Welcome to day 4 of my 'trying-to-catch-up-on-summer blog!
The day we left St Ignace was a very grey, foggy and rainy one, which made me pretty nervous since that day we had to 'conquer' the famous Mackinac Bridge, aka 'Big Mac' or 'Mighty Mac'.
This 5 mile long suspension bridge, opened in 1957 and spanning the Straits of Mackinac to connect the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of the U.S. state of Michigan is currently the third longest in the world.
RV's are charged $5 per axle to cross, which came to $25 in our case, and have to stick to a 25 mile speed limit, which makes for a slooow crossing ...
When the weather is real bad, high winds or snow or sleet, you'll be escorted to the other side and if you don't trust yourself with heights you can even hire a chauffeur who'll drive your RV for you.
James of course had no such problems at all and before I could even think about it too much we were on and over,' none the worse for wear', as they say. Phew!
Our destination for that day was another casino, the Odawa, in Petoskey. Rather peculiar looking, won't you say?
Another parking lot, and this time without any hookups, but we're not complaining if you can stay for free!
They even had an on-call shuttle service going from the parking lot to the casino. Casinos are smart that way!
Since we were nice and early we drove to town after lunch, to do some exploring.
Petosky is a coastal resort community, situated on beautiful Little Traverse Bay, and known for it's fresh air, beach-vibe and Michigan's State Stone, the Petoskey Stone.
Several other waterfront communities are in the area, making it a very popular and busy weekend get-away and vacation area.
We ended up at the beautiful waterfront park and it's pretty marina and sea-wall.
The weather had improved greatly and we took a short walk down the Little Traverse Wheelway, a beautiful walk, bicycle and rollerskating trail that follows the bay and runs from Harbor Springs to Charlevoix.
The water was still a little 'choppy' ...
The next day we left early and drove north along the bay, to the tiny town of Harbor Springs, where we succumbed to coffee and donuts at Johan's Pastries.
The narrow winding road runs 20 miles along a spectacular bluff overlooking Lake Michigan whith several sharp twist along the way.
When you finally emerge from the trees in Cross Village, you'll run into the funky Leggs Inn restaurant, named for the cast iron stove legs that adorn the roof ’s rail.
Unfortunately it was closed when we were there.
We took a shortcut back to Petoskey, that, as many presumed short ones, turned out to be a long-cut ... oh well.
Later that day we went for a lazy afternoon drive and visited Charlevoix, another cute, bay-side town, one of the many in this area.
See, 'everflowing waters' ...
It was nice to be able to hook 'everything' up again, that is, electric and water only, since there was no sewer.
Fortunately we have a large black tank so we can do without for a while.
This campground was in a pretty rural area, about 6 miles from Traverse City surrounded by the nice Michigan countryside.
We'd picked the area due to it's closeness to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, that comes highly recommended in any tourist brochure as a place to visit.
Which we did:
The parks main features are the immense sand dunes for which it is named and a wide variety of roads and trails and viewing points take you all over this 35 mile stretch of coastline and it's interior meadows, wetlands and bogs.
We picked a few of the 'must-see' spots as there is only so much you can see in a day.
First we drove to Glenn haven, situated on the beautiful Lake- shore :
And visited the historic restored little village, which is a step in time when these villages supplied fuel to steamers along the Great Lakes.
We stopped for a little in the blacksmith shop, 'manned' by two female blacksmiths!
We also visited the nearby, and very interesting, Maritime Museum:
Next we drove over to the 'Dune Climb'.
I have no clue why the colors in this pic came out so different?
Climbing this dune is apparently a must, so we went for it.
Taking it slow, it's not as bad as it seems and the view from the top is fantastic!
Additionally, at the top, you can than proceed to take a hike through the dunes all the way to Lake Michigan which takes about 3 to 4 hours.
We made an attempt but quickly gave up, it was warm and that loose sand is very tiring!
Glen Lake and the parking area from the top of the Dune Climb.
And arrived at the entrance of the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive.
If you don't have time, or are not able, to do anything else in this park, this drive with it's many viewing points, shows you almost everything worth seeing!
A covered bridge welcomes you to the drive.
The 7.4 mile drive loops through Beech-Maple forest and sand dunes and provides insight to the history and vegetation of the area by means of numerous information boards.
Best of all, it has spectacular overlooks of the Glen Lakes, the Sleeping Bear Dunes, and Lake Michigan.
Big and Little Glen Lake
Views of the inland dunes area
The observation deck at the Lake Michigan Overlook is about 450 feet above the lake level, and the angle to the lake is very steep. The dunes are perched on top of a moraine bluff made of a mixture of rocks and sand deposited by the glacier when it melted.
Fair warning!
Yowser! That's one steep dune dude!
And the last overlook towards the end of the drive:
The small lake below is North Bar Lake. The name describes how the lake formed: it is pond-ed behind a sand bar.
At times, the sand bar builds up and separates North Bar Lake from Lake Michigan. At other times, a small connecting channel exists between the two lakes.
Wow, that was some day, but what a gorgeous Park! It will be hard to beat this one!
We had the most beautiful weather too, not too warm, not too cold. Some days come out just perfect, don't they?
But no time to get too comfortable here, forward we will go!
Ludington, another lakeside harbor town, was our next destination.
We'd 'tentavely' booked a site at the Mason County Campground, just 5 minutes south of town.
Fortunately the site was available and this one was another beauty! Electric only, but a huge corner lot, in the middle of nature. Works for us!
We had no specific sightseeing to do in this area, but, once again, needed to bide some time to arrive outside the weekend at our next Passport America campground in Grand Haven.
Reason enough to take it easy, sit back and relax or check out town when we felt like it.
Located on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Pere Marquette River tourists come here for the beach, for swimming, fishing and boating and the Ludington State Park, just north of town.
We took a walk along the beach and 'got our feet wet'. The water was actually not very cold at all!
Talking about getting your feet wet! Look at the seize of these!
That evening James 'Bunyan' made a fire and we roasted hot dogs and warmed some baked beans for happy hour.
Happy hour indeed, summer at it's best!
Yeah, another blog finished! Only one more to go and I'm, kind-a, current ...
See you tomorrow!
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