooze is replaced by a few thoughts on the laptop which in turn is worked into the blog. I call it, Snooze & Write. Started doing that while on the road this past winter & I find it's easier for me at night not having to start from scratch. Just working on the day's photos at night can be very tiresome without having to write a whole blog on top of that. Too many 'midnight oil' nights so by starting the blog earlier in the day & splitting up the times, I find it easier in the long run.

THE ENTRANCE TO BAYFIELD'S HARBOR

And speaking of photos. Rick's way of photo filing is undoubtedly the correct one. I do it a little differently. I simply create a monthly photo on Picasa like, 'May 2010 or June 2010, etc. I put all of the pics I take in May into the May folder. Same thing in July, September, etc. Those files & names are also mirrored in 'My Pictures.' When a month ends I also put a copy of the month onto our external hard drive. In June I had 555 photos, in May it was 283. So far in July I have taken 225. All our travel pics are in a folder entitled, 'All RV Travels.' Within that folder are yearly folders such as 06/07, 07/08, etc. Within those year folders are then the months of travel. I have a tendency to use words in my filing instead of numbers simply because words are easier & less confusing for me to remember. I have never had a head for numbers. This system works for me & in my foggy little world it is important for me to keep myself simple:))

A FAMILY BOATING DAY

Some days when we are traveling I may be uploading pics to the computer from 3 separate cameras......now that's where things begin to get a little hairy late at night after a long tiring day!!

KIDS CLAMBERING AROUND ON THE BOW OF AN OLD SHIPWRECK JUST OFF BAYFIELD'S BEACH