Big Kids in Cedar Point

22nd -25th Aug: Days 136 – 139

We left Detroit (and Michigan finally) under a dark cloud of a threatened storm that we never materialised. We were a bit sorry to leave this fine state, but not sorry to leave the terrible roads of Detroit. Ironic that a city built on the back of the motoring industry and which boasts that it had the world’s first section of paved road (1 mile of the aforementioned Woodward Ave in 1909) Should have such awful, awful, awful awful road surfaces. Big Dave’s suspension was challenged by the ridges and potholes and it was a sweet moment when we passed over the state line into Ohio and the tarmac was instantly smooth as.

Our time in Ohio was to be a short but very focused 3 nights and 2 days at the Mecca for all that is fun, fast, high and upside down. Cedar Point Amusement Park. It sits at the end of a spit of land that juts out into Lake Erie at a place called Sandusky and it bills itself as the ‘Roller Coaster Capital Of The World’. And you know, I think it is probably right. It has 17 roller coasters, 5 of which are taller than 200ft, (one is 420ft and another is 310ft), one of the fastest accelerating coasters in the world, the tallest and fastest ‘dive’ coaster in the world and they are building another one which is going to be the biggest and fastest and longest in the whole damn universe. Yes.

Anyhow, a long time ago, Nick, the self confessed ‘Coaster Coward’ decided that we needed to visit this place of hedonism and adrenaline to ‘cure himself’ of his fear of heights. So he had booked us into the on-site RV park for 3 nights and bought us 2-day passes to the amusement park.  Our site was close enough that we could hear the screams…and easily walk to the entrance gate.

We had an amazing 2 days. We walked miles up and down searching the shortest queues. We rode all the big ones bar one (which was unfortunately closed) and some of the smaller ones. We really didn’t have to spend along time waiting for any of the rides, which was cool. We (ok, mainly I) screamed my head off. Repeatedly. We wasted money in the arcades. We ate ice cream. We people watched, a lot. Main observation: there sure is a whole heap of ‘active wear’ being worn by minimally active people. Apparently wearing close fitting stretchy clothing is essential to sit in a chair and travel at speed.

The favourite ride? Top Thrill Dragster.  A 0-120mph in 3.9 s acceleration then straight up, and then straight down. 17s of adrenaline The only one we did twice.

Here is us ‘enjoying’ it!

I spent much of the time having fun through a haze of mild vestibular labrynthitis, (hoorah for stemetil), and Nick now considers himself cured of his fear of heights (a bit).

 

 

Motown

19th – 22nd Aug: Days 133 – 136

This trip so far has mainly been about small towns, open roads, parks and lakes. Since we left Seattle the biggest urban area we had visited was probably Boise, Idaho but Nick had a hankering to visit Detroit. He loves a bit of industrial chic and urban decay, and of course it is a pilgrimage destination for the car nut.

As point of interest the Detroit Metro area has only slightly fewer inhabitants than the whole of NZ. You might not be surprised to hear that there are no RV parks in downtown or metro Detroit, so a visit was potentially going to be a little difficult. Happily, however, we had met Todd and Keta in Copper Harbour last month and they were kind enough to invite us to stay, offering us a very exclusive and upscale RV parking spot on their driveway in Shelby Township, a suburb about 20 miles from the centre of Detroit. The closer we got to the city the faster and more aggressive the driving became. Obviously our earlier observations of courteous American drivers was not applicable to all freeway drivers in cities. We white-knuckled-it, google-mapped-it and arrived in one piece mid afternoon on Saturday. The one thing that we had planned for our visit was for the four of us to go and watch a baseball game the next day, the Detroit Tigers were playing the LA Dodgers. Unbeknown to us however, there was a Detroit annual highlight afoot: The Woodward Dream Cruise. This is a week-long classic car event which culminates in an evening of all-comers street cruising in classic and notable cars and trucks. Folks with cool cars, fast cars, rare cars, old cars, new cars, loud cars, modified cars all come out and cruise the city, based around the long 4 lane Woodward road which divides Detroit into East and West. More than a million people come out to watch, either sitting on the road sides in camping chairs with coolers loaded with food and beer, parked up with their own old classics for others to admire up close, or like us, cruising with Family Thelan in their truck in the most tolerable traffic jam ever, surrounded by automotive eye and ear candy. A real treat and about as Detroit an experience as you can get.

