June 23, 2010 From Lake Superior to Lake Michigan

On the road with rain threathening again - a bit of pattern to this trip so far. We crossed from the UP to lower Michigan at St. Ignace and took the Mackinaw Bridge in the rain and wind. Some poor motorhome owner was trying to secure there canopy while pulled over to the side on the Mackinaw Bridge. We took the shore highway southbound at Mackinaw City to Petosky through Traverse City and stopped at Luddington. After a fun bit of navigation with the GPS we arrived at a County Campground and setup camp finally in sunshine. A quick dinner and down to the harbour just in time to see the arrival of the car ferry Badger entering the harbour. It looks like a very nice public beach - powdersy sand.We took a walk out the breakwater to the lighthouse and then back to the campground. There were a few seasonal campers in for the night but only a couple of transients - it was almost like a private campground.

June 22, 2010 Along the south side of Lake Superior

We were off early again to avoid the rain. We had rain off and on most of the day but again we were lucky to be able to stop for lunch at a roadside rest between rainstorms.  We stopped in Marquette Mi for a little shopping trip at Gander Mountain and Wal-mart and then onwards to Bay Furnace State Forest which is just outside of Munising Mi. The weather had finally dried and it was a very nice day. We setup camp and had a glass of wine. A walk along the trail to the remains of an Iron Ore Furnace from the late 1880's made for an interesting end to another good day on the road!

June 21, 2010 On The Road to the East Coast

It's acutaly June 27 as I try to catch up. This is the first night we have had Internet at the campsite since we left a week ago.

We were hitched up and away by about
9AM June 21.
















A quick run to the border and down the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside rest within site of Duluth. A quick lunch was in order so we wouldn't get wet from an approaching storm. We finished just in time and on the road again.









It could not have rained any harder for most of the rest of the day. We stopped at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center just outside of Ashland Wisc - very intersesting displays on mining and forestry in the area - not an hours worth of interesting but it was raining so hard we stayed inside until the rain was past.
We took the highway north to Washburn and stayed the night at Washburn Memorial Campground. Not very busy yet. We managed to get dinner cooked, dishes done and fit in a walk before the rain started again. An early night was in order. The mileage with the Jetta towing the Rascal was as good as we expected - 52 Cdn mpg (42 US mgp). Thats about 10 less than if we weren't towing.

June 20, 2010 Kakabeka Falls for the Weekend..then eastward!

We finally decided on Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park for our weekend camping trip. We hadn't camped here in about 10 years. Still a nice park but really illustrates why we don't camp at Ontario Provincial Parks - $34.40 a night for an unserviced site, although it did have showers.
We were running a little behind schedule but still managed to get setup and have the wine bar in operation by  2PM.

The modifications for the galley worked out fairly well - things need to be packed just a little tighter to accomodate the bouncing from the single axle. The curtains worked out well for the weekend and gave the privacy needed with the large windows in the door. The duvet needed to go in a larger cover but other than that everything worked out well. We had a rainy weekend  but Shannon had brought her dinging shelter so we were able to stay dry.

It was Shannon's birthday so what would a birthday be without a cake!

And of course what would camping be without a campfire and hotdogs. Shannon and Kaelynn cooking a hotdog.

Home again Sunday afternoon. Unload gear from this trip and reload for the next trip. Tomorrow morning we leave for the East Coast. We tentatively plan on driving along the south shore of Lake Superior, then down the east coast of Lake Michigan and then over to the Atlantic Coast and then north to New Brunswick. We hope to be at Marla's mothers house by Canada Day and spend a few days visiting. Then we will have to figure out a route home! Should be home mid to late July! I'll try to update the blog periodically but it will depend on Wi-FI along our route.

June 15, 2010 All RIV'd up and Ready to Go!

The RIV sticker arrived in the mail today and is attached to the trailer.
 
The last few days have been spent working on  the first modifications to the inside between  rain showers. We purchased a down duvet to go inside the duvet cover that Marla made. Curtains are made and ready to go up on the windows - just have to pick up some more velcro to attach the sash rods to the trailer wall.

The back galley storage area has been curtained off and mostly sealed from the sleeping area. We will give the mods a test run this weekend. We had planned on going to Trowbridge Falls in Thunder Bay but apparently there aren't any good sites left. Next plan was to head south of the border to Judge CR Magney State Park in Minnesota but by the time we made up our mind the sites were only available on Friday night and not Saturday. Ok we are down to Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park or the KOA. We will check out the KOA while we are in town tomorrow. It has a pool which might be nice if the weather clears up.

June 10, 2010 Hitched and Legal

We had visitors for the first week back from the mini adventure so not much progress on the teardrop front. We arranged for a hitch install so finally on June 10 we were off to Thunder Bay with both vehicles for the hitch installation and trailer inspection. We dropped the Jetta off and went to Canadian Tire for the RIV inspection. I believe it took longer for the paperwork completion than the inspection.

