Rondeau in June (4 of 4)

 

Thursday.

Packing up day, and it wasn't quite as sunny as previous days, but still dry and getting very warm. Today was the first day we weren’t witness to the Mad Mowers, two busy young Park Rangers riding around on big mowing machines and mowing the life out of any bit of grass they could see. On Tuesday I swear that between them they mowed the same patches of grass near us at least three times. I get it, young people trying to look busy and justifying their existence, but pity the poor grass. And my eardrums.

I made my final sortie to the shower block for this trip, spent ages in there and enjoyed the hot water very much. Yes, my flipflops were wet, but I didn’t care.

When it came time to break camp, it all went swimmingly well, up until the bit where we had to hitch up. There was nothing wrong with the actual process, but we were attacked by the biting bugs of Rondeau, all of them at once it seemed. This was despite liberally dousing myself in insect repellant. To be fair, I didn’t get bitten much, but the little buggers were everywhere. Poor old DW had to retreat to the sunshine because they seem to like her flesh particularly, and she was gnawed on quite viciously.

Once hitched up and secured, we drove off slowly towards the waste tanks dumping station. A fellow towing another trailer had stopped in the loop road for some reason, so I took a different loop, and we had a very slow race to see who could get to the campground gate first, to use the dump station first. He had a few yards on me to start with but then, a schoolboy error on his part, he stopped at the dumpsters to drop off his garbage, and I sailed serenely by. We take our garbage home.

At the dump station there were no other trailers using the facilities, so I was able to drive right in and connect up the tank flush to the handily provided non-potable water supply. It’s never a nice job dumping the waste, and it was really niffy around the hole in the floor, and that was before we started to dump, but these are the sacrifices us hardy campers make. I’d finished both tanks, and flushed through, before the fellow I was racing finally turned up, and he was behind someone else now. What had he been doing at the dumpsters, rescuing Raccoons?

The drive home wasn’t the best as there was a really strong headwind for the first section of the run, then when we changed direction, it became a cross wind. In the mirrors I could see the trailer twitching as we drove, but fortunately its twitches were not being translated to the steering of the Toadmobile, so it all felt solid enough. The fuel consumption takes a dive in those situations, though, and that’s when the engine really has to work hard, which bothers me far more than the twitching trailer. It’s a good job, I suppose, that the drive was mercifully short.

Unloading on the driveway at home is a chore, but one we like to get completed, mostly, more or less, as soon as we’ve chocked the wheels and unhitched. When it’s warm, as it was, it’s even more of a chore, but we stuck at it and emptied the Airstream, remembering this time to grab the bag of garbage, and to empty the recycling bin, especially as the following day is the City’s recycling collection day for us. We have, once or twice, forgotten one or both of the aforementioned chores, and neither omission has helped freshen the air inside, strangely enough.

I will just mention the weather (being a British Canadian, I am bound by law to mention weather at least three times in every conversation), as it was another totally dry trip. When we started this Airstream adventure in 2011, our trips were constantly rained on. We even spent a couple of weeks driving to and from Florida and it rained at some point pretty much every day, and the rain in Florida can get quite scary, let me tell you. A couple of years back we were all but flooded out at Science Hill (St. Mary's, Ontario) when the storm drains couldn't cope with the 36 hour deluge. But in 2024, we've had two dry trips, both early in the season, too, and I have to say that I'm thankful. Camping in the rain isn't so much of an issue when you have a good trailer, but trying to do trailer-type stuff in the rain, or even waterlogged ground, is never much fun. Hurrah for the fabulous weather this time around.

So that’s it for camping for a couple of months, now we can concentrate on the garden and the pool while the Province’s families enjoy Rondeau’s campground. We do have an annual pass for the park so I doubt that Charlie will go the entire summer without spending time on the beach there.

We have organised another travel trip, not in the Airstream, but I’ll keep that under wraps for a while. Roll on September.

Rondeau in June (3 of 4)

 

Wednesday

It’s been quite a bit warmer today, but that didn’t stop us from being slothful in the extreme again, and not really doing much of anything. The bugs have been particularly bitey during this trip, so we sat in the Pleasure Dome for a while, but the sun was up and it was getting a wee bit warm in there, so we repaired to the Airstream where we had some moving air (Aren’t Fantastic Fans fantastic?).

We spent quite a long time scoping out another trip, not Airstreaming, on our computers before realising how quickly the day had slipped by. Donning shoes and hats, we shuffled slowly through the campground, on the lookout for more turtles, but also checking out the other trailers, their equipment and their occupants. If you’re a people watcher then you’ll appreciate what fun that can be.

We saw another Airstream parked up, bigger than ours and looking quite shiny and new. Their truck had a US license plate, but I couldn’t make out from which state at a distance, so I might have to go and have another look later.

We didn’t see any more turtles, but the Chipmunks, Squirrels and Rabbits were thick on the ground. Coyote food I’d imagine.

We did get to have a little walk along the edge of Rondeau Bay, the smallish lake (comparatively speaking) kept from the main part of Lake Erie by the spit of land that is Rondeau Park. It’s shallow, normally very sheltered from the worst of the wind, and is therefore a haven for all manner of boat-related pastimes. There is a little “yacht club” that only operates in July and August, and loads of kids get out in little dinghies to learn the rudiments of sailing in the relatively safe water of the Bay. This being June, there was no one about, and the club’s portable dock structure was still out of the water. North Americans are not overly excited about dinghy sailing, so they seem happy to limit the club to the summer months only, but I couldn’t help thinking that if this was Europe, the dock would have been in the water as soon as the ice had gone, and the Bay would be filled with dinghies every weekend. Ah well, this isn’t Europe.

