A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 323 miles from St Clair to Buckley, Michigan.
RV
Posts featuring the coach.
Travel from St Clair to Buckley, Michigan
We drove our coach 323 miles, about five hours of driving, from St Clair to Buckley, Michigan.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading northwest:

An interactive map, with potential stops pinned:
I-69 West:

Rest area:

Flint Strong water:

North towards Saginaw:

I-75 North:

Rest area:

Paladin on the dash:

Route 10 West:

Speed Limit 75, Truck Speed 65, Minimum Speed 55:

Rest area:

I like this style of passing lane, where the dotted line strongly suggests moving right:

Arriving at KOA:

Replacing light under kitchen sink
I previously replaced the cover on the light under the sink, but it got knocked off again, so I decided to replace the whole light fixture this time, figuring that the clips that hold the cover on may be weak.
The light is available from Tiffin’s online parts store, part number 5032143 “Light Wardrobe Brown LED”:


Rather than using the wires that came with the light, I simply unplugged the existing wires from the old light, and plugged in to the new one. But the light didn’t work; it turned out that I needed to reverse the wires; so I guess the original was hooked up differently:

But all good now:

An easy fix.
Thousand Trails St Clair
We stayed at Thousand Trails St Clair in St Clair, Michigan. (Campground Reviews listing.)
A nice Thousand Trails campground.
Dates:
- Check in: 2025-05-11
- Check out: 2025-05-18
- 7 nights
Weather:
- Mix of sunny and rainy
- High temps 67-81°F, lows 44-61°F
- Some wind, gusts to 27 MPH
Noise:
- Some freeway noise
- No train horn noise
- A bunch of neighbor noise (kids)
Site:
- #C21, pull-through, gravel
- Buddy site, with neighbor passenger side facing us on both sides (ugh)
- Didn’t need to disconnect toad, parked behind coach
- Fairly level site; high on passenger side; used hydraulic leveling
- Gravel driveway about 70 feet long by 8 feet wide
- 35 feet to neighbors on both sides
- Just grass between sites
- Picnic table
- Fire pit
- Some tall trees
- Somewhat clean site
- Elevation 620 feet, front facing due west
Utilities:
- 50 amp power, conveniently located
- 50 PSI very hard water, conveniently located
- Unthreaded sewer connection, conveniently located (1 10-foot pipe needed)
Internet (in usage priority order):
- Starlink: 130-300 Mbps down, 7-30 Mbps up, 30-40 ms ping
- T-Mobile: 380-430 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up, 75-210 ms ping, unreliable
- AT&T: 128-142 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up, 65 ms ping
- Verizon: 5 Mbps down, 0.5-7 Mbps up, 60 ms ping (our SIM has 5 Mbps max)
- Campground Wi-Fi: not used
Amenities:
- Garbage dumpsters
- Pool
- Package delivery to office, at no charge (uncommon for Thousand Trails nowadays)
Our review on Campground Reviews:
A Nice Thousand Trails Campground
This place was typical of an older Thousand Trails campground, but the communal areas looked new and well-maintained. Like all other TT properties, they have switched to assigned sites, which I prefer. A word of warning, however, because the map they have online when you click the link in your confirmation email is highly outdated. Our original assignment was B2, which, on the old map, was a 15A site, which would not suffice, and we had some angst about what we’d do if that were the case. Thankfully, the map on the website itself was an updated version and showed it as a 50A & water site. When we checked in, however, the lovely lady at the front desk informed us that we would be in C-18, which was a full-hookup site. I wasn’t too happy about it since all the pull-throughs are buddy sites (I’d rather not have a sewer connection than have a buddy site). However, she very sweetly moved us to C-21, which was still a buddy site but had larger grassy areas between the sites, so we weren’t cheek-by-jowl with our neighbors, so it all worked out.
One of the best things about this campground is that it is one of the few Thousand Trails campgrounds that 1) still accepts packages for guests, and 2) doesn’t charge for them. It’s also one of the rare TT campgrounds that provides the actual gate code in the pre-arrival email. This is because you need to let yourself in when you arrive and then check in at the welcome center. I’ve been conditioned by past experiences at TT campgrounds to be skeptical of those emails, so it came as a surprise when I needed the gate code upon arrival. We camped at Thousand Trails St Clair in a Motorhome.
Campground map; it says C18, but the check-in person told us C21 was better:

An interactive map:
Our site:

It was a buddy site, which we normally hate, but this wasn’t too bad, since there was a fair bit of space between the sites. Plus it was too cold to want to sit outside, so didn’t bother us too much:




Utilities:

Dusty truck (we did take it through a car wash after this, though it was dirty again a few days later from rain):

We added the Michigan sticker to states map, filling a hole:

Just the little NE states left:

Our original site assignment was here, next to that annual site; it would have been fine, but no sewer:

Other sites:







Office:

Playground:

Community campfire:

Little library and game:

Mini golf:

We’d be happy to stay here again.
Video: Ravenna, Ohio to St Clair, Michigan motorhome travel timelapse
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 249 miles from Ravenna, Ohio to St Clair, Michigan.
Travel from Ravenna, Ohio to St Clair, Michigan
We drove our coach 249 miles, about five hours of driving, from Ravenna, Ohio to St Clair, Michigan.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading west then north:

An interactive map, with potential stops pinned:
“Is your TV Antennae Down?” — okay, pedantically that should be either “are” or “antenna”:

Leaving West Branch State Park:

High arching bridge over rail line:

Ohio Turnpike I-80 West:

“Trucks and slower traffic use left lane”; unusual:

Large service plaza truck parking:

Service plaza food court:

BK and Starbucks coffee for lunch:

Paladin in his dash bed with some roadworks:

Ohio turnpike I-80/90 West:

Another service plaza, with RV elctrical hookups!:

Toll plaza:

I-280 North:

Oregon?!

