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.