Day 13:The “Real” Promised Land

After touring Holland, MI, we pressed hard north as we had a reservation at a RV Park, on Lake Leelanau, named, logically enough, Lake Leelanau RV Park, located about 15 miles West of Traverse City. We got a little lost, which ended up being OK, since we were privy to blossoming cherry trees, and beautiful rolling hills of green, green grass. We made it to the park late afternoon, and after paying, in my opinion, too much ($48 for a VIP site), we settled into a reasonably spacious site with a concrete slab, picnic table, and fire rim. Fortuneatly, the sites to the north of us didn’t fill up providing us with a nice and quite lovely view of Lake Leelanau. The folks were, once again, very friendly, and on eo fo our RV neighbors across the road noticed we were struggling to get our wood fire going with any conviction. He brought over some round objects, that kinda looked like SOS pads, and handed us a few. I assume he could see the question mark written all over my face, so proceeded to let us in an another “RV TIP”. Here’s what you do: When at home, in the comfort of your kitchen, and assuming you have a cloths drier, you take the lint from the dryer (when available), wad it up into charcoal size balls, and soak it with heated-up (i.e. liquified) parrafin wax. Once cooled and hardened, these little balls of wonder will light the most stubborn fire, even when tended by a couple of RV Rookies. Within no time, we had a nice fire blazing, and ready for cooking up the nights meal. By the way, another tip is heading your way, as us “Rookies” didn’t have the right gear or experience to rig up a reasonable grill on top of a wood fire rim. We used several metal bars left over from some repair work Max had done on his jeep, and overlayed it with a grill top borrowed from my conventional, portable charcoal grill. It worked, but only after several pieces of chicken slid into the ashes below (for that extra “natural” flavor!). The solution is on its way n a subsequent post.