Bridge over Maumee River in Toledo:


I-75 North:

“Welcome to Pure Michigan”:

Not the best road surface:

TA fuel stop:

I-75 North:

“Speed limit 70, truck speed 65, minimum speed 55”:

“Welcome to Thousand Trails St Clair”:

Gate:

Our site:

Moved toilet paper holder in half bath
I’m sure most people are super-excited by minor modifications to our motorhome like this… and what’s more thrilling than toilet paper?!
But fellow owners of our coach (e.g. in the Tiffin Allegro Bus 2016-2018 Owners group on Facebook) might find it useful. For them, we have a 2017 Tiffin Allegro Bus 40SP.
The toilet paper holder used to be next to the door, but was kinda in the way there. I tried raising it up, but that didn’t help much:

So we decided to move it to under the corner cabinet. Here’s the mount, screwed into the cabinet:

The toilet paper holder attached to the mount:

The final result, along with a rechargeable motion light and replaced soap dispenser and faucet:

Much better; still easily reachable, without getting in the way.
AC replacements
Our front and mid AC units were having issues for some time — mostly not getting cold, and sometimes refusing to come on at all. We got a few techs to look at them, without any conclusive results or solutions.
While staying at Thousand Trails Orlando, we got Charles Sutton of CS Mobile RV Repair LLC to take a look, and he determined that the compressors on both were shot, and we needed to replace them. An unpleasantly large expense, but he handled it very professionally.
Here he is lugging the very heavy AC unit up to the roof (and I appreciate the padding on the ladder to protect our paint):

The offending part:

Inside the old AC unit, partially disassembled:

It is nice to have reliably working AC units now.
West Branch State Park
We stayed at West Branch State Park in Ravenna, Ohio. (Campground Reviews listing.)
A nice state park, though many of the sites are unlevel.
Dates:
- Check in: 2025-05-03
- Check out: 2025-05-11
- 8 nights
Weather:
- Some rain and some mostly cloudy
- High temps 60-70°F, lows 44-52°F
- Some wind, gusts to 21 MPH
Noise:
- No road noise
- Distant train horn noise
- Little neighbor noise
Site:
- #100, back-in, asphalt
- Needed to disconnect toad, parked in front of coach
- Very unlevel site; high in front and driver side; used hydraulic leveling (which couldn’t get entirely level; air leveling couldn’t cope either)
- Asphalt driveway about 45 feet long by 10 feet wide
- About 90 feet to neighbor on passenger side
- No neighbor on driver side
- Just grass between sites
- Picnic table
- Fire pit
- Tall trees
- Clean site
- Elevation 990 feet, front facing NE
Utilities:
- 50 amp power, conveniently located
- 55 PSI very hard water, conveniently located
- Unthreaded sewer connection, very conveniently located (2 2-foot pipes needed)
Internet (in usage priority order):
- Starlink: 12-160 Mbps down, 5-22 Mbps up, 30-90 ms ping
- T-Mobile: 5 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up, 42 ms ping
- AT&T: 17 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up, 80-120 ms ping
- Verizon: 5 Mbps down, 9 Mbps up, 60-150 ms ping (our SIM has 5 Mbps max)
- Campground Wi-Fi: none
Amenities:
- Garbage dumpsters
Our review on Campground Reviews:
Nice campground, unlevel sites
This was a nice state park on the lake. Our site was very wide with lots of space between the neighbors, but a bit on the short side (just long enough for our 40′ motorhome, and we parked our truck crosswise at the front with about a foot to spare). The only real downside was how massively unlevel the site was front-to-back. We tried multiple positions and both air and hydraulic leveling, but could never get flat. Examining other sites in our loop, it didn’t appear that any of them were particularly level. Many rigs had their wheels off the ground, which is just unsafe. Our utilities were all in working order, but with very hard water, which required us to refresh the water softener twice in a week. We camped at West Branch State Park in a Motorhome.
Campground map:

An interactive map:
Our site:



You can see how much the site slopes… and our coach wasn’t even level:


A track to the lake from our site:



We added the Ohio sticker to our map:


And added the Cuyahoga Valley National Park sticker:


Dumpster and bathrooms:


Other sites:



We’d be happy to stay here again, but not in the same site.
Video: Lebanon, Pennsylvania to Ravenna, Ohio motorhome travel timelapse
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 323 miles from Lebanon, Pennsylvania to Ravenna, Ohio, including several tunnels and narrow toll plazas, with clips from the truck perspective.