Our Travels with Rover

Did we say August 12?  Surprise: at the last minute it became August 11 instead. And if Rover had made it onto the Texas on that date, as planned, we’d have met her in Zeebrugge by now. Instead, we’re back in Minneapolis.

Here's the tale, not too sad (and perhaps instructive if you're thinking of shipping your RV overseas):

We were on our way out of Vermont, heading to New York City when we received a phone call from our freight forwarder, who asked, "Can you get to Baltimore tomorrow? The ship is coming in a day early."   (Note:  this was August 4th and the ship is coming in on August 10th.) We said we would try but that we hadn't had any luck in finding anyone who could purge our LP gas tank.  She gave us the number for someone who could take care of the LP gas and we decided to skip NYC and headed directly for brother George's in Philadelphia, where we repacked everything for shipping.

Early the next day we headed for Baltimore with 3/4 tank of LP gas. On the way we called the Baltimore LP gas number our freight forwarder had given us.  They said they couldn't help us but suggested we call so and so.  So and so couldn't help us, but gave us the number of United Propane.  Hurray, United Propane said they would help us and they were right on the route to the port.

We pulled in around 11 a.m. and the dealer told us to "just pull it up over there."  We did; he then simply opened the valve to let the propane bleed out.  "This will take a while, maybe several hours," he said.  So, in the meantime, we called a cab, who took us to a car rental agency. We drove the rental car  to the shipper's office to pay for this whole adventure and then drove back to the propane dealer, where the gas purging was going very slowly. We emptied into the rental car all the rest of our stuff that wasn't being shipped.  It is a little scary going in and out of a vehicle smelling of leaking gas.  Finally around 3 p.m. we realized that the gas tank would not be emptied in time to get it to the port by the 3:30 deadline, so we simply decided to be there first thing in the morning.  We left the motorhome at the propane dealer's overnight, and the tank was empty when we showed up at 8 a.m. the next morning.

We had been told that delivering the motorhome to the port would be as easy as returning a rental car.  It wasn't difficult, but the Port of Baltimore is huge, and directions and signage were not definitive about where we needed to go.  We were stopped at two different gates (by this time, Susan was driving the rental car and David was in Rover, making it a little difficult to discuss options.  But we found the customs shed, where the officer looked David in the eye and asked, "Is there anything in the motorhome that shouldn't be there?"  We could safely answer "no" to that question.  He stamped a bunch of papers and we were on our way to the  shipping terminal two blocks away.  We stood in line with a bunch of truckers, had a bunch more papers stamped, were told where to park the motorhome and  wait for someone to check us in.

We waited over an hour in 90+ degree heat by a row of already checked-in motorhomes for someone to show up and tell us exactly where to park.  Finally someone did, we parked it, locked it, handed over the key and took off the license plates. We were also told we could check online to find out exactly when our vehicle was loaded on the ship. We congratulated ourselves, got into the rental car, and headed toward our son's place in Washington D.C.

However, later that day we received a phone call from the freight forwarder.  That was when we learned that because we had delayed delivery until the 6th, we wouldn't be shipping on the Texas, even though it wasn't going to be arriving until the 10th! (See Things They Don't Tell You, #2.)  Instead we would be losing two weeks of our trip and we would be put on a ship leaving August 27th.  All in all an exhausting and anxious couple of days.  But it is out of our hands and we can do nothing about it. (We've been practicing breaking the habits developed in higher education, where for 30+ years we pushed violently against things we or others "can do nothing about.")

So back in Minneapolis we’ve been logging in on the shipping company’s website each day. There we can track our new ship, the Taiko, as she tries to stay ahead of Tropical Storm Fay: Miami a couple days ago, then Savannah today; then New York, then she doubles back to Newport News (why?), and finally doubles back yet again to Baltimore (again why?), where Rover patiently awaits. 

