Upper Peninsula

June 9, 2012

Michigan is shaped like a mitten. When you meet people from Michigan and ask them where they're from, they hold up their hand for a map and point to the proper coordinates. But wait, there's more! There's the Upper Peninsula which, at first glance has no business being part of Michigan. It should be part of Wisconsin or Canada. But there was political wrangling when Michigan became a state over some territory around Toledo which Michigan felt should belong to them, not Ohio. Michigan lost the battle and was given the Upper Penninsula as a consolation prize. At the time it was considered a barren wasteland.

We are currently camped in Mackinaw City which is about where the pad of the middle finger would be. There is a suspension bridge called the Mackinac bridge which connects Mackinaw City with the Upper Peninsula. The bridge spans the Straits of Mackinac which joins Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

OK, so I didn't really take this picture, but it's a cool bridge.

The Upper Peninsula is called the "U-P" by locals and its inhabitants are called "Yoopies" or "Yoopers." We went there today to visit the Tahquamenon Falls. We had several short hikes to several beautiful waterfalls. One hike included Rick rowing a boat to a little island for a better view. I yelled "pull" while he rowed. SiSi sat next to me and looked nervous. The brown color of the water is caused by minerals from the surrounding trees.
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We ended our day in the UP with a drive to Whitefish Point where we saw this pretty lighthouse and got our first glimpse of Lake Superior.



Lake Superior

Traverse City

June 5 - June 8, 2012

Traverse City is a lovely town in Northwest Michigan. It was suggested by the guy in the Michigan Welcome Center, and it was a great call. We found a camground on the Lake Leelanau peninsula, which is about 20 miles from Traverse City.

Have you ever tasted any Michigan wine? We didn't know it but there's a huge wine industry in this part of Michigan. There were about 40 vineyards within an easy drive of our campground. And, no, we didn't visit them all! We really enjoyed touring the vineyards and tasting the wine. SiSi came along with us and was welcome at about 75% of the places we stopped. We even found a really nice restaurant with an outdoor courtyard with a sign that said: "your canine companions are always welcome." The photos that follow were all taken at the beautiful vineyards that we visited. Some of the views are of Lake Leelanau and some are Lake Michigan. And for those of you that keep requesting more pictures of SiSi, there's a few of those thrown in as well!










We drove out to the tip of the Mission Peninsula and visited this cool old lighthouse. It's on the 45th parallel...halfway between the north pole and the equator. Forty-fifth Parallel is also the name of one of the vineyards that we visited.

Detour into Michigan

June 5, 2012




One of the joys of this kind of travel is the ability to be flexible. When you don't have to depend on airline schedules and hotel reservations, you can change your plans at a momment's notice. If the weather report looks bad at your intended destination, don't go. If you find out about a place you didn't know about along the way, make a detour. The next place that we "have" to be is my nephew Carlos' graduation party on June 23rd in New Hampshire. That gives us 18 days to make it up as we go along. Neither of us had ever been to Michigan, so we decided to take a peek.

In addition to the AAA tour books, a wonderful source for ideas for things to do in the individual states are the highway welcome centers. When we crossed the border into Michigan we stopped at the welcome center and talked to a very helpful ambassador for the state of Michigan. He loaded us up with brochures for wineries, craft breweries, golf courses, historical sites, natural wonders, and campgounds.





Our first stop was the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. The museum was directly off the highway in the middle of downtown Grand Rapids. Normally we leave the Liberty in a campground and drive the Hyundai to our daily destinations, but we were driving right by the museum in late morning, so it made sense to stop. We called first to confirm that they had a parking lot that would accomodate us. The Liberty with the Hyundai in tow just fit within two back to back spaces on their surface lot. SiSi held down the fort while we toured the museum.

In 1976, during the summer between my junior and senior years at George Washington, I had a job working for the Reagan campaign for the Republican nomination. Reagan was challenging the incumbent President, Ford, and it was a hard fought race that went all the way to the convention. Eventually, Ford got the nomination. All the Reagan campaign workers were offered jobs with the Ford campaign, but I chose, instead, to take a semester off from college and work for the campaign for the Libertarian Party candidate, Roger McBride. Between the bicentennial celebration that year and the two campaigns, it was a wonderful time to be in Washington.

To review the history, Richard Nixon and his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, had won by a landslide in the 1972 election against George McGovern. This was the election with the watergate break-in, and the country was embroiled in that scandal, not to mention opposition to the war in Vietnam. To make matters worse, Agnew was being investigated for taking kickbacks from contractors during the time he was governor of Maryland. When it became clear that he would be indicted, Agnew resigned. For the first time in history, Nixon chose Ford as a replacement VP, and he was confirmed by the House of Representatives. Ford was chosen because of his reputation for honesty and integrity, which was sorely needed between the Agnew indictment and the watergate scandal.

