Sleep Deprivation

Bobcat Lake looks like a nice little campground next to a nice little lake.  And today dawned clear and cool, looks like the start of a beautiful day.  But we didn’t investigate the area at all because of the unbelievable hordes of mosquitoes milling around outside the RV.  

And there appeared to be a rather large number of the insects inside the RV, even after we had spent quite a bit of time last night eliminating them.  I then found out that the coach door wasn’t closed all the way and there were many dozens of mosquitoes trapped between the outer door and the inner screen, and many of them were finding the open access hole by the door handle.  So we were getting a fresh supply constantly.  We left in a hurry, intending to find an open parking lot somewhere to purge the growing number of mosquitoes in the RV.

We stopped in Iron River for several minutes in an empty parking lot just to swat at mosquitoes.

On our way through Florence on US-2 I spotted something I haven’t seen in a very long time: a telephone booth. It was on a street corner, with a pay phone still inside. I went in, closed the door, and lifted the receiver, but the phone was dead.  I should have had a picture taken of me in it, but I didn’t think of it at the time.  This could very well be the world’s last surviving telephone booth.

I think we finally drove out of the mosquitoes somewhere before reaching Escanaba.  There we were able to step out of the RV in a parking lot without getting mobbed.

In Escanaba we stopped at a local grocery store because we were told it had fresh whitefish.  And it did.  This grocery store, according to our resident grocery store expert (Deb), is a very good grocery store.  Not as big as the regional super centers, but still large enough to have nearly everything imaginable, including a small dedicated fish counter, where we talked to the guy for a while.  This guy moved here from Florida and he said he was an expert in just about everything.  We heard a little bit of his life history as he was bagging the whitefish we wanted.  He also had samples of Almond Crusted Wild Flounder, which was on sale in the fish case.  It was amazing.  We came home with several filets of this also.

It seems like we always come home with more than intended when we go to one of the good grocery stores.

We also stopped at Ludington Park in Escanaba, which is right along Lake Michigan.  We made lunch here, then walked around for a while by the channel and the lighthouse.  I was getting really sleepy by this time, so I sacked out in the RV while Deb did some more walking around.  I still have quite a sleep debt, and attempting to continue driving in this state would not be a good idea.

In Manistique, we stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall fish market for some more whitefish.  We’ll probably do a fish boil for some family on Sunday and good Upper Peninsula Whitefish makes this a tasty meal.

It was getting to be about suppertime, and we stopped at Main Street Pizza because I had a hankering for a good pizza.  I was not disappointed and would recommend this place.  It also is rather nondescript, a tiny storefront on the main drag through town, with a couple impossibly young kids making up the pizza, and it’s not a sit-down joint, but take-out only. But it was a good pizza, and hit all the right spots.

Another hour of driving brought us to our destination for the evening: the Kewadin Casino in St. Ignace.  Can’t really go any further because I would need another nap, so we may as well stop for the night.  Since we are only stopping to crash for the night, it didn’t make sense to pay the $42 for the Straits State Park when we could just park here for free.