We’ve decided to buy our plane tickets as soon as we hear Rover has actually been loaded in Baltimore, rather than wait until getting notice that the ship is about four days from arriving in Zeebrugge. Arrival had originally been scheduled for September 3, now September 5, but we’ve been told even this one can change, and if we got tickets now only to find that the ship's arrival was further postponed, each additional day of sitting around in Brussels waiting for it to arrive would cost a lot of money. On the other hand, of course, in the past two weeks, the cost of airfare to Amsterdam has increased a few hundred dollars and the number of open plane seats going there has decreased pretty drastically.

Entry 4--September 6

Herewith, the exhausting details of arranging to pick up a motorhome when one is a stranger in a strange land.  

We had received confirmation that Rover had been loaded on her ship and that we would receive an email early in the week detailing the procedure for picking her up.  But by Wednesday noon we hadn’t heard anything, and since we were flying outThursday at noon, we once again called our freight forwarder in Baltimore. She told us that that information would come to us from Zeebrugge, but she would try to hurry them up.  

That afternoon we finally received the information: the ship would indeed be unloaded on Saturday, we could pick up Rover on Monday, and we had to see a customs clearing agent 48 hours in advance.  Suddenly we had something to do on Friday besides get to Brugge and find a hotel. 

When we met the customs clearing agent we would need our passports, the title to the vehicle, proof of insurance, and the bill of lading.  We had received nothing that looked like a bill of lading and again called our freight forwarder.  Surprise, surprise: she said that too would come from Zeebrugge and (all together now) she would try to hurry them up.

But nothing. So we called again on Thursday morning and told her that we were leaving at noon for the airport.  And we did . . . without the bill of lading.

The flight was the usual: too cramped for too long. Mercifully, it was shortened by more than an hour because of a great tailwind.  We arrived in Amsterdam at 5:30 in the morning (10:30 pm our time), missing a whole night’s sleep.

Because of the great public transportation, we were able to take a train directly from the airport to Brugge, changing trains in Antwerpen.  We were in Brugge by 10:30 and in a hotel (by bus) by 11 am.  Since our room was not ready, we left our luggage and walked a short block to the library, where we purchased internet service good for a year. We got our email, including the bill of lading! We printed it (it had been sent at 11:57 am Thursday, about a minute after we’d locked the door to our condo in Minneapolis) and headed out into the rain to find a taxi.

The taxi ride to the customs clearing agent’s office was €38.  Money well spent, because we never would have found it on our own.  We had to wait for the agent for over an hour.  Then he talked to us for about five minutes, collected the necessary papers and disappeared for another half hour.  We were trying desperately to look awake and intelligent and responsible enough to drive our large vehicle on their narrow roads.  He returned and said that everything was taken care of: we would have no problems with customs on Monday, they would only have to inspect the vehicle, and “that will be €75, please.”  When we asked if there was a bus or train we could take back to Brugge, he seemed to take pity on us and found a friend heading in that direction to give us a ride. By 4 pm we were napping in our hotel.

We had been awake for 29 hours straight; during that time we had been in 2 taxis, a light rail car, a tram, an airplane, 2 trains, a bus, and a private car.  All we wanted was the motorhome.  Monday, maybe Monday. 

After a call to the shipping company, a visit to the campground office, and a second and third examination of everything in Rover, we found the passport in one of the outside storage boxes and have no idea how it got there.  But it was a huge relief and will keep us from having to contact a US embassy somewhere.  The only benefit to all of this is that we have packed and repacked everything several times and now know just exactly where everything is.  And we still have some empty cupboards.

We then drove south to the area around Ypres, the site of one of World War I's bloodiest battles. We caught up with the "Flanders Fields" tour signs and followed them around the narrow streets in the center of town...and out again. The tour took us to several British cemeteries and to the museum in Zonnebeke. It was all very stark, very sobering, very factual. The museum and each of the cemeteries had registers in which visitors were invited to record their thoughts.

 We have now stayed in three different campgrounds. All have been very clean, quiet, and well kept and we have felt very safe.  The first two had many permanent trailers and we saw very few people. They apparently come out only for weekends.  Because we are now in the “low” season we aren’t even bothering to make reservations--we just show up, and there have been lots of open spaces for us. We are now in a campground just outside of Amsterdam where there are many tents and motorhomes here for short stays.