We forgot to take any photos, so here is a stock photo, and a link for the fellow car-aholics.

http://www.detroitnews.com/autos/woodward-dream-cruise

The next day we had another truely Detroit-ian experience. BBQ for brunch at ‘Slows’, another Man Vs Food food joint. Slightly heavier than our usual 11am fayre, but the kilos of meat would see us through the baseball game which started at 1pm.

We had accessorised for our baseball experience with Detroit baseball hats, but on arrival at the ballpark I felt I needed a big orange foam Tiger Claw/Paw. It was a brilliantly sunny day and hotter than Hades. We got a handle on the rules of the game and sat through 5 innings with no score whilst we slowly cooked in the baking heat. We decided to take a break from the sun and decamped to an air-conditioned bar for a drink. This half an hour coincided almost exactly with pretty much all the scores in the game. Typical. But the good news was that the Tigers won and the crowd was happy.  We had a great afternoon, but like cricket, baseball can be a little dull.

We headed home via the sights of Detroit. It is a city that has been on it’s knees, but there is a lot of regeneration and it definitely has a buzz about it again.

That evening we were assimilated into a family birthday gathering. Keta’s family all live nearby and have a Sunday evening meal together 3 out of 4 weeks. This week it was at Todd and Keta’s place and we were celebrating Todd and his brother-in law’s birthdays which were the next day. There was a huge amount of food, and I hadn’t really digested my BBQ brunch yet. Luckily we only had a short distance to roll home and I have come to the conclusion that camping in a fully self contained camper on your hosts’ driveway is a perfect way to be a houseguest.

We headed off the next morning, next stop being the Henry Fort Museum in Dearborn about 30 miles away on the other side of the city. It is not just a car museum, but also a homage to American Innovation in general. It needs more than a day to get around all the different areas and due to the continuing lack of RV parks we booked a night in a Comfort Inn just up the road with a free shuttle to the museum. We abandoned TC and Big Dave in a corner of the carpark with our overnight stuff packed into into reusable shopping bags and headed off in the shuttle to the museum.  It really is epic. A huge collection of all that is American style, commercial and domestic invention and, of course, the history of the automobile industry. Henry Ford built an empire in Dearborn and you don’t just see this here, you feel it.  Monday 21st August was also eclipse day and this area had an 85% eclipse. We were armed with the natty specs, and interrupted our museum tour for half an hour to sit on the lawn and experience the slight twilight, happy to be far away from the madness of the ‘totality zone’.

The next day we did a tour visiting ‘The Rouge’, the original Ford plant that is still well and truely in business. The area that the tour visits assembles the bodywork of the F150 truck. This is the automotive workhorse of the American people and at its height was selling one unit PER SECOND in the USA. It was really interesting to watch the assembly line in action, matching up the right cabs, doors and beds. Poetry in motion and surprisingly quiet and clean.

The 3rd part of the complex that we visited was Greenfield Village. A fake historic village with a collection of relocated historic houses and buildings, a steam railway and a craft area. Not particularly interesting to us after all the previous stuff we had seen, so we left town before the forecast storm hit.

 

 

Saugatuck

12th – 19th Aug: Days 126 – 133

Yup. Still in Michigan.

Back, back, back in the midsts of time (April), when we were staying with Dean and Lori in Seattle, kitting out the Tin Can and starting to formulate our route, they expressed an interest in coming and finding us somewhere along the way.  They weren’t fussy when or where, but we agreed it should be a summery spot somewhere that they hadn’t been before.  This was a fairly broad remit on the location front as they are ‘coasters’, have done a lot of flying over the States but not so many touch-downs. We settled on a small town called Saugatuck, on the lower west coast of the lower Michigan peninsula.

 

Reasons for this:

  • We were vaguely heading this way.
  • Oval Beach, Saugatuck’s beach on the shores of Lake Michigan has been voted in the top 25 beaches in the world by Conde Nast, and the 2nd best freshwater beach in the USA by Nat Geo Traveller.
  • It is a very cool, lakeside town full of galleries, eateries, safe cycling and water sportsy things to do.
  • It was reasonably easy for Dean and Lori to get to from Seattle (Just a 4 hour flight and a 3 hour train ride…I did say reasonably)
  • Sarah McWilliams recommended it. (Good call, McWilly)

Although they are good friends, sharing the Tin Can for a week was not a realistic option, so we splurged and rented a holiday home. A week in a real house which didn’t sway in the wind, with proper sewers, cupboards and showers. Bliss.

