Well, we are down to our final few days before heading southwest. Looks like we are going to have a full house traveling along with us this winter according to the Sitemeter & Feedjit stats on the website. Our Sitemeter tells us that up till to-day we've had 15,921 hits on our site since Sept of 07 but Sitemeter doesn't log every visit for some unknown reason. Our Feedjit site is more accurate but doesn't give us a final total each day like Sitemeter. However, from watching the live feeds coming in I would estimate we've probably had in access of 40,000 people click on our website this past year. Without these kinds of meters on a blog site the blogger has no way of knowing if anyone out there is even looking at the site, so after awhile it would be easy to just become discouraged & just drop the whole idea. When I look at the numbers each day it always gives me a good feeling knowing people are out there.Just want to say thanks to the folks in places like Fulton NY, Mountain View California, Imperial Missouri, Walnut Creek California, Brandon Manitoba, Ottawa Ontario, & Kitchener Ontario, to just mention a very few, who have been faithfully following our blog for this past year to see what the Bayfield Bunch is up to. Don't know who most of you folks are but many thanks for giving me the inspiration to get out there with my camera & snap a few pictures again. I had totally lost all interest in photography from 1993 up until a few years ago. I'm happy people are enjoying the photos & the albums.
And thanks to the blog readers who have given me a reason to sit down with the computer most days, put my thinking cap on, & try to come up with something sort of interesting for people to read. And thanks to the fellow down there in New Mexico somewhere for emailing me a few days ago & suggesting I break the blog down into shorter paragraphs to make it more readable. Thanks my friend, every little bit helps.
An easy way to follow our blog or anyone else's blog, or for that matter, any website is to simply put an icon on your desktop. To do that, just open up any website in your browser & look up to the top left of the page & find the word, File. Click that & a menu drops out. Scroll down to the word Send. Another menu with 3 options pops out the side. If you want to send that website's address to anyone, just click on, Link by Email & it will automatically format an email for you to send. If you want to put an icon on the desktop for that website just click on, Shortcut to Desktop. In our case the icon will probably appear as an orange square with a white capital letter B in the center. Now, anytime you want to go to that website just click on that icon & it takes you directly to the site. No more rummaging around looking for the website address:))
I hope to do one or two more posts before we leave this coming Saturday.
To-day's photos are on the beach at Deerpark Lodge along the sullen & sandy shores of Lake Huron about a half mile north of Bayfield Ontario, Canada. Taken Nov. 9th.
OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/
As departure time approaches, our thoughts are more on our upcoming travels these mornings. Have we forgotten to pack something, how far do you think we should drive the first day, will we be stopped at the border for an agriculture check again, should we consider just going to Texas because it would be cheaper, can we really afford to be going this year, should we try & make it to California again, will the tires on the motorhome be ok for one more year, where will we be & what will we be doing a year from now, we lost "how much" on the stock markets yesterday again, do we have enough blankets for the cold desert nights, is Checkers aging hip going to be a problem for getting in & out of the motorhome, is our satellite-internet-TV system going to work once we get down there, because of the poor economy will this be our last winter of traveling south, are we really enjoying our morning walk if we're worrying about all this stuff?? Hmmmmmm!!
Different walks have different squawks. Years ago when I belonged to the Stratford Field Naturalist Club the group walks were very informative. Each person brought along they're own expertise in various fields of interests & hobbies. The bird watchers pointed out & identified the many birds along the way. Other folks drew attention to the abundant wild plants & flowers alongside the trail while others were astute at tree or animal identification. Always an exchange of information & points of interest. I also belonged to the Avon Trail Hiking Club for awhile where the focus was on exercise, wellness, & speed. We would traverse the trails in single file, moving swiftly, keeping the conversations low, & not stopping to look at too much. When I was with the Stratford Camera Club we focused our attentive walks on things like composition, color, shadows & lighting. The eye became trained to look photographically at our surroundings. Conversations revolved around shutter speeds, f-stops, camera brands & lenses. Every outing was an adventure in seeing. 
All these clubs taught me things that I still remember & use to-day. Many walks & talks with people years ago. Many things learned & many things applied.
