Arriving Ishpenny

 8-27-2021 - Friday

It was a brisk 66 when I woke up about 6:45 this morning, and very cloudy. But by the time we got on the road, the temperature had dropped to 62, and later it got down to 59 before it came back up into the 70s.   I took a short walk to see if I could see lights on the bridge since it was just breaking daylight, and I could -- although my viewpoint was blocked by trees.  

Today we headed across the U P to the Marquette area, actually we are staying in Ishpeming.  A lady we talked to on the beach in Leland told us about a spot in Marquette to find agates.  We had driven to Marquette when we were here in June but couldn't find any good spots to rockhound, so now we have a target.  I called two campgrounds in Marquette but they were both full, so we ended up in Ishpeming, about 15 miles away, for Friday and Saturday nights.  It's very difficult to find campsites on the weekends in Michigan, both Lower and Upper.

In the giftshop here at St. Ignace, there is a box of polished Petoskey stones.  She said the small ones had already been bought, so I was forced to buy a $10 one.  A relative of hers (brother, cousin?) finds and polishes them.  I think she called this "facing," where just one side is polished.  Anyway, I was certain I needed one for my collection -- a big one to go with the small ones we are lucky enough to find.

All we had to do this morning was unhook electricity, so we were on the way by 9:25.  It started raining shortly after I got up and rained off and on all day.  We took I-75 out of St. Ignace to hwy 123, then hwy 28 across. then we started jogging a little, across 94, 553, and 35.  Pleasant drive, good roads, might have had a  little tail wind.   This is supposed to be moose territory so we were on the lookout. Didn’t see any moose but did see a sign for bear bait, so there must be bears in the area too.  Didn’t see any of them either.  We had to turn the heater on through the Newberry area, (the moose area) when it was 59. The last little bit of our drive got pretty curvy, and we came into Ishpeming the back way, but that was all ok.  We got to the campground about 1:30.  This is another nice campground (Country Village), right off of Hwy 41.  Very roomy, clean, full hook-up, laundry, right in the town of Ishpeming.  

While Joe was hooking up to electricity, etc., I started vacuuming the RV, which desperately needed it.  Well, the vacuum got plugged up, and we ended up changing the bag and shaking out the filter.  Then while I was vacuuming the bedroom, Joe started fixing up our little apple cider vinegar/dawn mixture in little glass bowls for the gnats.  I pulled the sweeper too far, and the cord came out of the plug-in, knocking off one of the little bowls and shattering the glass all over the floor I had just vacuumed.  Made a little job into a big job, and neither of us were in too great a mood by then.

We went out for pasta tonight, very good at Mama Mia's, then drove to a rock shop called Tourist Trap.  We had stopped here before, and the owner comes to Apache Junction in the winter and belongs to our rock club.  They have some nice rock on display here.

Since I had bought the larger Petoskey stone this morning, I wanted to find out how they got them to shine.  The ones I had polished before never really shined much, and got ground away to much smaller specimens.  I learned they put some kind of finish on them, something like polyurethane but much more expensive, rather than tumbling them like I had tried.  They just polish one side.

One of the most impressive things here, I think, are the sets of bookends, to which I am partial anyhow.  I kept looking at them, thinking I have a birthday coming up, but couldn't figure out where I would put them to get the viewing they deserve, so I didn't start begging.  The picture of the first one doesn't do it justice -- it was pink all over, they were both beautiful, along with some others he had.

Another sample he had was hermatite, which he gave me a piece of when we were here before.  It is almost black, very sparkly.

There is a pretty unique gift shop attached to the rock shop, and I went in there and looked around but didn't buy anything.  Meanwhile, Joe walked the grounds outside and found a sample of slag from one of the mines in this area, I imagine the "blueys" we were looking for in Leland are very similar to this, since these pieces come from the same process.

So enough about rocks.  We left there, heading to the grocery store just down from the campground, but when we started to pull onto the highway, I spotted 2 deer straight across the road, so of course, the deer won.  We went down that road until it wound its way back to the highway (we were surprised), and we did see 2 other deer.  When we turned onto Hwy 41, we really didn't know where we were with regard to the campground, and we turned the wrong way, back the way we had come into town in the RV.  But that worked out, because we had seen a produce market and planned to go back to it, and lo and behold, there it was.  We stopped and picked up a few things, they had Indiana watermelons but they didn't say whose farm they were from.  We have been fighting gnats or fruit flies in the RV all summer, so I hope we didn't bring more in.  I washed everything we bought, so we are hoping.

So we just went back to the RV, have to try again tomorrow for the grocery store.  But our plan tomorrow is to go rockhounding for agates in Marquette, in Lake Superior.  Joe just read they are having a march in Marquette tomorrow for voters rights, so we may run into problems there.  I hope not, because I'm thinking this is probably my last opportunity for rockhounding on this trip.

Yesterday I calculated our RV mileage at 6,500 miles.  Today, I got the mileage out of the Jeep, and we are at 6,432 miles in it.  Lots and lots of gasoline!

On an unrelated topic, Joe's cousin in Virginia just won the St. Jude's House Give-Away.  We were told the house is valued at $525,000.  Now that is pretty cool!  She is a great person, and well-deserving.

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.