We arrived on Saturday, but the Seattle contingent didn’t get in til Monday evening. This gave us a couple of days to ourselves to get the lie of the land, do some shopping for provisions and generally veg out. We deposited the Tin Can onto the driveway, pulled out the slides and ‘Voila!‘, the biggest suitcase known to humanity. We hadn’t specifically requested permission to park the camper on the property and during the week we had an email from our landlord saying that he had been informed of its presence by a neighbour and he wanted to check that it wasn’t drawing too much power if it was plugged in. Reassuringly, small towns and twitching curtains are the same all over the world.

The house was about 100m from the lake and cycling the lakeshore road was an amazing opportunity to oogle some fairly impressive homes. The road cut between the houses on one side and the cliff top lawns with sunset watching spots on the lake side. Most of them had steps leading down to private beaches. Very nice.

We had a great week, cycling into and around Saugatuck, stopping in at galleries, shops and craft breweries. We rode the chain ferry across the river, (this is hand cranked by high school seniors as a holiday job), had a day sitting on the famous beach*, swam in the lake (which was beautifully warm and clear) and walked in the nearby Saugatuck Dunes State Park.

We did this on a windy day and the resulting waves limited the width of the beach quite considerably- occasionally to zero ft and wet up to the knees.

We had an evening out at a diner which had its own bowling alley (I only fell over once-boy, those shoes are slippy) and had a great few evenings at home (We now have serious BBQ envy). We even had a team outing to the laundromat. (The good times roll in all sorts of places). We saw lots of deer wandering through the neighbourhood (one was just chilling out in our front garden one day) and more magical fireflies at dusk.

So after much food, a reasonable amount of gin and tonic, plenty of good cheer and hours of marauding around on bikes like a gang of neighbourhood kids, it was time for our holiday-within-a-holiday to come to an end. We loaded TC up, packed, (by packed, I mean carry armfuls of possessions back into Tin Can.), jammed Dean and Lori and their bags into the back seats, and set off to Grand Rapids to drop them at the airport for their trip back West.

Next stop Detroit.

 

 

 

 

Coastguard City USA and a haircut.

8th – 12th Aug: Days 122 -126

We slipped south again to spend 4 days in another lovely coastal town called Grand Haven. This is known as ‘Coastguard City USA’ which is a little bizarre seeing this is a lakeshore town, not a coastal town. We missed the town’s annual week-long fiesta of ‘Coastguard Week’ by about 2 days. This was both good news and a misfortune. These events are jolly, but the crowds make life a bit less relaxed.  In the US the Coastguard is regarded as an arm of the military and federally funded, so they have some tip-top facilities.

Our site here was a ‘Resort’.  (Code for pricey) It was full of very shiny and enormous fancy motor coaches, was beautifully coiffured and well appointed with a great pool, electric gates, a gym, and was only 10 minute cycle to town. There was a State Park, which was essentially just a great sandy beach with a carpark right on the edge of town, a pier, a light house and small boat marina.  The town was quite well-to-do, without some of the posing that went on in Petoskey or Harbour Springs. It even had a Farmers Market twice a week selling actual fruit and vegetables.

Here we procured our 3rd haircuts of the trip. Important to keep looking snazzy on our travels and it gives us a tremendous opportunity to talk mercilessly about ourselves to captive hairdressers.

As usual we did some walking, biking, eating, drinking, with a bit of added loafing by the pool at camp and some loafing on the beach at the State Park. We did not avail ourselves of the gym facility.

The major excitement of our stay here was a quite short, sharp and spectacular storm that hit whilst we were having dinner at a lakeshore restaurant in town. It was a balmy humid evening and having tied up the bikes we started the evening sat out at an outdoor table, admiring the sunset. Then we admired the offshore forked lightening. Then we tolerated a light drizzle. Then not tolerating actual rain we moved inside, and just in the nick of time. Town was hit by 45mph winds, impressive lightening bombardment, thunder, hailstones and then torrential rain. We philosophically contemplated the prospects of getting home in one piece over a digestif, and then it was over. We cycled home without incident and didn’t even get wet a little bit. True story.

