Day 23 - Wednesday, July 1 - Grocery Shopping

 This morning we went to a local grocery store to "fill the larder". We can't remember what grocery shopping was available in Houghton and Hancock when we were there a few years ago. Houghton has a population of around 8,600 and Hancock has a population of around 4,600. (They are separated by the Portage River.) The plan is to spend a week in the Houghton/Hancock area when we leave here tomorrow.

Kathy has seen this store as we were on our way to the Tourist Park. Disclaimer 😊I copied these photos from the online sources. The store has a nice bakery. It is privately owned. With a Walmart and a Meijer both in town, it must be tough to compete. The place was as nice/clean as it looks in the photo. Also, workers in the store were pleasant.

After lunch and a short walkabout I regened our water softener and then sat outside until around 3 PM. I have no desire to camp in a tent but I do find some of them interesting.

I've noticed the tents in the two photos below each time I've walked around. I've never seen people at either tent. 

At least the one below looks "lived in".

This little tent isn't real close to any campsites. A 5' tall person would trouble stretching out in it. There is an extension cord running from the tent to an electrical panel 40' away.

One of the people who works here must own this truck. It is nice looking. The color scheme and no front bumper is certainly eye catching. 

 Today's high was 88, not quite as hot as yesterday. It was 87/88 from 1PM-5PM. A little after 6PM a rainstorm blew through the area. We noticed the lady next door had a jacket on, right before the rain started. By 7PM the temp had dropped to 67 degrees. We actually turned the AC off. 

We are such Glampers (glamorous camper). We like it here at the Marquette Tourist Park. And, Lord willing, we will be back again. Normally only having a 30 amp connection is not a problem because it is cool enough that we don't have to worry about needing AC. This trip has been different. We are limited to running one AC unit and have to be careful with other heating appliances. No running the coffee maker, toaster & microwave (all of which I run when I fix my breakfast) and the AC at the same time. The good news is that this site has a lot of shade so it really hasn't been much of a problem. 

Next stop is the Hancock Recreation area. There we will have a 30 amp electrical connection and water, no sewer hook up. We will be there 4 nights so if we aren't careful we may have to move to the dump station and dump our gray water tank during our stay. Then its across the river to the Houghton RV Park where we will have a full 50 amp hook up, PTL.

The rain has passed, the sun is back out and it has the makings of a great evening. Almost a campfire evening.

God is good. I pray that He bless you and yours. He has blessed me.

Day22 - Tuesday, June 30 - Ore Dock & HOT!

 The temperatures in the morning weren't bad. I sat outside most of the morning. I kept in the shade and there was a slight breeze. Temperatures were in the high 70's by the time we went out  for lunch.

We went to a diner Kathy had seen on the way in. Eastbound traffic was really backed up at a roundabout on US 41. Fortunately we came into the roundabout from the north and it didn't bother us. 

We sat down and I picked up one of the menus the waitress had put on the table. As soon as I scanned it I told Kathy I was ready to leave.

The waitress had dropped 3 similar looking menus on the table. Kathy told me to pick up another. Only one of them was a vegan menu. She ordered some type of Mexican chicken burrito and I order a whitefish basket, both were good.

On the way back home we noted that the car thermometer said 91 degrees. When we got back home we turned on one of the AC units. With only a 30 amp electrical connection we can't run both AC units. It was 86 inside the coach, with 74% humidity. I dropped her off and headed over to the ore dock. I spend hours there two years ago. 

The public beach is just before you get to the ore dock. There were a lot of people enjoying the cool/cold water. Below are photos of the trestle that leads to the ore dock. I watched a pair of locomotive pull a string of 49 cars off the dock. I think there are 3 sets of tracks above the ore bins.

The Joseph L Block was in position to be loaded. I think she was partially loaded but no loading occurred while I was there. The Joseph L Block is a 700'+ self-unloading, bulk carrier.

I walked back to the car, got in and was just backing out of the parking lot when I looked out and saw another ship coming in.  I took the first two photos below at 2:48P.

Zoomed in.

I drove around to the other side of the trestle and took the photos below.

The Maumee in place to be loaded. I took this photo at 3:25P

The Maumee is a 815-foot articulated tug-barge (ATB), the tug is the "Victory" and the barge is the 'Maumee'. I wished I could have seen the rear better. I had no idea it was an ATB. 

By the time I got back home the inside temperature had only dropped a few degrees but the humidity was below 50%. We both took long naps. At 11:45P the outside temperature is 82 degrees and the humidity is 77%. Inside is 75 degrees and 30% humidity (not sure I believe the humidity is that low).

