Cleanliness

The Tank covered 5000 miles in the last three months.  It is one dirty RV and I set about cleaning it yesterday.  The bug marks had been weathered into the fiberglass wind screen to the point where it was necessary to use a commercial auto cleaning solution and the back of one of those "brillo" sponges, and a lot of elbow grease.

Thousands of bug hits incurred over 5000 miles.

I dismounted the camper and lowered it on it's stilts so that it was accessible with a small step ladder.  To clean the wind foil in front I backed the pickup up to the front and lowered the tailgate to use as a scaffold.

First time in 3 months the Tank has been "disassembled".

It was a slow process.  Scrub cleaner into a section, get down hose the area off, re-scrub the areas you missed, hose it down, move to the next section.  It took most of the morning but it looks 100 percent better.

Sparkling!  I ran the truck through a car wash too.

During the cleaning of the Tank my brother Jim (who is putting me up in his driveway until my Dad's 86th birthday party Saturday night) pointed out severe tread wear on one of the Tank's front tires.  The kind of wear that makes one ask "How did this thing not come apart on the way down from Traverse City?"  The Tank's tires  have 56,000 miles on them so I bit the bullet and bought 4 10-ply heavy duty tires.  The tank also needed shocks all around sooooo I walked out of the tire store $1300 lighter.

The Tank's new "treads".

 Oh well, I'm going camping in the Rockies with my daughter over Labor Day so I'm real grateful we found a problem before it manifested itself on I-70 going through the Eisenhower Tunnel at 11 pm.

Safety first!

Thanks for reading!

Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes (Part 2)

Here are some more pictures I took while at the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, my first blog got completely filled up so I couldn't fit them all in.

Taken from the top, hikers on their way up the dune.

The Tank on the Scenic Trail

View south along Lake Michigan's shore

Coast Guard museum freighter bridge mockup

The  Coast Guard used train tracks to get the boat to the beach

 

Thanks for reading! (both).

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

In search of more summer-like temperatures I crossed the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan's lower peninsula.  I'm a member of Anytime Fitness so a city having a location (1500 locations nationwide) tends to draw me.  Traverse City had one so I made that area a destination.  About 25 miles to the west of the city is Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore which I visited and toured by first visiting the Phillip Hart Visitor Center in Empire, MI to buy the $10 weekly park pass. 

Lake Michigan from the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive

The first stops were along the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive which is a winding one lane 7.5 mile paved road loop with 12 stops for different views of the lake and the dunes.  The scenery is just spectacular.

The dunes beach along Lake Michigan

It takes about an hour and a half to complete the Scenic Drive loop depending on how much photography you want to engage in.

There's an ore carrier way out on the horizon

Next up was the Dune Climb where you....climb up a 110 foot sand dune that seems more like a couple miles high.  Here's the first part of the climb.

Initially it doesn't look too tough.

The tough part of the climbing is you slide back several inches for every step you take.

Glen Lake from the top of the dune.

After dumping sand out of my Topsiders I continued on to the historical town of Glen Haven, a steamship stop at the turn of the 20th century.  There's a Maritime Museum there built around an actual Coast Guard station that is free to visit (donations accepted).

Lots of exhibits of early 1900's life.

They had a miniature cannon that fired rope 400 yards out to a sinking ship that allowed crewman to be brought to shore on....pretty cool!

I'm a sucker for cannons.