Here's the "home stretch" entry to close out the western journey.

It’s Saturday night and we’ve returned to the wolverine state.

We spent the last two FULL days traversing the northern plains of Eastern Montana and North Dakota and the north woods of Minnesota.

I have to find out what crop blooms in a yellow flower.  When I first saw it a couple weeks ago, I thought it was just some kind of weed, but this is definitely a cultivated crop.

It’s a foot tall stalk with a bloom on top at this point.

So we stayed at a commercial camp I Grand Forks Friday night and treated ourselves to some ribs at the Texas Steakhouse.  Then got up early this morning for the 400 mile trek into Michigan and arrived at Gogebic State Park in the Western UP about 4:00 pm EDT. 

Yeah, we’re going to struggle with this time zone for a day or two I think.  We tried to maintain an eastern time zone existence in the west, but ended up splitting the difference most of the time.  What is 8:00 pm today, was only dinner time a couple days ago.  We spent nearly three weeks in the mountain time zone so we did get used to those hours.

We pulled into Gogebic and had a nice and large corner campsite.

 The park is nice and grassy which is a rarity in a state park.  There is a beach area…

… and a boat launch.

The lake is said to be a decent fishing hole, especially for walleye and perch.

The shore isn’t very friendly for beaching a boat so most people in the campground launch and load daily.

We walked back through the campground…

…to our waterlogged site.

The DNR guys said it has rained daily for many days here.  It rained shortly before we arrived.  The grounds aren’t particularly low, but the soil is saturated with water so the campground has become a bit of a mud pit.  Fortunately, we’re only here for the overnight stay so it won’t affect us much.  I parked the motor home on as level a spot as I could and called it good.

Tomorrow we’ll cross the Straits of Mackinac and play in Mackinaw City for a while before setting up camp in Cheboygan for the night.

Sunday…day 27.

We left our muddy world at Gogebic State Park and traversed the UP of Michigan today arriving at the Mackinac Bridge around 1:00 pm. 

I didn’t realize it, but we were still living in the central time zone in the western UP last night.  We left the campground there at an early 6:00 am central time.  By the time we got to the bridge there was a dozen car backup southbound and maybe a quarter mile going north.

Must be the UP is the place to be for the 4^th.  You couldn’t prove it by me.  It’s a wet world up there.

We stopped at a car wash in Mackinaw City that had an RV bay and I scrubbed a couple weeks work of bugs and grime off the Minnie.  It poured down rain while I was at the car wash but it needed the bath.  A block away was Darrow’s restaurant which we like so we went over there for a late lunch.

After lunch we walked through town and then made our way to Cheboygan State Park for our final night on the road.  This turned out to be one of the nicer camp sites we’ve been in.

It’s quite private and backs up to a grove of cedars that open to Duncan Bay on Lake Huron.

It doesn’t look like a swimmable area (there’s a separate beach area on the other side of the point) but you might be able to wade out and catch a smallmouth here in the reeds.

So tomorrow is the final leg of the journey and I’ll sum it all up. 

Monday and we’ve completed the journey.

28 days

5,910 miles

575 gallons of fuel

All in, it cost us about $115/day for RV parking, fuel and food. 

It was an enjoyable trek for the most part.  Here is what I learned during the past 4 weeks:

I learned that the working world fills up the RV parks on Friday and Saturday nights so that plan needed to be made as soon as we had a plan (which was usually too late and we often settled for plan “C”).

There is much more demand for the national park facilities than is available.  There has to be some control placed on entry.  The parks with a bus shuttle system seemed to have that issue under control. 

The Chinese have created a large tourist industry here for their citizens.  Chinese tourists were everywhere by the bus loads.

There are as many rental RV’s as there are privately owned RV’s traveling the western parks.  Many of the rentals are driven by the “Clark Griswolds” (Chevy Chase) of the world.  They are entertaining while being just a bit scary knowing you share the road with them.

There are as many mosquitoes as trees in Yellowstone National Park.  Interestingly enough, there are none in Glacier.

Quilt shops are almost as prominent as Subway franchises.

And most important, I learned that Kathy and I CAN exist in a motorized metal box for a whole month and come out with only scars from our hikes in the wild.

Bryce and Glacier would be my picks for must see parks.  The others were nice, but didn’t measure up to those two.  Bryce is just so unique with its sandstone formations.

Here are my favorites from the circle tour.

No. 1 is Bryce Canyon...no comparison to the beauty of this park.

My vote for No. 2 is Glacier.  We saw only a little piece but could tell the rest of it would be incredible.  Everything there is on a grand scale.

No. 3 goes to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  It's big and it's beautiful.  To view this canyon, is all by itself, worth the trip into Yellowstone.

And my No. 4 is Rocky Mountain National Park.  The views from the summit areas are endless.  

