Petosky and Charlevoix, Michigan

 6-16-2021

I woke up this morning at 7:45 and it was 49 degrees.  Very chilly.  I got up and turned the furnace on, and went back to bed for another hour!  It had warmed up to 59 by then.  But it turned out to be another beautiful day up here, I think the high was 70.  We didn't leave the campground until almost 11:00, and we headed back north to Petosky and Charlevoix.  Both of these towns are very cute, clean, beach towns, lots of flowers line the main highway all the way through town.  Most of the towns of any size in Michigan have hanging pots of flowers lining at least the downtown area.  I think it says a lot about the pride the residents have in their city, I wish my home town would do this.

Petoskey sits at the mouth of Little Traverse Bay, while we are camped on Grand Traverse Bay.  

If you enlarge this photo, you can see where the open water goes through.

Joe finally found us a swan, this was in a little lake north of Petoskey, before we turned around.

We had passed the spot where we found the petoskey stones in 2019, but decided to drive on through town, then come back.  This is the other place we tried that year, where we clambered over the boulders, and the water slammed into us.  And we didn't find any stones.  That was the first spot we tried then.

We didn't even attempt this spot.  So we drove up, around and through the streets of town, had lunch, then headed to the other spot.  There are steps down to the water, which was good, but we had to climb over some tree branches once we got to walking the beach.  We had high hopes for this place, but no luck today.  There is a mossy scum along most of the beach from the pollen from the trees, and all the rocks look the same in the water, which is the easiest place to spot the stones.  We spent an hour there, but never found a single petoskey stone.  We have a little of this algae at our campground, but not as much as there was here.

We gave up, and headed toward the campground, through Charlevoix.  We did find some charlevoix stones on that beach.  We passed the place we thought probably should be Catalina's next residence, plenty of room for the horses she needs, and for her to ride.  This is the Bay Harbor Equestrian Club, very beautiful setting.

We had passed the "Old Dixie Highway" on our way into town, and Joe decided he needed to drive that.  And he found a dirt road too.  That dead-ended, so back to Dixie, then he found another side road that took us to the beach.  This turned out to be a real find!  

There were a few people walking, one lady laying on the beach that Joe thought was a dead body.  But one guy had a little bucket and was picking up rocks, so I asked him if he was finding anything.  He said, oh yeah.  I asked if he found any petoskey stones, and he said, yeah, they were all over out there.  "Here, I will find you one," he said.  And he did.  Then, "here's another one."  He gave us both of them.  So we got serious about looking.  We finally found a couple apiece, but we don't seem to have the eye for them yet.  But the beach did have a lot of pretty, interesting rocks, so we gathered part of a bucket full.  And we plan to return tomorrow.  

Joe took 3 pictures of me washing the sand out of my shoes, and he never did get my skinny side!

We spent about 1 1/2 hours here, with plans to come back tomorrow.  I also plan to take some ibuprophen before we leave the RV.  Walking on the rocks, and in the sand, wore us out.  We will probably go to bed as soon as it gets dark (maybe 10:30).  We do not like this time zone!

Joe wasn't able to get satelline TV here, but he does get some stations on the antennae.  He was getting stations out of Wisconsin, Green Bay, we think.  However, tonight, he lost some of those channels for some reason, so he is really limited in what he can watch.

The price of gas continues to climb.  We were paying $2.99 last week, this week in lower Michigan it's $3.19.  I hope it stops there, we have lots of miles to go.  Our only plan tomorrow is to back to our beach, then come back and start getting to move on Friday.  

Heading into Lower Michigan

 6-15-2021 - Tuesday

Today we were out of bed and on the move.  We got up at 7:00 and were on the road by 7:50, stopping one last time in Manistique for breakfast at the moose place.  It was 56 degrees when we started out, and got up to 70 by the time we stopped.  This was one of the nicest campgrounds we have ever stayed in, and this Big Bay de Noc is reputed to be the Walleye capital of the world.  We considered trying to charter a fishing boat here but we never followed through on it.   

