Author: kbailey2018

More Personal

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Meet The Bailey's

Kim -

Bruce -

Kim enjoys her job at a local radio station as the operation manager, she is anxiously awaiting those retirement years.

In her downtime at home she enjoys spending time with her great dane Duke and her chickens.

Some of her favorite things are drinking coffee, binging shows on various streaming services and trying out new recipes.

Fun Fact – Kim grew up in Upper Michigan and enjoyed many trips out in the woods with her father who was an avid outdoorsman. 

 

Bruce enjoys his job as a driver for a local chain grocery story. He is also anxiously looking forward to retirement.

In his downtime at home Bruce enjoys tinkering with different projects around the house or working on his “honey-do” list.

Some of his favorite things are drinking ice tea, surfing YouTube and catching a nap on occasion.

Fun Fact – Bruce is a HUGE fan of doing puzzles, the more pieces the better. He has completed multiple 3D puzzles as well.

Our Great Dane Duke has his very own page here on our site. If you’d like to read all about Duke, click here!

All The Things

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As we get closer to getting things ready to leave on our first camping trip, I start thinking about food prep, I like making – cooking things at home that we can dig into while camping, like casseroles, breakfast burritos, waffles, salads etc..

Let’s face it, you go camping to relax, not spend all sorts of time cooking, cleaning etc. I like foods that are easy to warm up or grab and go. I even go as far as compiling a list of foods I want to make at home and also make a grocery list just for those things. I actually enjoy doing all the food prep because that means we are close to leaving on our trip. The hubby makes sure the frig and freezer in the camper are up and going at least 4 days ahead so as I prepare food I can take it out and stick it in the frig. The craziest part, its exciting to get set up at camp and open the frig and see all that food already done!

Normally on the day that we arrive at the campground, our tradition has always been to go out to dinner that first night. We like to kick off our vacation by enjoying good local food and relaxing the rest of the evening.

It’s all the small things that makes each trip unique and enjoyable.
Camp On Friends!!

Camping Season 2022

Posted on by kbailey2018

I sit here on March 11th looking out the window at a fresh coating of that “white” stuff, and more falling. Makes me that much more anxious to go camping!!


Our first trip of this season is heading back to our all time favorite place, Aune Osborn in Sault St. Marie, Michigan. We have a paid for site right on the river’s edge where we can sit in our front room or out in front of the camper and watch the big ships go by, something we absolutely love doing!! And with assistance from an app on our phones (Marine Traffic) we can even find out all sorts of information about each ship we see! Makes for some fun days.

View from our tour boat of the soo locks.

As for our second and later trip this year that we normally take in the middle of August, we are not sure if we will be going anyplace or just staying home and finishing up some of our outdoor projects that we didn’t get done last year. Either way, our vacation will be exactly what we want it to be 🙂


I have a tip, something that we have never had happen before and we didn’t do anything different in years past. If you have one of those “inline” blue tube water filters that you put in place when hooking up to city water, you might want to take it into the house during the winter, something we have NEVER done and this year, yup, it split open spilling charcoal all over the basement of our 5th wheel, nothing a good vacuum won’t take care of, it just surprised us is all, we have never taken it into the house and this winter wasn’t as cold as some of the previous ones. It was so strange.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Posted on by kbailey2018

We are just 2 days away from the big turkey day. Am I ready? Not at all, tonight and tomorrow night I shall be busy prepping.

We are hosting this year and are expecting 5 or so people for dinner, not huge I know but anytime you have “company” for dinner you feel the pressure of everything to be “just right” 

It’s not the food that I am worried about, we will have plenty, it’s all the “extra” stuff. Cleaning, side dishes, if the dogs will behave.

We are dinning in our freshly painted finished basement, we have a 10 foot long table that is perfect for family get togethers. We purchased new comfy chairs this year so that will be nice. I am sure everything will be perfect and all my normal worrying will be fine. 

Speaking of Thanksgiving, there are so many things I am thankful for, this year and every year, topping the list is Family, all the love and support we all have for each other, second would be Friends, we all need friends and we may not see them on a regular basis, true friends are always there for you at a moments notice.  Lastly but not least, I am very thankful to have a roof over my head, plenty of food to eat, we work hard to make sure we have all the creature comforts and our efforts always payoff. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO YOU AND YOURS!!

Fall Is “Leaf”ing

Posted on by kbailey2018

If these past two weeks have taught me anything is to appreciate every second of nice weather that is presented to you. Even if you just take a walk around the outside perimeter of your home, chat with your neighbors, play with your pets. Just enjoy it.

Upon my alarm sounding this morning, I did my routine as I do most mornings, then proceeded to go outside with the dogs as I do most mornings, I was shocked how cold it was, 27 degrees! Wait?!?! What?!?! This fall weather doesn’t seem normal OR we were spoiled rotten the last several years of having 60s and 70s well into November. Not this year, and from the forecast I looked at this morning we will be lucky and blessed to see another 60 degree day this weekend.

Yes we live in Michigan, yes winter, cold and snow come every single year, just something is different this year and I have really noticed it. 

So I will keep on keeping on, enjoy the nice weather when it comes, IF it comes and try to get into a “winter” frame of mind.

Campers Cove

Posted on by kbailey2018

We arrived at our site around 3pm on Friday August 27th, our drive up was wonderful and peaceful and arriving to much cooler temps was a huge blessing.

