Saute St. Marie doesn't sound at all like it looks.

Spent yesterday hanging out at Terrace Bay Beach. Watched a charter boat load up 2 canoes,1 kayak,4 gentlemen from Wisconsin, a Jack Russell and a whole lot of gear to carry them out to one of the islands to camp and paddle about. Watched numerous other boats come and go - it's a busy boat launch.






Before relocating to the other end of the bay we watched a gull fishing at the mouth of the river - something I've never seen them do at home. The gull would circle always in the same direction, hover for a few seconds over the same then dive into the water with hardly a splash. Never did see if it caught anything but it did this for quite a long time.

After a long bike ride,  I did a couple of flights with my quad up and down the beach.

On through the boreal forest, we are now seeing sugar maples - we are now in the land of maple syrup. Lots of mining sites for silver, gold, and copper.

We next stop in White River where Winnie the Pooh originated. It's an interesting story that I was unaware of.

Next stop was at Wawa to check out the giant goose. Note that the goose even includes a stream of crap behind the legs (? is this what the artist wanted included...).

The final stop of the day was definitely the best, the pictographs at Agawa Bay. A steep 500m walk thru the woods, then a treacherous tiptoe along the narrow slanted ledge into Lake Superior. Luckily the lake is calm or we wouldn't have been able to attempt it, but the view was worth it!!

Note the ropes to grab onto in case you slip!  Not sure how you would haul someone back up though...

Arrived at our favorite location just after 7 p.m., a long day but a good one.

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Ebike Conversion

I've been interested in e-bikes for awhile now and finally took the plunge and converted my bike with a Bafang kit. The results turned out far better than I had expected.

The conversion kit was ordered from a store on AliExpress. It's a Bafang BBS 02 750 watt mid drive unit as well as an installation tool and hydraulic brake adapters.I also purchased a 13S 4P 48V battery to drive it all.

Installation of the kit is fairly straightforward.

The first step is the removal of the pedals, for this I used a Park Tool CCP-22 Crank Puller, to remove the bottom bracket cartridge I needed to purchase a Park Tool BBT-22 for my setup.





Slide the Bafang unit into the BB it's a tight fit and required a little sanding but it fits. I had to modify the retaining bracket, enlarging the holes and removing some material to get a nice fit. Using the tool I purchased with my kit I tightened it all down ensuring the tabs faced inwards.


Then I  removed the derailer and installed the drive sprocket chain and pedals.

Next, I removed the grips and left shifter. Installed the ON/OFF switch, control display, and throttle on the bars.


Routed all the wires using lots of zap straps and mounted the battery. Job done!!!

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Forest River 2401R Stereo Upgrade

Our RV came with the upgraded head unit from Jenson and while it did work as intended it was far from premium and the included GPS unit left a lot to be desired. It served us for our first year of ownership, but with our planned tour of North America this summer something better was required.
After a lot of research, I decided to replace it with an Android Head unit which turned out to be an easy and very worthwhile upgrade.

The Sprinter dash comes apart in layers, you have to slowly remove the trim pieces to gain access to the fasteners which makes it possible to remove the next layer till you can finally remove the stereo. All of the fasteners are either the same length T25 Torx screws, plastic tabs, spring clips or molded hooks. I just had to take my time gently removing them.

Once I had the radio removed I spent some time labeling all the wiring of which there are a lot.

The replacement unit was from Joying and only required a little modification to mount it.

Once the I doubled checked the new wiring harness and checked to make sure everything was working as it should it was time to finish the install.

The finished product looks as good as the original and works far better with the ability to use numerous Android apps and the GPS using both North American as well as Glasnost satellites for a faster and more accurate fix

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Mopeka LP Tank Check Sensor on a Horizontal RV Tank

My motorhome has 2 LP tank gauges both showing different readings, I had heard about a new way to monitor your LP tank using an ultrasonic sensor by Mopeka. It sounded like just what I needed but when it arrived, I discovered that while it works great on vertical tanks it's less than ideal on horizontal tanks like the kind that come on most class C RV's.

The problem is it's designed to mount on the flat part of the bottom of a vertical tank which a class C  with it's horizontally mounted tank causing the bottom of the tank to be rounded makes for a poor fit and not very accurate readings.

Fortunately, I have access to a 3d printer and after a few trial and errors in designing the case came up with a solution that works great.

 With the addition of a couple of zip ties to secure it to the tank, I now have a reliable sensor that will alert me before I run out of propane.

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First Trip

With the Solar installed and summer finally, here it's time to test the system out and see what if any changes I need to make before our big trip in September so we took the RV out for our first trip up island to Long Beach.

The weather was perfect nice sunny days spent wandering the Pacific Rim trails with an awesome sunset at the end of the day.

Stopped at a funky taco stand near Tofino for dinner it was a little hard to find but the food was great.

It was a very enjoyable time the RV worked great, no problems with the Solar looks like we are ready for September.

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