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.