Shifting Gears

So things are here in Michigan are settling comfortably on our end. We're getting to know the area better everyday, learning more roads, short cuts and back ways to and from town. We’ve been trying to get into Traverse City most days, whether its to run errands or just simply walk around the streets to peak into shops. It’s not a terribly large town so it’s not like it takes a long time to figure things out, but it is a real pretty so it’s worth the trip just to walk around.

The downtown area sits in a little coobie hole on the bank of the west arm of the Grand Traverse Bay which flows into Lake Michigan about 25 or 30 miles north of here.


Seriously, doesn’t this picture look like it should have an advertisement for an exotic, and much needed, Caribbean vacation overtop of it. For a fresh body of water it’s hard to beat those colors…and the beach. I swear, that’s half the reason for moving here, just to be able to see this view almost everyday.

Boardman River also meanders through town, spilling into the bay at the edge of town. Some of the river has a slight feel of Amsterdam to it, with boats lining the canals as if they are the primary mode of transportation for those who own them…and probably their primary residence as well. The river is apparently also a decent little fishing spot with salmon as big as a toddler swimming around freely like they own the joint. Though the other day we saw a man fishing on the banks pulling out one of those suckers reinforcing the fact that they don’t indeed own the river after all. But, hey, it’s worth a shot, right? I have yet to get a fishing license, but I have the day off tomorrow so that may be the day. I mean it’s worth it. Especially if there are two foot long salmon cruising casually through nearby waterways, just waiting to be served on our dinner table. Mmmmm…you certainly can’t complain about that meal after a long day of work which, I might add, I just finished…the first in four months. Wow, that feels great to say. Both that I took four months off from working and that I started working again after four months. The whole cycle, for me personally, can be boiled down to a very delicate relationship between the two. Man I loved being on the road but, as sick as it sounds, it also feels good to be back at work, although I am only working part-time so I’m not really sure if that counts or not. But there is a part of RV life that I do truly miss, as there were also those things in stationary house life that I missed when we were in the RV. I guess that's the ebb and flow of life. Is the grass always greener? I don't really believe that it is but I do think that there are times that you need to take advantage of a very real opportunity that confronts you, even if only for a passing moment. I mean, after all, that is how we were able to sell the house and find our perfect motorhome in the first place. I believe that some things are truly meant to be and buying the Ultrastar was, from the first moment I laid my eyes on her, one of those defining moments.

Although we are no longer using her as our primary residence and source of transportation we are lucky enough to have the space to park her outside our cottage so not only do I get to look at that beautiful piece of machinery as soon as I wake up every morning, I am also able to open the door to her loving and welcoming interior anytime I want. To be taken in by her inner beauty. To be devoured in her round curves and the smooth lines of oak wood finish. To sit in her now is just as it has always been, comforting and warm, though we have emptied her out, taking out what we needed for our new home which deep down makes me feel incredibly unfaithful, like I'm cheating on her. I don't like to think of it like this but I feel like we've left her as an empty shell, just as we found her. Lost of a true personality, lost of her own identity. But I know this isn’t the way it really is and that she's not completely finished with what she was meant to do, where she was meant to go. And I don't feel like we're finished with her either. Let's face it…she's a 21 year old workhorse, tuned up and ready to spread her wings and fly on the endless highway whenever we need her to snap onto action.

For now, though, we'll let her rest on a soft sandy cushion under the shade of the pines and enjoy the life of the lakes just as we are. After all, even the most determined of us need to take a break once in a while. And, in our case, sometimes you need to shake out the cobwebs, dust off the boots and kick start the old engine to get it started again. But not without a true appreciation of what you've already been through, where you've been and what got you there.

Back To The Future

So Michigan it is!!! Yes, we decided to overwinter in a place that gets colder, has more snow and a longer winter than PA. And no, we're not nuts. Well possibly a little bit, but I don't think that had much to do with our choice. So we headed back from Wyoming..back to a spot that we spent a week at a little over two months ago. We also did it much faster than we did on the way out, taking only nine days to cover the same ground we just covered in over two months . It was a weird feeling to drive most of the days but once we decided to actually do this we were also pretty excited to get there and see what the scene was like. Although we did rush a bit on the way back (rush by our definition is apparently to drive more than five hours a week), we did get to camp on an island on the Mississippi River and spend a few nights along Lake Michigan on the southern side of the Upper Peninsula, a spot that we missed on the way out.



