The Road Goes On…

Category: Michigan

Southern US Trip Summary

This morning at home we feel as though we are living between two worlds. Before we enter back into our everyday life with all its responsibilities we look back on six and a half weeks of excitement and adventure. We’re happy we did write the blog so that we don’t forget all the things we saw and experienced. It definitely is a trip to remember and does rival our Route 66 trip from two years ago.

What worked well:

WIND Mobile’s Unlimited US Roaming. We’ve been WIND Mobile customers for a number of years now and their price just can’t be beat. For $15 a month we had unlimited voice calling, texting and 1GB of data while in the US. This allowed us to keep in touch and look up things on the road.

Good Sam Membership: This RV club membership cost $25 a year and give you 10% discount at member campsites. It definitely paid for itself.

America the Beautiful Pass: This $80/year pass gives you free entrance to US Parks and other recreation sites. It paid for itself as well.

Garmin GPS: We love our Garmin GPS system. At the start of the trip we had the RV/Trucking dezl 760 model but it was stolen in Albuquerque so we bought a nuvi 2689LMT to replace it. These GPS units have campground locations pre-installed and provide lots of information on arrival times, traffic conditions, etc.

Allstays Camp and RV App: We use this app on our iPads all the time to look for campgrounds. It shows the location of campgrounds and gives information about their rating, facilities and distance from your current location.

NOAA Weather Pro App: This app for the iPad and iPhone shows a map with weather conditions. It also has the ability to send alerts to your phone when severe weather is nearby.

Visitor Centres, Park Rangers and Bureau of Land Management offices: These are always a source of great information and have invaluable knowledge of local conditions and opportunities.

Frugal RV Travel Guides: These guides have great route information as well as tips on inexpensive places to stay overnight.

Here’s a map of the entire trip. This is an image grab from Google Maps as it wasn’t possible to use the entire GPS track on a live map, probably because of its size.

August 26, 2015
Cloverdale, Indiana to Dundas, Ontario

This morning we were all excited to go to Indianapolis to see Kevin Raber again and visit his new gallery. We’ve known Kevin since our 2009 Antarctica trip and our PODAS trips to Death Valley and Iceland. Kevin used to be the Vice President of Phase One USA and is now the CEO of Luminous Landscape, a great online resource for photographers.

Kevin has a lovely gallery/workspace in the Stutz building in downtown Indianapolis. Stutz was a car manufacturer and some of the historic cars are on display in the building today.

Ruth loved the old freight elevators and we all enjoyed a nice lunch in the building’s restaurant. Thanks for lunch Kevin.

After a great visit we decided to drive the remaining 700 or so kms home rather than spending another night so close to our final destination.

It was an amazing trip and rivals our Route 66 trip.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

August 25, 2015
Portage, IN to Dundas, ON

After a great sleep, we had 7 hours left to go on our drive home. We had an oatmeal breakfast at McDonalds and got on our way.

The highways we took were quite rough and there was lots of construction.

For lunch we had our leftover ribs and Pepsi got to enjoy the left over bones.

Customs was no problem and we declared our Tillamook cheese, souvenirs and clothes and were sent on our way.

It was nice to be back in Ontario and we looked forward to finishing the final stretch and to be back home. At 5:30PM the RV was parked and the unloading began.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

August 14, 2014
Wakefield, MI to Crookston, MN

In the morning we had $0.25 and $0.50 showers, a nice in-RV breakfast, flushed tanks and then headed for the Wisconsin border on Hwy 2. Our first stop in Wisconsin was Ashland which is famous for the Ashland Soo Line Ore dock. Unfortunately this dock was torn down last year. Murals throughout the city depict life in the late 19th century and shows the dock in its glory.

Pepsi briefly made friends with a cat before scaring her off with a big “woof”.

We found the Gabriele bakery where we stocked up on gummy bears and cookies.

We then took a side trip to Bayfield on Hwy 13 and had a white fish lunch at the Greunke’s Fine Food Restaurant.

Bayfield is famous for its fisheries.

We booted through the rest of Wisconsin and stopped in Grand Rapids, Minnesota for dinner at New Grand Buffet Chinese restaurant across the Blandin Paper Company mill.

We made it almost to the North Dakota border staying in a Walmart parking lot in Crookston, Minnesota.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 22, 2014
Gaylord, MI to Wakefield, MI

An overnight stay at a Walmart parking lot is never complete without a coffee or tea at their McDonald’s in the morning. What a surprise – no McDonald’s! Instead we found a Subway and of course we had to sample their breakfast menu. According to tradition, this is followed by a brief shopping trip at Walmart store itself. This time, two T-shirts and a pair of cheap sunglasses found a new home.

At 9AM, we departed for Harbour Springs. There we toured the very pretty town with beautiful gift, kitchen, clothing, fudge and ice cream stores. We resisted all temptations and moved down to their harbour for a stroll.

A Harley-Davidson with a rifle pouch caught our attention.

