Day 7 - Van Riper State Park, MI to Cass Lake Rest Area, MN

They say things come in threes.

It rained overnight, but had cleared by morning. It was quiet in the Rustic campground and Ellen and Sally took a quick walk for a few birds before leaving. One of the things we had to do before getting on the road was to dump our holding tanks, so it was off to the dump station.

Time for that third thing...our macerator pump died. Speedy has a powered dump system where the waste drains out of the tanks to a macerator pump which then chews up any solids and pumps the resulting liquid to the dump station drain via a small diameter hose. Old Speedy had a gravity system. You opened a valve and it just flowed out a big hose to the drain.

An advantage of a macerator pump is that it doesn't require a large sloping pipe from the tanks to the hose, which is an advantage in a small van-based camper. It will also pump uphill, so there is no problem with dump stations with a curb. The disadvantage is that there is an electrical pump with moving parts that can fail.

Today the motor failed. I got everything set up, pushed the power button and nothing happened. It worked briefly earlier, but now absolutely nothing. I checked the circuit; no blown fuses. Then I looked underneath and saw liquid leaking from the pump. I suspect a seal failed and water got into the motor, shorting it out.

This left us with two full tanks. Fortunately, Roadtrek provides an emergency gravity drain, a two inch plug just beside the tank valves under the van. Unfortunately, it drains directly onto the ground. We lucked out though, the Van Riper SP dump station has a sloping concrete pad that goes from under the vehicle to the ground drain. I just had to position Speedy in the right place, Reach underneath and unscrew the plug, then open the drain valves. It worked smoothly. Once Speedy was moved out of the way, I could rinse off the pad and all was well...until we fill the tanks again.

Now we have two failed parts going into a three day weekend. I looked around online and called nearby shops, but everything is closed on Memorial day weekend. We decided we would press on, babying the brakes until Tuesday. The plan is to drive to Minot, ND, about a two day drive, which is a city large enough to have brake repair shops and an RV dealer. We may be stuck there a couple of days, but we built slack into the first part of the trip by leaving as early as we did,

Today was the first of those two travel days. The idea was to drive until late afternoon, when we expected to be well into Minnesota, then find a public campground, even a primitive one, for the night. We didn't quite plan for Memorial day weekend. I guess they really like to camp in Minnesota. We looked into five campgrounds, including a dispersed camping area in a National Forest, but everywhere we looked was filled. We had just resigned ourselves to the Bemidji, MN Walmart parking lot when we came across the Cass Lake Rest Area at Cass Lake, MN.

It is a really nice rest area, with a new welcome center which is open 24 hours. The attendent there when we arrived said there was no problem staying overnight. We pulled the vans into the RV/Truck parking area and settled in with a better view of the lake than in any of the nearby campgrounds we tried. There was even great birding after dinner while walking along the lake.

We have now crossed the Mississippi River and are officially in the West. We also passed through Cohasset, MN, one of the three towns named Cohasset.

Tomorrow we will be off to somewhere near Minot, ND, which should be a full day's drive. After tomorrow night, Harry and Sally will continue in to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, a slight detour, while we get our repairs done. We hope to catch up with them there.

Travel Details
Van Riper State park, Champion, Michigan to Lake Cass Rest Area, Lake Cass, Minnesota.
Distance 367 Miles
Travel Time 11 hours 10 minutes