Day 25 - Oct 10 - Home Again

 We drove from Vandalia to Centertown. Weather wasn't bad but it was windy, which made the camper a little twitchy. The surface of US40, in Illinois, was bad enough that we got back on I70/I44, until we hit US50 in Union, MO.

We had a great time. We so enjoy Michigan's UP. I wonder if we won't end up heading that way again next year, and spending even more days in the UP.

Total miles driven was 2,496. Worst fuel economy was 9.6 mpg, best when pulling trailer was 11.4 mpg. Almost all of the 150 miles on the 11.4 tankful was non-Interstate. The next tankful, 10.7 mpg, was also almost all non-Interstate.

The least we paid for fuel was $2.95 in Palmyra, MO, then $2.97 in Crivitz, WI. The most we paid was $3.76 in Speedway, IN, 2nd most was $3.59 in Vandalia, IL. A surprise was that fuel in MI's UP was less expensive than in the lower peninsula.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Days 22, 23 & 24 - October 7-9, I

 Some photos I didn't include earlier:

This is where I had one of the best, if the THE BEST, hamburgers that I have ever eaten. DeTour Village, UP, MI

My brother-in-law Ed took me along when he went to sell their pickup full of walnuts. Below is a photo of walnut hulls being conveyed out to pile. The machine that dehulled them was all enclosed. Also, I didn't want to take photos of any of the Amish folks running the walnut operation.

Day 22 - We travelled from Mom's to Indy. The "campground' we stayed at was an old trailer court next to the Indy speedway. The bleachers you see are seating at the track. As we were setting up we heard an Indycar fire up and head out onto the track, and then it started to rain. The driver didn't manage to make one lap. (Don't know who the driver was, we were told that Jimmy Johnson had been practicing Wednesday, trying to get qualified to run in next years Indy 500.) 

Georgetown Road, the street between the campground and the track ends at the south end of the speedway, about a block from where we were parked. I walked down and took a photo of the main entrance. We thought about visiting the Speedway Museum (I have been there, many years ago, but Kathy never had.) Ended up not going.

We had dinner with our oldest son, Doug, and his husband, at Dawson's in Speedway. It was good, but nothing to write home about.

Day 23 - Most of the time when we were at the "campground" Saturday we could hear two cars running laps at the track. 

We went to the renovated Coca Cola bottling plant. It sat vacant for years but is now an upscale hotel and office complex.

Hotel lobby.

Lobby ceiling looked like brass plates.

Looking along one wall of the building.

Lots of artwork on the walls.

Across the street was the garage. It also was renovated. A large portion of it is now a food court.

A redneck, window shopping.

I'm glad the place has been restored, but it is FAR to upscale for country folks a redneck country bumpkin like me.

In the afternoon we drove to Lebanon, where we used to live, about 25 miles NNW of Indy, to visit one of our neighbors. I sure miss the pole barn I build there and Kathy REALLY misses her kitchen that she had TOTALLY redone while we were there. We don't miss all the traffic.

Day 24 - Doug came by in the morning to bring me some Ekrich Smoky Links, you can't buy them in MO. I love them. (Lil Smokies are definitely not the same thing.) We had also purchased some earlier. Our freezer is now almost totally full of Smokies.

Then it was off to Vandalia, IL, about 180 miles. We drove US40 for maybe 160 miles of the distance. The road was better than the I70 in Indiana but the Illinois stretch was some of the worst US highway we have driven on, not as bad as the miles of Interstate we endured in Iowa and Wisconsin, but rougher than the US highways in MI & IN.

Vandalia is about half way between Indy & Centertown. I thought the campground I found online might be interesting for great-grandkids if we came this way with them some time. NOT! The Kaskaskia Dragon RV park is a patch of rock off the side of a city street. (There is a large steel dragon sculpture out front.) When I made the reservation the lady told me that they only had back-in sites. I told her that was okay as long as they were long enough so that I didn't have to unhook my truck for our overnight stay. Length wasn't a problem.

But the sites were so unlevel front/back (4 degrees) that I had to unhook and drop the front of the trailer to get it reasonably level.

