WHO WE ARE

We are Marlene and Benno Klopfer.  Many people know us already from our cruising years on the oceans with “Najade” a 37-foot sailboat and later “Diesel Duck” a 41-foot motor vessel. Discovering fascinating places and making new friends all over the world had been a big part of our lives, while we were full time cruising on our boats for 13 years.  More of that and some interesting stories we will tell you throughout following blog entries. In February of 2012, while under anchor in Miami on “Diesel Duck”, we flew to Canada to purchase a 2-bedroom cottage across the shores of Lake Erie on the outskirts of Leamington, close to the little town of Wheatley in Southern Ontario very close to Windsor, Ont. or Detroit USA. The cottage needed a lot of renovations, so in the springtime we brought our boat after a short stay in the lovely Bahamas up the East Coast, the Hudson River and the Erie Canal to Lake Erie to live on our boat docked in the Leamington Marina while working on the cottage to turn her into a winterized house with central heat and air and all the amenities of a fine home, a definitely 2 season project. That October we headed south with the boat to spend the winter away from the cold in Canada, to the southern State of Florida. Instead of bringing the boat back up in the spring of 2013, we left it in Florida, listed it with a broker to be sold and drove up by car. The cottage, now turning into a house, was nowhere near completion, so we opted to purchase a 24-foot Wildwood travel trailer, which we parked next to our house to live in while completing our project. Late fall we moved into the now completed house and winterized the travel trailer to be sold the next spring.  It so happened that the winter of 2013/14 turned out to be the coldest with the most snow ever seen in this area for 40 years. It must have been during one of the blizzards while Benno battled the elements with the snow blower that we came to the decision to not want to spend our winters shoveling snow, but rather go somewhere warm like all those Canadian Snowbirds.  The RV life looked like a good idea and the interest in RV-ing was born.

Although the 24ft. travel trailer was okay, the layout did not suit our taste and we could not pull it, as we were driving a VW Jetta Diesel at the time.  In short order the travel trailer sold quickly, the Jetta got traded in for a red RAM 1500, 6 Cyl. pickup truck and we treated ourselves to a 19ft. Jay Flight Swift 198 RD travel trailer with a smart interior that suits us just fine to try out and get our foot into RVing. 

Well, that was then.  In March of 2016 our family grew with the addition of our two dachshunds.  Although the 19 ft Jayco had been sufficient for the two of us, it now seemed a bit cramped and we were looking to upgrade a bit.  Read all about it in our post from April 2016 "24-hour whirlwind new camper purchase" and for the present time the 2016 model of the Jayco White Hawk 24RKS we call our home away from home.