6/18/2021 - Friday
Well, I was right, we are both sore today after our day of rockhounding, and we didn't sleep well last night (too tired, I think). But we de-camped this morning and headed south, where I know it's going to be warmer. Ugh. We got on the road about 9:30 after we dumped our tanks, leaving behind beautiful Lake Michigan. This area has lots of orchards, mainly cherry trees, but other kinds of trees as well. Strawberries aren't quite in yet, but fresh asparagus is at all the fruit markets that are open. Joe kept trying to find some local strawberries, but the only ones we found at grocery or convenience stores were shipped in from somewhere else.
We also saw a couple fields of hops. We only know what these are because Collins enlightened us a few years ago on our trip to Canada.
About 8 miles south of our campground we came upon a sign that said "45th Parallel, halfway between the Equator and the North Pole." So now we know that.
Our campground here was only about 33 miles from Traverse City, so that was our first stop - to fuel, and get breakfast. There was a McDonald's next door to the gas station, so I walked over there to get breakfast sandwiches. But the doors were locked and the only thing open was the drive-through. There was a sign on the door saying they couldn't get enough help for full staff. We see "help wanted" signs everywhere we go, not just at fast food places.
Traverse City is known as the cherry capital of the world. We didn't know that, but their airport is named Cherry Capital Airport, so I looked it up. Sure enough, that is their claim to fame. July is cherry season, so again, we were too early.
Anyhow we drove on, and finally found a restaurant down the road. Traffic was a lot heavier than we have been dealing with, towns were getting bigger, and it got hot. We couldn't find a campground with any available sites, so we stayed on the parking lot at Gun Lake Casino, just south of Dorr where Joe's cousin, Jan and Don Ivers live. They have construction going on at the casino, so we parked way away from the building, in the front. We checked inside with the security guard and told him where we had parked, and of course, we had to move -- to the back, where they had places marked for trucks and RVs. So it was almost 3:00 by the time we got settled there. Jan and Don picked us up for dinner at the casino and we spent a little time donating our $$ there. No big winners in our group, but dinner was fun.
We drove 200 miles today. We are staying here two nights, then heading to Ft. Wayne.
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