Our time on the west coast has been governed by the fact that from 12th August we are having a week in a holiday home in an town called Saugatuck and Dean and Lori are flying in from Seattle to join us. However accustomed we have become to living our small, mobile space and meeting new people all the time, we are really looking forward to a week on dry land with good  friends.

 

 

Frankfort and Sleeping Bear Dunes

4th – 8th Aug: Days 118 – 122

Our journey is now taking us slowly down the west coast of Lower Michigan, or the ‘mitten’ as some may call it. Apparently it is shaped a bit like a mitten. Some folk wear T-shirts with ‘Smitten With The Mitten’ written on them. In fact a lot of people wear T-shirts, sweatshirts and baseball caps proclaiming their allegiance to various places/universities/sports teams/arms of the military/the USA. It seems an important part of the national psyche to be identifiable as belonging to a particular tribe. But I digress…

The next roost for the small and exclusive tribe that is ‘The two 40-something British Kiwis who have the coolest camper in the park and intrigue their fellow RV travellers with their exotic accents and why they are not at work like normal pre-retirement age people” (Try putting that on a T-shirt) was Frankfort. Less German than in sounds and a very picturesque coastal town with a lovely main street, beach and the ubiquitous cycle trail.

Our arrival day was slightly dampened by precipitation, but after plugging in (and a set of dry clothes), we holed up and knocked off a few more episodes of Breaking Bad. Oooh, it’s getting good….

The rain went away, the sun came out and we were happy. Over the next 3 days we: cycled a lot, sat on the beach a bit, went to see the Sleeping Bear Dunes nearby, climbed the aforementioned sand dunes and generally mooched about.

The coast here is beautiful. The beaches are lovely and sandy, the small towns have a real beachy vibe and it is a thoroughly pleasant place to spend some summer days. I’m sure winter has its own charms, but less cruising around on a bike in flip-flops, I imagine.

 

 

Petoskey, MI

31st July – 4th Aug: Days 114 – 118

Nick managed the drive over the 5 mile long Mackinac Bridge without too many vertiginous histrionics, and so we left the UP and headed south west to the shores of Lake Michigan on the Lower Penisula. The UP inhabitants call themselves Yoopers, and the the dwellers of the lower half of the state’ Trolls’. Because they live under the bridge. I don’t think the lower folk like this nickname. Our drive today was a not-too-exhausting 45 miles.

Everyone that we have met, who knows this area of Michigan, has waxed lyrical about the charms of Petoskey. It is a busy and affluent little lakeside town with lots of nice shops and eateries. The money here is obvious in the cars, the boats in the marina, the well preserved late 19th C weatherboard homes and the equally well preserved ‘ladies who lunch’. (For my Kiwi readers think leaving rural Northland and arriving in Devonport.) There is a great cycle trail, a State Park with a long sandy beach and Petoskey rock.

Petoskey rock? What’s that? I hear you ask. Let me tell you a story.

About 500 million years ago, when land was sea, the only ‘lunching’ in the area was being done by invertebrates and this area was populated by corals. Sh*t happened, and the corrals died and were turned to stone. Now hunks of  fossilised coral are gleaned from local beaches, polished up and sold to tourists. So their sacrifice was not in vain.  The end.

It really is a pretty and unusual stone and I bought a piece about the size of a chicken egg as a momento. Every great road-trip needs a Pet(oskey) Rock.

Our campsite was only a few hundred metres from the cycle trail, and an easy 3 mile pedal to town, 2 mile pedal to the State Park beach and 1 mile pedal to a craft brewery. A near perfect location.  We had one gloriously hot day and headed to the beach. Lake Michigan is much warmer than Superior and we eventually had our inaugural Great Lake Swim. With the brisk on shore breeze creating quite impressive little waves it felt a lot like the Med. Until you get a faceful of fresh water, that is. Just odd.

We had a day in Petoskey by bike. Walked the streets, had amazing sandwiches from a deli where the bread was so thick and light and fluffy that it was like eating a cloud, perused the boats in the marina, and admired the beautiful lakeside homes. Another day we cycled the 6 miles to the next town, Harbour Springs. This is a smaller, quieter but prettier version of Petoskey. We spent a few hours walking the streets, admiring the boats and homes but were less impressed with the sandwiches.  The Petoskey Brewing Company, of course, also had a visit from us.

