Points East

The final days of our Summer has taken us through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut on our way back to the Greater Boston area and our family. Cedar Point Ohio was two wet and wild days. The first evening we went into the park’s pool, which was a bit cool for our tastes, so mostly we were in the Jacuzzi. The next day we went to the water attraction at the amusement park, Soak City. We splurged on a cabana for relaxing and then jumped into the wave pool. Geoff immediately sat down in his tube, was hit by a wave, and flipped right over backward. Ouch! He was ok but was more cautious after that and we enjoyed the waves with the tubes around our waves.

After getting some lunch brought to our cabana, we headed for the main thing we wanted to do, the lazy river, where you just float around a stream on a tube. However, we didn’t plan that, since it was approaching the end of the season and the crowds were getting smaller, that some of the attractions would be closed. Oops. So we had to settle for the other river attraction, which has a stronger current, more water falling from above, and a wave action part. It was OK and we enjoyed it, going around 4 times total, once together in one double tube. It was fun and very refreshing. The day was the best we could have hoped for. You did not get cold coming out of the water without a towel and there was not a cloud in the sky, but you could still sit in the shade and feel refreshed, since the humidity was very low.

In the evening we walked out onto the beach. It was nice but the wind was kind of high on Lake Erie and there were some pretty good waves.

From there, we drove an hour and a half to Main Line Truck and Trailer south of Cleveland where we had an appointment to finish the muffler job on our motor home. We had most of the parts but there was one the place in Grand Rapids had said they could not get. Geoff had called ahead the part number and they had ordered it but, we got a surprise. One, the part was not what Geoff had been told it was in GR, plus, there was one of those parts already in the box of parts we had brought, and it was a part that did not need to be replaced. Ugh! But that was not the worst news. It turns out that the muffler was not the only thing that needed to be replaced. The exhaust manifold, where the exhaust exits the engine, was cracked nearly in two. We ended up spending the night in their parking lot (where a thunderstorm blew through that night) and they got the new part the next day for installation. A more extensive repair job than we had planned.

The original plan was for us to go into Cleveland while the muffler job was done and visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We had been there many years ago with Logan and Brian (likely in 1993 during our trip around the country but it may have been a few years before that on the way to visit Geoff’s parents in Michigan). So there were a lot more inductees in the hall since the last time we had been there. It is a lot to see in one day, as there are nearly 3 hours of videos playing throughout the hall. One of the non-R&R highlights was sitting on the patio outside the café overlooking Lake Erie and the harbor of Cleveland. The longest and perhaps most interesting movie was one highlighting all 27 years of inductees (up to 2013. The 2014 inductees had their own video).

The next day, while they did the additional work on the RV, we took Jordy with us and went to the nearby town of Chagrin Falls, which had been suggested by the tech doing the work on the rig. He said it was dog friendly and had lots of nice restaurants. We also were in search of some better cell coverage than we had in their lot. We sat in a nice little park not far from the falls and tried to keep Jordy from being too territorial while we played on our devices. Then we searched out a nice restaurant with sidewalk seating and enjoyed a nice lunch. We walked around the town and looked in a few shops before returning to our car and the shop to find the RV ready for travel. After settling our bill and making arrangement to return the parts not needed to the Grand Rapids Cumins dealer, we hooked up the car and started the trek east.

After about 5 hours, we were ready to hunker down for the night and finish the trip to Connecticut the next day. This put us back to our original schedule, which was to arrive in Salem Mass on Friday. There we will be spending a couple of weeks and celebrating our Grandson’s first Birthday on September 15th before heading south toward our winter home in Sarasota Florida.

Great Lakes Lighthouses 2014

Lighthouses we have seen this summer along the Great Lakes. Hover the mouse over each to see the lake where it is located.

Old Mackinac Point Light

St. Ignace Light	Plum Island Light	Eagle Bluff Light
Grand Island East Channel	Manistique Light	Cedar Point Light
Straits of Mackinac Light	St. Joseph Lights	Whitefish Point Light
Chicago Harbor Light	Cana Island Light	Copper Harbor Light
Eagle Harbor Light White River Light Station	South Haven Light	Bailey’s Harbor Front Range
Muskegon Harbor Lights	Round Island Light	Bailey’s Harbor Rear Range

Campgrounds 2014

Here are pictures of many of the campgrounds we have stayed at this summer. Hover the mouse pointer over each to see the date we stayed there and click on the picture to see a map of the campground location.