Harbour Springs is one end of the Tunnel of Trees scenic route. This is a winding and narrow road with old trees on both sides meeting each other above you as you drive through. Beautiful glimpses of Lake Michigan and lovely houses along the route made for a beautiful experience.

The crepe stand about three quarters of the way up provided a place to stop for a savoury lunch.

We then returned to I-75 and crossed the Mackinaw bridge.

We tried the traditional pasties and bought the local smoked fish in St. Ignace and then started our trip on Hwy 2. Our GPS routing suggested a short cut bypassing a number of interesting towns along Hwy 2 and replaced them with empty roads. We joined up with Hwy 2 again and made it to Wakefield where we are staying at a lovely community campground by a lake with ice tea coloured water caused by the amount of iron ore in the ground here. We had a wonderful swim nonetheless.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 21, 2014
Dundas, ON to Gaylord, MI

After a frantic packing session, we were ready and left at 2:20PM. Our plan was to make Harbour Springs in Michigan but this wasn’t going to happen. We made it across the US border at Port Huron after following a horse trailer that had been tagged with contraband by a customs officer who was training their beautiful and talented sniffing dog who succeeded in finding it without any difficulty whatsoever. The dog was enthusiastically praised by its handler. We were next in line and where waved on after answering a few questions.

A couple of hours later we were getting hungry and looked for a place to stop and discovered we were near Frankenmuth. The German hearts began to beat heavily and we took the detour to check the town out. The town is pretty, touristy but has charm.

Our favourite store was the Woolen Mill, Michigan’s oldest operating woolen mill.

At this point we were really hungry and stopped at Zehnder’s Famous Chicken Dinners.

We had a great meal with raspberry lemonade cocktail. An endless supply of delicious relishes including a very special cranberry salad, cheeses and pate was followed by fried chicken, mashed potatoes, buttered noodles, stuffing, green beans and gravy. Needless to say, there was only a small amount of space left for a very small ice cream dessert. All this for $19.95.

Frankenmuth cost us 3 hours and we didn’t make it all the way to Harbour Springs that day but called it a night in the Gaylord Walmart parking lot.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 20, 2014
Bourbonnais, IL to Dundas, ON

This morning Martin had a wonderful idea! Since we missed out on the Drive-In Movie Theatre experience on Route 66 he suggested to go to a 50s Drive-In Theatre on our way back home in London, Ontario. Therefore, the driving day home was not all desolate but had a great ending at the drive-in with hot dogs, fries, coke, popcorn and two movies. A lot of fun and early Saturday morning we will be home.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

June 21, 2013
Van Buren SP to Kankakee SP

After breakfast, a walk along the beach with beautiful sand dunes and a power generating plant in the distance we finally decided that we had to start our Route 66 track right at the beginning, right downtown Chicago. Off we went to Chicago! The Interstates were fine, the 200km trip went smoothly. The toll routes to downtown Chicago were a bit stressful, the ticket machine ate the credit card, but thanks to a help button and a friendly voice on the other end we had it back quickly and could proceed. Wow, I love Chicago!!! The rails in the air, beautiful old buildings, art in the streets, restaurants, stores, all with a story to tell! And all decorated with US flags, it was Memorial Day Weekend after all. And thank God it was a Sunday which made the drive through the city with an RV possible.
Yes, we got the crucial shots: The signs of the beginning and the end of Route 66!

And we had a nice Greek lunch at Santorini’s and then dessert on top of it at Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant and Bakery, a downtown Chicago eatery since 1923 and a land mark on Route 66.

The first t-shirt was purchased 🙂

We left Chicago on Route 66, passed Castle Car Wash, Cindy Lyn’s questionable motel and ended up at the White Fence Farm in the Joliet area after passing by prisons onward on the older of the two Route 66 in the direction of Joliet, Elwood, Wilmington and Braidwood. The chicken outside was huge but nothing in comparison to the chicken dinner in the restaurant.

Most of it is now in our little freezer compartment in our RV fridge. Time to rest our weary bones! We ended up at the State Kankakee River State Park. We never got to see the river, it was raining so hard even Pepsi didn’t want to go out.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

May 26, 2013
Dundas to Van Buren SP

Left home at 12 noon, stopped at Costco for cheap gas price for our 98 litres. Proceeded to Port Huron border crossing over the bridge with a magnificent view of Lake Huron. At the border crossing Pepsi’s dog food was thoroughly investigated to see whether it was admissible or not. Next stop was the visitor centre where the staff where extremely friendly and helpful and suggested a state park on Lake Michigan for our first overnight stay. Reservation was made on the spot it was a long weekend in the US after all. Walmart stop for groceries like exquisite swedish coffee, salad, apricots and a prepaid visa to try and activate our iPad data plan. This was unsuccessful and we’ll need to find another way to do this. Lunch at Wendy’s and then off to van Buren State Park. Unfortunately there were two by this name approximately the same distance from us and Martin entered the wrong one into the GPS. So we had a bit of a detour. We finally arrived at the correct park at about 9:40pm and had a beautiful electrical site. The park is situated on the shore of Lake Michigan with dunes along the beach.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

May 25, 2013