In spite of the fact that we brought with us at least half a dozen different electrical plug adaptors, we had yet to show up with the right thing. At the first campground we were able to borrow the right cable and then we were able to find an RV shop in the neighborhood and bought a long extension cord with the proper connector, but then at the second campground even that wouldn’t work. They loaned us a proper connector and then today we were able to purchase that same item to use at the present campground. (See "Things They Don't Tell You" #3-4.)

When we left the campground in Belgium this morning we needed to find an ATM.  We were turning around for the second time in a large parking lot when a young man pulled up beside us and asked “Are you really from Minnesota?  Can I help you?”  We told him we wanted to find an ATM and he told us to follow him.  We drove just a couple hundred yards around a couple of corners and parked in an open square. He told us to walk around the church where we would find a bank and he would meet us there.  We did and he did; he then invited us up for coffee in his apartment just upstairs of the bank. It was great to have a good cup of coffee and also to have someone else to talk to.  He had sent some time in various US cities and was eager to hear how we had shipped Rover.  He graciously answered all our questions about road signs and then gave us his phone number and email address in case we had more questions in the future.  His hospitality was so generous and genuine.  It really made for a special beginning to our day.

Gas today was €1.60/litre; diesel is €1.30/litre.

Entry 8--September 14

The rain in Volendam stopped overnight, but it was drizzling again by morning and we abandoned the idea of riding our bikes into town; instead we drove Rover to a car park in the centrum.

Volendam is a tourist town. We walked past lots of shops along the harbor and bought bread, strawberries and peanuts in a street market. We see very few supermarkets: people still buy bread at the bakery and meat from the butcher. There is an amazing selection of fruits, fish, breads and beer available. We would like to find some Cheerios but are losing hope.

We then drove along the dike to Edam, know for its cheese. This time we stayed out of the center of town, parking in a car park near the Information bureau. Most of the car parks are clearly marked; some are free; some have a bar across the entrance that will not allow anything but little cars. Others are marked for buses, and we have used them without incident.

Edam is a lovely little place with tiny brick houses with tile roofs along many canals. There are flowers everywhere. It is unfortunate that they allow any cars to drive in the city center. One is always jumping out of the way of bikes and cars onto the two-foot wide sidewalks. There was a large camping store on the edge of town where we found out it would probably cost $1000 to equip Rover with a TV and a satellite dish, and then we would still have to purchase some service that was good only in a single country. Another problem that can wait for another day. But we are feeling a little left out of the news cycle. We get a 5-minute update from BBC on our short wave radio, which isn’t much; however, we’re finding that compressing the US presidential campaign to a single sentence isn’t a bad idea.

Our real adventure of the day was still ahead of us. We had a GPS location for a camperstop in the marina of the nearby town of Hoorn. But as we headed into the town center (always with fear and trepidation) we were confronted with a detour and road construction just when we had the campground literally in sight. We had to leave the programmed route, at which the GPS lady began telling us to make U turns, first gently, then more insistently (or so it seemed). We finally shut her off, thereby losing the only map we had.

But we knew there had to be a way around, so we tried going around the city to come at it from the other side. Thank goodness for roundabouts: they get you back where you really want to be without turning around in traffic.  We just didn’t know that we were heading directly into the tiny old city center. At one point we could see the harbor again and saw a sign for buses: surely a street that can handle buses can handle Rover, so we turned into it. David said, ”Finally, I don’t have anyone following us.” That was when I saw an elderly gentleman waving his arms and shaking his head in what was clearly the international language for “No!” We stopped. I hopped out. (I was to do a lot of hopping out today.) The gist of the elderly gentleman’s message was that “only buses can use this as a through street. There is an obstacle (a two-foot metal triangle) at the end, and only buses have the magic button to lower it out of their way.”