 We stopped at a roadside park just before we got to the bridge in St. Ignace, and I could see a big ship just beyond the little island.  At first I didn't think it was moving, but Joe could see that it was.  Before we left, it had cleared the island and I got a better picture.

I found Joe another moose, I think this patriotic one was in St. Ignace.  We didn't stop so I had to take my picture as we were driving past.

We got to the bridge at 11:05, it cost us $14.00 in tolls.  We got a great view of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron here.

There is construction on the bridge.  People we talked to at the campground said it took them almost an hour and a half to cross it on Sunday.  We got lucky today, we never got stopped once.  It took us about 8 minutes to get across (speed limit for trucks and trailers is 20 mph).  

We came down I-75 for about 30 miles, then cut across county roads back to the coast.  That took a while.  We arrived at our campground in Eastport, right on Lake Michigan again, about 1:00.  Today was 201 miles.  This campground is nice, and our site is just a short walk over to the beach, down a few steps.  And it is a rocky beach!  We walked it a little and collected a few rocks.  I don't think the variety of pretty rocks is here, but at least there are some.  Tomorrow we will drive back up Petoskey and Charlevoix to look for those kind of rocks.  Hopefully we can find the spot we found the petosky stones in last time. We are here for 3 nights, so hopefully we will have some to take home.  

Kitch-Iti-Kipi

 6-14-2021 - Monday

Today we drove back into Manistique, then over to Palms Book State Park to see "the Big Spring" (kitch-iti-kipi).  This drive to Manistique is right beside Lake Michigan with lots of pull offs, very nice sandy beaches, clear water.  We pulled into a couple of them (no rocks).

We read about Kitch-iti-kipi in some of the brochures we have accumulated, and it seemed like something we should see.  And it was worth the drive (which wasn't that far, maybe 30 miles). 

This is a spring that is 45 feet deep and 200 feet across, Michigan's largest fresh-water spring.  It fills this lake with beautiful, clear water, is a constant 45 degrees.  There is a self-propelled observation raft that you ride over the spring on, where you can see the 16,000 gallons of water per minute "erupting" from the depths.  Large brown trout swim around, but no fishing is allowed.  

Joe, of course, took the stern to get us started, then turned the job over to the youngsters.  In the middle of the raft is a glass bottom so we can all see directly underneath the raft.  There were 60-70 people on our ride, but there was enough room to move around.

It was fun to watch the fish swimming around below us.  They were large.  

The raft moves along a cable, so we don't get off course.  And it actually is propelled by turning that wheel.  The people gather on the deck in the back of this picture for the next ride.  The CCCs constructed the original raft, deck, concession stand and ranger's quarters here.

We could see the spring spurting up water bubbles.  The fish must like the oxygen because there were several swimming around that area.

From there, we drove through another state park, Indian Lake State Park, the fourth largest inland lake in the UP.  It is 6 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 8,400 acres.  We had hoped to be able to drive around the lake, or at least around the park, but it was basically a campground.  

Then we went back to Manistique, and I got to go to the casino for a little while.  I even won a little.  We got back to camp around 5:00, and Joe built another campfire when it got a little later.  And I roasted some marshmallows!

  Can't wait until dark to build a campfire because it stays daylight forever.  Even at 9:00 the sun hasn't set.  But we got ourselves ready to pull out in the morning, and tomorrow we leave the UP.  I hope lower Michigan is not too much warmer, because we are loving the weather up here.

Rock Hounding along Lake Superior

 6-13-2021 - Sunday

Today didn't work out as well as hoped.  We spent the day chasing rocks, with very little success.  We headed to Manistique for breakfast, on our way to Lake Superior to look for rocks, since we weren't finding any here on Lake Michigan.  We ate at Big Boy, where I'm pretty sure we ate with Dave and Mazie when we were here before.  This is probably the only moose we are ever going to get a picture of.

As we drove through town, I noticed the flags of this year's graduates on light poles.  I have seen this in several towns on this trip, I don't know if they were all in Michigan or if they did this in Minnesota and Wisconsin, or the Dakotas as well.  I think it's a nice idea, and a nice way of giving the graduates some recognition.  I guess the size of the town and the size of the graduating class have to match up, or they would run out of light poles.  

