Wednesday August 21st the weather was perfect for traveling. We were up and ready to travel for our short 140 miles to St Ignace MI. We traveled north on I 75 and across the 5 mile Mackinac Bridge from lower Michigan to what is known as the U.P. or Upper Peninsula. The U.P. starts in St Ignace on the great Lake Huron at the foot of the Mackinac Bridge.
Today Patty will take a turn at being the captain of the rig. She hitched the truck to the RV and pulled out of our site in West Branch MI around 11:15am and then towed the 140 miles to St Ignace MI. She also went over the Mackinac Bridge and parked the RV into our new site at the Tiki RV Park in St Ignace. In some road construction areas she needed to drive with half of the rig on the road surface and half on the shoulder. This can be a little scary and gets tiring because if you get off of the pavement and into the gravel on the left it would be easy to lose control. She did a great job even with the narrow road construction areas.
This was such a great day traveling. Some days just seem to be OK and some seem to be great and today was a great day. Sun was shining, deep blue sky, low traffic, short distance to travel, and great songs on the radio. We were just commenting to each other how great this was when the song On the Road Again by the band Canned Heat came on. It just doesn't get better than that :)
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| Due to high winds we were reduced to just 20 MPH over the bridge. |
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| Getting close to the bridge! |
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| Going out on to the bridge. |
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| Captain Patty a the wheel on the bridge. |
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| Entering the U.P. at the tolls for the bridge. Cost was $8 for the rig. |
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| Good picture of the rig in front of the Tiki RV Park Office waiting to get our site number. |
We arrived at our new site at the Tiki RV Park around 2:30pm and were set up by a little after 3pm. The Tiki RV Park was at one time an Indian burial ground. In the 20’s they found 50 some Indian skeletons buried here. For a while the skeletons were shown as a tourist attraction into the 50s. Then the skeletons were given back to the Indians who buried them on reservation grounds. Not long after that this area became the Tiki RV Park.
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| Our site at the Tiki RV Park. |
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| Another view of our site. Note the view of Lake Huron in the background. |
We love fresh fish and we really like fresh lake fish. So we decided to try one of the restaurants within walking distance. By the way, the whole town is within walking distance at about 3 miles long. We went to The Galley located at the marina. The restaurant had a very nice view of Lake Huron with Mackinac Island off in the distance. However, we had mixed feelings about the fish. I had a sampler plate with lake Trout, White fish (this is the big fish here), and lake Perch. Patty had the broiled Walleye. My fish was fine but not great. Patty’s was dry and no taste and the taste I had sucked. Anyway, we will try again while we are here for good fresh lake fish.
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| The marina in St Ignace. Mackinac Island is the land mass in the background to the left. |
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| Another view of the marina. Note the beautiful flowers along the road. |
After arriving back at the RV we were going to kick back and watch some TV. Well, not tonight! I have been having problems with the living room TV lately. The problem goes back to the way the cables were installed when we purchased the RV.
The TV is on an arm that allows the TV to be pulled away from the wall to make for better viewing at different angles.
When we pull out the TV the cables would tighten up putting pressure on the connection to the TV. I realized this a long time ago and re routed the cables using some strategically placed cable ties. This worked but the damage to the over-the-air coaxial cable connection to the TV had been done. As we moved and time went on the connector on the TV became loose inside the TV. We would need to move it around to get reception. Tonight the connection finally completely broke and came out of the TV.
This is a simple but time consuming problem to fix. I now need to take the TV off the wall and take the 20 or more screws out of the back to open it up to attempt a good repair. The original connector is a special-made connector for this TV. It is a regular male coaxial plug with a metal housing machined into the back that is soldered to a circuit board. The back metal housing had broken off of the coaxial connector that protruded from the TV.
I decided that I needed to solder a coaxial cable directly into the circuit board. So from about 9pm until midnight I worked on the TV. After putting the TV back together, the coaxial became loose due to my cold solder joints. I was using a very low heat soldering iron that just wasn't hot enough to do the job I needed to do. I needed to get a higher heat iron or maybe a soldering gun. Tomorrow I get to repeat the process all over again.
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| After the removal of the TV. |
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| Me working on the TV. |
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| The round loose part is what broke off of the small metal box on the circuit board behind it. |
Tomorrow we are going over to Mackinac Island and plan to ride our bikes around the entire Island. Maybe we will get a better soldering iron as well :)
Stay Tuned!
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