Carter Caves State Park Resort - Olive Hill, Kentucky

August 23, 2017

Carter Caves State Park Resort

For nearly a year I have been watching and participating on a popular RV site called iRV2.com.  The site has all kinds of information from how to do repairs to how to buy an RV. Among the many threads on this site I frequent a morning group. The group is very jovial and helpful as well as good friends. I count myself privileged to have run into these folks on line.  A year or so ago a woman named Lynne started organizing a meet and greet which took place last week and this week here at Carter Caves State Park Resort/

It was a good time with some communal meals and really nice people. I borrowed this drone photo (below) from my new friend Stan's post on iRV2.

(Click any photo for a better view)

Most of the group left this morning but there a few malingerers left including us.  Martha and I have been on the road the better part of a week before arriving here on the 20th. Our first two days were spent relaxing and catching up on sleep.  But today we did some exploring. The roads here are perfect for motorcycling with many, many twisty roads and great elevation changes. 

We spent the afternoon at Echo Valley Winery eating excellent lunches and tasting wine. Then we took the "long way" home with a "Nichols Shortcut" (a family inside joke). The scenery was very pastoral and quite beautiful.

The views from the winery  

Martha decided that today she was in the mood to take photos. So we explored Kentucky back roads and went "Barn Storming," well kinda...

Tobacco Drying Shed

The Home Place

A "Generations" Farm

Time is winning

Crooked Steep Roads. Perfect!

This valley was famous for Tanyards

A pretty little Lewis County Park

A Tobacco Drying Shed with some Character

Tobacco growing in the fields, note the sticks on the wagon (left), the tobacco will be draped over the sticks and then hung in a tobacco shed to dry

Small Town Kentucky

View from Echo Valley Winery

Goddard White Bridge

What is "Ithiel Town Lattice" you ask?  

Town's lattice bridge (from Wikipedia)

Town's lattice truss patent drawing

On January 28, 1820, Town was granted a patent for a wooden lattice bridge, which became known as the Town Bridge. The design was of great importance because it could be built quickly by relatively unskilled workers from readily available material. The design also avoided the need for the heavy piers needed for stone arches. The design was widely known throughout the world and made Town wealthy (Town is said to have charged one to two dollars per foot in royalties for his designs). Town's design can still be seen in two of Connecticut's  remaining covered bridges, Bulls Bridge in Kent and West Cornwall Covered Bridge  in Cornwall  and Sharon, and in the Eagleville Bridge and the Sushage in Washington County, New York. Many other extant covered bridges also employ Town's basic design. The lattice is sometimes called a truss, although it lacks vertical members.

I hope you enjoyed the barn storming tour.  We leave Carter Caves on the 25th bound for Blacksburg, Virginia.  We will post up once we've gotten parked at our new location.

Pere Marquette State Park - Lightening - Progressive Electrical Management System - Open Neutral

July 31, 2017

Today was a travel day. We moved from Fisherman's Corner C.O.E. Campground to Pere Marquette State Park, Illinois.  Once again we managed to make a four hour trip a six and a half hour trip. Why? well, first we got a false reading from one of my Tire Minder sensors which showed a progression of leaking during the first ten minutes of our trip. It took more than 45 minutes to find out that the sensor or the tire valve extension may be bad. I took it off the left front tire, checked the pressure only to find we had 106 psi in the tire (4 pounds low). So we moved on. 

In Carrollton, Illinois I started having stomach distress which I later determined was a result of some packaged ham that I ate earlier in the day. I had to make an emergency pit stop and afterwards all was well but that stop put us another 10 minutes behind schedule whatever a schedule is?

To add to our tardiness we made a detour because of bridge with low weight restrictions of 28 tons, we are 41,000 pounds or 21 tons but didn't want to risk it. We finally arrived at the park at about 6:30 pm.  

As per normal we found our campsite and leveled the coach and deployed our slide outs.  Next I went to plug into the 50 amp service at our campsite and nothing, zilch, nada, no power. I mean, WTF? My Progressive EMS/Surge protection system didn't even try to turn on.  This had me worried until I read the manual. In fact it is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. 

The fifty amp service was non-operational as well as the 20 amp service on the same power pedestal. I ended up finding the the campground host and he came to check out the problem along with his own personal 30 AMP cord. We tried power from an adjacent 30 amp site and zero.  Next I used my 20 amp extension cords at the 30/20 amp site and we finally had power.  So, tonight we are running on inverted power with 20 amps recharging our batteries on bulk charge. 

