Home Improvements (counter extension)

From time to time we come up with an idea to modify and/or improve on our home on wheels. Last week I embarked on a project to add a foldable counter extension on the back side of our kitchen sink counter.Here is a pict of the finished project. We just finished it today and are pleased with the result. I purchased a pine table top at the local Home Depot, cut it to size with my skill saw and Teddy stained & varnished it. Now we have a breakfast nook in addition to our dining table. I attached it to the underside of the sink counter with a long piano hinge; I then made a fold out support on the right side as I could attach the support to the vertical end of the counter. However, the left end of the shelf ended in a portion of the the sink cabinet where it was too flimsy to attach a support to.



At first I intended on removing the back panel and beef up the counter but with a sudden burst of creative insight, came up with the idea of making a table leg from a baseball bat.











I found this Louisville Slugger at Amazon.com for $24.95. I attached a leg leveler on the handle end and a table leg stud on the other end and...VOLA! A cute table leg support.








Here it is in the travel position. It has to be folded down for travel so that the TV/Computer slide can be retracted.









The final step was to find two counter height (24") stools. A Google search came up with these European designed birch bentwood stools. A big bonus for us is that they are remarkably light, weighing less than ten pounds each and stackable for space saving storage when we travel.

All in all Teddy and I are very pleased with the way that this project turned out....
...and we had dinner on our new countertop tonight.

The Trip West

We are now safely ensconced at Terribles Lakeside RV Resort in Pahrump, Nevada. We left Michigan on August 31 and drove through Michigan's UP to Escanaba where we stayed overnight in the driveway of our RV friends, Dan & Pat Martenson. They took us on a sightseeing drive around the Escanaba area after which Pat had prepared another of her wonderful dinners complete with homemade rhubarb pie. In the evening we played "Mexican Train" dominoes and stayed up talking until well after midnight.
The next morning, Sept. 1 we continued on to Appleton and dropped anchor at Appleton Camping to have some warranty work done on the Cardinal. They kindly let us park in the back of their lot and provided us with electricity. Since it was Labor Day weekend we had to wait until Wednesday the 3rd before they could start the repairs. We didn't mind the wait as it gave us time to visit with our son and daughter-in-law, Mike & Toni. During our stay we also were treated to a dinner with our friends, Dick & Jenny Orr, Tom & Carol Sykes, and Wes Evans at the "Orr House" Jen, as usual put on a great feed. During the week we also had lunch with our friends, Tony Welhouse and his sister Becky Welhouse.
Our repairs finally completed, we again hit the road in the afternoon of Sept. 9 and after overnighting in Tomah, WI, arrived at the Comfort Inn in Sioux Falls, SD on the 10th.
As we are fulltime RVers we have established residence in South Dakota for legal reasons and had to spend a night in a motel/hotel there in order to register to vote. We will now be able to vote in the upcoming November elections by absentee ballot.
I have always wanted to go over the Rockies on I-70 through the famous "Eisenhower Tunnel" so on leaving Sioux Falls the following morning we dropped down to I-80 at North Platte, NB and from there on to Denver and I-70.
It was a hard climb up to the tunnel with an approach grade of 6 percent for several miles. We were glad that we had our GMC diesel but even so we were down to 30 MPH and there weren't many trucks or other RVs passing us.The Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel is located approximately sixty miles west of Denver, Colorado on Interstate 70. It is the highest vehicular tunnel in the world, located at an elevation of 11,013 feet at the East Portal and 11,158 feet at the West Portal. Verified here by our GPS just after entering the East Portal.We saw snow along the road on the east side but although hard to see in this pict., we were surprised by spitting snow upon exiting the West Portal.The 6 percent climb on the east side was replaced by a 7 percent descent on the west. As you can see from this pict., in order to save the brakes I put the truck into low gear to hold us back and still had to gingerly tap the breaks every so often to keep the engine from redlining.
After overnighting one night in Rifle Colorado and another night in Cedar City, Utah,...

...we arrived here at Terribles RV resort in Pahrump' NV on Sunday the 14th.












We paid for a month so will be here till Oct. 14 when we will head on down to Lake Havasu City, Arizona for the balance of the winter.

On the Road Again

Fall is approaching here in Leelanau County, Michigan and it's time for us to pull up stakes and join the annual snowbird southern migration. 

Here we are, all hooked up and ready to pullout tomorrow morning, Sunday August 31. We will spend tomorrow night parked in the driveway of our good friends Dan & Pat Martenson in Escanaba, MI. Then, Monday we will continue on to our former home town, Appleton, Wisconsin where we will spend a few days visiting "old" friends (smile) and our son and daughter-in-law. After we leave Appleton we will travel west to our 'legal home of record', Sioux Falls, SD where we have to spend a night at a hotel in Sioux Falls in order to satisfy residency requirements so that we can register to vote in the upcoming November election(s). Leaving Sioux Falls, we will then continue on westward and plan on staying for a month in a lovely park in Pahrump, Nevada. Then in mid October we will head for Lake Havasu City, Arizona to join up with our many snowbird friends at Havasu Falls RV Resort. Between now and then I'm not sure what internet connections we will be able to connect to, so this blog might be silent for a few weeks. :-(

Till then....

Larry & Teddy (traveling America in order to help the "big oil companies" remain solvent)

Final update on my arm

These photos chronicle the healing progress of my left arm from April to present. I am slowly gaining more momentum to the point that I can now bend my elbow enough to reach my face. I'm told that it might take up to a year before it stops improving. I cannot yet close my hand all the way and my little finger is semi paralyzed, but I don't need my little finger except to dig earwax from the inside of my ear and my elbow still doesn't bend enough for that anyway. I can close the other three fingers enough to comfortably grasp the truck steering wheel so driving is no longer a problem. Teddy is relieved that she will not have to drive the rig back to our winter digs in Arizona.

