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.

Ann Arbor and Vicinity

Another corner of Lower Michigan was our target as we begin to wind down our travels. We parked at the Detroit Greenfield RV Park, which is an old KOA campground. We arrived in the rain and the roads throughout are dirt, so there was mud all over to maneuver Jordy around on his walks. We got in fairly early because it was a sort drive from Bay City. We decided to find a movie we wanted to see so we went to “Boyhood”. It was entertaining, although Ellyn seemed to like the acting better than Geoff did. The movie was shot over a period of nine years and all the actor actually grew older during the movie, rather than using make up tricks and multiple actors for the children. It was done very well.

One interesting thing that happened was that the theater had a brief power outage about 3/4 of the way through. It worked out well for us because we were able to take a bathroom break while they got the projectors back up and running. It was a long movie and we had a lot of soda. Also, it seems there was a very active storm system which went through, because there was reports of flooding in parts of Detroit around the same time period we were in the theater. We were unaware of it until the next day when the news was covering it.

On the second day, we visited with friends of ours from Sun’N’Fun, Diana and Clyde, at their home in Ann Arbor. I say they are Sun’N’Fun people but that was in the past, as they will be moving on to another RV park this winter. They did not utilize the activities in the park as much as we do so the cost was not worth it for them. We should still be able to see them as they will be a bit south of Sarasota. They took us to one of their favorite places, Zingerman’s Deli. We had a great lunch and then walked around some of the shops while more rain fell in the area. Then we went back to their house and played a new game we just started playing…Tenzi. We played and talked for quite a while until we had to get back to the RV and tend to Jordy. We are lucky that he is very patient while we go on these outings.

On the third day, we visited the Henry Ford Museum. We had been to Greenfield village many years ago but this was our first time in the museum. There is really a lot of stuff there and we were not able to see all of it because they had suffered some flooding due to the heavy rains two days before. Some of the exhibits were closed. We saw an Imax film on Jerusalem and spent most of the afternoon in the museum. Then we visited with one of Geoff’s friends from MTU and his wife, Ken and Josie and went to dinner with them. It was a nice finish to our visit in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area.

So the next day, we had to back-track a bit on our way to our next stop on Lake Michigan, near Muskegon. Ellyn had to go back to the dentist in Midland to get a filling put in on the tooth she had root canal work on when we were up there. The good news, it was really quick, less than 1/2 hour to do. The bad news, we had to be there by 9:45 AM and it was 2 1/2 hours from Ann Arbor. We hate early mornings.

Additionally, Ellyn twisted her foot getting into the car after visiting with Ken and Josie and so she wanted to see an orthopedist while we were in Midland, but she needed a referral and we didn’t think it was bad enough to go to an emergency room. So we went to an urgent care clinic. They x-rayed it and found no broken bones. A prescription for a pain killer and an ace bandage later, and then lunch, and off on the 3 plus hour trip to Muskegon.