Every where is busy now. Summer holidays are in full flow and the population is in full ‘recreating’ mode. We are having to book our sites a few weeks in advance to get in where we want to be, and this has slightly changed the ‘seat-of-the-pants’ flavour of the trip. We are still only meeting American travellers and holiday makers, with even this part of the states with all its amazing lakes not seemingly a destination for fellow foreigners.

 

 

 

 

Rocks, Falls, Locks, an Island and a Mighty Bridge.

20th – 24th July: Days 103 – 107

The journey from Marquette to Munising was fairly short, but still managed to include a trip to Walmart. (We may need an intervention…) Munising is also on the south shore of Lake Superior and is a bone fide tourist trap. It’s raison d’être is as the jump-off for accessing ‘Pictured Rocks’, a portion of the lake shore which are rocky cliffs with lots of different coloured layers, eroded into some interesting formations. There are lots of companies doing sightseeing boat trips and kayak hire.  We had 3 full days here, and had booked a kayak trip for the middle day.  Our camp was a ‘family campsite’ with a pool and our site was near enough the pool that we could easily hear the happy sounds of children voices shrieking ‘Marco. Polo’ for hours on end. The children’s cycle tracks conveniently doubled up as the roads around the campsite, and some of those little humans must have rolled past hundreds of times. Shrieking. Fun times.

Our kayak trip needed a early start and we had to be at the office at 8.15 am, about 1 hour earlier than our usual current waking up time. The trip was a bit bigger than we would have liked, with 36 people in total, but the outfit was very efficient and we all had waivers signed, spray skirts and life jackets in hand, safety demo done and aboard and underway by 9.00am. It was sunny and calm, but but after the 1 hour boat trip to the Rocks, it was sunny and quite choppy. Our captain and crew decided it was too messy to do our planned route in the kayaks, so we back-tracked a bit to calmer waters. We were all loaded into our tandem vessels and set off in 3 groups, each with a guide. We had nearly 2 hours of paddling, up close to the face of the Rocks. There were some great features, beautiful colours, and we didn’t fall out once (Literally or figuratively).

The next day we braved some rain to do a couple of hikes up to waterfalls. We managed to get the truck absolutely filthy, and ended the day at the car wash.

We had 4 campfires in 4 evenings in Munising. I think I may be starting to suffer from smoke inhalation.

24th – 26th July: Days 107 – 109

Our next leg was a drive from Munising to Tahquamenon State Park, home of the Tahquamenon Falls.  The water of the river is stained brown by the tannic acid from Hemlock plants and in some places looked just like flowing molten chocolate.. The single Upper Fall is the second most voluminous vertical waterfall east of the Mississippi after only Niagara Falls. Factoid.

It is 4 miles up-river of the cascades of the Lower Falls, which is where our campsite was.  We just had 2 nights here, with a plan to do a big hike on our full day. The Upper and Lower Falls are both major tourist attractions, and most people will drive to each. There is a well trodden 4 mile hiking trail between the falls along the river and there is a shuttle that means you can opt to only do it one way. We decided to do a circuit walk which would take us along a 6 mile loop on a much more primitive trail up to the Upper Falls, then bring us back to the Lower Falls on the popular trail. We had been warned that it might be muddy in patches as there had been 10cm of rain 2 days previously. Undeterred, we packed picnic, bug spray, water and Werthers Originals and set off.  Despite the first 6 miles of trails being quite off the beaten track, they were well signposted. The muddy patches were more like small bogs/ponds and the mosquitos were the size of pigeons, but it was beautiful and peaceful, hot and sunny. We managed to jump/skirt most of the wet patches, and the 40% DEET kept the majority of the bugs away. We popped out of the wilderness into the carpark of the Upper Falls and our solitude was no more. The place was heaving. We dodged the crowds, oooh-ed and aaah-ed at the Falls, and set off down the river track back towards home again. The Lower Falls were less dramatic, but very pretty. It was a great day: 10.5 miles walked, tired legs, but feet intact and a warm fuzzy feeling of achievement. (Best appreciated after a shower with the first cold beer).  We sat out around the fire again, packed up as much as we could before bed as we knew rain was on the way again, and slept like logs.

26th – 28th July: Days 109 – 111

Yup. Rained overnight, and was still raining in the morning during pack-up, which is a rapid and well practiced affair by now.  We only had another short hop to our next stop: Sault Sainte Marie. The main attraction at Sault (pronounced ‘Soo’, for some reason to do with the English mis-pronouncing the original French name) are its epic locks.