This one-lane street has houses lining one side with literally a two-foot sidewalk.  The street itself was maybe 12 feet wide, and small cars were parked on the right, facing a canal.  Mercifully, a few feet ahead we saw a break in the row of houses: a narrow alley. And directly opposite it was an empty parking space. David pulled into the parking space and backed up into the alley.  Now this may sound easy, but by now there was a bus waiting, we were drawing a small crowd, and the backing up took several back and forths. But the narrow scrape on the top left side of Rover almost all washed off later, and the longsuffering bus driver had honked only once.

The nice man tried to give us directions, after which we did another couple of tight back and forths and headed back out of town. Three miles later, his directions had brought us right back to the end of that street, but this time on the other side of the obstacle. By this time I had reprogrammed the GPS lady, who was happy to give us correct directions to our destinations.

Correct, however, doesn’t mean easy: these were through even tighter streets where several people backed out of our way, and at least twice I got out of the motorhome to look around corners before we dared to drive around them. The problem is that the streets are so narrow that many have been designated one way now to accommodate the cars that didn’t exist when they were built. When we arrived at the harbor, we couldn’t believe the size of some of the other campers and motorhomes there. There had to be a better way out. We treated ourselves to a meal in a restaurant that night after biking around the city and scouting out the return map the harbor clerk had given us.

But on Sunday morning, leaving early before breakfast and traffic, we were sent to an even smaller street that we simply could not navigate. We deliberately went the wrong way on a one-way street to a bridge marked “2.3 m” wide and, with inches to spare, crossed it with a motorhome that measures 2.5 m.  We were free of Hoorn and on our way.

Soon we were on a 20-mile motorway over a dike heading east.  I counted 126 wind turbines in a line along the coast near Lelystad.

Now we are camped for nine days in a campground outside St Nicolasga in the province of Friesland, where my brother and sister-in-law have rented a little vacation house. We will be joined by another sister and niece and brother-in-law, and together we will be visiting the birthplaces of our grandparents. It is nice not to be driving for a few days.

This is the first place where we have water at our site. There are many permanent trailers here, most of them closed up for the winter even though it’s only mid-September. Outside temperatures go down to 45 or so at night, but Rover’s LPG furnace takes the chill off quickly in the morning.

Left to our own devices for the first time in more than a week, we set off to the north and east to see the fortified town of Bourtange on the German border. We broke the journey Tuesday at Groningen, our most northerly stop to date.

Because it was a drizzly, chilly day that didn’t lend itself to sightseeing, and because of our ill-advised decision to wear ourselves out walking to town rather than taking the bus from the campground, we have little to say about Groningen. Instead, two digressions:

1. In place of the initial ‘G’ in the city’s name, we cognoscenti (!) substitute a throat-clearing ‘Hkk’, thus: ‘HKKRON i gen’.  And the ‘r’ is rolled. Further, a  favorite dessert is pronounced ‘Fla’, even though it is spelled VLAG in Friesian. (Frisian, you will quickly learn, is a separate language, not a mere dialect of Dutch. Vlag, incidentally, is a delicious runny pudding, sold in quart-sized milk-like cartons, flavored vanilla or chocolate (of course) or strawberry, raspberry. . . .)

2. The Dutch cities and towns we’ve seen have looked extremely prosperous: long shopping streets, few or no shuttered storefronts, successful open-air markets in addition to lots of upscale shops--many of them European and American chains--and large crowds. Groningen was no different, and the presence of about 20,000 university students probably didn’t hurt its economy, either.

One of the relatives we met told us, with evident pride, that his university-educated son was making a much larger salary than he, his father, was. The American Dream is doing OK in Holland.

Bourtange is a fortified village rebuilt to its 1742 glory, when it stood astride the routes other nations used to supply Dutch towns they occupied.  It was begun in 1580, built in the shape of a five pointed star with triple moats and earthworks, allowing the defenders to fire upon invaders from at least two different angles--very clever and interesting.  Lots of little rooms and shops to peek into. “It’s as if time had stood still,” say the town’s advertisements: well, yes, if you ignore the gift shops and the tourists and the cars.  

