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.  

Welcome to Michigan

 6-11-2021 - Friday

We are ready to be done with Wisconsin.  It got warm here, and lots of bugs.  We headed out about 8:30.  We drove Hwy 141 south to Hwy 64 (I was hoping to see my belted cows, but they must have been closer to Green Bay), then east across 64 for 18 miles.  We made all the correct left turns and right turns, and didn't get lost even once.  We crossed the Michigan state line at 10:15.  The last town in Wisconsin, Marinette, had some cute pots of flowers decorating the boulevard.  

Across the river, in Menominee, Michigan, there was a "statue" of a pair of Clysdales pulling a wagon, but I didn't get that picture.  These towns are all nice and clean, pretty, lots of flowers, houses in good condition, yards mowed.  We changed time zones again along in here, so we now are on Eastern Daylight Time. 

Our highway went right beside Lake Michigan, and we had lots of glimpses.  We saw campgrounds along here too, but you have to know they are there.

 And we are continuing on the lilac trail, they are still blooming in Michigan!

We are at a very nice campground in Garden, Michigan, on the east side of Big Bay de Noc, on the southern shore of the Upper Peninsula. But the Verizon phone signal is very week, as is the internet.  We did get TV though, so that was good. We got here about 1:30, so that was a pretty short day for us.

We think there are some places in the campground with better phone signal and internet than our site, so Joe is checking that out.  So far tonight, though, we have been able to get on the internet in the RV, although it is sometimes very slow.

 I'm hoping to find some rocks here, but we may have to drive up to the north shore, which I think is about 50 miles along in here.  The temperature is a balmy 65 degrees, very windy, but sunny.  When we got here, we opened the windows instead of turning on the A/C, but now we've closed them because it got too cold!

There were two food trucks just south of town, one with fish, the other with mini donuts.  Both were very good.  I didn't see a restaurant in town that was still in business, so that might be the only thing going here.  The campground we are in is only open from May to October.  

We had a pretty easy day today, drove 167 miles.  We are booked in here for 2 nights, but may extend if I can find a rocky beach to rockhound.  We will probably drive this peninsula tomorrow until we run out of road.  The town of Manistique is the next town of any size back on Hwy 2, so we might drive over there.  We went through there once before, in 2015, but I don't remember if we stopped.  We will see what tomorrow brings.

Last Day in Wisconsin

 6-10-2021  Thursday

Headed back into Iron Mountain for our town chores first thing.  We got a little lost getting out of the park (the GPS brought us in a different way last night, partly on a quad trail.  Good thing we weren't in the RV)  We had to put the last campground in the GPS so we knew which way to turn when we got to the highway.  Joe said it was a good thing we have clothes with us if we get lost.  But we made it, had breakfast in Iron Mountain and found a laundromat with a fast WiFi!  

We got our chores done in Iron Mountain (laundry, posted blog at laundromat, auto parts store), and headed out of town around 2:00.  OMG, we can’t even find our way back to the campground on the highway.  Somehow, we missed a jog on Hwy 141.  We were driving through these little towns, seeing things we don’t recognize – a big wooden bear (no way I would have missed that Tuesday), a Vulcan (I got a picture), and a big mountain guy in front of an iron ore mine, advertising tours. 

I checked the GPS and it said we were headed east, but I had noticed on the way in that we went west for a while, then north, so I wasn’t sure if east was good.  I started looking for highway signs, and finally found one (I hadn’t said anything to Joe about the highway for these miles).  By this time, he had started looking for the turn-off to our campground.   I asked him, if we were supposed to be on Hwy 141, why did the highway sign say Hwy 2.  Well, he laughed, and said 2 and 141 don’t ever run together, so do we need to turn around??? We didn’t even know what state we were lost in!  I put the campground in the GPS, and sure enough, we had driven about 12 miles too far east.  When we got back to Hwy 141, we were only 3.2 miles from the turnoff to our campground.   We may have to hire a pilot car to get us to Florida!

Finally, we got back to the RV, a little after 3:00.  We drove 76 miles on our trip to a town 17 miles away.  I was just glad we were in the jeep and not the RV.  So then we did our maintenance here.  Joe cleaned the batteries on the jeep, and I put away laundry, made the bed and vacuumed.  Then we took a nap.

But we just couldn’t do it.  We could not just sit in the RV and do nothing the rest of the day (remember, no TV, no internet, bad phone signal).  So about 6:00, I asked Joe if he wanted to go for a little drive in the park (I know I’m a glutton for punishment).  But since we kept getting lost in the park, I thought maybe we should go for an adventure right here for about an hour.  So we did. There were signs about 2 falls on our drive in, so I thought we should check them out.  Well, both were “rugged” trails, with steep overlooks.  And the bugs in the woods are really bad (not to mention, worrying about ticks).  So we didn’t do any hiking.   Of course, Joe couldn’t just stay in the park, so we drove across the road, down some other dirt roads, etc.  The woods here, especially in the park, are so thick it’s hard to imagine how animals get through them.

But they do.  We saw 9 deer on our little drive (one with a fawn), plus two fawns on our way back from town this afternoon.  Joe said the deer are hard to find because there is no place they can’t hide.  We also saw a little turtle.  Joe actually straddled it with the jeep tires, and he hadn’t even seen it.  But he missed it because we saw it continuing on across the road in the mirror.   We came upon a sign for “John’s Road,” so we drove back it, but it dead-ended pretty quickly.  Nice that John has a road here, though.

We were almost back to the campsite (we could see the pin on the GPS) when I spotted another deer down a dirt road – this was one with the fawn.  So, down that road we go. It was some dam road, but we never did get to the dam. We did see a few more deer on that road, but now we are out 2 hours.  Fortunately, our dirt road connected with a highway, that brought us back to another highway, that brought us back to the park (a different way, again).  Thank God for GPS!

While we were at the laundromat (with internet), Joe found us a spot in a campground in Garden, Michigan, on the south shore.  The campground we have been in the last two nights is nice, very secluded and quiet.  Some sites have water, but ours only has electricity.  The phone signal is very weak (too many trees), and internet non-existent.  And we couldn't get a TV signal.  But we are ready to leave Wisconsin, and see what trouble we can get into in Michigan.