These can accomodate the 1000ft freighters, and manage the 21ft drop of the St Marys River between the waters of Lakes Superior and Huron. Ingeniously the spillways power hydroelectric plants on both sides of the river, which provide all the power for the locks, with plenty to spare for the town too. The locks are right in town, and the massive freighters come through, dwarfing the waterfront and providing quite a captivating slow motion spectacle.  Our campsite was right on the water, about a mile down river so had great views of the approaching and departing ships, and looked right across the river at Canada. The rain stopped at lunchtime and the day turned into glorious sunny one. We headed to town for dinner on our first evening here. There was a regular summertime performance by a local steel drum band in the park, which was excellent, and after watching for 15 minutes we found a restaurant with a roof top terrace. Our waitress amused us, and herself, by practicing her English accent, and we had a perfect view of the locks and a passing freighter during our meal. The next day we mooched around, watched a few more ships coming through, spent some time in the Locks Visitor Centre and had savoury crepes for lunch. Just a little bit French.

Another factoid: Sault is the 3rd oldest city in the USA, having been established by French missionaries in 1668. The knowledge cup runneth over…

28th – 31st July: Days 111 – 114

We left Sault and headed to our final Upper Peninsula destination, St Ignace. Again, not a long trip, perhaps 1.5 hours driving. We have been on the UP for 5 weeks now, and are moving so slowly that we have almost ground to a halt.

St Ignace sits at the northern end of the Mackinac Bridge, which spans the Mackinac straits, the 5 mile stretch of water that separates the UP from the Lower Michigan Peninsula, and Lake Huron from Lake Michigan. The bridge is very long, and is, wait for it, the ‘longest suspension bridge between anchorages’ in the world. But before we get to the bridge, the other main attraction of St Ignace is that it is the gateway to Mackinac Island.  In another strange quirk of pronunciation, Mackinac is pronounced Mackinaw. Something to do with the French/English thang again.

We had 3 nights here in a campsite called ‘Tiki’. Felt a bit like home.  A trip to the island is a must, and we did this the next day, which was a perfect hot sunny cloudless day with a light breeze and low humidity. There are several boat companies that regularly make the 25 minute trip across to the island. It was an important outpost for the US army for many years and has a well preserved fort, but its more recent history is as a popular summer holiday destination for the monied in the late 19th C. As cars became popular and the island was in danger of losing its tranquillity, the powers-that-be made a big decision in 1898 and banned motorised vehicles from the island. This edict remains in place and transport on the 8 mile circumference island is only by foot, pedal or hoof, with 300 horses providing carriage rides.

The jewel in the island’s crown is the Grand Hotel. Built in 1887, it is enormous and boasts a 660ft long french porch, which, you guessed it, is the longest in the world. The chief industries on the island are selling fudge to tourists, and renting bicycles to tourists. The place is bonkers! Bazillions of people on bikes doing the circuit of the flat lakeshore road. Some of these people even had some spacial awareness and a grasp of the basic road rules.

We had a fantastic day: brunch at an old fashioned diner, did a couple laps and a few crosses on the internal island tracks, visited the old fort, bought home-made lemonade from 2 cute little girls on the roadside, had an hour lying in the sun, and got quite adept at horse poop slalom. (Even the horse pooper-scooper wagon is horse drawn.) The island is a very special place, with a real sense of history and some amazing old homes. It is interesting that even without the scourge of the combustion engine, humans all want to be going somewhere, in large numbers

After catching the boat back to St Ignace we had dinner in town then watched the weekly summertime fireworks display. Quite impressive. Our cycle home was exciting as we had no lights for the bikes. Luckily we could stick to pavements, so it wasn’t as dangerous as it felt.

The next day we eventually mustered ourselves at about midday and after brunch headed back into town on the bikes. We mooched around, bought some bike lights, sussed out a dinner spot and visited the teeny tiny lighthouse at the end of the very short breakwater. Later, after cycling back into town with our camp chairs on our backs, we had (a mediocre) dinner and then as darkness fell, we watched the weekly open air movie in the park. (The animated movie ‘Sing’). Our ride home was less scary given the improved illumination factor.