Opting to spend the winter in Michigan rather than in the southwest like we "planned" wasn't just a split second decision though…well it kind of was but it was a confident split second decision. It really was an area that we both felt we could possibly start something new, with all the things that we like to have around us, some of which we have yet to have in a homebase. Beautiful natural areas right outside our door, lakes just about everywhere you look, the largest freshwater source in the world at our fingertips, a decent job market, four microbreweries, a beach town feel. Well that's our list so far…though it may grow the longer we stay, who knows. For now, we're just trying out something that Kev and I have never done together in the ten years we've been married. We figured we might as well… we've got nothing to lose by trying.

So we have an eight month lease on a small cottage on Arbutus Lake, about six and a half miles south of Traverse City. The lake is actually five small lakes connected together, the cottage sitting on the south bank of the southernmost lake.



During the summer the cottage rents by the week so we have all of the conveniences of a summer vacation rental at our disposal…row boats, motor boats, docks, a small beach. Unfortunately we know that there we will only have a couple months to take advantage of it, but something is better than nothing, right?? And we always have ice fishing (beer drinking) in the winter which we have heard is a lot of fun. And don't forget ice skating and cross country skiing, not that I have ever really done either…so if I don't take this opportunity to try it, well, I should just curl up under my blanket and succumb to winter blues. Luckily we already have ice skates that we got a few years ago but never really had the chance to use in PA so that's one hurdle out of the way. Now we just need to pick up some cross country skis and a fishing license, which is cheaper with Michigan residency so yesterday I became an official Michigan resident…license, voter registration, a Michigan plate on my new set of wheels, which is probably (definitely) the nicest car I've ever had.



I mean, I'm 31 years old, don't I deserve it? I even promised Kev that I would do my best to keep it the nicest car I've ever had. Now all I need now is a job. But that will come and, quite honesty, I barely even started looking yet. Luckily it's a town driven on tourism so the service industry is pretty steady and I'm definitely not opposed to slinging coffee again for a while. But, in reality, I'm not really opposed to doing anything for a while to get things going and get our feet on the ground. Who knows what will happen, where we'll end up working, what we'll end up doing. All I know is that we have eight months to figure it out so it's worth giving it a solid chance…and if everything works out hopefully we'll still be in Traverse City next year at this time. And if not, well, the life we lived for the last three and a half months wasn't too shabby either.

Under A Sky So Blue

So Story lies on the eastern edge of the Bighorn Mountains, the easternmost range of the Rockies, in between and equidistant from the towns of Buffalo and Sheridan. Every road in town, except one, turns into dirt a mile or two outside of town and stops abruptly in a dead end. Appropriately so, the one lonely continuous road in town is a dirt road that doesn’t really seem to connect Story to anything that couldn’t be taken through another route. But it does go past the Wagon Box Fight Historical Site, a famous battle in 1867 between the U.S. Army and Lakota (Sioux) Indian tribes who were under the leadership of Crazy Horse and Little Wolf (there is speculation that Red Cloud had also played a part in the attacks though the truth behind this was never confirmed). Although the Sioux Indians had a larger army (estimated at 2,000), the U.S. had recently acquired new weaponry that the Lakota did not know about and could not match. The 9th Infantry, comprised of 31 men and protected only by 14 wagons lying end to end in a circle, survived repeated attacks by the Sioux. It is reported by Captain James Powell that his infantry of 31 killed an estimated 60 Sioux and injured another 120, although there was never a clear establishment of the true numbers of the encounter.

Boy do I get distracted…
Anyway, most of the other dead end roads in town lead to either historical sites or trailheads that enter the valleys of Bighorn National Forest. This has been a pretty convenient situation for us motorhome owners being that it’s not real practical to take down the awning and batten down the hatches to make a mere two mile jaunt to enjoy the trails within the forest. It adds three or four miles of road walking to the excursion but that’s definitely not a bad thing and the dogs certainly aren’t complaining about it.



We’ve all had a great time cruising the trails of the national forest, climbing hills that are higher than anything else we’ve hiked so far and taking in spectacular vistas of rolling dry land hills that seem to stretch the whole way to South Dakota.



Some hikes took us along creeks gushing with mountain melt off.





