Not every episode needs a breakdown or a white-knuckle travel day. This one is a slow day in Marquette, Michigan, and honestly those are the days that remind us why we sold the house. We cooked outside, hiked along Lake Superior, poked at our trailer lights again, and finally started the scratch-off travel map we've been carrying around since we moved into the Brinkley.
Lunch off the griddle first
We started with a simple cookout: asparagus, onions, and chicken on the Blackstone 17" griddle. Nothing fancy, and that's kind of the point. Cooking outside keeps the heat and the smell out of the rig, and cleanup on the cast-iron top takes a couple of minutes. If we could only keep one piece of outdoor gear, the griddle wins without much of a fight.
Presque Isle Park earns its reputation
After lunch we drove over to Presque Isle Park, which locals kept telling us was the thing to see in Marquette. They were right. It's a ten-minute hike from the parking area to rocky overlooks where the water is clear enough to watch the bottom drop away. Lake Superior does not look like a lake from up there. It looks like an ocean that wandered inland.
The surprise was the cliff jumpers. We came around a bend and found a group launching themselves off Black Rocks into water that, even in summer, is cold enough to make you rethink your choices. We stayed on the filming side of that activity. Watching was plenty.
The trailer light mystery continues
Back at the rig we returned to our recurring headache: the right turn signal that works whenever anyone is watching. Sure enough, the moment we set up the camera and ran a test, everything functioned perfectly. Classic. But the check wasn't wasted, because we spotted moisture inside both tail light housings. Now we have a real decision: replace the lights ourselves now, or wait and see what Brinkley recommends since the rig is under warranty. We talk through both options in the video. For now we're documenting everything so the service conversation is easy.
If you tow anything, go look at your tail lights after a rainy travel day. Condensation inside the lens is one of those small things that turns into corroded connections and mystery electrical problems later, and we suspect it's been the root of ours all along.
Scratching off our first states
The fun project of the day was the scratch-off U.S. travel map. Before we marked anything we had to agree on the rules, because everyone counts states differently. Driving through on the interstate doesn't count for us. Sleeping there in the rig and actually doing something in the state does. It took some negotiating (Fabiola is stricter than Nathan on this) but we landed on a standard we can both live with.
Then we scratched off the first states we've truly explored since going full time, and it was a better feeling than we expected. Seeing the map mostly gray is motivating in the same way an empty checklist is. We also mocked up where the map will live in the rig, which is harder than it sounds when every wall is either a slide, a cabinet, or curved.
The map conversation turned into route planning, which turned into us listing places we want to be next summer. That's how most of our slow days end lately: with a longer list than we started with.
You can watch the whole day, cliff jumpers included, on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.