Clafouti

Clafouti
Originally uploaded by .Larry Page

Today Teddy, made this delicious Clafouti (kla-foo-TEE), a traditional dessert from the Limousin region of France. During the peak cherry season it is often served as a breakfast dish. In France, the dish is often made without pitting the cherries because the pits are thought to enhance the flavor of the batter with a perfume faintly reminiscent of almonds. Whole cherries are also less likely to bleed into the batter.
When other kinds of fruit, such as plums, prunes, apples, cranberries or blackberries are used instead of cherries, the dish is more properly called a "flognarde".

The Birth of a Monarch

Teddy went out looking for monarch caterpillars feeding on milkweed leaves and bought six of them back to the trailer so that we could observe them metamorphose into adult butterflies. The Monarch is a common poisonous butterfly that eats poisonous milkweed in its larval stage and lays its eggs on the milkweed plant. Animals that eat a Monarch get very sick and vomit (but generally do not die). These animals remember that this brightly-colored butterfly made them very sick and will avoid all Monarchs in the future. The monarch gets its poison (cardenolide glycosides) when it is a caterpillar, from eating the poisonous milkweed plant (genus Asclepias) while in its larval (caterpillar) stage. The poisonous Monarch is mimicked by the non-poisonous North American Viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus), which has a similar shape, coloration and patterns. Predators who have learned to avoid the Monarch will also avoid the similar-looking Viceroy.
Some groups of Monarchs migrate for over 2,000 miles during August-October, flying from Canada and the USA to overwinter in coastal southern California to the transvolcanic mountains of central Mexico; this was determined by the Canadian scientist Dr. Fred A. Urquhart in 1975. Females lay their eggs along the migratory route. This migration takes up to three generations of Monarchs to complete.
Other Monarchs stay in one area their entire lives. The life span of the adult Monarch varies, depending on the season in which it emerged from the pupa and whether or not it belongs to a migratory group of Monarchs. Adults that emerged in early summer have the shortest life spans and live for about two to five weeks. Those that emerged in late summer survive over the winter months. The migratory Monarchs, which emerge from the pupa in late summer and then migrate south, live a much longer life, about 8-9 months.

I took this series of photographs of the metamorphic process.

(click on picture for a larger image)

CLASSIFICATION
Order: Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths)
Family: Nymphalidae (over 5,000 species of butterflies with dwarfed front legs)
Subfamily: Danaidae (milkweed butterflies)
Genus and species: Danaus plexippus

Breakfast

I just love breakfast, it’s my favorite meal. Eggs, bacon, ham, spam, grits, breakfast steak, toast, biscuits & gravy, sausage, French toast, waffles or pancakes in any combination. All washed down with strong black coffee and a side of V-8 juice. However, unlike Jerry Seinfeld I rarely eat breakfast cereal & milk. Just not a cereal guy.Here is my breakfast from this morning. French toast, bacon & coffee with maple syrup and PB. Spread a generous amount of PB on the FT and then mix in maple syrup to a gooey consistency. Mmmmmm! I can’t eat like this very often though or I’d blow up like a balloon.

Here are some other breakfasts that I have enjoyed in the past.



Spam 'n eggs









Boiled egg, toast & coffee













Soft boiled egg in an egg cup & coffee














Fried egg, bacon, toast & coffee.















Hard boiled egg, tomato slice, banana & coffee

Creepy Crawlies

This summer I have been skulking outside in the yard & garden taking close ups of various insects. Then I try to identify them using the internet. Here are some of the results.

Six-Spotted

Tiger Beetle

Ant

Antlion

Bee on a Lion

Pallid-winged

Grasshopper

(Trimerotropis

pallidipennis)

Photo taken in Arizona

Common Fly

Garden Chafer

Grasshopper

Mayfly

Daddy Longlegs

Another

Mayfly

Stink Bug

aka Shield Bug

Another member

of the Shieldbug

aka Stinkbug

family

(Banasa dimiata)

Inflated Beetle

(Cysteodemus armatus)

Photo taken in Arizona

Japanese Beetle

Stag Beetle

Dining on

a Fly

Cherry Bounce

Teddy's brother, John Schlueter has now started harvesting this years crop of cherries. Teddy and I took the opportunity to produce 10 liters of this years "Cherry Bounce". It is an infusion of vodka, sugar and red tart cherries. We got the original recipe from Teddy's Mother and have tweeked it to our own through the years.



Here is a pict of the bounce aging in gallon jugs.
















Just before we leave here for our winter digs in Arizona we will rebottle the "Bounce" in 750 ml bottles.

Beating the high cost of fuel

With diesel fuel hovering around the $5.00/gallon mark we aren't firing up the truck as often. Traverse City is 20 miles away so we don't go into Traverse unless we have to. We make a list of what we need so that when I have a doctors appointment we also visit Lyle & Kathy (my brother); then go grocery shopping at Sam's & Meijer's, and visit Ace, Lowe's, Staples etc. if necessary. Teddy's mother is homebound and has to have help with meals etc. so Teddy has to visit her daily. Her home is about four miles from here and instead of driving Teddy rides her Greenspeed trike over there.





Here she is all loaded up and ready to go.
















She also rides into the village of Cedar (14 miles round trip) to pick up necessary inci-dentals such as milk, meat, saltpork, bullets and whiskey.