Our visit to northern Michigan was a busy one. We spent the first week at an RV campground in Indian River to use as our base for visiting the Sault Ste Marie and Petoskey areas. The park was a very fun place for families with young children to camp. It's a really popular park, and the campers and tents are packed in for the weekends.
We do prefer to 'RV' rather than 'camp', but if the park includes 'campground' in its name, which this one did, then we consider ourselves forewarned that there will likely be lots of campfires and smoke...and there were. And the trees were plentiful, giving us lots of nice shade, not to mention lots of satellite-searching angst for one of us (you guess which one). The other one of us said, so cavalierly, "Maybe we should just try to go without TV for a week, dear". The satellite searcher did not agree, to say the least. The cavalier one just calmly shook her head thinking this would not be so bad. We could try to actually 'camp' for a week. How bad can that be? It would probably actually be fun. Come on, let's try it!......That is, until it was discovered that we may not have internet, either! "What? No, no, no, no! We can't live like this! How can we live like this?" So there you have it, we admit that we are hopelessly dependent on technology, and are definitely NOT campers. In the end, we were able to pick up one satellite for TV and a very slow internet connection, so we survived the week.
The state of Michigan has established an impressive system of trails throughout the state that are open to hiking, biking, and snowmobiling. One of these trails, the North Central State Trail, runs from Gaylord to Mackinaw City, and has an access point adjacent to the campground. We took advantage of it on our daily walks, and enjoyed the section that runs right next to Mullett Lake.
Our first outing was to Mackinac Island. We took the ferry out of Mackinaw City and arrived in its world of horses and bicycles, no motorized vehicles allowed. Even the trash pickup rounds are done with horse and cart. The island is lovely with Victorian-style houses, flower boxes and beds overflowing with colorful blooms. The downtown area is awash with souvenir shops interspersed with fudge and ice cream venues. It was a very warm day that we were there, so we decided against renting bicycles; we plan to go back some day and stay for a weekend so we can enjoy riding around and exploring the island more. The warmth of the day also contributed to one of the distractions from the beauty--horses have their own brand of emissions, and you do have to watch where you step. We took lots of pictures while there, but we've again lost a batch that included them.
We drove up to Sault Ste. Marie to see the Soo Locks. While we were there, a large freighter passed through the locks upbound from Lake Huron to Lake Superior.
After leaving the locks, we drove through the eastern fringes of the Upper Peninsula, up to Whitefish Point. Besides an operating lighthouse, there is a Shipwreck Museum there. One of their prize exhibits is the actual bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald that was recovered from the wreckage just 17 miles from Whitefish Point. When the original bell was recovered, a replica with the crew's names engraved was lowered into the wreckage where it remains.
Petoskey sits on Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan. The drive from Bay View with its old Victorian houses through Petoskey with its marinas to Bay Shore with its upscale shopping is very picturesque. We stopped at a small cafe in Petoskey for lunch the day we made the drive.
After a week camped in Indian River, we moved the RV to Williamsburg which is just outside Traverse City. That served as our base for exploring the Traverse Bay area and Sleeping Bear Dunes. For the first time in several months, we found a park that is truly an RV Resort. We enjoyed the spacious paved and concrete sites, the lovely landscaped grounds, and the fitness room. We also took advantage of the complimentary bicycles available for use at any time.
The first thing we chose to do while there was to drive along Old Mission Peninsula which is home to seven wineries. We visited three of them, and bought samplings from each one. The views from some of them are really pretty, overlooking the East Arm and West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay.
Next we headed out to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. We took a 1.5 mile hike up the Empire Bluff Trail. At the end of the trail we were rewarded with a view of Lake Michigan and the beginnings of the dunes.
After the hike, we took the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive to get an upclose view of the Sleeping Bear Dunes. The drive is a 7.4 drive with 12 viewing stops along the way. The most impressive stop was #10 where you can stand on top of a 450' dune.
The little dark specks in the picture above are people climbing the 450' up the dune. We didn't attempt this. Maybe if we come back someday, we'll try it. Our next stop is Hopkins in southwestern Michigan. It isn't too far from Kalamazoo!