After getting unhooked I connected to the campground electricity & water with no problems. Then I tried to hook up to the sewer connection, the inlet was higher than the discharge on our camper. I walked over to the "office" which is in a hardware store across the street, told them about the problem. I asked if they had a dump station I could use in the morning, since I couldn't dump on the sewer connection at the site. No dump station. The lady made a phone call to someone who didn't sound happy about having to come to the campground, but agreed to do so. About 10 minutes later a guy showed up and told me that if I would not have backed up so far the sewer connection would have worked. ( I didn't argue with him but it was obvious that even if I had parked the camper with the tongue sticking out into the city street it was doubtful that there would have been enough fall to drain the tanks, plus I didn't have 50' of sewer hose with me. I suggested that he cut the pipe and lower the inlet. He gruffly replied that he had planned to do so. He pulled the white coupling (just a light schedule PVC coupling, no threads, no glued joint) off the pipe and cut 3-4" off the pipe. He then pushed the coupling back on the pipe, no glue, no threads for our sewer connection, and left. The worst campground experience we have had in the past 4 years. (It was 88 degrees while we were setting up. The hottest temps we have experienced for weeks.

Live and learn, We know not to stop here in the future, and so will other campers after I post a review on a Internet.

Good night to all.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Days 19, 20 & 21 - October 4-6

 Day 19 - We "broke camp" in the rain and headed for Coldwater Lake. Misted rain on and off during the 90 mile trip here. We drove all 2 lane roads. The scenery was great. Roads were good. Stopped at a local orchard and bought some apples. No problems getting set up at Mom's.

Day 20 - Went to Coldwater with  Mom. Mom & Kathy did some grocery shopping at the Meijer store while I took a propane tank to Tractor Supply to have it refilled. Anyone know where you  can get 30# tanks recertified. I need to do that for the ones on our camper, or buy new ones. Tractor Supply wanted $85 for one.

Back to Mom's and then down to Ed & Cindy's (one of Kathy's sisters) in the afternoon, in Montpelier, OH. Ed & Cindy pick up walnuts every year. Ed's old half ton pickup was full enough that any more walnuts would have fallen off. I rode along with  Ed as he took them to the Amish place that buys them. They "dehull" them, bag them and ship them to Stockton, MO, once they have accumulated a semi-load. Watching the dehulling was interesting. Ed got a check for $140 for the truck load, about 800# after dehulling. There are ton's of walnuts around that people could pick up for free to make a few bucks, but why bother when the feds will give you free money. The place in Stockton would like to process 25 million pounds a year but at current prices they can only buy 10-12 million pounds, because so few want to pick them up.

We then met Kathy, Cindy & Nancy (another of Kathy's sisters) at the Dairy Treat in Edon, OH for dinner.

Day 21 - Spent hours trying to get Mom's cable/internet/phone bill reduced. No success. Cindy came up, picked up Kathy and they went to a specialty grocery  in Bronson, MI.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Day 19 - Sunday, October 3 - DeTour Village to Ionia, MI

 Not much but driving today. 289 miles from DeTour Village to Lakeside Campground near Ionia, MI, 85 more miles tomorrow to get to my Mom's near Coldwater Lake Michigan.

No rain when we packed up but it was foggy. Kathy said she could barely see the water when we crossed the Mackinaw Bridge. There was a light mist falling most of the day, with occasional showers. 

We stopped at a "fruit stand" about 20 miles from here and bought some apples and tomatoes. It wasn't raining when we went in, but it sure was when we came out. Managed to get utilities hooked up without getting rained on.

Most of today's traveling was on 2 lane MI highways, so much better than the Interstates and limited access highways.

Supper is on the table, better get this sent.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Day 18 - Saturday, October 2 - DeTour, MI

 Not much to report today. We sat out on the porch swing this morning and watched the bay. It was cloudy but temps were nice.

Around noon we drove into DeTour Village. Seems like a nice little town. We had lunch there. I had one of the best mushroom cheeseburgers I've ever had, Kathy said her shrimp was good, but not as good as my burger. We walked a little and drove a loop through the town. We had considered taking the ferry to Drummond Island but there didn't seem to be enough out there to make it worth the effort. After topping off with fuel ($3.35/gal, the most we have paid during the trip but not bad for very rural Michigan) we headed back to the campground.

Did some more sitting watching the bay and some walking before the rain started. It rained fairly hard a couple of times this afternoon. Hopefully it won't be raining when we hook up to head south in the morning.