Off to the licence bureau to licence the trailer, get an Ontario registration and pay the provinicial sales tax. I would think come July 1, 2010 you will just pay the HST once at the border. So now we are legal to travel in Canada with our new teardrop trailer.

We received email confirmation from  RIV that they had received the inspection report. We will receive a Canadian compliance sticker in the mail to affix to our trailer.

It will be inteersting to see how the Rascal affects our TDI Jetta's mileage. We normally get well over 55  mpg(Cdn) on the highway. When towing with the Silverado we only lost about half a mile per gallon and got about 22 mpg. A nice change from the 10-14 mpg we would get towing the Funfinder!

We are busy fitting out the new trailer - our next trip will be next weekend when we are going to Trowbridge Falls Campground with our daugher and grandaughter(Shannon and Kaelynn). We will come home on the Sunday and then we head out for a month on the road with the Little Guy! We are heading through the States to the East Coast and up to New Brunswick - not sure of the route home yet but it will unfold as it should!

Are teardrop trailers for everyone? Not likely - you have to remember we are using this to replace a tent - a very small tent (a MEC TGV 4 season). We went with about as small as you could go - our Rascal is light enough to be towed by a larger motorcyle and has a small towing profile so as not to present much frontage to the wind behind the Jetta. We still don't know what kind of mileage to expect with the Jetta - stay tuned. Teardrops come in many types from homemade trailers that adhere to the 30's and 40's craftsman style to commericailly made ones like ours. You can outfit them with full galleys with stove, refrigerator and shelves and tv radio and DVD's inside or very basic like ours which is a bed with some storage.

One last thing - be prepared for lots of people stopping and wanting to see your trailer and ask lots of questions! We had people stop by everynight at the campgrounds.

May 30, 2010 Time to go home

Up for another day on the road. We didn't use the shower facilities - we would have liked to but didn't feel like standing in line. Oh well an hour plus the border paperwork and we will be home. Had our breakfast, hitched up and headed north. When we got to the border - We bought a bottle of booze each (Bailey's) at the duty free shop and proceeded to Canadian side to clear customs and start the import procedure.

We had imported our previous trailer as well so were aware of the procedures. Declare your trailer, fill in the paperwork, pay the GST and on our way in about half an hour. The next morning we logged onto www.RIV.ca , entered our file information from the border , pay the import fee (this covers the inspection at Canadian Tire as well), email a copy of your recall letter from the manufacturer and then wait for your file to be processed. We had a return email that afternoon with our inspection letter which we had to take to Canadian Tire for them to perform the import inspection. This wasn't going to be a problem as there was already a compliance sticker on the trailer meeting US and Canadian standards. If you do plan to import a trailer from the US make sure there is at the very least a US compliance sticker on your trailer - without it you can't import the trailer. I called Canadian Tire and they said come in anytime as there was no appointment required for the inspection. We will do the inspection in a week or so. We still have to get a trailer hitch for the Jetta so will probably do that the same day.

Our new Little Guy Rascal beside our Funfinder. Looks like she had a baby  and we didn't even know she was seeing anyone!

May 29, 2010 Homeward bound???

No showers this morning but another nice day. We headed back down the Interstate to pick up scenic highway to Duluth. Once we got to Duluth a quick trip to the mall to look at new stuff to outfit our new trailer and then northbound from Duluth on Hwy 61 (revisited??) to the Canadian border. It still wasn't time to end this initial adventure so we again stopped at a State Park to see if there were any vacancies - afterall it was May on the shores of Lake Superior and it was considerably cooler than points south - nope not a one, we even called the two further north and all were full.  We stopped in Two Harbors for a coffee stop and figured perhaps we should pick up some food just in case we stopped again for the night - bet you can see where this is headed! And so it was, just south of Grand Marais, Mn (an hour from home) we are setting up camp for the night at Lamb's Resort on the shores of Lake Superior. A bit pricer than the last two nights, $25.00.  and we had to take a site with hydro and water which we didn't need.

May 28, 2010 Northbound to Minneapolis and Points North

A bright sunny day. Same routine as with the tent - showers, breakfast and break camp only breaking camp only consisted of lifting the Rascal onto the hitch, checking the lights and away we went.

North on I-35 to Minneapolis and a stop at REI (  www.rei.com MEC is the Cdn equivilent.). A little shopping  and northward bound towards Duluth, Mn. It was only noon but traffic was heavy north of the Twin Cities with people getting a jump on the holiday weekend.

There was a construction sign about an hour south of Duluth advising of an alternate route which we decided to take. Banning State Park was about 5 minutes off the interstate so we thought - it's early, maybe there still some spots available - wrong! However they did point us about 10 miles up the Interstate to Willow River State Forest which had plenty of rustic spots available. (pit toilets and no showers!). $12.00 a night and we had a site backing onto the water. One thing we found was you need to keep small bills - a lot of campgrounds are self-registration with payment by cash or cheque.  So our adventure was extended by another day - at this point we were only four hours from home but really didn't want to wait in the line at the border with all the fishermen trying to get into Canada.

May 27, 2010 - Off to Colo Iowa.

