Summer '22 Cross Country - Day 10
Summer '22 Cross Country - Day 10
Goshen, Indiana to Utica, Illinois
Tuesday, 14 June 2022
It was a dark and stormy night… Literally! The thunderstorms and wind we experienced last night was about as severe as you can get without a hurricane or tornado. The dogs were scared. We were scared. It wasn’t fun.
Around 4 am in the morning, the trailer went completely dead. No power at all. It was at that point I realized some time during the night, the shore power had gone out and we must have switched to the onboard lithium batteries and 3,000 watt inverter because the AC had been working just fine through the night. Without any DC power at all, Frieda and I tried to go back to sleep for at least another hour or so.
Getting up around 6 am, we started to assess our situation. First things first: coffee. Normally, we would be able to run the coffee maker on our batteries and inverter, but being dead, and no sun yet to charge the solar, we asked our friend and neighbor Wendy if we could plug our coffee maker into her motor coach since she had an onboard diesel generator. Ah… now we could think clearly!
Most importantly, we were safe and surprisingly, no damage despite some small hail during the storm. We did, however, have to make some quick decisions. With over 27,000 people without power in Goshen, and excessive heat and humidity warnings being issued for the day, did we want to chance having the power come on soon or just go ahead and pack up and head west. We opted for the latter while it was still somewhat cool.
Fortunately, Natures’s Way RV park in Utica, Illinois said they could take us a day early so we were able to relax as we headed that direction knowing we would be able to set up for five straight days there.
Our route of travel for the day should have kept us south of Michigan - a bit of a disappointment since our original travel plans before departing home had us going up into northern Michigan after Goshen. In an ironic twist, while on State Hwy 31 North, I missed two separate turns in a row and we crossed into Michigan. At that point, the navigation routed us on State Hwy 12 West toward New Buffalo, Michigan.
Seeing an opportunity to add bucket list item “toes and paws dipped into Lake Michigan,” we decided we would try and find a beach. First, we tried Union Pier. Perhaps we missed the pier, but all we ended up doing there was driving on some small residential roads among very exclusive homes and lots of “private beach” signs. We also received numerous looks that said “why are you driving that trailer in our neighborhood?!”
New Buffalo clearly had a public beach so we then headed there only to see a sign that listed two prohibitions: RVs and Dogs. Ugh!! And there was Lake Michigan, only about two hundred yards away. Plans foiled, we parked in the boat launch area and had some lunch.
After our brief stop in New Buffalo, we pressed on toward Utica where we arrived safely at Nature’s Way RV park around 2 pm Central time. Because of our detour through Michigan, we added two more states to Oliver’s Travels - Michigan and Illinois.