We have driven 1,381 miles.. Google maps says we are 855 miles from Centertown, if we took the shortest route from here. I'm guessing we will drive close to another 1,000 miles before we make it back.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Day 18 - Friday, October 1 - Sault Ste Marie to De Tour Village, MI

 Another beautiful day here. I honestly don't know how God could have made it any nicer. We lazed around at Soo Locks Campground this morning. We finally left around noon. It is only 57 miles to Paradise Point Campground in De Tour Village and early check-in time was 1 PM. With the exception of a couple of miles of city streets inside Sault Ste Marie the roads we traveled, both state and county roads, were in great shape. The route my crazy Garmin RV GPS tried to get us to follow would have added over 10 miles to the trip, to keep us a state highway longer. We ignored it and followed the paper map in our Atlas, which was the route shown using Google maps. The Garmin GPS kept trying to reroute us. Twice it wanted us to drive down a gravel road. Someone at Garmin needs to do a LOT of work on their algorithms. 

Welcome to Paradise Point (the gate was just starting to open to let someone out of the campground).

Ma & Pa Dirschell all set up and having a late lunch.

Two 5th wheel units pulled in minutes after we backed into our space. The guy next to us mentioned that this area must be Duramax row. All 3 trucks in the photo are Duramax's. Mine is a 2005, its the newest of the 3. The guy next to us has a 2003 that he bought new and his son-in-law has a 2004. They are from the Grand Rapids, MI area. I didn't think to ask how many miles they had on their trucks. The guy with the 2003 said that he leaves his in the garage most of the winter, to keep it out of the road salt. He said he drives "Old Rusty", another truck he has, during the winter months.

We didn't make it in time for any morning sun but Kathy was:

Sittin' in the morning sun, She'll be sittin' when the evening comes watching the ships roll in, then watch'em roll away again, yeah, she was sittin' on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away..." No tides here and now ships in this bay. For those of you to young to remember the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTVjnBo96Ug 

The land way out is Canada. We have seen a couple of freighters on their way from Lake Superior to Lake Huron.

There are only 14 sites here, but they are nice. Sites are on the right. On the left is a channel with docks for boats.

I got a shock as we were driving down here today. I saw a blue yard sign and thought I was going to see the first Biden sign in the over 1,400 miles we have driven. I was wrong, it was a Blue Lives Matter sign. We did see more Trump and Trump/Pence signs again today, in addition to American flags flown by folks who still thing the is a great nation.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

 

Day 17 - Thursday, September 30 - Another Day in Sault Ste. Marie

 The weather was beautiful again today. Solid cloud cover would blow in at times and then blow back out. There wasn't much in the way of surface winds.

It appears that there are quite a few people who come to this campground for at least a month. Quite a few left today, on a Thursday, but the end of September. We leave tomorrow so we won't know how many come in for the weekend.

We enjoyed sitting outside, reading, watching the river traffic and enjoying the weather. We made one trip out of the campground. We drove down and checked out the other Sault Ste Marie campground that is on the river, the Anne Osborne campground. It is much larger than this one but we think we would prefer the Soo Locks for any future trips we might make. Neither the Soo Locks nor the Anne Osborne campgrounds have sewer hookups. The showers here are kept clean, but they are dated. If/when we come this way again I think we would also spend some days at the casino campground in Brimley. It is close enough to drive to Paradise Point and back and forth into SSM. You can't beat the $29/night rate for a full hookup. The rate here is $40/night and no sewer hookup. (I saw several people with  20-30 gallon "poop tanks" on wheels. They can dump their gray water into the carts, pull the cart up to the dump station and empty it.

Also during our excursion out of the campground Kathy got a carmel apple, I got an ice cream cone and we topped of the tank with fuel, $3.29/gal.

Tomorrow its off to De Tour, MI for Friday & Saturday night. Current plan is to head south across the bridge Sunday.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Day 15 - Wednesday, September 29 - Day in Sault Ste Marie

 Weather was absolutely beautiful again today. Down in the 50's last night and sunny and high in the low 70's today. PERFECT!

We took a 2 hour boat ride through the locks and up and down the St. Charles River today. There are going to be a LOT of photos of "stuff". I was an Engineer, I can't help myself. Consider yourselves lucky not to get paragraphs on the railroad lift bridges that show in the photos.

