Crossing the Bridge into St. Ignace

 8-26-2021 Thursday

On the road at 10:00. One of our two bear mascots on the front dash of the motor home was on its side. Last night Joe read about a bear that got shot and he thought someone had shot our Monty (the black one).  But I straightened it out for him, I said we were driving in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Monty was just sleeping.

Took a while to drive through Traverse City. I think we have driven every side of this town. There is a lot of frontage on Grand Traverse Bay but we finally got through (we drove through the main street) and picked up Hwy 131.

We passed a hops field — we have seen 3-4 of these lately. All we have seen look like they have already been harvested, but Wikipedia says they are harvested at the end of summer, so maybe we just don't know what they look like when they are growing.  

As we passed Mackinaw City heading onto the bridge, we saw this hotdog restaurant.  We had just eaten, but it looked good.

Lake Huron on right -- see the boat, looks like a matchbox boat.  Lake Michigan on the left.

We started across the bridge at 1;55, we just sailed right across, took us 4-5 minutes (I think it is 4 miles long).  In 5 more minutes we were at our campground, and 10 minutes later we were set up and ready for our naps.  We are in the second row, but we do have view of the lake (between the campers on the front row).

This is a pretty nice campground (Lakeshore RV Park in St. Ignace), full hookups, pull-throughs, and a laundry.  Easy to find with a view.  We would stay here again.

We are both tired today from yesterday’s rockhounding. Plus I woke up too early this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. so it didn't take us long to lay down for our naps.  When we got up, we headed out for dinner.  Joe had spotted a family restaurant as we came through, so that's where we headed.  The air conditioner was blaring so much I had to go get a sweatshirt from the Jeep, after we had changed tables once to try to get away from the air stream.  There was a cool moose on the parking lot just down the street.

Then we took a short drive along the lake for a view of the bridge.  It wasn't dark enough to see how much it lights up at night.  And we didn't see any big ships out there.

I needed to find the post office so we drove into town, the post office was right across the street from the ferry dock for Mackinac Island.  And we happened to find an ice cream shop.

It was 72 degrees in town, a lovely evening.  Traffic was light but there were several cars in the parking lot for the ferry.  We got back to the RV before dark and called it a night.

Our drive today was 141 miles.  It cost $14 to cross the bridge, a little pricey we thought.  We (well, Joe) have driven over 6500 miles in the RV since we left home in May, and I don't even know how many in the Jeep.  I will have to figure that out, I guess.  but we are headed home -- very indirectly, but we are headed home.

Betsie Beach

8-25-2021 Wednesday

On our way into town this morning for breakfast, we came past a truck with this sign:  “this vehicle may back up.”  We need that sign, and also one that says "this vehicle makes frequent u-turns."  

Breakfast took a while, there was a 20-minute wait, but they actually got us in a little quicker than that.  So many places are closed that the ones that are open are very busy, and most are short-handed.  Next to our parking spot was another hibiscus bush with huge blooms.  

The hand is for perspective.  The blooms are huge.

and on the corner was this sign, which I thought appropriate for my gardening friends.

We talked to a couple at the table beside us, and learned of another rocky beach we needed to check out.  This one is a little further than the Empire Beach that we drove to last night, and is supposed to have "blueys," a stone-like slag -- byproduct of a smelting process from an iron company in Leland long ago.  It can also be purple, gray or green.  

Anyway, after breakfast, we headed to our Betsie Beach that we had found yesterday, and spent a couple hours picking up rocks.  We carried our bucket and chairs down to the shoreline, but I forgot our pickers and had to go back to the Jeep.  Meanwhile, Joe just couldn't wait to get started -- surprised me.  

The piles of rocks we had seen last night were gone.  There was a small pile in the corner by these wooden pylons, but eventually they disappeared too -- either covered with sand or washed back into the lake.  There were several people enjoying the water, but none more than these two kids who kept jumping up into the waves as they crashed into these wooden pylons.

the lake was a little rough, waves pretty strong, but there were boats out there.

This is rough work on my back, so I took a little break and enjoyed the view for a few minutes.

but time is precious, so I was quickly back at it.

After a couple of hours, by which time we were thirsty and had forgotten to stop for our morning soda, we headed back to the parking lot.  There, we talked a couple for a few minutes -- they knew about the blueys too and were thinking about heading up there next. Anyway, the guy had converted a golf club into a "picker."  He said when he picks up a rock and decides he doesn't want it, he just knocks it out into the lake with the head of his golf club.  He laughed and said he really doesn't do that, but I thought it was a good idea.  Made me laugh.

The drive to Leland took about an hour, driving past pretty Crystal Lake again, which is huge.  We are driving on a little strip through this part of the drive, Lake Michigan on the left, Crystal Lake on the right.  

Joe spotted this mailbox.  Another use for rocks for me and my rockhound friends.