We drove through Munising and started looking for beaches.  We passed the one I remembered, and Joe offered to turn around and go back (I guess he hadn't used up his u-turns yet today), but I figured we would find others so I said no.  We stopped at a couple of beaches but they were just sandy, no rocks.  We finally did find one with a few rocks, and we spent about an hour there, gathering up a few.  But it wasn't a great beach (although it did have some cool sandstone boulders I would have liked in my yard), so we moved on to Marquette.

I thought we had found a good beach here before, but we could not find it today.  We went by the ore dock and saw a big ship getting loaded, which is always interesting to watch.

We walked down to a couple of beaches here but they too were just sandy beaches.  So we went to a Mexican restaurant we had taken Marilyn and Collins to and had a very nice lunch.  We sat outside and enjoyed the view of Lake Superior, but it started to sprinkle just as we finished.

It continued to sprinkle as we headed out of town, back toward the first beach that we missed.  It was almost all the way back to Munising.  We again stopped at a couple of other beaches and checked them out, but they just were not right.  So we got to the one I knew about at 5:45.  Joe was trying to outrun the rain, but no sooner had we walked over to the beach that it started sprinkling here.  And then the wind came in.  The Lake was white-capping, and the temperature was going down.  We hustled back to the jeep, and sat there for a few minutes, but it started raining in earnest.  It went from 73 degrees to 61 in a very short time.

Joe drove down to the beach, and I opened the door, thinking maybe I could spot some but that didn't really work either.  I guess I will have to wait until we get around Petoskey and try my luck in that part of Michigan.  We found Petoskey stones before, so we will give that another try.

When we got back to camp (we had outrun the rain again), I got the rummikup game out and we sat down at the picnic table.  Joe invited the people next to us to join us, and the little girl (3rd grade) came over.  We had to teach her how to play, but she liked it.  But then the rain came, and we had to quit.  Her dad came over to keep her company, so we got to visit with him.  

It has been so nice here that we extended for 2 more days.  Temperature in 60-70s, nice campground.  Tomorrow is a free day, then we will move on Tuesday.  We couldn't find a campground in Petoskey but did find one about 35 miles south of there, inland, so that is out next destination.  Forgot to check today's mileage, but it was probably 220-230.  But it was a nice drive along Lake Superior.  

Around Garden and Fayette

 6-12-2021 - Saturday

We took it pretty easy today, didn't get a very early start, and our only two adventures was a tour of Fayette Historic State Park and driving back roads.  We really like this campground and this area.  It was cloudy this morning, 65, but the sun came out in the afternoon and it warmed up to 70.  Bugs are not bad, the camp spaces are very roomy and its very clean.  In fact, we have decided to stay 2 more days.

The Fayette Historic State Park is a representation of a once-bustling industrial community that manufactured charcoal pig iron between 1867 and 1891.  There are 20 structures remaining, some restored and rebuilt buildings.   We walked most of the buildings, many of which we could enter, checked out the beach.  We also walked 3300 steps, which pretty well did us in for the rest of the day.

The water was really clear, but not the right kind of rocks for tumbling.

From there, we drove to the end of the road on this peninsula.  The road became a two-track before we got to the beach, and the beach was not a good one.

We headed back to town and Joe found another road he thought would take us across the peninsula and then north to Hwy 2.  Our plan was to drive to Manistique.  But this road also deteriorated into a two-track.  By the time we got back to civilization, it was 3:00, too late for another drive, so we called it a day.

We did see one cool thing on this drive, Linnie's "she shed."  I guess I need to do some decorating on my rock shop when we get home.

Joe built us a fire in the afternoon.  The sun came out and it was lovely outside, sitting here with a view of the Bay, watching other people arrive and set-up their campers.  It was entertaining.

All in all, another good day.  We are loving this weather, hating Eastern Daylight Time.  It's 9:30 before it even begins to get dark.  But it's nice to be back in cool temperatures.