Croton Point	Normandy Farms	Winter Island
Waterloo Harbor	Bronte Creek PP	Algonac SP
Covert KOA	Hollywood Casino	Arlington Heights
River Park	U.P. Fairgrounds	City of Houghton
City of Munising	Straits SP	Camp Pet-O-Se-Ga
Bay City Recreation Area	Sleepy Hollow SP	Detroit-Greenfield RV Park
Duck Creek RV Resort	Lake Side Camp Park	Lighthouse Point

Muskegon and Grand Rapids

Our last two stops in Michigan. It has been a wonderful summer, full of sunny, but not too hot, weather. We saw lots of interesting things and camped in quite a variety of campgrounds, from rustic with dirt roads and only electric service to concrete pads and full hook ups. We have visited with friends and family in just about every place we have stopped. We have even parked the RV is some of their driveways. We have eaten in very few chain restaurants and tried to stick mainly to the local eateries. We have visited 19 Great Lakes lighthouses and taken 4 boat tours/ferry rides. We’ve spent time on four of the Great Lakes, so far, and will be camping on the shores of Lake Erie on the way back to Boston to round it out. This summer has been a lot more traveling around and visiting more places than last year but not as much as 2012 when we went to Alaska. So far, nearly 5000 miles have been put on the RV with another 1200 to go, compared to less than 5000 last summer and over 16000 in 2012.

Muskegon has been more laid back for us, partially due to Ellyn’s foot injury, but also because the resort we are staying at is so nice, sometimes we have just lazed around here instead of going out. We did drive into Muskegon to the beach in the evening our first night here and arrived just in time for the sunset. One day we went to White Hall and Montague. Ellyn had seen an ad for an estate sale where the person had been a crafter and sewer so she picked up some materials and other things for her future projects. We also saw the “World’s Largest Weather Vane” which is debatable, since we supposedly saw the same thing in White Horse, Yukon two years ago.

On Sunday, we went to dinner at a place near the channel that runs between Muskegon Lake and Lake Michigan. After we walked on the pier and took pictures of the lighthouses and the coast guard station. Ellyn struck up a conversation with a guy who saw she was looking up cargo ships on the app on her phone. It turns out he tracks lots of the ships in and out of Muskegon and he said that a ship was coming in on Monday with a load of wind turbine blades. So, on Monday, after lunch, we went to where the ship was docked as indicated on Ellyn’s app and we watched them getting the blades off the ship. Unfortunately, they seemed to run into some problems and, although we hung around for more than 2 hours, we didn’t see a single blade unloaded. We did see some which had already been unloaded to trucks placed on the pier. We also got to observe some monarch butterflies which were around milkweed plants in the area.

On Tuesday we moved on to Grand Rapids. We stopped by the Cummins Bridgeway to have them look at our muffler, which has rusted out. We also have an appointment at Midway RV to have them replace two of our leveling jacks which do not retract properly. Then we went to Lakeside Camp Park in Cedar Springs. We stayed here for 2 weeks with Mom in 2009 while we were cleaning out her house in Grand Rapids and putting it up for sale. Then we stopped here for two nights in 2011 after the Spartan Rally and before going to Midland to see Ellyn’s friend Debbie. The noise from the highway can be loud but there is a nice little lake and the people are nice here. We had dinner with Jerry and Marilyn, people we were camped next to in 2009. They are not at the park any longer but live close by.

The primary reason for coming here is so Ellyn can attend the AQS show. She went to this quilting show when it was in Des Moines, Iowa in 2012 as we made our way back from Alaska. She bought her first really nice sewing machine then. Geoff is hoping she doesn’t find one she likes better this time.

On Thursday we got the jacks replaced and on Sunday, when we retract them, we will know if the work was worthwhile and if we can stop totting around an eight-foot 2x4. However, we also got the bad news that not all of the parts to fix the muffler were able to be received in time to do the repair here in Grand Rapids, so that is getting pushed out to Cleveland. On Tuesday, we will take the RV to a repair place there, drop it off, go site seeing around Cleveland, and then come back and camp in their lot over night before heading out. We will likely take in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Our last day in Grand Rapids was also the last one for the AQS show. Ellyn had a class in the morning and then we both took in the quilt show. There is one particularly large quit there which is touring the world known as the Quilt of Belonging. It has sections depicting every country of the world from which people have emigrated to Canada, as well as every indigenous tribe of Canada.

In the afternoon, we traveled north to Evart, Michigan to visit with Geoff’s Uncle Dick and Aunt Thelma. We had a really nice visit and went through a bunch of pictures that Geoff’s Cousin Jill had given him at the reunion. We also showed them pictures we had taken at the reunion as well as ones we took at Mom’s 90th birthday. Uncle Dick is the only other surviving sibling of Mom’s family.

Next, Cedar Point and the final Great Lakes stop on our tour, Lake Erie.