We would like warmer weather, so we did 119 miles today, some on a direct south motorway in Germany where the roads were noticeably worse and the traffic noticeably faster.  We are heading back to the storage place south of Amsterdam with some questions and then on south.  We are parked in Zwolle at our first real camperstop: basically a public parking lot with spaces marked for motorhomes for € 5 a night.  We are a little more at ease with driving after having a week off and learning a few more signs and rules of the road.  We have also seen very large trucks on very small streets almost everywhere, so we know we are not the biggest thing on the road. We watched in awe today as a large truck pulling a semi trailer went around a tight corner in front of us. Nothing seems to deter them; we look carefully ahead.

We stayed with about half a dozen other campers in a farmer’s field, set aside as a “mini-camp,” outside Middelberg, the capital of Zeeland, the furthest southwest province of the Netherlands. We took a bus into the city center.  Once again, the city center was very old and impressively large; also impressive was the Abbey, just off the centrum: three churches, side by side, a quad surrounded by monks’ quarters, and very old pulpits and pipe organs. It also has a fanciful monument remembering FDR’s “Four Freedoms”: freedom of speech and of religion, freedom from fear and from want. The connection is that FDR’s ancestors came from Zeeland.  After  we took the bus back  to the campground, we rode our bikes into Veere, a small village that has become a sailing harbor when the dyke project in the 1960s cut off their access to the sea and ended their fishing economy.  We visited an old church which hasn’t been restored but instead turned into a concert and community place.  An unexpected twist.

It has rained all day Tuesday, as we traveled to a campground on the outskirts of Breda: we picked this campground because it has a laundry--a good way to use a rainy day--but found that the only washing machine is not working! So we’ve done nothing more than shop for groceries today and listen to the BBC discuss the US House’s rejection of the bailout bill. Much of the coverage has been on the level of “does this represent the failure of market capitalism?” It was interesting hearing a European banker or politician say that American politicians had to act responsibly and pass the damn thing: it was clear that a congressman from Kansas wouldn’t be at all impressed by the admonition and might even be angered by it...much as Europeans must be by American blowhards lecturing them. 

We interrupt this report for breaking news:

This just in--

TWINS LOSE!!

In a development that sent stock markets reeling around the world, the Minnesota Twins lost their playoff game to the universally despised Chicago White Sox on Tuesday. Right-thinking enclaves throughout the world mourn. Except in Breda, the Netherlands, where patrons of the McDonalds couldn't understand our anguish.

More later, but not about this.

As promised--if that’s the word--here’s a midterm assessment of the outcomes of our various expectations about this trip: which ones, so far, have been exceeded, which met, and which shattered beyond all recognition.

(“Midterm,” “assessment,” “outcomes”. . . how deep runs the influence of decades in American higher education. But we’re doing our best to get over it.)

So, in the terms of our epigraph from Henry James-- 

“My idea of paradise is a perfect automobile going thirty miles an hour on a smooth road to a twelfth-century cathedral."--

we begin. 

“A perfect automobile . . .”

B+ on this one.  As near as we can tell, Rover has been averaging about 10 mpg, which is all we can expect; mechanically, she’s been flawless in the crucial areas.

We can’t be sure about the mpg because until recently we weren’t willing to fill the 55-gallon gas tank once, let alone twice, because of the cost of lugging that much extra weight around. However, just today when we left Luxembourg we filled it up because gas there was € .30  per liter cheaper than anywhere else we’d been--that’s about $1.60 per gallon less. And it’s beginning to look like we’ll make it through the two months of our trip on a single tank of propane.

One of the tires needs about 3 lbs of added pressure every two days or so, and the hydraulic levelers sometimes snap and groan disconcertingly--but at least they don’t give way. Most annoying has been the water heater: it sometimes fails to come on at all, and other times it warms the water initially but then fails to keep it up. This afternoon we took out the manual and poked and tapped it a bit, after which it burned energetically and we went inside to eat supper and drink wine . . . we’ll see whether we’ve done any long-term good. (I hope so, because everything else the manual suggests is about 3 semesters above me and, as the Luxembourgean motorhome repair guy said, “I have no parts for this.”)