Kathy noticed the smog first thing this morning. That is not a low cloud, it is pollution from a steel making facility on the Canadian side of the border.

Then it was a short drive and a walk down to the tour boat docks.

While waiting to board we saw a sight that we don't think is common. A tug pushing a barge. The barge probably is full of iron ore.

There are two active American locks here. The MacArthur on the left (80' wide x 800' long and 29.5' deep) and the Poe on the right (110' wide x 1,200' long and 32' deep).  A new lock is being built and scheduled to open in 2030. It will be the same size as the Poe Lock. When the lock doors/gates are closed golf cart traffic moves people/employees back and forth to the buildings you see.

We are entering the MacArthur Lock, where we will be raised 21', to the level of Lake Superior.

The boat is tied off to the side of the lock and water from the Lake Superior side enters through the bottom of the lock as gates are opened. The water level of Lake Superior is about 3' below the top of the lock doors in the photo below.

We have now been raised the 21' and the lock doors are opening to allow us to exit into Lake Superior.

This is the Canadian steel plant. The dark piles are coal and the white is limestone.

The "purple" pile in the photo below is taconite iron ore. (When high grade iron ore became scarce a method to make use of lower grade ore became necessary. The low grade ore is ground, at the mines, the iron is separated and the mixed with bentonite clay and "pelletized."

As we headed back to the locks we "sped" by a freighter, the Oakglen, that was also headed for the locks. 

We won the race to the locks. For some reason they put us, a single small boat, in the Poe lock and the Oakglen in the MacArthur lock. The Oakglen is 760' long and carries over 22,000 TONS of cargo. She was still slowly getting stopped in the center of the MacArther lock when we had already been lowered to the Lake Huron level.

 Passing by the Soo Locks Campground on our return.

The window you see in the back of the trailer to the left of the trees is ours.

After the boat ride is was off to Zorba's Greek American Restaurant for a late lunch. We first went there when we were up here in 2011. We had a pizza & Greek salad and it was awesome. In 2018 we went back, the pizza and salad was just as good. It was still just as good today.

After lunch we walked around town, killing time until the Farmer's Market to opened at 4:30. We got cups of coffee ($1/cup) at a little coffee shop/deli, and sat outside drinking our coffee.

The fall colors are coming, but we will miss them at their peak. These trees were in the yard at the Methodist Church. I didn't take pictures of the church, but should have. It was a beautiful building constructed in 1873 from a red sandstone that was waste material when the first locks were constructed.

We are hear for 2 more nights. We leave Friday morning. We weren't sure of our routing when we leave here, and still aren't. This afternoon we made reservations for Friday and Saturday nights at Paradise Point RV Park in DeTour Village, MI. I'm not sure what you can make out in the cut and paste photo but DeTour is basically at the east end of the UP mainland.

PS. One of the workers at the boat tour place mentioned that they no longer were allowed to go through the Canadian locks. The Canadians are in a snit over US border crossing protocols. This person claimed that it is relatively easy to go into Canada but you have to jump through hoops, and wait in long lines, to get back into the US. We did notice that the volume of traffic on the bridge across the St. Mary's seemed to be less than half of what we remembered. Perhaps the Canadians just need to start crossing the river illegally. Then the US would provide them with free food, shelter, transportation and health care.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

 

Day 14 - Tuesday, September 29 - Traveling Brimley, MI to Sault Ste. Marie, MI

Tuesday weather was awesome. 

Not a big distance to travel today, which was good. We didn't have to be out of the Casino campground until 1PM and that worked well with only have to travel 20 miles to the Soo Locks Campground.

What didn't work well was what I found when hooking up. Don't know when I did it but somehow I managed to pinch the pig tail connecting the truck to the trailer. The brake and tail light wires were completely sheared. (I always check the trailer brakes when leaving a campground. I know they worked when we left Ishpeming.) The insulation on the power wire was nicked enough to see copper. I has some electrical connectors with me so after making a repair we were on our way. (I will buy a new pig tail and have it with me so that I can replace the damaged one when I get home, or before

We weren't even completely set up when we saw the first boat on the river, a tug. Soon after this one a freighter went by but I didn't get a photo of it.

