Saturday, July 01, 2006
From "Great Lakes Splendor" to "America's Dairyland"
June 30 2006
I included two words yesterday and here are the definitions:
milieu \meel-YUH; meel-YOO\,
noun; Environment; setting.
paragon \PAIR-uh-gon; -guhn\,
noun: A model of excellence or perfection; as, "a paragon of beauty; a paragon of eloquence."
We had to bid farewell to Manistique this morning but not before being treated to a visual aubade compliments of the patient, morning sun toying with some lazy, lingering clouds.
I know June 21 is typically the longest day of the year but today was actually 25 hours long thanks to our crossing into the Central Time Zone. And we needed it! We drove from Manistique, MI to Lakewood, WI to visit friends of ours, the Alsbachs, at their cottage, or cabin as they like to call it. I’ll let you take a look at the 
pictures of their place on Archibald Lake and let you decide if either of those names do justice to the little piece of paradise they have there. Karen and Royce are our quondam neighbours from Raleigh, North Carolina who moved to Appleton, WI just before we moved back to Canada. It was fun to see them again after 7 years and I must admit, they certainly know how to entertain. We just popped in for a few hours in 
the afternoon and within minutes of arriving Royce had us out on their boat for a tour of the lake, which is just gorgeous. We saw beautiful cottages as well as beautiful wildlife, like turtles, eagles and loons.
After our visit we started heading toward Chicago which is our next destination. Chantal found a campsite on the shores of Lake Michigan again (big lake!) in a town named Kewaunee, WI, just eat of Green Bay. It is a beautiful, tidy little town of 2333 people, according to the sign on the way into town, situated on the water with a lovely harbour which is like the jewel of the village. The campsite itself is not that attractive but it has a heated pool and wireless internet access, so that makes up for most of the other drawbacks. Anyway, we did catch a glimpse of a fabulous sunset looking like a burning orange/red ball burning in the sky as it dipped into the wispy clouds just on the horizon. A nice way to end the day.
We experienced a couple more “episodes” with pulling the poor little Matrix. As we pulled in to a
grocery store to pick up some things both Chantal and I noticed a squealing tire noise. I thought it was just due to the extreme angle were needed to take to get around the corner. I have never pulled a car behind a motorhome before so I figured that this is just one of those things that nobody mentions. It happened again on the way out but I was not surprised by this. Then, about an hour later when we pulled in to get some gas, we heard the squealing again and that got us wondering what was going on since the angle on which we turned into the gas station was not that sharp. When I jumped out to fill the tank one of the other people at the station came over to tell me that the front wheels did not look like they were turning with the RV. He then showed me the black rubber marks on the ground leading up to where the poor little Matrix sat. 
Sure enough, when we check the steering wheel it was locked! Ouch! We tried to figure out what went wrong since we did everything the same way as we always do. After some experimentation I found that you need to turn the key to the second positon, ACC, before turning it back to the first position to ensure that the steering wheel does not lock. I guess we had been lucky and had been doing that way up until yesterday. AS we found out, just turning it to the first position rather than “coming back” to the first position makes a big difference. However, the Matrix still seems to drive OK. Tough little car.
Then, to add insult to injury, after we had unhooked and used the car for the day, we hooked it back up, made double sure that they key positioning was done correctly, and proceed to forget to disengage the handbrake! Luckily for us we had the windows down and were listening very closely for squealing of any sort so we only went about 10 feet before realizing something was not right. Two more patches of rubber on the ground. But no serious harm done to anything but our egos. The one thing I have to admit though is how amazed I was at the V10 engine in the MoHo. When I started off with the Matrix attached with the hand brake on, I couldn’t even tell. The torque must be so strong that dragging a car with the brakes on hardly has any noticeable effect. I wish I could take even a little bit of that torque and transfer it to my Miata.
So now it is off to Chicago to celibrate Canada Day!
I included two words yesterday and here are the definitions:
milieu \meel-YUH; meel-YOO\,
noun; Environment; setting.
paragon \PAIR-uh-gon; -guhn\,
noun: A model of excellence or perfection; as, "a paragon of beauty; a paragon of eloquence."
We had to bid farewell to Manistique this morning but not before being treated to a visual aubade compliments of the patient, morning sun toying with some lazy, lingering clouds.
I know June 21 is typically the longest day of the year but today was actually 25 hours long thanks to our crossing into the Central Time Zone. And we needed it! We drove from Manistique, MI to Lakewood, WI to visit friends of ours, the Alsbachs, at their cottage, or cabin as they like to call it. I’ll let you take a look at the 
pictures of their place on Archibald Lake and let you decide if either of those names do justice to the little piece of paradise they have there. Karen and Royce are our quondam neighbours from Raleigh, North Carolina who moved to Appleton, WI just before we moved back to Canada. It was fun to see them again after 7 years and I must admit, they certainly know how to entertain. We just popped in for a few hours in 
the afternoon and within minutes of arriving Royce had us out on their boat for a tour of the lake, which is just gorgeous. We saw beautiful cottages as well as beautiful wildlife, like turtles, eagles and loons.After our visit we started heading toward Chicago which is our next destination. Chantal found a campsite on the shores of Lake Michigan again (big lake!) in a town named Kewaunee, WI, just eat of Green Bay. It is a beautiful, tidy little town of 2333 people, according to the sign on the way into town, situated on the water with a lovely harbour which is like the jewel of the village. The campsite itself is not that attractive but it has a heated pool and wireless internet access, so that makes up for most of the other drawbacks. Anyway, we did catch a glimpse of a fabulous sunset looking like a burning orange/red ball burning in the sky as it dipped into the wispy clouds just on the horizon. A nice way to end the day.
We experienced a couple more “episodes” with pulling the poor little Matrix. As we pulled in to a
grocery store to pick up some things both Chantal and I noticed a squealing tire noise. I thought it was just due to the extreme angle were needed to take to get around the corner. I have never pulled a car behind a motorhome before so I figured that this is just one of those things that nobody mentions. It happened again on the way out but I was not surprised by this. Then, about an hour later when we pulled in to get some gas, we heard the squealing again and that got us wondering what was going on since the angle on which we turned into the gas station was not that sharp. When I jumped out to fill the tank one of the other people at the station came over to tell me that the front wheels did not look like they were turning with the RV. He then showed me the black rubber marks on the ground leading up to where the poor little Matrix sat. 
Sure enough, when we check the steering wheel it was locked! Ouch! We tried to figure out what went wrong since we did everything the same way as we always do. After some experimentation I found that you need to turn the key to the second positon, ACC, before turning it back to the first position to ensure that the steering wheel does not lock. I guess we had been lucky and had been doing that way up until yesterday. AS we found out, just turning it to the first position rather than “coming back” to the first position makes a big difference. However, the Matrix still seems to drive OK. Tough little car.Then, to add insult to injury, after we had unhooked and used the car for the day, we hooked it back up, made double sure that they key positioning was done correctly, and proceed to forget to disengage the handbrake! Luckily for us we had the windows down and were listening very closely for squealing of any sort so we only went about 10 feet before realizing something was not right. Two more patches of rubber on the ground. But no serious harm done to anything but our egos. The one thing I have to admit though is how amazed I was at the V10 engine in the MoHo. When I started off with the Matrix attached with the hand brake on, I couldn’t even tell. The torque must be so strong that dragging a car with the brakes on hardly has any noticeable effect. I wish I could take even a little bit of that torque and transfer it to my Miata.
So now it is off to Chicago to celibrate Canada Day!