Up fairly early this morning. Showers, breakfast and break camp. The tent is a little damp from the dew but not bad. A nice drive through rural Wisconsin and then cross the Mississippi at Winona Mn. It looked like a nice town to explore but that will have to wait as we are on a mission. We rejoined the interstate highway system and arrived at Twin Anchors RV in Colo, Iowa in mid-afternoon.
We had emailed this dealer as well so we knew they had a Rascal in stock at a good price. This is where we found out all Rascal's are not created equal - the one in Wisconsin had two doors from the galley area into the cupboards and three cupboard doors in interior. No problem - they took a matching door from another stock model and installed it in the galley for us - so now we have two doors in the interior and one from the galley to the cupboard area. We also had a spare tire installed - can't imagine why you would tow a trailer and not have a spare but it was an option.
It's Thursday and the American Memorial Day weekend is coming up so we took delivery of our trailer that afternoon and headed north to put some miles behind us in case we had problems finding a campsite tomorrow night.

We stopped at a county park in Thornton, Iowa for the night. It was quite a nice site and you couldn't beat the price - $7.00 unserviced and $12.00 with hydro! The park was small and was filling up quickly with people bringing their trailers out, setting them up and leaving to come back Friday for the weekend.

May 26, 2010 The search begins...

We got away early this morning. First stop was to be Chippewa Falls Wisc by lunch to have a look at a Big Woody Camper. We had the address and a GPS piece of cake! Well getting to Chippewa Falls was easy finding Big Woody not so much. The trusty GPS took us to a residential neighbourhood. We stopped an asked for directions. The young man seemed to know what he was talking about - "sure over by Shopko and behind the tank farm." Well we got close but no cigar so Plan B call and ask for directions. Seemed like a good idea but we got voicemail - so left a voicemail.
Fortunately our next stop was only 12 miles away in Eau Claire Wisconsin and a Little Guy dealer. No problem finding Southtown Motors and quite a few Little Guy models. We had finally seen a real teardrop! I think at this point we knew we could do this... We spent quite a bit of time looking at Joe's various models - he had the Rascal, a five wide econ, a five wide platform and a couple of off-road sport models.
We still hadn't looked at a traditional teardrop and by this time we had directions to Big Woody so off we went back to Chippewa Falls. Dave the owner/builder of Big Woody campers showed us his trailers. Very nice! We priced out one of his trailers and it was pretty reasonable but I think we had already decided on a Little Guy but which model?

So back to Eau Claire we go and after another go at looking at a couple of models we decided on the Rascal. It is the smallest one in the lineup but suited our needs. We are planning towing with our diesel Jetta so did not want much weight or a towing profile bigger that the car - this seemed to meet our needs. However making a deal at Joe's didn't work out - not to worry there were other dealers close enough - we are off to Twin Anchors RV in Colo Iowa tomorrow! Tonight we are still tenting so off to the nearby State Park for the night. An unserviced tent site was reasonable at $14.00 but then we needed a $10.00 park pass on top of the site fee!

We decided not to go look at a Camp-Inn as we were sure they would be nice but out of the budget.

Research

When we bought our travel trailer a few years ago (Funfinder X 189 FBR) we had looked at a T@B but decided it didn't suit our purposes so were somewhat familiar with the teardrop trailer concept but not on the true form of a teardrop. We were looking to replace a tent and not much else - essentially a bed on wheels.
After looking at tent trailers (or pop-ups as they are also called) we decided that wasn't for us - you still had a lot of setup and plus the disadvantage of a tent - wet setups and takedowns.

A little more research brought us to teardrop trailers. What we found out - there are quite a few types but the search can be frustrating. A lot of websites are listed on various websites with links that are no longer active. It seems a lot of manufacturers come and go or were difficult to contact. We live in Northwest Ontario which compounded our problem. There a few Canadian manufacturers but none close to us. Fortunately for us we live close to the American mid-west and were close enough to take a trip to look at a few.

We decided on three kinds to look at as they were all within a days drive of the
Thunder Bay area. In the case of Little Guy we were going to dealers and the other two were actually the builders.

Little Guy Teardrops http://www.golittleguy.com/teardrops
Big Woody Campers located in Chippewa Falls Wisconsin http://www.bigwoodycampers.com/
Camp-Inn Trailers located in Necadah Wisconsin http://www.tinycamper.com/

Our Very First Post

We are posting this a couple of weeks after we bought our Little Guy Rascal teardrop camper. This blog will follow our travels and experiences. in the Little Guy.

We have camped in tents, tent trailers, travel trailers and now a teardrop. The process of getting the Little Guy actually only took a couple of weeks once the research started. We are planning a month long camping trip starting in June and decided that spending a month in a tent in various types of weather wasn't an attractive option. We could have taken our travel trailer but we had gone back to tenting last summer and enjoyed it. We still have our other trailer and various tents and will continue to use them - they are all different experiences.

Now I will spend some time figuring out how to post and add pictures etc. Come along for the ride!