The campground host is going to have the park electrician look at the two power pedestals in the morning. Afterwards we found out that there was a lighting strike yesterday that significantly damaged a nearby tree. I am guessing that the power to our camping loop was also affected. Time till tell.

I will update the blog tomorrow about the electrician's findings. However, I am betting that when he/she investigates they will find an open neutral on the input power.

Charlie's - Top Ten things I Have Learned About Full Time RV'ing

July 26, 2017

Hello to all of our regular readers and welcome if this is your first time reading Wandering Toes. 

 I wanted to note that Martha and I have changed the our blog somewhat by adding a page with our personal campground ratings (look in the right margin at the top). These may or may not be helpful to you but eventually we will have entries in every state except Hawaii.  To see our ratings just click the campground listing.  

We have changed the theme of our blog to a brighter more user friendly background. As always, your input is important to us. Be sure to let us know if you like or dislike the changes by using the comment box. I answer all comments (the comment box is located at the bottom of this and all pages) so don't be afraid to tell us what approve or disapprove of. 

THE TOP TEN THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT RV'ING FULL TIME

1. You can RV full time with only a few tools to repair things.

2. If you travel full time without the proper tools you will need to buy the right ones.

3. Giant sized packs of toilet paper and paper towels would cause storage issues.

4. We use a lot of internet data. Martha works on line and I surf a lot. But, who doesn't ?

5. I get bored when there is nothing to fix on the RV (not griping about it, just bored).

6. Walking more has been good for me and very good for my diabetes.

7. Living with your best friend on a full time basis isn't as hard as I thought it would be BUT it helps that I am still madly in love with her after all this time.

8. I really need to be a better roommate and give Martha some space, She says I take up a lot of room go figure?

9. Our dog Jake is a pain in the ass (I already knew that) but, he is also loving the lifestyle as he gets to go outdoors for a walk more often. I am glad to have him with us. He's 14 and could be gone soon.

10. Motorhomes are very complex with dozens of separate systems that can act up, so it's a plus that I can fix things.

I will likely revise this list as I go on but for now this is what I have learned

Door County - Wisconsin - Cana Island Lighthouse - Beautiful Scenery - Lots Of Photos

Wandering Toes - 7/25/2017

Door County - Wisconsin

We heard about Door County years ago, and before we left Hancock and our KOA temporary home we decided that while we were in Wisconsin we would go see why everyone raves about Door County.

Trying to figure out why people say this place is beautiful is really a no brainer

We arrived in Door County and Bailey's Harbor on the 18th of this month and departed on the 23rd. It was pretty much everything I had ever heard about it. It is just awesomely beautiful with vistas that rival any of those you might see on an ocean coast. The difference? "We were on Lake Superior where the water was less salty and there aren't any 
sharks " (got that quote from a Tee Shirt).

The water here is almost crystal clear. People were out in droves to swim and be with their families. It was really great.






We were on the road and exploring a lot. One of our trips took us to the Cana Island Lighthouse. This lighthouse was built on 8.7 Cana Island.

It was built in 1869 and at that time of construction was built of bricks and mortar. Due to weathering from harsh winters the lighthouse was was given a metal skin in 1902.

The lamp was originally fueled by lard, later it was fueled by kerosene, then by acetylene, and now by electricity. The lens that provides the light is a "Third Order Fresnel Lense" made in France"

The wages of the Light Keepers were rather low by today's standards

Rations were sorta meager too!

The oil house. When we poked our head into the building it still smelled faintly of kerosene. Kerosene hadn't been used at the lighthouse since 1945.

To get onto Cana Island you either have to wade through calf deep water

Or, you can opt to take a ride behind a tractor in a wagon

Told ya the water was clear      

This is a picturesque place 

The waves coming in were very calming. I enjoyed our short trek across the little bay to the Island

The hike up the 97 steps to the top of the lighthouse was a chore. But the crowds are limited to about 10 people up to the top at a time. So, being too crowded wasn't an issue.

There are a series of portholes in the lighthouse structure so that natural light is admitted into the tower. I took advantage of these by taking some portrait shots as we climbed up.

Once we got to the top and onto the catwalk we were able to see the original Fresnel Lens

The views from the top were awesome

The lighthouse grounds below

The lighthouse keepers office

The kitchen

Looking up at the iron clad lighthouse