2024 visit to ore docks: https://bertdsblog.blogspot.com/2024/08/day-49-monday-august-12-day-at-ore-docks.html

As I was looking through old posts I saw the one from August 6 & 7, 2024. What a difference in temperature:  https://bertdsblog.blogspot.com/2024/08/days-43-44-tuesday-wednesday-august-6-7.html

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.

Day 21 - Monday, June 29 - Rainy

 About 5 AM it started raining. In rained, on and off, most of the morning. The rain stopped until storms rolled in around 7 PM, but it remained overcast.

I did a couple of campground walkabouts, 2 miles total. There were lots of empty sites in the electric only and electric and water sites; but only a few open full hookup sites.

Quite a few sites have multiple canopies set up around there RV's.

We have seen a few of these rooftop "tents' over the years. Note the ladder to get up into it. Not for old folks.

Lots of weather warnings during the day, for heavy rain, hail, lightening, heat, etc. The heat advisory warning started at 3PM today and runs until 8PM tomorrow. This is us sitting outside at 5PM. Do we look over heated? I think the temperature was a humid 72 degrees, with a significant breeze. 

 

There were storms west and north of us. Several thousand people were without power at 7 PM. That is a lot of people in the sparsely populated UP. There are only 19 people per square mile up here. Lower Michigan has a population density of 240 people per square mile. Missouri has a population density of 90 per square mile, Ohio has a population density of 288/sq mi and Indiana 192/sq mi.

We changed to T-Mobile cell service a couple of years ago, apparently after the last time we were up here. It has been great every where else but the service was terrible in Sault Ste Marie and Brimley. It is okay here in Marquette. According to some research I did T-Mobile only has towers in "major metro area" and along "major highways" in the UP.  In other areas they have to rely on deals they have made with other cell companies (roaming). Marquette is the largest city in the UP, pop 22,000 and Sault Ste Marie is the second largest, pop 13,000. 

Forget over the air TV. In Sault Ste Marie there was one Canadian Channel. Here in Marquette NBC has a channel split into 5 channels. I wanted to have good enough cell service to be able to stream TV, if we wanted to. Before we left I noticed that the screen on my Pixel 9a had a hairline crack in it. It is still fine for use but in case the crack got worse I brought along my old Pixel 5a. Both Verizon and AT&T are supposed to have much better service up here. Today I activated the Pixel 5a on Consumer Cellular (AT&T). It will be interesting to see if it works better when we leave here. 

It is still raining but the storms appear to have passed us by.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me. 

Day 20 - Sunday, June 28 - Brimley to Marquette

 Today we travelled from the Bay Mills Casino & RV Resort to the Maquette Tourist Park Campground, 158 miles. Most of the trip was on M-28, a Michigan state highway. A little of the pavement was in fair condition but most of it was good to excellent. 

Last night's low was in the 50's again. The high was 78. Currently, at 8:20P the temp is 73 and the dew point is 59. It is very comfortable sitting here with the windows open, no breeze but I have a small fan running. It actually borders on feeling cool. We are basking in it because the next several days here are going to be HOT, for the UP. Average high/low here at this time of years is 70/51. For the next 4 days the highs are forecast to be 79, 90, 90 & 80. It is also supposed to be rainy. So far the weather on our trip has been fantastic.

We left Bay Mills at 11AM. We weren't in a hurry since the driving time to get here was only 3.5 hours, and check in starts at 3PM. Soon after we left Bay Mills we went past a gas station that had diesel for $5.00/gal. I wasn't ready to stop yet, big mistake. We had enough fuel to make it to L'Anse on Thursday, where fuel is currently $4.29/gal (Indian reservation?) but we would drop to a quarter tank by the time we were in Marquette. The generator won't draw fuel out of the tank once the level gets to/below a quarter tank. With stormy weather forecast for several days while we are in Marquette the conservative engineer in me wanted to have enough fuel to run the generator should there be issues with power. Close to Marquette I gave up looking for cheaper fuel and put in 30 gallons at $5.25/gal.

If you have never driven across Michigan's upper peninsula you will probably be shocked by the mile after pile of virtually nothing but trees on both sides of the roads. We likened it to driving on rural roads through Iowa corn fields in last August. When we lived there we remember going mile after mile with 7' tall corn both sides of the road.

Kathy took the next two photos at places at least 10 miles apart. I don't remember anything memorable along the road between the two photos.

In some areas there are acres of dead trees. I suppose they could have been dead for over 10 years. There are occasionally live trees sprinkled in with the dead ones.

We haven't seen much wildlife but today two sandhill cranes(?) casually walked across the highway in front of us. Kathy was quick enough to take a photo of one of them. (I just remembered that yesterday we saw a couple of turkeys along the road on the way to Whiteish point and on the way back.) The other crane is only a few feet off in the tall grass. It was Sunday morning, note the lack of traffic. Traffic did pick up later in the day.