Weather has been unbelievably nice these past few days so figured it was a good time to work on getting the pine sap off the motorhome roof. It's one of the few disadvantages of living in a pine forest. Pine pollen in June, pine sap all summer long & pine needles in the fall. Pine sap is by far the worst. Our motorhome sits beneath pine trees & up till now there has been no way of getting away from the sap, but that will be remedied shortly after we leave for the south this year when the local tree cutter stops by!! In the meantime we've had enough sap drippings on top of the motorhome to start our own Pine-Sol factory. There are products on the market for dealing with this miserable stuff but I noticed that if you work on the sap in cooler temperatures it comes off much easier. Fortunately the roof of our rig is not a paint finish like a car so using a putty scraper on the rubber roof in cool temps basically lifts about 90% of the sap off on the first light scrape. Even so, you still end up with pine sap stuck to your shoes, your pants, your hands, or any other part of you that comes in contact with the icky sticky stuff. 
Just over a week before departure so we've been scurrying around like little pack rats loading the rig with last minute things for 5 months on the road. With each year the packing smarts get a little better but I'm sure we've probably already got some stuff on board we'll never use. Just seems to be the norm.
Nasty weather coming in for the week-end so that will just heighten my impatience for getting this show on the road!!!!
Received a few comments on my blog earlier about not being the brightest crayon in the box & that got me thinking of another dumb thing I did two winters ago down in Arizona. Worst part about this dumb thing was that I did it twice within a couple days. We were at the Hickiwan Trails RV Park near Why in the southwest part of Arizona. This is the blog I posted on January 8th, 2007. We had a truck & fifth wheel at the time.............................
JANUARY 8TH, 2007 HICKIWAN TRAILS RV PARK, WHY, AZ.
Remember, the above blog was a year ago in 2007.
Waiting to go somewhere has always bugged me. I have one of those brains that always wants to do something 5 minutes before I even think of it in the first place. Patience has never been one of my strong points & so it is once again that time of year for waiting, & waiting, & waiting!! It's always the same, whether your waiting to go on vacation or waiting to come home from vacation. Once the decision is made to do either, it's time to get the wheels rolling & get on with it. Because of a work commitment for Kelly our departure time this year is delayed to mid November. I'm always ready to rumble by the first week-end after Thanksgiving so it's a long patient wait for a short patience guy like myself. By mid November we could be into snow & ice here plus salt laden roads & I really don't want the motorhome & car encrusted in that horrible road salt all the way down south & it's not like you can just pull into any old car wash with a nearly 12' high, 33' long motorhome. 
Our Canadian dollar is taking a pounding again but at least the gas prices are continuing to drop. Well, until November 14th that is.....................................
Our handyman friend Bruce finished up the final stage of our television renovation project in the motorhome last week. Pictures show where the last section was fitted in place to cover the hole where the old heavy analog television used to be. Much better view out the front now with that big blonky television cabinet out of the way. Gives us some extra storage up there too. 
I generally like to leave early on a Saturday morning because it gives us a 2 day head start on a lot of rush hour traffic nonsense south of the border. We'll cross into the States at Port Huron (& probably get pulled over for an agriculture check again) & follow I-69 down through Flint & Lansing. Into the State of Indiana & through Fort Wayne stopping somewhere north of Indianapolis for the first night. We'll do Indy bright & early Sunday morning & then head southwest on I-70 to Effingham. From there it's I-57 south to Missouri where we'll pick up I-55 into Arkansas. Just west of Memphis, Tennessee we'll pick up I-40 & that begins our true journey west, sliding through places like Little Rock & Texarkana. Texarkana launches us into the big State of Texas & from there we'll pick our way north of Dallas through Sherman & Gainesville until we pick up highway # 380 somewhere around Jacksboro. Once we're on # 380 it's a quiet straight line level drive to just west of Roswell, New Mexico whereupon we'll slip up & over the southern end of the Rocky mountains. We came home this way last year & found it an easy mountain drive compared to Denver for example. No big scary stuff!! Would like to stop at White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo this time & have a look around. Over another small mountain range & we'll be in Las Cruces, New Mexico. From here it's anybody's guess where we'll go because the rush is over & we'll just go wherever feels right, whenever we feel were ready. Most likely will head up into the Silver City area for starters. 
As I read this all over, it looks good on paper but as some reader's already know, we don't always stick to the paper. I remember one time near Joplin, Missouri we were heading west with a rough travel plan in mind & at the last minute I decided to take a different route & wheeled us off the Interstate heading south & that little venture eventually landed us lost on some twisting back roads in the Ozark mountains. That was an interesting afternoon to say the least. We were driving a small Class C on that trip. Another time I figured out another quick last minute short cut in my head & landed us in the Boston Mountain range in Arkansas huffing & puffing our truck & fifth wheel at the time up & over the long graded mountain tops. Another nail biter for awhile but did get to see some great scenery again. Every twist & turn is a new adventure & if we keep that foremost in our minds we sort of get along just fine in our travels. 
