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.