There are some great parking areas along the Lake when you  get close to Marquette. We waited for one of them to stop for lunch. This is at least a quarter pile long paved parking area that parallels the highway. 

When I opened the door I found that I had stopped right at a path to the beach. The path is not as nice as it looks. There is an almost vertical drop of 2 feet before you get to the beach.

Lots of kayakers paddled by while we sat there.

Parked at Marquette Tourist Park. We have stayed here several times in the past. Unless you schedule your trip/reservation months in advance you have to take whatever slots are available when you make the reservation. Last week I was lucky enough to get a site with 30 amp, water & sewer for 4 consecutive nights. It's the first time we ever were able to get a site for four days.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.

Day 19 - Saturday, June 27 - Whitefish Point

 Last nights low was 51 and the high was 82, according to Weatherbug. It sure didn't feel like 82 at the beach!

We hung around the campground in the morning and then at 11:30 we headed to Whitefish Point. It takes a little over an hour to drive the 55 miles. The road runs close to Lake Superior most of the way but you can only see the Lake in certain sections because there are so many trees.

The trip up there evokes a small wave of nostalgia as we think about previous visits, mostly because Brown Fisheries, a restaurant, shut down a few years ago and we have now given up hope that it will ever reopen. The first time we ate there was in 2011 (I archived blog posts from early 2011 and can't find them). The next time was in 2018. ( https://bertdsblog.blogspot.com/2018/08/monday-day-12.html ). We were sad when went to eat there on a Monday in 2021 and learned that it was closed on Sundays and Mondays ( https://bertdsblog.blogspot.com/2021/09/day-13-monday-september-27-whitefish.html ).  Happy days when we found it open in 2022 ( https://bertdsblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/saturday-july-23rd-whitefish-point.html ). When we were up here in August 2024 our mouths were watering for whitefish from Brown's, we were disappointed when we found out that it had closed but there was hope that it might reopen in a few months. When we drove by today the building looks abandoned and really run down.

We went to the Wheelhouse Diner, just down the highway from Browns. I had a hot beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. Kathy had a hamburger and fries. The fries were by far the best part of our lunch. Kathy didn't even finish her medium rare hamburger. There was a good amount of food with my hot beef sandwich but, according to Kathy, the gravy was some type of package gravy, the mashed potatoes and meat were edible. We crossed it off our list of places to go back to next time we are up here.

We ate here in 2024, after we found Browns closed. Note the overhead garage doors. It was August when we were here previously and the large openings were screened, not windows like they were this time.

Whitefish Point Shipwreck Museum and Light Station.

The beach at Whitefish Point

It felt COLD out next to the water. There was a stiff breeze and the temperature was in the low/mid 60's. This may be the first time we have been there that Kathy didn't go wading.

We did spend some time sitting on a bench at the observation area, where I took the beach photo. The wind wasn't quite as brisk and with the sun it was tolerable.

Then it was back to the campground for the rest of the afternoon.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.

Day 18 - Friday, June 26 - Slow, but Beautiful, Day

 Weather was great again today. Last night the low was 51 and today the high was 75. It was mostly sunny and there was a light breeze. It just doesn't get much better than that.

I did a couple of campground walkabouts, 2.25 miles total. For some reason of the campground is closed. If I remember correctly it is the original campground. It has full hooks up with  50 amp service. Also, again if I remember correctly, when we were here 2 years ago they were having problems with the electric over there. It's Friday evening, I  think every site on this side is now full.

Kathy did a couple of loads of laundry and cooked us lunch (hot dogs) and supper (hamburger and potatoes with green beans). My part was fixing my own breakfast and eating what she fixed. She did great with her part and I did a good job with my part.

We sat outside a lot today, doing a little people watching but mostly just enjoying the day.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.

Day 17 - Thursday, June 25 - Soo Locks Campground to Bay Mills Casino RV Resort

 The morning weather was cool and damp, with occasional very light rain. Fortunately the rain was spotty enough that I was able to get us unhooked while only getting a little damp. It is only 20 miles from the campground in Sault Ste Marie to the one in Brimley.  We were parked at the Casino by 1:30 PM. 

Looking out at Waiska Bay from the campground.

The casino complex, across the street from the campground. They have added a hotel on the other side of the casino since we were here two years ago.

Kathy spent the afternoon catching up with  laundry since she couldn't do any at Soo Locks because of no sewer hook ups. I took a nap. 

At 6PM I drove a couple of miles to the local pizza place and picked up a pizza for our supper.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.