Shorty after Ford became VP, the watergate scandal came to a head, and Nixon was going to be impeached. Instead, he resigned, leaving the country with its first president who had not been elected to either the preidency or the vice-presidency. Several months later, before Nixon had been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, Ford pardoned Nixon, sparking speculation that there had been a deal: Nixon would resign, making Ford president if he agreed to pardon Nixon.

Ford always denied any sort of deal and said the he had decided to pardon Nixon so that the country could get on with its real problems: out if control inflation, high unemployment, and ending the war. But his popularity plummeted after the pardon, and he was defeated by Jimmy Carter in the next election.

Replica of Ford's Oval Office

The guy at the welcome center recommended that we visit the Traverse City area in NW Michigan. We landed at a nice RV park on the Leelanau peninsula. The photo below is taken from our campsite which is directly on Lake Leelanau. It's pricey, but NO TRAINS!

Indiana Dunes State Park and National Lakeshore

June 3 - June 5, 2012




We spent two nights at Indiana Dunes State Park and National Lakeshore. Having lived on the East coast all my life, it never occurred to me that there were dunes anywhere but at the Ocean. I've seen plenty of Eastern lakes, but the only sand was carted in for small man-made beaches. But, then again, I'd never seen a lake as large as Lake Michigan. And who knew that Indiana even had a coastline.

Before leaving Florida I visited my local AAA office and picked up free maps and tour books for all the states that we planned on visiting or passing through. While the tour books aren't as detailed or well written as a real guidebook that you'd buy at the bookstore, they're a good starting point. It was the AAA tour book that gave us the idea to take a look at the Indiana Dunes.

The Indiana Dunes are pretty amazing. They stretch for miles on the Southern shore of Lake Michigan, and are some of the largest dunes I have ever seen. Formed by the most recent ice age, they are constatly changing as a result of sands dropped by the unrelenting northwest winds. The back dunes are thousands of years old and have been stablized by soil and vegetation. The largest dune, 126 foot "Mt Baldy" is on the move. It advances 4-6 feet south from the lakeshore every year. Note the trees which have been submerged in it on its current path.

We took several nice hikes in the area, one in the woods and one on the lakeshore. I was amazed at how clear the water is. You might think this was the gulf coast of Florida if you couldn't see Chicago's skyline off in the distance. If you click on the picture you can enlarge it, and Chicago should be visible.



We chose the state park over the national park campground because the state park had an electric hookup. We made a mistake. The national park campsites were much larger, prettier, and more private. We would gladly have lost the electric hookup for the more scenic campground. And, to make matters worse, the state park had several campsites full of teenagers, off on their own and looking for a party. It was loud. And, naturally, there was a train nearby. In my previous description of the county park where we stayed in Chicago, I forgot to mention the train. I've decided to keep track and figure the percentage of campgrounds with train noise at the end of the trip!

Chicago, IL

May 31- June 3, 2012

We're in Glen Elyn, a suburb of Chicago, visiting Rick's son Matt and his wife Trish. Mark and Cristin drove up from Columbus to join us. One of the reasons that we're here is to see Matt and Trish's new house. They spent years finding just the right property and built an amazing house. Every detail has been considered and the place looks beautiful.

I mentioned in a previous entry that it's often tough to find decent campgrounds, sometimes any campground, when you get close to major cities. Chicago is no exception. We're staying at a really strange campground called Blackwell Family Campground. It's in a county park that's fairly close to Matt and Trish. It's only open on the weekends and we arrived on Thursday, so we had to improvise. Matt visited his local police station and got permission for us to spend 24 hours on the street across from his house. It worked fine, but it was quite cold. We had to put the furnace on. What happened to the heat wave we experienced last weekend in Columbus? The high on Thursday wasn't more than about 55.

On Friday we were able to check in to the campground. The place has a million rules, including a curfew! We had to be back at the campground by an hour after sunset! No night life for us in Chicago! They would come around the campground each night with a bull horn and tell everyone that the gates were closing and no one would be let in or let out!

The campground has only an electric hookup (no water or sewer). We knew this ahead of time. No problem...many public parks have limited hookups. But in all our travels, we have never seen a park which welcomed RV's that didn't provide some place within the park for the RV's to fill their fresh water tanks. The college kids dressed up in ranger suits that run this place said "you should have called ahead if you had any questions" when I asked what I was supposed to do for water! Poor Rick was obliged to schlep gallon water jugs, two at a time, back and forth to the unthreaded water pumps and pour them into our fresh water tank by hand. He was losing a good half of each jug because of the angle that he had to pour and wishing he had a funnel. Suddenly I remembered that I did indeed have a funnel! When we had checked in to the Coach House Owner's Club rally in PA several weeks ago, they had, mysteriously, given us a set of plastic funnels at check-in instead of the usual tee shirt. At the time, I scratched my head and thought "what a strange giveaway." I resolved to take them home and put them in the kitchen or garage. Little did I know that we would be in such need for them so soon. Thank you CHOC for saving the day!

On Friday night Matt and Trish made us an amazing feast. Matt used his smoker to smoke a pork butt and a brisket which had been treated with his own recipe of homemade pork rub and we drank delicious beer that he has been brewing in his basement.