My initial impression of the campground was not the best, it was probably the most rustic campground we have ever stayed at. The roads are very much in need of some upkeep to at least fill in all the holes. I would rate the cleanliness at about a “C” at best, not that there wasn’t trash receptacles because there were plenty but there was also plenty of trash just scattered around, not to mention plenty of dog deposits as well, perhaps they like many other businesses lately are short handed in the help department, it wasn’t a huge eyesore and it could be perhaps we have been spoiled by the other places we have stayed at. All the picnic tables are in need of a good paint job or at least some cleaning. Our 2 sites needed some cleaning from cigarette butts to goose poop and bottle tops. I was just sort of a put off is all. For the money we paid they could at least check the sites before we get there.

We stayed on a “point – peninsula” and as you can tell in the pictures the views were wonderful. After paying for two sites we realized we didn’t need both sites so won’t make that mistake again

We didn’t utilize it but they have a very nice swimming area with a couple rafts anchored out a bit.

We did notice that on the weekends they had nightly “train” rides for the kiddos and apparently they also do a park wide water fights when the weather is super hot which it wasn’t when we stayed so we missed out on the water fights.

All in all we really did enjoy our stay, it was beautiful weather (with the exception of a couple fast moving storms that rolled thru) the place is really quiet and the perfect distance from downtown Alpena. The folks in the office are super nice and accommodating, we had a jack that wouldn’t retract and they loaned us a power drill.

Would we stay there again? Absolutely, we love being by the water and this site had it on 3 sides. Surprisingly the bugs weren’t bad either, that shocked me because I figured being on the waters edge they would be horrendous and they weren’t.

Click HERE for a few pictures including our neighbors that had a tree fall on their pontoon, missed the camper and the vehicles and the damage to the pontoon was not sever at all, in fact, they had it out on the water later that day. I heard that some other campers in the park didn’t fair so well, one had a tree fall on a camper and another on a car.

Summer, Don’t leave us yet!

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I am having a hard time believing that we are fast approaching the end of summer, like where has time gone? We have managed to enjoy the outdoors as much as we could with the heat and the mosquitos. I for one am ready for a bit cooler temps without pesky insects. Perhaps it’s because we both work fulltime plus and the days just fly by.

We did go camping to our favorite place, Indigo Bluffs back at the end of May, just us and Duke, was a nice peaceful getaway that we very badly needed. Along with relaxing, we replaced our big TV with a smart TV so we wouldn’t need extra “things” hooked to the tv to be able to stream our shows. I must say we are both tickled pink with the upgrade and are looking forward to enjoying it more next month.

Next month (August 27th) we are heading to a new to us, campground just north of Alpena Michigan called Campers Cove, looking forward to having our 2 sites on the “island” in full view of the lake. The date can’t come soon enough.

Since I last wrote, our son moved out (beginning of May) and we have been in cleaning mode every since, it was shocking to me how much “stuff” we accumulated over the past 20+ years. I am fairly certain that our trash guy is happy we are finally done. We are so happy with how it went and how clean and tidy everything looks now, not to mention the room we gained, hopefully we won’t fill it back up with more “stuff” that will sit for the next 20+ years. We are slowly getting prepared for that day that we can hit the road as more fulltime RV people.

Last night we took a little road trip down to St. Joseph Michigan to meet up with some “celebrity” fulltime RV’ers that have a channel on YouTube called “Watts on Wheels” we have followed their channel for a couple years now and it was exciting to meet them and share a meal together!!! Can’t wait to cross paths with them again in the future!

I will post more next month after our new adventure to Alpena!

Happy Camping!

Dave and Karen Watts

 

Mars, The Final Frontier

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Bruce and I are huge sci-fi fans and I was reading a news blurb yesterday about how NASA is doing another round of sending “names” to space. I didn’t know there was such a thing and apparently they are sending more names to Mars in the next 4-6 years, we had to jump on that.

You can do it to, Click this link – Send Your Name To Mars

Here is our boarding passes, cool stuff!!!

2021 Plans

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Now that the holiday’s are behind us my mind shifts into camping plans for the year. I will be making our reservations for May at Indigo Bluffs in Empire Michigan, we love this place and will be our 3rd time staying here.

Also this year, we decided to head up the east side of Michigan, up around Alpena. We love being near water and the sites we have reserved here at Campers Cove are on the water big time!! August can’t get here soon enough!

Campers Cove & Canoe Livery
End Of Summer

End Of Summer

Posted on by kbailey2018

What an interesting year it has been, because of all the COVID related issues, we canceled our May camping trip, stayed home and did some home improvements.

By August however, we were more then ready to escape for a bit, we headed to Poncho’s Pond in Ludington, Michigan.

Very nice park, very nicely kept up, LOTS of sites and sort of close together, we are not fans of this, we like being spread out a bit more.

After the initial day or two of acclimating to his new environment, Duke settled in nicely to “camping” life. We took him on numerous walks each day, the park had a fenced in off leash dog area, all I can say about this area is they need to monitor it a bit more closely because although there are signs posted everywhere “clean up after your pet” most folks did not do this and it was loaded with doggie “gifts”. I also feel they should make it a bit wider, install some benches for us hoomans to have nice places to sit, I just feel with a few alterations it could be a very nice off leash park.

The staff was helpful the couple times we engaged with them via phone, it was very quiet at night and nice and close enough to town, businesses and Lake Michigan.

Duke & Dad

I would give it a 8 out of 10 stars and only because we personally don’t like being that tightly packed in.

We really kick ourselves for not going to Empire this year, we just LOVE that place so much and it is the first trip on our list for 2021.

For now we will enjoy everything that fall has to offer from the comforts of home.

Until next season, Camp on friends!