On the Road Again

On the road again
I just can’t wait to get on the road again...

This would make fantastic lyrics for a song.

Wait a minute ... looks like Willie Nelson beat me to it, 45 years ago.

We are on the road again, having covered 374 miles today and currently camped out in the Hiawatha National Forest, at the Colwell Lake Campground just north of Manistique.  It appears we got one of the last campsites in the campground.  One of the risks of not making reservations is arriving somewhere and finding it full.  So far, one night in, we’re doing OK.

We were on the road before 8am, just in time to catch the rush hour traffic into Grand Rapids.  But we were early enough to beat most of the heat and the temperature here “up north” is several degrees cooler than at home.

We are officially “up north”.  It could be argued that “up north” could include Ludington, Cadillac, or even Rockford for those who don’t get out much, but, crossing the Mighty Mac bridge probably fits anyone’s definition of “up north”.

We crossed the bridge after having lunch in Mackinaw City, near the Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse, a lovely area with a commanding view of the bridge.  On our way across the bridge, we talked about doing the bridge walk on this coming Labor Day.  Anyone want to join us?  It would be another excuse to go “up north”.

We stopped at the Mackinac Straits Fish Company in St. Ignace for some smoked fish, one of our regular stops when coming here.  We’re trying out something new: Menominee, a rather skinny looking fish that is supposed to be very similar to whitefish.  Looking forward to trying that out.

We took US Highway 2 along the northern shore of Lake Michigan all the way to Manistique.  I know that’s not technically a Lake Superior circle tour road, but we always like the scenery along US-2.  We’ll hit Lake Superior tomorrow.

We stopped at Kitch-iti-kipi (Big Spring) near Manistique as we haven’t seen this in probably a few decades.  The water is still clear as ever, but there are a lot more people than I remember.

Another half hour brought us to this campground, where we made dinner and then took the walk around Colwell Lake, about a 2-mile walk.  Nice campground and a pleasant walk, however the mosquitos started coming out and drove us inside.

The fridge is still working and the magnetic catch I installed to eliminate the bothersome bungee cord that held the bathroom door in place appears to be working.  Even over eight miles of dirt road.  Win, win.

The journey so far: