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.
… 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 4th. 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.
