The Wendlands stay open to new experiences and adventures and leave many details to chance.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
August 2014
It’s taken us a couple of years to develop our traveling style, but with more than 65,000 miles under our wheels, I can now say I’m finally comfortable with the way we move around North America.
Essentially, my wife, Jennifer, and I follow the winds of our curiosity.
It came to me back in mid-June when some folks, reading our daily blog posts about our 3,500-mile tour of the Great Lakes shoreline, tried to catch up with us in upstate New York. Every time they arrived where they thought we’d be, we had moved on.
“Where ARE you,” one of them finally messaged me on Facebook. “You’re not here!”
No, we were not. We had packed up and headed to a new here.
Specifically, the new “here” happened to be the tiny town of LeRoy, New York, where we heard there was a Jell-O museum. And indeed there was. It’s an absolutely fascinating place that chronicles the amazing success of the gelatinous concoction, from its invention in 1845 by a local carpenter, who sold rights to it in 1899 for $450, to its iconic status today as America’s most famous dessert.
As soon as a camping attendant at Lakeside Beach State Park told us about the museum, that was all we needed. Off we went, probably passing the readers who were on their way to meet us back at the park’s campground.
Don’t take this the wrong way, because we absolutely love meeting folks who read of our adventures and discoveries. I always share our whereabouts and known stops on social media and the blog hoping for such opportunities. It’s just that we tend to move fast, especially when undertaking a project such as our Great Lakes shoreline tour.
Because we had plans for another tour — tracing the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Oregon Trail west to Oregon and attending FMCA’s Family Reunion and Motorhome Showcase in Redmond, Oregon, in August — we had only a month to squeeze in a Great Lakes tour.
The Great Lakes tour is a perfect example of that serendipitous way of traveling we have embraced. It’s something I had wanted to do for a long time. Actually, my dream was to do it on a bicycle. I had planned out each leg, averaging 50 to 75 miles a day, with a couple days off every week. I wanted to pedal it, with Jennifer following in our motorhome. It would have taken close to three months.
But when I actually picked up sponsors for the tour — Verizon Wireless and the Pure Michigan travel group — we decided on 10 stories encompassing 10 different legs of the shoreline over a month’s time. We couldn’t do every inch of every mile, but we could drive the most scenic sections, taking in 3,500 miles across eight states that touch the shoreline of the five Great Lakes.
As I am writing this, we have begun a trek that started at the Lake Ontario shoreline near Oswego, New York, and led us toward Lake Erie and Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. We will continue to Michigan along the shorelines of Lake Huron, Lake Superior, and Lake Michigan. We also will visit Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, and Illinois, where Lake Michigan shapes a vibrant coastline lifestyle.
We travel in our Roadtrek E-trek motorhome, with our Norwegian elkhound, Tai — writing about the interesting people and places we encounter, sharing our reports, photos, and videos.
The cool thing about the Great Lakes tour is that other than a general route that will take us as close to the Great Lakes shorelines as we can get, we have no plans, no schedules, and no firm appointments.
Just like we do on every motorhome trip, we stop whenever something catches our eye, talk to people, and learn about the places we visit. We try to document the scenic beauty, recreational opportunities, lifestyle, and historical significance of the areas we explore. I’m able to post on our blog pretty much from wherever we are, because of technology — that’s where Verizon comes in.
I’ve just begun that Great Lakes tour as I write this column, so I can’t pass along too many of the cool things we’ve discovered, except for the Jell-O Museum/Gallery, of course. But I can tell you why you may want to embark on a similar trip, and how to find those hidden jewels along the way.
The significance of the Great Lakes is staggering. Here are statistics from the Great Lakes Information Network:
- The five lakes contain one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water (only the polar ice caps and Lake Baikal in Siberia contain more), 95 percent of the U.S. water supply, and 84 percent of the surface water supply in North America. Spread evenly across the continental United States, the Great Lakes would submerge the country under about 9.5 feet of water.
- The lakes have more than 94,000 square miles of water (larger than the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire combined, or about 23 percent of the province of Ontario). Their watershed (the area where all the rivers and streams drain into the lakes) encompasses approximately 295,000 square miles.
- The Great Lakes shoreline is equal to almost 44 percent of the circumference of the Earth, and Michigan’s Great Lakes coast totals 3,288 miles — more coastline than any state but Alaska.
See why we wanted to experience the whole shoreline?
The first thing we do in planning a trip is pretty much the last thing: We agree on a route. And that’s about it. I generally have an idea where I’d like to be by the end of the day; but, more often than not, we don’t make a reservation. This concept really upsets many detail-oriented people. But because those winds of curiosity often lead us to unexpected places, we often find that we are not where I thought we’d be. We’ve forfeited overnight camping reservation fees (paid in advance) too many times because something has struck our fancy and delayed us elsewhere. So, instead of having to be somewhere at a certain time, we go with the flow and stop when we want to stop, where we want to stop. At the worst, if all the local campgrounds are filled, we usually can count on a Walmart store or a Cracker Barrel restaurant or other such business that welcomes overnight parking by RVers.
We also try to take state or county roads instead of four-lane highways or interstates. That’s where all the good stuff is, off on those back roads. We’ve learned to watch the welcome signs in the little towns and villages as we pass them. Usually, as in the case of LeRoy and that Jell-O museum, town fathers boast about whatever it is they are most proud of and attach it to the city limits sign.
We talk with the locals at restaurants and gas stations and campgrounds, usually asking, “What should we see while we’re in the area?” We also pick up the guidebooks that tourist agencies distribute at campgrounds and restaurants. And thanks to always being wired as we travel, our greatest source of info is the Internet. As I drive, Jennifer searches online to learn about the town ahead or the area we’re in.
As we drove through Erie, Pennsylvania, the other day, her Internet search revealed that an epic “Battle of Lake Erie” took place during the War of 1812, wherein Oliver Hazard Perry of the U.S. Navy and his crew of 557 brave patriots defeated the British fleet. That detoured us to the town’s amazing Presque Isle State Park, a huge peninsula that juts out to the lake and boasts, besides numerous beaches and picnic spots, a monument to Perry, who built his fleet in Erie.
So, that’s our travel style: free and easy, and always subject to change. It works for us.
If you are in Redmond, Oregon, during FMCA’s Family Reunion this month (August 13-16), look us up. We’ll be there. We’re doing a couple of seminars and would love to meet you and hear about your trips and tips, too.
See you out there!
Veteran journalist Mike Wendland, F426141, FMCA’s official on-the-road reporter, travels the country with his wife, Jennifer, and their Norwegian elkhound, Tai, aboard the couple’s Roadtrek Type B motorhome. Mike can be reached at openmike@fmca.com