“ . . . going thirty miles an hour . . .”

There’s no way around it: the grade so far is F. 

The original plan had been to travel backroads at a leisurely pace and to stop for the night in small towns as the spirit moved us. Instead, we’ve usually been on the European equivalent of interstates--and now that we’re in France, they’re tollroads to boot--going 55 mph, while everyone else does 75 or so. Today might have been our worst in this regard: 170 miles from Luxembourg city to Strasbourg, France. We had hoped to go about 50 miles a day.

I think there are a number of reasons we haven’t done this. First, ever since leaving our relatives in northern Holland, we’ve had rain most every day. Backroads and hills and narrow lanes are no fun to drive on in those conditions, and I’ve succumbed to the false hope that if we only go fast and far enough, we will outrun the bad weather. Second, I’ve been very aware of our three water tanks--black, grey, and fresh--and the need to prevent the first two from getting full and the third from getting empty. So no sooner does the monitor’s level for one another of the tanks threaten to become critical in a couple of days than I start thinking we have to find a campground where we can fill one kind of tank or empty another.

Finally, I haven’t yet been able to shake my Type-A habit of ‘get it done,’ ‘check one destination off the list and go on to the next,’ instead of taking it as it comes.

“ . . . on a smooth road . . .”

A. Maybe A+. Except for a short stretch in western Germany, the highways have been great, and even the narrowest lanes have been smooth. The oval “USA” decal next to our rear license plate seems to elicit other drivers’ pity and forebearance rather than impatience (not to mention a lot of interest from people at restaurants and gas stations and campgrounds).

“ . . . to a twelfth-century cathedral.”

B so far--but on the other hand, we’ve only today gotten into France, the country of literally hundreds of ancient cathedrals, town halls, and villages… (Cathedrals like this one at Strasbourg?

That would be too much to hope for.)

Still, some of our best memories so far have been turning a corner in a Dutch or Belgian town and having our breath taken away by the sudden sight of a centuries-old Grote Kerk or Town Hall at the far end of the market square--and this despite the fact that Reformation Protestants or the 20th century’s two wars often had done terrible things to towns’ architecture in these countries.

One of our wisest purchases so far was a three-day “Luxembourg Card,” which gave us unlimited travel on the buses and trains throughout the country as well as free admission to more than 50 museums and other attractions. Because we had the card, we saved energy riding a bus when otherwise we might have walked, and we weren’t particularly upset when one of the museums we took a bus to was putting in a new exhibit and had everything off limits. And we saw a couple of interesting museums we otherwise probably would have skipped for the sake of saving money.

We’ve just finished a four-night stay in a campground just on the edge of Luxembourg city. This was the first camppground that wasn’t filled with permanent and rather crummy looking trailers. Instead there were people coming in and going out every day.   And we could order fresh bread to be available in the morning. The laundry was only € 4 to wash and dry and the campgound was only € l3 with free showers. 

We looked at the map and decided we were too close to Switzerland to not include it in our non-existent itinerary. So we left Colmar and drove into Germany, following the Rhine south to Basel. This is the height of the fall color season and it is beautiful country.

We were brought down to earth when we learned that Switzerland collects road taxes at the border on all trucks: that piece of information cost us € 17. (“We learn something every day, to our cost” (Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead).

Basel is a big city with a very good bus and tram service to the campground, so we had no trouble getting into the city center.  We stayed two nights. Our decision to do so was easy: first, we found no fewer than three Starbucks in the central city, and second, we stumbled across a wonderful special exhibition of paintings of Venice by Canaletto, Turner, and Monet. There is also a very impressive teddy bear and doll house museum which is so large it is hard to take it all in. David was graciously patient through all four floors. (He calls the reader’s attention to the fact that Susan, not he, wrote that.)