Our highway passes right through the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, and Joe wanted to take the scenic drive here, so we turned around and went back to the beginning of that.  This is the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, and it is scenic.  (By the way, our American the Beautiful Pass got us in here free.)  There are several pull-outs with views of Lake Michigan and the sand dunes.

Where there aren't dunes that you can see, it is very woodsy.

and we drove right past the dune that people can climb.  Joe and Mazie climbed to the top of this when we were here in 2015.  Joe said he wasn't climbing it without Mazie so we moved along.

We moved on to Leland, several miles.  We did stop for a soda and snack, which was a good thing.  We had a hard time finding the beach in Leland, and there are 3 we were told!  After asking twice, we finally found the trail between houses -- it just looked like another driveway the 2 times we had driven past.  We did spook a deer as we were driving through the streets here, looking for the beach. 

We didn't take our chairs this time -- it was already after 5:00 so we knew we couldn't stay here too long. Again, Joe is hard at it.

This was a nice beach, and we were glad we found it.  It had better rocks than Betsie, but we didn't find many "blueys."  Of course, we are never sure what we are looking for.  But we did find a few Petoskeys so that was good. 

The water was a little calmer and we worked until our backs were breaking, then Joe had to carry our bucket up the trail to the car.  By now, it's 6:30 and we hadn't had any lunch, so we were hungry and ready to end our day.  We found a restaurant a few miles out of Leland and had dinner, then made our drive home.  It was just after 9:00 when we got back to the campground, and we were not sure we would be able to get out of the Jeep.  Every move elicited a groan.  

We are moving on tomorrow, across the bridge into the U.P.  Haven't got a place to stay tomorrow night yet, but are hoping for a campground around St. Ignace.  Weather was nice today, low 80s, partly cloudy.  That's why we are here.  I think home made 108 today.  Yuk.

Arriving Frankfurt Area

 8-24-2021 - Tuesday

We got a good start this morning, 9:20.  I fixed breakfast and we didn't have to dump, so that helped our timing.  We got off the road at 1:15, so just a 4 hour drive.

A pleasant, uneventful drive to Benzonia today, just southeast of Frankfurt.  Parts of bumpy highway, but otherwise it all went well for our 199-mile drive.  It was pretty warm when we got up this morning, and it reached a high of 88 here before a little rain storm blew in after we got parked for the day.  Some of the little towns we drove through were quite pretty, some had harbors, lakes, Grand Haven had a drawbridge that we crossed. 

drawbridge

 In Manistee, another pretty town on the water (Manistee Lake), we saw a huge ship, the SS City of Milwaukee, which is advertised as a "ghost ship," "a venue for thrilling and scary adventure."  

Another little town had really pretty flowers along the roadside, different than the towns with hanging baskets or big pots of flowers.

Our campground here, Vacation Trailer Park, is nothing exciting, very small spaces, but right on Highway 31.  It does have a pool but we were under a thunderstorm watch so we didn't walk over.  We drove into Frankfurt to check out a couple of beaches for rocks here -- Pointe Betsie Beach just north of Frankfurt, and Empire Beach in Empire. 

 It was raining when we left but slowed down to just a few drops by the time we got to the first beach.  There was another rockhounder on the beach, filling a bucket.  The beach looks very promising, lots of colorful rocks, several layers deep as well as in the water.  I gathered a few in my bag while Joe took pictures of the lighthouses here, one off a ways and the other right here beside the beach.

sandy beach even though there were rocks a the shoreline.

Lake Michigan looked very pretty with the evening clouds following the rain.

I looked hard for some pretty rocks.  I didn't find any Petoskey stones, though, but the other rockhounder said there were some small ones there.  I look forward to coming back here tomorrow, better prepared to spend some time.  This was just a pre-check tonight.

We left there to check out Empire Beach, which turned out to be further than we expected.  I guessed 30 miles, Joe thought it was at least 50, but we took a shortcut home and it was only 23 coming back that way.  But we hadn't gone through Frankfurt or followed the shoreline, so it was probably somewhere between 30 and 50.  There were good rocks there too, not as plentiful as Betsie Beach, and the beach ended in private property on both ends, so we may not come back here.  I did pick up a handful of pretty rocks but hadn't taken a bag with me, so my space was limited.  I will be satisfied with the first beach, and hope it is not a rainy day tomorrow.

Joe got a nice photo of the Jeep on the beach -- I was surprised to see that on the camera.

He also got a photo of this tower right at the beach, but we don't know what it was for.

as we left the beach, I snapped another picture of the sky and lake.

We stopped in the town of Empire for dinner at Joe's Friendly Tavern, then headed back on our shortcut way home.  We had seen 2 deer on our way to the beach, and we saw another 5 or 6 on the way back (one might have been a statue, it was in a yard).  We made it home before dark, and it had quit raining, so all was good.  I am excited about tomorrow -- hope to get at least one bucketful.