Keep out of skunk trap? You have to tell people to stay out of the skunk trap?
Along the way
Keep out of skunk trap? You have to tell people to stay out of the skunk trap?
Keep out of skunk trap? You have to tell people to stay out of the skunk trap?
Birds
Still seeing good birds. Green Heron, Osprey, many Bald Eagles, Hairy Woodpecker, Red-eyed Vireo, Grasshopper Sparrow, Purple Finch again. The Iron River area birds from earlier this week:
| Canada Goose |
| Common Merganser |
| Common Loon |
| Double-crested Cormorant |
| Green Heron |
| Turkey Vulture |
| Osprey |
| Bald Eagle |
| American Kestrel |
| Merlin |
| Ring-billed Gull |
| Rock Pigeon |
| Mourning Dove |
| Ruby-throated Hummingbird |
| Hairy Woodpecker |
| Northern Flicker |
| Eastern Phoebe |
| Eastern Kingbird |
| Red-eyed Vireo |
| American Crow |
| Common Raven |
| Black-capped Chickadee |
| Red-breasted Nuthatch |
| American Robin |
| Nashville Warbler |
| Grasshopper Sparrow |
| Dark-eyed Junco |
| Brown-headed Cowbird |
| Baltimore Oriole |
| Purple Finch |
| American Goldfinch |
Yoopers
We’re not really Yoopers. We just found the hat. But here we are. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=107013362562471418011.00047964b60d16d130156&ll=46.528635,-88.000488&spn=8.510549,28.45459&z=6 Not far from Marquette. Still around Lake Superior. We’ve been to the lower portion of Michigan before, but never the upper. In California parlance, we’re in NoMi (as opposed to SoMi). (NoCal and SoCal.) It was raining this morning when we woke up in Wisconsin, and it rained all the way here. I think we need a windshield wiper on the Rearview Camera in back. When it’s raining while we’re moving, all I can see in my camera screen on the dash are giant water droplets dancing. Driving in the rain gets me to thinking about the weight of various machines and their tendency to hydroplane. It occurs to me that because we’re so heavy, we might not have the same tendency to hydroplane as a car would. I wondered this in a trip report a year or so ago, and got some answers, but it’s still an issue in my head. I don’t know the physics of it, but it seems to me if you have a vehicle with a certain size tire (say, a bicycle with bicycle tires) it will have a tendency to hydroplane at a certain speed. If you multiply the weight of that vehicle by ten, on the same size tires, I would think it would push the tires through the water and keep it on the road longer. Which brings me back to the motorhome. We weigh 35,000 pounds, so we’re pushing down really hard on the road. We have bigger tires than a bicycle, though, so we can’t really address the tendency to hydroplane just from weight. It must be a calculation of weight, combined with the footprint of the tires. But on our tires, if we multiplied the weight by a factor of ten, would we be less likely to hydroplane? (at least until the tires burst because they’re not rated for ten times the weight.) Now we’re in the Eastern Time Zone, but we’ve left our clocks on Mountain Time. No struggling with time zone changes for us! We still stay up for the news (Colorado channels). All our neighbors go to bed really early. And you wouldn’t believe what time it gets light!
Tower/Ely
The Tower/Ely bird list from last week.
| Mallard |
| Ruffed Grouse |
| Common Loon |
| Osprey |
| Bald Eagle |
| Sharp-shinned Hawk |
| Red-tailed Hawk |
| American Kestrel |
| Ring-billed Gull |
| Common Nighthawk |
| Ruby-throated Hummingbird |
| Yellow-bellied Sapsucker |
| Northern Flicker |
| Pileated Woodpecker |
| Eastern Wood-Pewee |
| Eastern Kingbird |
| Blue Jay |
| Black-billed Magpie |
| American Crow |
| Common Raven |
| Barn Swallow |
| Black-capped Chickadee |
| Red-breasted Nuthatch |
| American Robin |
| Cedar Waxwing |
| Tennessee Warbler |
| Nashville Warbler |
| Yellow Warbler |
| Black-and-white Warbler |
| Savannah Sparrow |
| White-throated Sparrow |
| Dark-eyed Junco |
| Common Grackle |
| American Goldfinch |
Wisconsin
We love this park. It’s beautiful. It has full hook-ups, 50 amp service, the people are friendly, and the rates are reasonable. It’s quiet and has forests, clearings, birds, a lake, canoes, and boats to rent. The weather is cool at night and 70s during the day.
We can’t stay here.
We hardly get any cellphone and the Verizon internet works at a crawl. I say that I can work without internet if I already have something on my computer to work on, but it doesn’t really work out that way. When the internet is slow, I realize so much of my work involves exchanging information, I really need a good connection or I spend way much too much time waiting for uploads, downloads, transfers, and research.
But still, Loons. Eagles…
It’s a great place.