Warning: the following deals with European toilets, so if that topic doesn’t appeal to you, skip this paragraph. We have learned to save the ends of toilet paper rolls and carry them with us, because you never know whether it will be provided when you need it. Some places simply do not provide it; others have huge major league rolls; still others have it locked down so it can’t be stolen; or it may be for sale in the office; and a few others just have it out there, like both you and they were real civilized and sophisticated. One place had a single roll by the sinks. Toilets seats are also not always considered a necessity. Since we have been in France, we have encountered several toilets without seats attached. And we have seen several continental toilets, where you simply position yoursef over the hole in the floor (a maneuver we have avoided so far). Virtually all are reasonably clean, and in the campgrounds they and the showers have generally been well cared for. Since our hot water does not want to get very hot, we have been using campground showers. There is sometimes a charge of €1 for their use, but many are free.  Toilets are always free in the campgrounds but not always in public places.

Between toilets, toilet paper, and our obsession with the levels of Rover’s water tanks (is the fresh one nearly empty? are the grey and black ones getting full? we know the tanks' monitors aren't accurate, but just how far off are they?), quite a bit of our psychic energy is devoted to sanitation.

After another night and day of rain (the first in quite a while) we are now in Auxonne, France, parked right on the Saone River. We knew nothing about it but discovered Napoleon presiding over the town square, complete with an impressive Romanesque church and a marker commemorating the place where the "liberating forces" of the Allied armies of the Rhine and Danube campaigns linked up.

In Baume les Dames, the night before, we saw a Montana license plate on a Winnebago but did not meet the owners. We did talk with a woman from Switzerland who said she and her husband had shipped their motorhome to the US seven years ago for seven months. That campsite was full of caravans and motorhomes, some of them substantially larger than Rover, all of them driven by people our age or older. Most seemed interested in seeing the fall colors. We arrived in Baume les Dames after striking out at Mandeure, where a campground the guidebook promised was open wasn't: however, we were delighted to find what the signpost said were the ruins of a "Gallo-Roman" theatre. It made the extra miles worthwhile.

Tonight we are doing laundry again. This time it is $ 12 (US) to wash and dry one load, but we have two that can’t wait. (For that amount, we could buy eight bottles of wine!)

We have spent the last two days prowling around the centre villes (city centers) of Avallon and Auxerre and stumbling upon the medieval village of Vezelay. In Avallon we were given a personal tour in French of a remarkable costume museum, by a little old French lady, wrapped in a shawl, who could barely make it up the long flight of stairs. She just ignored the fact that we barely understood anything she said. But the costume collection was quite wonderful, even if it was moldy in places. And it was quite effectively displayed in rooms decorated to match the period of the costumes. The rooms were filled to overflowing. 

Avallon was where one of the pedals fell off David’s bike. Our folding bikes attract more attention than our Minnesota license plates. David had been unhappy with one pedal and managed to strip the threads while trying to fix it. Remarkably, it fell off as we rode back to Rover, which happened to be a good half mile away, all downhill. The next day we found a Menard’s type store called “Bricoland”--the whole thing would fit in Menard’s lighting department--and purchased some nuts, bolts, and washers and David created a new pedal. We were off on our bikes again this morning--to a street market in the rain--to buy our baguette.

After the bike incident we started looking for a campground. One we were looking for had an extremely tight looking entrance, so we drove on to another that turned out to be a treasure. The camping signs led us to Vezelay, a medieval walled village high on a hill. After we found the only level spot in the campground (tire wedges are required), we walked the ten minutes to the village. Since it was Sunday night after 5 PM we were not expecting much, but were surprised to find lots of people, open shops  all on a single street that went basically straight up to the basilica at the top. It is said to contain relics of none other than Mary Magdelene, who is said (at least by the French) to have made it to France toward the end of her life. It was a beautiful clear day and the views from the top were pretty amazing.  

Today we spent getting lost and getting into and out of centre villes, driving white knuckled at times, trying to find a campground in the rain. The bicycle museum we finally found was closed. The campground is right on the edge of the village of Grez sur Loing: the guidebook says, “Do not try to tow a camping trailer through the village.”  We approached it from the other direction and we will be sure to check it out before we head that way tomorrow towards Fountainbleau.

