|
June 13, 2001 Good (smack) morning (smack…smack) from just outside Paradise (smack), Michigan. We stopped counting the mosquitoes we killed INSIDE the trailer. They must have been coming in from somewhere because for as many as we killed there would be just as many more flying around. We imagine some entrepreneurial mosquito somewhere was getting rich selling Aistream time-shares to his unsuspecting fellow mosquitoes. Not having mosquito netting (although our missionary friends can probably give us great advice on this topic), we eventually just crawled completely under the top sheet to get away from them all! Today we bought some weather-stripping and have sealed the door, the trunk door, the oven vent, the windows, and the top vent screens. Don’t worry that our oven won’t have a vent. It hasn’t been used in the last twenty years, and Lise doesn’t want to be the first one in the family to have blown up the trailer! Besides, most everything we like to eat can be cooked in a skillet on top of the stove. For everything else there’s the “dinner out” option! Our first sightseeing stop today was the Tahquamenon Logging Museum. $3.00 per person allows you to view a 15-minute informational video on the history of logging in Michigan and the freedom to walk around the grounds and look at the displays, including those in three restored buildings. During the video we learned that the first logging in the area occurred only during the winter when sleds could be used. Large and heavy wooden rollers packed down the snow. Troughs for the runners were dug and sprayed with water. Once frozen, the road surface was hard enough to support the weight of the 18-foot logs, which were sometimes stacked 8 high on the horse-drawn sleds! You’d think the logging company’s “dentist” would be the person in charge of everyone’s oral hygiene, but in fact he was in charge of keeping every SAW sharp and in good working order! The rakertooth saw was invented around 1870 when it was found that sawdust gathered on the cutting edge of the saw and slowed the workers’ progress. Every third tooth was designed not to cut wood but to remove this built-up sawdust by ‘raking’ it away. /\/\/’v’\/\/\/’v’\/\/\/’v’\/\/\/ Well, that’s about the best text-art I can use to show you what a raketooth saw blade looks like. We viewed the displays in the CCC building. The Civilian Conservation Corps was responsible for replanting many acres left tree-less by logging. We also peeked inside the Williams house. Built in 1890 and recently renovated and restocked with turn-of-the-century furniture and memorabilia. A quick lunch and a quick change into shorts and we were on the road again. …But not too far out of Newberry, Michigan, as we were traveling westward on M28, our trailer was hit head-on by a blue, eastbound Coleman cooler. Yes, folks, you read that right… a cooler! It slid off of the flat bed of an on-coming pickup truck, crossed the center yellow line, and struck the front driver’s side underbelly of our Airstream. The damage is amazing. Two panels of the outer skin of aluminum are twisted and torn, and the copper drain line for the fresh water is now bent at a right angle. You can see shreds of blue plastic from the cooler on several of the jagged pieces. Fortunately nothing is leaking so we still have water and we don’t have to get it fixed immediately. Scott will need to find something to patch it with temporarily to keep the rain and bugs out. (Hey, Airstreamers, any suggestions on what to use other than duct tape? It’s the right color and everything, but the cleanup is heck!) The cooler’s owners stopped long enough to pick up what was left of the cooler, but took off before we could exchange insurance info. We contacted our insurance company and they suggested we get an accident report filled out at the police station. The patrolman said this was a first for him. He recorded it as a “collision with an other non-fixed object”. No person was injured, and our plans were flexible enough to accommodate the delay. It’s unfortunate, but not devastating. An hour-and-a-half later we were on the road again. We stayed at Wandering Wheel campground just east of Munising, MI. It is now a Jellystone campground. Translation for you non-camping folk = they now charge about $7 more a night than what was written in the AAA Camp Book. But for about $30, we have electric, water, sewer, and cable TV! Yes, the Scheuermann’s finally broke down and brought a TV and VCR with us this year. It’s Wednesday and Star Trek should start around 9 p.m. on UPN! If we can’t find a UPN station around here, don’t worry, we have about 25 video tapes of episodes saved up! Pretty humid, it might thunderstorm tonight. But we’re happy (though slightly damaged) campers. –Scott & Lise <>< S.L.SCHEUERMANN@WORLDNET.ATT.NET |