Leaving Michigan

 

I last left you while we were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  We left there a week ago and moved to Traverse City, Michigan for a few days.  Traverse City is a beautiful town on a bay of Lake Michigan.  It has very vibrant and popular downtown area.  We spent Saturday morning at their farmer’s market, walking Front Street and then having lunch at the Grand Traverse Pie Company.  We took pieces of pie home for later (very good).

Besides seeing Traverse City the reason we stopped in this area was to see Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  It is about 30 miles from Traverse City and has some of the largest sand dunes in the US on the shore of the lake.  They have it set up nicely with a scenic drive through the park with overlooks to see the dunes.

Hard to tell but this is looking straight down from the overlook.  This dune is 400 feet tall.  There are actually people down at the bottom.  Some are walking back up on the dark line you see in the center of the picture.

View of the lake through the trees at the top of the dune.

From Traverse City we made a stop in Ionia, Michigan which is about 30 miles east of Grand Rapids.  The purpose of this stop was to visit the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum.  This is the 11th of the 13 Presidential Libraries that I have visited.  Very beautiful museum (his actual papers (library) are in Ann Arbor), and very informative considering he was only President for a couple of years.

We have now moved into the Amish country of Ohio.

Route:  From Munising, Michigan we took Highway 28 east to Interstate 75 south to Highway 31 south to Highway 131 south into Traverse City.  From Traverse City to Ionia we took Highway 131 south to Interstate 96 east to Ionia.

Yooperland!

 

This past 4 days we were in the Upper Peninsula (locally called “yooper”) of Michigan.  We had driven through this area many years ago when we were on an RV trip from Sault Ste. Marie to Door County, Wisconsin, but we never stopped.  In looking through our 1000 places to see book it had an entry for the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  It sounded just beautiful so it has been on our list of places to stop.  We were not disappointed.

There were not many choices for RV parks in the area, Munising, Michigan,  but all the reviews pointed to one park that was right on the lake.  The problem was trying to get reservations for a site big enough for us and for a few days.  The park is really popular.  Luckily I found an opening for 3 nights during the week.  Our spot backed right up to the lake.

The downside was the mosquitos were out in force.  It was nightly ritual to try and find all of them in the trailer before we went to sleep. 

On Wednesday we saw a portion of the park, walked the town and picked up some Pasties (pronounced “past-tee”) for dinner  They are a local delicacy made of dough stuffed with various fillings.  We tried the veggie, beef and chicken ones, although they do have fruit filled ones.  They were not bad.

The only way to see the rocks, which are high cliffs on the lake, is to take a boat ride up the coast.  The rocks have many colors in them due to the minerals and water is constantly seeping out so it looks like an artists canvas.  Since the cliffs face west the best time to see them is at sunset as the sun is low in the sky and hit the cliffs at a great angle.  They offer a sunset cruise but since we are so far north, sunset is not until 9:40pm!.  Our cruise started at 7:15pm and lasted until 9:45pm.

The views were spectacular as was the weather.

The start of the cliffs.  The cliffs are made of sandstone, so they are very soft.  With the water action many caves are formed.

Starting to see some of the colors beginning to show.

Huge rocks that have broken off.

Interesting rock formation

The colors

Sunset

For our second day we drove the entire park to the town of Grand Marais.  One of the stops in the park is the Log Slide.  This is where, back in the 1800’s, loggers had set up a log chute on the sand dunes to send the logs down to the lake and waiting boats.  What is great is that you can actually slide down the dunes, if you want.  The Park Service has a big warning sign telling people to be careful as help is a long way off and to remember it takes only 5 minutes to make it to the bottom and more than 90 minutes to get back up!

Fran at the top of the log slide with the lake in the distance.

A view of the sand dunes, where the slide is.

On Friday the wind really picked up overnight and by morning it was creating 2 to 3 foot waves on the lake.  I was concerned with the creaking tree over our trailer and how hard it would be to drive the highway so we quickly packed up and drove off at 8:30am.  Once we got on the highway, which is inland, the wind was not a problem until we got to the Mackinac Bridge where we had to take it slow to get over the straits.

We are now in Traverse City, Michigan for the weekend.

Route: From Butternut, Wisconsin we took highway 13 north to highway 77 east to highway 28 east into Munising, Michigan.

Father’s Day Tribute

 

For the first 16 years of my life I had great guy who was my father.  Unfortunately he was taken away to soon in his life and my life.  After 40 years it is still sad to know he never got to see me graduate high school, college, marry a great woman and to see his three granddaughters.  We shared some fun times but it all ended so soon.  I would like you all to meet my father, Roger.

My dad

 

Fortunately, for the past 38 years I have had another great guy in my life, my step-father.  He has been there for all the great events in my life and has been a super grand father to my children.  I could not have asked for anyone better.  I would like you all to meet my step-father, Frank:

Oh, he will be 90 years old this year!!

Butternut, Wisconsin

 

It has been a couple of weeks and we have moved a couple of times so lets get caught up.  We arrived in Joliet, Illinois on Thursday, May 29th.  On Friday we took our RV in for repairs.  The dealer discovered that the air conditioner compressor had failed which meant the entire AC unit had to be replaced and they did not have any in stock.  This meant we would have to wait a few days to get the AC fixed while one was shipped.  They did install the new microwave and addressed some smaller issues we had identified.   Fortunately we had scheduled to be Joliet for 8 days.  We caught up with some old friends, finished the repair and then moved on to Lauderdale Lakes, Wisconsin.

We had let our friends from our wine group in Naperville know we were in town and an event was planned at the lake house of one of the couples.  We parked our RV about 10 miles away in an RV park and then spent the weekend at their house with the rest of the group.  We had a great time visiting with our friends and cruising on their pontoon boat on the lake.

Wine group

Sunset cruise

On Sunday the group followed us to the RV park to get a tour of our trailer as they had never seen our living conditions since we started our “Life on the Road”. 

From there we headed further north in Wisconsin for a two night stop over at my former boss’s home.  He lives on 120 acres near a little town called Butternut.  With all the land it allows us to park our rig in his “yard”.

Ours is on the right.  They have a fifth wheel also, which is the one on the left.

  Their house.

Due to all the snow and long winter that occurred here the mosquitos are out in force.  Taking the pictures above was unbelievable as I was being swarmed. 

From here we will be heading to the upper peninsula of Michigan.

Route:  From Joliet we took Interstate 80, west to Interstate 55, north, to Interstate 355, north to US 12 which took us into the Elkhorn area of Wisconsin. From there we took US 12 to Interstate 39, north, to US 8, west to US 13, north into Butternut.