On The Road Again

We finally hit the road. Son Steven is the first stop, in Traverse City. Debbie has lined us up for a two night visit and we stayed one, each, at a Harvest Host winery. This organization lines up farms and

wineries to host a free night of glamping by self-contained units. In return for occupying part of their field or parking lot, they expect we'll buy a bottle of wine or something else from their business. Brengman Farm north of Traverse city, low on the Leelenau Peninsula, parked us on a high hill overlooking acres and acres of nascent wine-on-the-vine. It took a small bit of getting to, up a farm's dirt road, but was a nice location for the night after consuming the bottle of sparkling wine for our pre-dinner relaxing time. The next night saw us in an asphalt parking lot nearer Suttons Bay. Hawkins Farms has a roadside commercial presence that included a Thai restaurant. We didn't buy the wine, but we had a fine meal with Steven. Debbie was so impressed with the tomatoes and fresh basil in her meal --both from the cook's own garden-- that she suggested an ice cream dessert! We scooted up the road to Scoops 22 in Suttons Bay before she could change her mind.

Steven had just added to his arsenal with a handgun purchase, a Walther P22, more for target shooting than personal defense, he said. So he took us to the local DNR shooting range with a friend of his to

put several holes into paper targets. John E. used a .357 magnum, six shot revolver. Both people allowed Debbie and John to shoot, too. Lots of fun. Most of our bullets even hit the paper.

After the first two cheap nights on the road, Debbie allowed us to spend actual dollars at RV parks in the UP. We could have made the trip clear to the Wisconsin border in one day, but remember our motto: We're Retired, We Have Time To Relax. And, as John amends frequently, “You got a problem? Keep it!”   Munising has a city campground we've used before when coming to this area for backpacking trips. It's right on the bay in Lake Superior and usually great. This time, the park's superintendent told us they'd had rain –a lot of rain– during most of August. Puddles were everywhere even though it didn't rain on us that day and the ground was soft. We were happy that our latest tent has six wheels --and a kitchen, couch, reclining chair, shower, flush toilet, queen sized bed, lights and a TV screen. Sort of a step up from the last time we were there.

The next three nights we spent at the very beautiful Lake Gogebic State park in Iron County. There's not a lot of tourist infrastructure, being in the UP and all, but we love this part of

Michigan even if we don't fish or even hike very far anymore. “The world's highest ski jump” (referring to the ramp, not the mountain) is nearby at Copper Peak. Also several of the picturesque waterfalls that dot Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We started with Rainbow Falls, a US Forest Service hunk of river cascading over primordial rock. They'd even built steps down to the river level. John counted two hundred two of them coming back up.

We had a terrific view of Lake Gogebic from our coach during our time there, too. Several campsites are on a small bluff at lakeside. Remember the rain and the subsequent soft ground?

Yeah. We had backed up looking for level ground before realizing that we literally had mired our fifteen ton selves there. The Rangers were prepared, though, with steel ramp plates and said it was no big deal. Two of them spent half an hour getting the plates under our tires and our rig back on solid ground.

We feel terrible for the mess we left behind, but nobody yelled at us so we guess it's just part of doing business in the UP.  We were still looking at Lake Gogebic State Park mud on our tires for the next week.