We are very aware that a week from tomorrow we have to be in Amsterdam, cleaning Rover and packing, because we fly out on Thursday the 30th. Negotiations about where to spend these last few days have begun.

We have arrived in Amsterdam after two fairly long days on the road from Paris. We are here a day early, so we have plenty of time to do our storage/cleanup/packing and organizing before we fly home on Thursday. We have decided to spend the last night in a hotel so that we will not be trying to wash and dry and pack bedding the morning we leave. It is raining frequently again, so we postponed a visit to the city center and started to pack. Since the last laundry, we have worn “clothes that are going home with us.” We have quite a lot of summer things we will be leaving behind for next year. Because we shipped so much in Rover, we have very full suitcases going home with us. Trying to go through every cupboard and storage area is a little tricky to do in that small space.    

Because the washer and dryer in this campground are so small, we spent the equivalent of $40 doing four loads of laundry, even though it consisted only of our sheets, pilowcases and the two bed sacks. But they are clean, dry and packed into space bags. We gave away the little bit of food we couldn’t use up or safely store. There are a dozen or so student types tenting here, and the “free food” bag disappeared from the shower room very quickly.

We have been unable to find a place to give Rover a really good bath and campgrounds do not want you using their water or their spaces for that. The best I could do was go over Rover with a damp rag: moving the dirt around a little and then pouring water on her to rinse her off. It worked remarkably well, thanks partly to the rain. But it is really hard to do a good job on the nose of the cab where all the bugs collect. We did the best we could, and I think she looked reasonably clean.

We waited until the last morning to do the plumbing winterizing.  A month ago in a Luxembourg camping store we purchased some expensive camper water system antifreeze for about $40. We have since discovered that is is concentrated and we needed to dilute it with water. It should last us as long as we want to travel and store Rover in Europe.  But it is a clear liquid--not pink--so it presented the problem of “how will we know when we have used enough?”  My brilliant idea was to use a little red wine, so we saved a bottle. When it came time to add it to our winterizing concoction, we discovered that only the bottle was dark, while the wine inside was white.  Because we had already given  away or thrown everything else out, we looked around for an alternative. Literally the only single thing left was about half a cup of cold coffee. So we dumped that in and ended up with something that looked like weak urine. We completed the unappetizing winterizing and proceded to the dump and then we were on our way. Nowhere is it possible to really introduce a great deal of water to the holding tank system to flush it out.  Having a short hose availlable at a dump site is an asset that isn’t always available.  The two collapsible water jugs have proved to be valuable items. We can only hope that the urine/antifreeze we used will remain in the toilet to keep any odors out.  

On our way to the storage place we drove around looking for Mobil 1 oil for Rover. The storage place also works on engines and campers and had agreed to do an oil change. We were actually able to find two different auto supply stores, but neither had what we were looking for.  So we gave up that search and drove to the storage place where they talked us out of doing an oil change after 3800 miles we’d traveled in the US and Europe since the last servicing. But we did leave them with a small list of other things to check for us and determined to bring Mobil 1 with us next year. With just a little separation anxiety we turned over the keys, gave them €500, locked the door and said goodbye to Rover and took a cab to a hotel by the airport.

During this time we went into Amsterdam twice by metro and once by bus. The city center is truly wonderful with its canals and unique archiitecture. It has great public transportation and restaurants, and if you can avoid being hit by a bicycle or tram, it is a very walkable city. Everything is so close together.  It is also a peaceful place compared to Paris. And almost everyone speaks English and many signs are also translated, making it easier to get around. Even in the pouring rain, it is a charming place and one of our favorites.

Tomorrow we will head home. We promise one last blog entry after we have recovered from jet lag and toted up all our expenses and other interesting numbers.     We are feeling blessed. While we had some scary moments, we never got into any real trouble. We didn’t sprain any ankles, back into anything (except that sign in Hoorn),  lose any fillings, or even get our feet really wet. It feels good to be going home, but I have a feeling we’ll be planning the next trip pretty quickly. Actually, we have already started.