Some took us along ridges that led into fields of wildflowers and grasses. And there were always those idyllic spots to stop and eat lunch or think about our next move after Story, where we want to spend the fall and winter months. We knew from the beginning of the trip that this time would come, to consider our over wintering options, to consider what is most practical, most realistic for the next six months or so.
We originally thought we’d like to make it to the southwest for the winter season. Maybe store the Ultrastar in an RV Park, maybe get jobs, hang out in the desert for a while. But the way things have gone so far, with us sticking to the goal of going slow and stopping often, has put us in a slightly precarious situation. Here we sit, just east of the Bighorn’s, Bitterroot’s and the Cascades and north of the Rockies, during a time of year that can see weather changes quicker than a blink of an eye. It’s been getting into the low 40’s or upper 30’s most nights during the last two weeks, just an inkling of what to expect real soon as the norm. Yellowstone was even shut down for a day last week due to substantial snowfall. And we know this is just the beginning of a long winter for this region of the country. Do we make a run for it and continue through Wyoming and Idaho and hope that we don’t get stuck in a situation that we can’t dig ourselves out of? Do we zigzag around mountain passes in Colorado and Utah in hopes of finding a clear path to the southwest? Do we backtrack a bit to see what comes of that direction?
A decision will eventually be made and no matter what it is, it doesn’t really matter, because there is really no “wrong” choice here. Like they say, if it’s worth the going, it’s worth the ride.

There's A Story Behind Every Town

A few days at Keyhole State Park and we were off, on our way to a small town just east of the Bighorn Mountains…Story, Wyoming. Some friends of ours from PA moved to this town of 600 people a month or so ago and are settling into the scene seamlessly and comfortably. It didn’t take long to get there and by most other people’s driving standards we probably should have actually gotten there a week ago. But why rush? Especially when there’s so much that is easy to miss in between.
One of the reasons I think this country is great is just when you think you’ve possibly gone through the most barren areas of the U.S. your next drive is even more desolate than the one before. Although we have done fairly extensive traveling throughout the U.S. I had almost forgotten that there is still a lot of wide open space out there that hasn’t been built up with cookie cutter developments and strips malls offering the same things that are offered at the strip mall across the street. And that it doesn’t have to take you half an hour to drive eight miles. But there’s also the other side of things, the fact that in areas this spread out and open, well, you have to drive to get just about everywhere. For me, I think I’m aiming for the happy medium. I’m not exactly sure what I mean by that except that I really like the idea of getting everything you need in the town that you reside and not be forced into going to the SprawlMart stores off the exit ramp on the highway. To have conveniences that are accessible in a downtown area (grocery store, market, place to see music, etc.) but still be able to get to the next town over without too much hassle and without battling bouts of road rage. If anyone knows the town I’m referencing, please let me know because I’m not really sure where it is myself!

Anyway, back to Story. So we pulled into town just in time for the start of Story Days, a community celebration of town pride. There were plans for festivities all weekend including a dutch oven cookoff, a parade, food and craft stands, and live music. A pretty good scene for a town of 600. Well we missed the cookoff on Friday night though judging by the responses from the crowd the prepared foods were pretty impressive. There were lots of comments along the lines of “there’s no way the (insert food) was made in a dutch oven. I don’t believe it.” If that’s not a testament to the quality of the food that was offered, well I don’t know what is. I, myself, have never used a dutch oven but as far as I’ve heard you can cook anything to perfection in them. The atmosphere at the cookoff was real inviting, even for strangers like us. Bluegrass music resonated through the air and laughter was escaping from people everywhere you looked. You could tell this community had something going on.
Although we missed the cookoff on Friday night, we made sure not to miss the parade on Saturday morning with its eclectic representation of antique cars, the 7th calvary drum and bugle corps, cowboys shooting guns and a float created by the Story Women’s Club (which our friend Caroline was a part of).




There was a great mix of designs and organizations and fun was to be had by everyone during the parade. The winner for the best float went to the Story Book Tails (although we were rooting for Caroline, of course) which, I have to say, was a pretty awesome creation.

In addition to this being a big weekend in Story we also had tickets to see The Gourds (Austin, TX good-fun band) at the Babcock Theater in Billings, Montana on Saturday night. So we hit the road during the late afternoon and made our way two hours northwest towards Billings. Apparently the city of Billings doesn’t have the best reputation and, being that crystal meth detox centers lined the street on our way into town, the reasons behind this accusation were clear. But a town is a town is a town and we weren’t there to cast judgement or develop a concrete opinion of the area. We were there to see The Gourds!!






And being that we only ever saw them in PA, well, it was neat to see what a Montanian crowd was like (for the record, there were a bunch more hippies here than the PA shows we saw, but I could have expected as much). Overall well worth the two hour drive there, as well as the two hour drive home after the show (although I didn’t drive so I was able to catch a few zzzz’s in the back seat) and, as always, we look forward to seeing them the next time they’re playing a gig near us, wherever we may be.