The next day we drove over the Mighty Mackinaw Bridge, and were sad to leave the wilds of the UP. It, and it’s people are quite like NZ, and the Kiwis. I think that is why we have enjoyed it so much. Michigan is a state of 2 halves, and now we head back into relative civilisation of the Lower Peninsula, or the ‘Mitten’, as it is affectionately known. Perhaps the Wifi will be better…

 

 

 

Marquette, MI

16th -20th July: Days 99-103

So, we have now passed the 100 day mark. The days are going both slowly and at great speed. It is great to have no real pressure of time, a luxury.

Marquette, also on the shores of Lake Superior, is the Upper Penisular’s largest town, with population of about 21,000.

It is also the home of Northern Michigan University and the world’s largest wooden dome. which houses a sports arena. The place is covered in walking and biking trails which become cross country ski trails, and ATV trails which become snowmobile trails, in the winter.

Our site was on the Town Park, another lovely large, wooded camp, full of entertaining squirrels and chipmunks, right on the edge of town. It had a lake with a beach, was on the doorstep of the cycle trails and was linked to town by a paved, flat cycle route. Perfect.

We had 3 full days here. We explored town, the lakeshore, the dome, the local microbrewery and the ice-cream shop. We had campfires, played weasel bag *, and watched the park slowly transform for its hosting of the imminent ‘traditional’ music festival Hiawatha. Happily we would be leaving before that delight got started.

We had one memorable morning on the cycle trails. We had planned an hour or 2 of cruising some easy trails, with only one bottle of water each and no food or padded pants involved in the planning.  We set off with a (in retrospect: incomplete) map and high spirits. 3.5 hours later we realised we were the unfortunate victims of poor trail signage and had strayed onto a part of the trail system not on our map. The black diamond/ only for cycling ninjas/ let’s keep it secret from the hapless tourists part of of the trail system . We were hot, tired, ravaged by mosquitos, hungry, thirsty and just a teensy bit grumpy. We had essentially taken our bikes for a walk up a rock face and through a swamp. Google maps came to the rescue and we eventually found our way home where we reminisced on the great adventure we had had over a late lunch.

So as the sound stage went up, the portaloos were delivered and the arriving campers got more and more ‘alternative’, we left Marquette and Hiawatha-land. 

*Weasel bag: This is our alternative name for the popular US lawn game known as Corn Hole.  It involves each throwing 4 small beanbags and trying to land them on a sloped board with a hole in it. The further you stand from the board, the more challenging it is. One point for a bag on the board, 3 points for a bag in the hole. First to 21.  Ours is a budget version from Walmart. Other things that increase the challenge: Darkness falling. Beer. Inquisitive chipmunks. Being downwind from a smoky campfire. Left-handed throwing only. Wine.

 

Some Observations of the Behaviour of American People.

We have noted a few things about the behaviour of the American Folk during our travels. These are complete sweeping generalisations of course,  and are intended to be taken in the fluffy light-hearted spirit in which they are meant.

  1. Americans recreate. This is a lesser known verb associated with the action of partaking in recreation. They recreate, and they recreate hard. With vim and vigour. Due to their woefully poor annual leave allowance, they recreate mainly in short sharp spurts at weekends. They drive hundreds of miles, with wagons, trailers, tents, kids, dogs, bikes, boats and kayaks. They CAMP. This involves arriving late, setting up epic sites, often with strings of fairy lights, floor matting, seating for 30. They get up early, cram in multiple daily activities and then stay up late around a campfire. (See no. 2) Then they de-camp and drive home again. It’s exhausting to watch. But also dangerous to get in the way.
  2. Americans do not mumble. They are taught at an early age to project their voices. They can confuse the volume of voice needed for normal communication with those people with whom you are sitting around a campfire/ in a diner/ in a shop, with that volume used for attracting attention from a search party when they have been lost in the woods for 2 days. We have coined the phrase ‘lost in the woods voice’ to describe the decibel level of these conversations.
  3. Americans are incredibly courteous drivers. As previously mentioned, they pull out wide to pass you even if you are in a designated cycle lane. They will stop on a main road to let you cross in the complete absence of a designated crossing. There will be much waving and gesturing at 4 way stop signs to let us go first, even if it is not really our turn. They don’t really tailgate, or seem to get inpatient at not being able to overtake.
  4. Americans cannot be ‘quipped’ at. Throw-away humorous comments hit them and slide off. Often they don’t even hear them because they are not expecting an off-the-cuff witticism, other times they just look bemused. Sometimes I think they don’t understand our accent. You can see the grey matter trying to process the words…Is that English? (Yes, the original version, thank you) They are literal people. Our sarcasm and irony is not welcome here. Shame, as that is the back-stop of our communication technique.
  5. Americans often do not make eye contact with you as you walk past. Some of this, I think, is because they are busy and distracted with the ‘recreating’ thing. Some of it is the ‘stranger-danger’ thing. Who knows which weirdos are armed and which are bumbling, sarcastic, overly friendly British-Kiwi tourists.
  6. Americans have a serious addition to white crystallised substances: namely salt and sugar. Everything is either incredibly sweet, or overly salty. Bread is more like cake. Baked beans are so sugary they should be served as a dessert. On slices of toasted cake.
  7. Americans don’t walk anywhere that they can drive. Even the hiking, running, cycling type of Americans with very functional legs and normal BMIs will jump in the car to go to the restaurant around the corner. They have a distinct demarkation between walking (or hiking) as a recreational activity, and walking as a (silly) form of transport. We have seen families load up into a car to drive the 0.2 miles to a trailhead car park in order to do a 5 mile hike. Our readiness to walk or cycle places that have perfectly good road access and car parking is another thing that bemuses the Americans about us.