Rounding out my top 5 is Canyonlands.  It's not the Grand Canyon by any means but is a pretty big ditch.

So, we’re done.  Time to clean up the Minnie Winnie and let the V10 cool down a little.  The motorhome ran and operated flawlessly.  That was a bit of a concern since it is a 1999 vehicle and we had just purchased it so had no history other than our drive home at the time of purchase.  We were pleased.

It’s time to get the Crestliner in the water and do a little boating now.

It's Thursday and we're STILL in Montana.

We left West Glacier this morning and followed US-2 through the Rockies for the last time.  The first 30 miles were the usual woods and waters.

That gave way to the eastern slopes of the mountains.

Which became the foothills before we arrived at East Glacier.

And then the HOURS of flat land across Montana.

This state is endless...and we've still got another hour or so until we get to North Dakota.  Now there's another place to get excited about.  It's good that all that land exists for agriculture, but man, is it ever a monotonous drive.  The biggest change from mile to mile is the yellow to black stripe in the middle of the road.  Yellow, black, yellow, black, yellow, black...  Oh look!  Another pasture.  You'd think they would at least plant a tree here and there.

So we're headed east now and probably won't have much opportunity at blog posting for a couple days.  Because of the holiday, state parks were our only choice at campsites anywhere east of Duluth so we're park hopping the state parks across Michigan this weekend.  Not that that's a bad thing.  We've just been spoiled by all the amenities of commercial camps on our trip.

I'll do a wrap up of the journey in the next post.

Wednesday at Glacier National Park.

We were real limited in our activity here at Glacier.  The main scenic road through the park is called the “Rising to the Sun Road’.  It has been closed much of the distance…until today.  When we entered the park at 7:00 am this morning the road was still closed.  After our 3 hour hike, we noticed very heavy traffic into the park.  Turns out they opened the rest of the road today at 8:05 am.  It really didn’t matter to us as our vehicle is too large to proceed any further than we did.  Once we found out the road was open, we checked into a tour car going over the route, but that was all booked and the park shuttle buses don’t begin to run until July 1^st.

So we made lemons out of lemonade…or vice versa depending on if you ask me or Kathy and took a little walk in the woods…straight up.

This was very early in the morning and the lighting conditions weren’t the best so the pictures are of varying quality…sorry ‘bout that.  I did my best.

We started out at the Avalanche Campground where Kathy had planned a little half mile hike along the “Trail of the Cedars”.  A stream ran along the path.

Then we came upon a waterfall area in a narrow gorge that was real scenic.

There was also another trail head there that indicated it lead to a lake some 500’ higher in elevation and a couple miles away.  OK, I was game figuring this waterfall had to be a little indicator of what had to be up the trail.  So off we went.

It was heavily wooded and quite dark.  We were by ourselves for the most part and there were bear warning signs everywhere.  Kathy said to make noise so I tripped along singing the “Day-O” tune.  I think others on the trail were probably expecting the Jamaican bobsled team to appear.

Anyway, after two miles of uphill agony, here’s the payoff.

Avalanche Lake.

The shade difference running diagonally across the frame is the sun ray over the mountains to our left.  The three white streaks coming down the mountain sides are waterfalls.  It was stunning and hard to photograph.

Here is a selection of shots I took.  I think a little later in the day might provide better light, but I wasn’t waiting and certainly not up for an afternoon excursion.

Kathy even made it all the way there.  She kept wanting to turn back after about the first mile of the climb, but I wouldn’t allow that.  We were going to get to that lake if it killed me…and that seemed a distinct possibility a time or two.

There was even a rest area on the trail. 

 So with the goal met, we headed back DOWN the trail. 

The lighting was a little better so I snapped a few shots on the way back DOWN the trail.  Do you get the sense I’m elated that we’re hiking DOWN the trail for a change?

We got back to the motor home and headed back down the road toward West Glacier since we couldn’t travel any further into the park in that size vehicle.

We stopped along the road to view the cascade rapids and falls above McDonald Lake.

Then took a couple shots at McDonald Lake.

We left the park and headed south on US-2 to go to a place called Goat Lick.  The campground host said we would see goats there.  The road parallels the Flathead River.

We happened to catch some rafters passing by.

This one has a “she” skipper.

When they get into the heavy rapids, it becomes a group participation event.

Finally, we arrived at Goat Lick.  It’s not particularly scenic.  There’s a train trestle there and the river on the floor of the gorge.

But we did spot a mountain goat.  It was on a ledge a bit off in the distance. 

So that was Glacier for us.  It’s a postcard kind of place.  I’m sure the trip over the mountain through the park is worth the effort but our timing isn’t going to let that happen.  We’ll catch that on the way to Alaska one day…maybe.

Tomorrow we’ll point the Minnie toward the rising sun for the first time in over three weeks.

I think we’re ready for that.