On Saturday the guys played golf in the morning. Later, the six of us went to a beer brewers festival.

When you're away from home for a long time the services that you depend on at home need to be attended to on the road. It was time for a haircut and color. On Saturday I found a nice salon in Chicago and got it taken care of while the boys were golfing.

We leave tomorrow for Indiana Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan.

Elkhart, Indiana

May 28 - May 31, 2012

We spent the past few days in Elkhart, Indiana. Elkhart is the home of many RV manufacturers and related industries. It was one of the hardest hit communities in the US during the recession. Unemployment was as high as 18% in 2010. Thankfully, the RV industry has begun to turn around, and Elkhart seems to be recovering.

On Tuesday we visited the RV and Motorhome Hall of Fame. They have a wonderful collection of historic RV's starting as early as the model T. We enjoyed seeing how RV's and motorhomes have evolved over the years.

Today we went to one of Indiana's Amish communities and shopped at a huge flea market. It promotes itself as the largest flea market in the mid-west, but it's hard to believe that it's not the biggest in the country. We made a few small purchases (there's no room in the Liberty for large purchases.)

Later we did a wine tasting at a local winery called Fruit Hills and bought several bottles of tasty wine.

We leave tomorrow for Chicago to visit Rick's son Matt and his wife Trish.

Warren G. Harding

May 28, 2012

We left Columbus on Memorial Day and made the short drive to Marion Ohio to visit the home of president Warren G. Harding. The house is a museum that is jointly administered by the Ohio Historical Society and Marion Technical College. The College recently came on board when budget cuts for the Ohio Historical Society threatened to close the museum. This was an odd choice since Ohio Technical College doesn't even have a history department!

This place is an absolute treasure! The front porch was the porch where Harding conducted his so-called "front porch campaign" making many of his speeches while he ran for president. Harding's widow died two years after he did and left their home to the State of Ohio to be run as a museum. The home is 90% furnished with original pieces and decor. It contains many posessions of Harding and his wife. His drawers are still filled with his clothes! While this makes for a very interesting tour, we were alarmed to see the docent repeatedly remove and exhibit many of these pieces. To be fair, he wore gloves before handling the artifacts, but even I know that these things aren't going to last with repeated daily handling. They really need to be properly preserved and displayed.

There's a wonderful quilt on one of the beds which had been donated to the president by a women's suffrage group. The names of the women in the group that sent it had been embroidered on the quilt, but the ink had faded over time. Our docent said that he had seen his former supervisor actually darkening the names with a magic marker! He questioned whether this was a good idea, and his supervisor stopped, leaving the quilt half "magic marker restored." Perhaps they should have found a college with a history department to administer this collection! Help! They need your donations!

More US presidents have come from Ohio than any other state: William Henry Harrison, US Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding. Harding was 55 years old when he entered the White House in March 1921, with Calvin Coolidge as his vice president. President Harding died in office in 1923, 29 months into his first term as president. In his short time as president, Harding reduced the federal deficit by 25%. He took a trip by train and boat across the country to see the new Alaskan territory. During his return visit he became ill and died of an apparent heart attack.

Columbus, OH

May 24 - May 28, 2012

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Columbus, OH visiting Rick's son Mark and his wife Cristin. We stayed at a campground about 20 miles away in Delaware, OH. It's a pretty decent place, but it was absolutely packed with families and their RV's intent on kicking off the summer with a bang. It wasn't exactly a quiet and peaceful campground, especially because, you guessed it, there were trains running nearby, every hour or two,all night long! Ohio's experiencing a heatwave; it's cooler at home in Florida than it is here right now. But that hasn't stopped the Memorial Day revellers from sitting around their campfires each evening. We like a campfire as much as the next camper, but this is ridiculous. The air is so heavy with smoke that we were convinced that the smoke alarm was going to go off in our RV. (It didn't.)

While Mark and Cristin were working on Friday we visited the Olentangy Indian Caves. These small but interesting caves were used by local Indians and later as a hideout by outlaws.

Later we met Mark and Cristin for dinner at Rick's 2nd favorite restaurant in the world: Schmidt's Sausage House, a wonderful German restaurant in the German district of Columbus.

On Saturday, Rick's brother Mike brought his daughter Simran to the campground. Mark and Cristin joined us along with their dogs Chip and Tater. They brought their grill, some food, and we had a Memorial Day cookout along with the masses at the campground. There's nothing better than celebrating the holidays with family.

It was yellow shirts and khaki shorts day.

On Sunday we went to the movies with Mark and Cristin and saw the Hunger Games. I've never read the books, but really enjoyed the movie. Later we had dinner with Cristin's family at another local restaurant, Montgomery Grill. Before we went to dinner we met at Cristin's sister's house for drinks and appetizers and worried about what effect hurricaine Beryl would have on our home in FL. (See weather map on tv in picture!) Good thing we put the hurricaine shutters up before we left.

We leave in the morning for Elkhart, Indiana.