Those are my thoughts. Apologies to my American friends!

Rodeo, Rodeo, Rodeo.

14th-16th July: Days 97-99

Going to a rodeo was definitely on The List. Upper Peninsula Michigan is not your stereotypical location for a rodeo but we discovered that The UP Rodeo Championships were going to be held in Iron River, and so we went.   This is a big weekend for a small town with 2 evenings of rodeo, market stalls, a street parade, and a series of fun runs. We had pre-booked a spot in the town camp site which was close to the town centre and only a 20 minute walk from the rodeo grounds.  After arriving early afternoon on the Friday we caught the end of the market, and Nick bought raffle tickets for which the prize draw was months away. More of a donation then, really, as we will be long gone.

We walked up to the rodeo grounds at about 6pm, furnished ourselves with a beer, and started the important pre-event entertainment…people watching.  There were all sorts of folks in attendance. Folks from the hills. Folks from the other side of the tracks. Folks from the cowboy fancy dress shop (or so it seemed). Actual cowboys. And then there was us. I suspect that we stood out like sore thumbs, and were being watched as much as we were watching.

 The evening started with flag hoisting, national anthem playing, military personnel thanking, girls with flags on horseback galloping in synchronised circles to stirring music, and there was a clown with a tiny performing pony both in a beaten up VW Beetle. Then there was some rodeo. Men chasing and roping calves. Men with very bendy backs on very grumpy horses, some with saddles, some without.  Men plucking the bendy backed men off the grumpy horses before the grumpy horses tried to kill them. Men on horses galloping after the grumpy horses (after they had plucked the bendy backed men off them) to remove the straps from around their nether regions to make them a lot less grumpy all of a sudden.

 

The women and girls involved in the rodeo were mainly entrants in the Miss Rodeo Queen and Miss Rodeo Princess competitions. Lots of sparkly fringed cowgirl outfits, lots of big long hair-dos, lots of fixed smiles and beauty pageant makeup. Not much getting dusty or sweaty.  Those gals can really gallop fast in a circle whilst doing a ‘royal wave’ though.

We had a really fun evening. What with the beer and junk food, sunshine and drama of it all.

The next morning I decided, at the last minute, to do the 10km fun run. It was a slightly bigger affair than the Copper Harbour event, with about 20 entrants. I staggered around the course, coming in 4th from last, BUT, winning my ladies age category. I even got a medal. My glory continues.

Soon after the run came the town parade. This really was an epic. Floats large and small, good and bad, with horses and without. Lots of fire engines, police cars, tractors, lorries, wheelbarrows, people dressed up, some not. Lots of candy.  And the entire population of Iron River lining the streets sat on camping chairs. We got bored after an hour and fell into a diner for coffee and brunch.

Saturday evening was rodeo again. We walked up to the grounds, in the baking heat this time and were very pleased to make it to the first cold beer.  The program was much the same as the previous night, but just as fun.  We spent more time wandering round and watching seeing the action from different angles.  The beer and junk food was also as good. I vowed to eat some salad or vegetables the next day.

Rodeo. Check.