May 30 - Lighthouses and Lake Michigan

May 30 - Lighthouses and Lake Michigan

Today was a leisurely drive headed west on Route 2 through Michigan and into a tiny piece of Wisconsin. Lake Michigan is VAST with few people in small towns. All I can think of is how much snow and ice they must get in the winter. We are on Route 2 having left St.Ignace, stopping at a lot of state rest stops to walk. At first I thought the columns of something dark rising up out of the woods were smoke plumes. Discovered they weren't when one descended upon us and turned out to be about a bazillion bugs/gnats. It was actually hard to breath for a few seconds. Didn't bite, just wandered off. Later we saw what looked like a flying black ball right ahead of us. It was more bugs. You can imagine what the front nose of the TC looks like.

The sand beaches of Lake Michigan are powder like from being pounded against a somewhat rocky coast. It's not like our granite in Maine but the beach is not hard packed.



Very hard to walk in as you sink ankle deep but the view out over the water was worth it. Lots of little towns along Route 2 where many businesses are closed. We even saw what looked like a new Hilton Inn that was closed with tall weeds all around.

Got off Route 2 Cooks, MI right on Lake Michigan and took a tiny road out to Nahma. I don't think an A class RV could have gone down that road. We picked up hot pasty and ate by the water. Can it get any better than this? For those of you who don't know (and we didn't), a pasty is a meat pie with a meat, potato, carrot, rice and onion in all enclosed in a flaky crust. I asked for a small and the lady laughed. They only make one size and they weigh about a pound. We split one and didn't fight over the last bite, we were full. Recipes for the Michigan version here - [url=http://www.absolutemichigan.com/dig/michigan/real-michigan-food-the-]Michigan pasty[/url]

We next headed to Escanaba for the Sand Point Lighthouse and Museum. Very good local museum with history of how the huge logs were moved out of the woods to ships in the winter. Basically they made an ice road and skidded them out. Joe enjoyed talking to another retired Coast Guardsman while I climbed the lighthouse for the view. The wind off the lake is so cold you expect to see icebergs any minute. Wonder if it ever warms up?







Last time I got on a bicycle (Tall Pines) I took a most ungraceful fall. Joe thought I should get on this one. HA!



A bit further west in Iron Mountain was a mining museum we had planned to see. However, the view was so beautiful over the lake, we headed south from the lighthouse down through Ford River and Cedar River eventually cutting north again to rejoin Route 2 and enter WI. There is a tiny piece of WI that sticks up into MI and we'll get to claim it as a state we have camped in. We're at a small campground in Florence, WI - $12 for the night with water, electricity, laundry and WiFi! We are finding almost no one in the state parks yet. Schools still in and it is a bit nippy.

Mostly sunny day, very windy and the TC rocked quite a bit. We got to show off the Host to a group of ATVers who had stopped at the National Forest center in Florence, WI. They were on a week tent camping trip on the ATV trails and looked pretty longingly at the TC. Joe could not convince one of them that a dual slide TC was too heavy for his F150. It's always fun to show someone a TC who had never been in one before.

Tomorrow we head to Superior, WI. We found two state parks with high waterfalls and good walking trails near there. We'll camp at one of them. There is also a WWII museum that looks pretty interesting. Ever westward!