After dark I was sitting in front of the window reading. It was so cool to watch the lights of freighters go by. I actually saw a westbound and an eastbound pass each other. It was dark enough that the only way you could see them was to watch the lights on the Canadian shore wink off and then back on as they passed by. The freighters have a lot of lights, but other than the cabin area the lights don't look that much difference than the lights along the Canadian shoreline. 

We say the Objibwa (boat in the photo below) go by yesterday. This (Wed) morning it went by westbound and then, a half hour later, back eastbound. The crane on it looks like it may be used to lift pallets on and off its deck.

I blew up a section of the above photo. The speck on the right side of the photo is a float plane that landed on the Canadian side of the river. A half hour later it was taking off when I took this photo.

A half hour later I saw the first freighter of the day go by. I don't know how big this one is, but the ore freighters are 800-1,000 feet long.

Weather looks like it is going to be awesome again today. Yesterday I visited with our "neighbors". The guy on the east side is from the Grand Rapids, MI area. He has been coming up here for 35 years. The guy on the west side is from west coast of FL, midway between Tampa and Tallahassee. This is at least his 3rd trip up here. The last time he was up here he only spent a couple of days in Sault Ste. Marie and then they went west, out through the badlands, before heading back to FL. He (they?) liked the campground and this trip they are spending 9 days here before heading back to FL.

This is the last week in September and the campground is full, on a weekday. MI's UP is awesome! 

Time to get out and have fun this Wed AM.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Day 13 - Monday, September 27 - Whitefish Point

 Today we drove up to Paradise, MI & Whitefish Point. When we were here in 2011 we went to Whitefish Point sightseeing and happened across Brown's Fisheries in Paradise. GREAT FISH, low key environment. We made sure to hit both places again in 2018. Today was the day to do both in 2021. Much to our chagrin we learned that Brown's was not open Sunday or Monday. We were sad.😞 Not only was Brown's closed but the ice cream place across the street had been torn down and replaced with a storage place. Doubly sad!

We ate a a newly opened restaurant just down the street from Browns. My fish and Kathy's hamburger were both good, but the new place will never have the charm of Brown's. Browns building is in need of a lot of TLC. We hope that it will still be open should we manage to get up here again.

Then it was on out to Whitefish Point and miles of Lake Superior shoreline.

All along this shore there are smooth rocks, most no bigger than eggs. They have unique colors mixed in each rock. Kathy could spend hours checking them out. The temps were in the high 50's-low60's while we were out there. The sun was shining but there was a BRISK breeze blowing in off the water. We did do a little wading, the water didn't seem all the cold but I'm sure it would have had we gotten more than just our feet wet.

It is about an hours drive up there from the campground, through absolutely gorgeous country. Below is the view from one of the many Scenic Outlooks 

I obviously need more practice doing selfies. I think I need a selfie stick.😀 Those were such a rage several years ago when we went west. Does anyone use them now?

It is beautiful the way the trees arch completely over the road in some areas. 

Michigan would be such an awesome state if the politics weren't controlled by Detroit, a city so mis-managed over the years that it actually went bankrupt a few years ago.

As we walked around the campground this afternoon we ran across this apple "bush". It couldn't have been more than 6' tall. It was loaded with apples. Kathy ate one and said it was good.

Tomorrow we move about 30 miles to the Soo Locks Campground in Sault Ste. Marie. We love sitting next to the St. Charles River watching the freighters as they prepare to enter the locks from the east, and looking across the river to watch what is happening on the Canadian shore. 

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Day 12 - Sunday, September 26 - Nothing Exciting

 This morning we stayed at the camper until around noon. It was a good morning to do a little Bible study.

Around noon we drove about a mile to Pickles, for lunch. Below is the view from our table. The water you see is Waiska Bay. At the far left of the photo the land on the horizon is Canada.

Zooming in you can see a peninsula that extends out into Lake Superior to form the bay.

Kathy had fish tacos and I had a whitefish basket. The food was excellent.

After we ate we drove over and drove down the peninsula. It is fairly narrow. In some places it was so narrow that there were cottages on only one side of the road.

Kathy did some laundry after lunch while I sat outside and enjoyed the day.

This evening we picked up a pizza from a place down the road a few miles. It was also very good. Its a good thing we are doing a fair amount of walking, with all the eating.

Below is a pretty tree/bush across from our camper.

 

God is good, may He bless you and yours.