We did find a lone turtle, sat quietly in the shade and looking for all the world like he was going to cross the road. He didn’t move, though, so we took it that he was indeed resting and building up the energy to strike for the woods. We kept looking back as we walked away but no, he was definitely having a rest.

I’ll skip over the bit where we bought yet another ice cream from the Park Store and move onto the bit where we had a delightful afternoon nap, baked potatoes for supper and watched the darkness draw in from the bug-free environs of the Pleasure Dome. As the light faded we were treated to the sight of a small Raccoon snuffling around the site, and even trying the edges of the Pleasure Dome, that was until he heard our voices and scuttled off into the undergrowth. It was a reminder for us not to leave anything vaguely edible or drinkable in the gazebo because those cheeky critters will be in and trashing anything that gets in their way when they’re in search of an easy snack.

This fine evening, we broke out the TV and watched a film that I had on my laptop. It was the 1960s classic Georgy Girl, starring Lynn Redgrave, Alan Bates and James Mason. I slept through too much of it to be able to recount the plot, but I was content that I hadn’t seen it before, not even through closed eyes. We rarely watch the TV when we’re camping, which I guess is a good thing. We have a retractable TV antenna built into the Airstream that we can extend should we want to watch broadcast TV, but I can count the times we’ve used it on one hand, although that really speaks to the dreadful quality of broadcast TV as much as to our disinterest in the TV when we’re camping. I was reminded why we don’t have a TV in our bedroom at home as we deployed Airstream’s sofa-bed platform and I watched, or tried to watch, the film from a semi-prone position. Of course, I can sleep standing up, pretty much, but being prone like that made the act of actually nodding off so much easier. A TV in our bedroom would be better than sleeping pills, if I ever needed them.

The morrow would be our last day, and we had a much warmer night to enjoy, but we still didn't turn in until much later than we should have. Again, the pleasures of retirement are many and varied.

Rondeau in June (2 of 4)

 

 

Tuesday

Yes, it was a cold night, for June anyway. As is usual, I woke up at 5am, tossed and turned a little and decided that I wasn’t going back to sleep without some form of assistance. So, I grabbed by earbuds and fired up my audio book. I was dozing for a while, then the book finished so I selected a podcast to listen to and almost immediately went to sleep. I woke up at ten past eight with the podcast still playing, which surprised me. Each episode of the podcast was only sixteen minutes long, and I’d been asleep for an hour and a half, so that was quite a few episodes I’d slept through. Still, I’m not complaining because falling asleep to a podcast is preferable to lying awake and staring at the ceiling.

When you’re camping, there’s rarely a schedule to follow, so I was fashionably late when I slouched over to the Comfort Station for a shower. The shower water wasn’t as warm as I’d have liked, and even after hiding my flipflops around the corner, the splash back from the crazily designed stall had still soaked them (yes, I know I say this every time). It occurred to me that perhaps I should hang the flipflops onto the coat hooks in there to get them up and out of the way, but that would be far too sensible an idea after so many years using these showers. I think my timing was a bit off today, too, as the nice young woman who cleans the comfort station was outside waiting for me to finish. I say nice, she gave me a nice smile and wished me a good morning, but she could have been fuming that I’d held her up. Who knows? These are things that go through my mind when I’m not occupied with more pressing matters.

We skipped breakfast and went straight to lunch, which was swiftly followed by rest, relaxation and a quick nap, such is the whirl of activity that we enjoy when we’re camping. Actually, it was all in a good cause because Emma and Charlie came to visit later in the afternoon, which was a couple of hours of excitable chaos. After some supper, we walked over to the park’s store and had ice cream, which was all the more enjoyable for the fabulous afternoon weather, which was clear blue skies, bright sunshine, but not too scarily hot. I did have a bit of a run in with a Barn Swallow when I stood too close to its nest. It decided to swoop at my head a few times, and close enough for me to feel the whoosh of wind as it went past. Those birds do fly close to people anyway, but this one kept going at me until I went and stood under the store’s awning. That’ll teach me not to be so nosy. Still, a close up of a barn swallow coming at my head is a memory I shall cherish.

It's turtle season here at Rondeau, and we weren’t disappointed when we saw one scuttling across our camp site, heading for the lake I assumed. They come onto the land from the water to lay their eggs, and as there are plenty of turtles in Rondeau Pond, they’re fairly easy to spot making their way to or from their egg laying sites. One of our camping neighbours called Charlie over to have a look at one on their site, and even though it was probably the same one that we had seen earlier, Charlie was dutifully enthused.

Crazy is as crazy does, so when everyone was ready, we all piled into our respective cars and headed back to Chatham because, well, doesn’t everyone go home halfway through a trip? Emma and Charlie had to go back so they could go to bed, of course, but DW and I had to do some plant watering, given the lack of rain and the number of new plants we’d put in the garden over the past few days. It’s amazing how quickly they dry out, so we doused them with water from the rain barrels, and gave the new trees some sustenance as well, as they are particularly vulnerable to drying out. Before heading back to Rondeau, I made the obligatory stop at the Liquor Store for some Liffey Water, and it wasn’t long before we were back in our little Rondeau bolt hole to resume our rest and relaxation. The evening wasn’t quite so cold as the previous one, but we wimped out didn’t stay in the Pleasure Dome for too long, preferring to stay a little warmer in our aluminium cell. One of the big advantages of an Airstream over other travel trailers is the big windows. We can sit inside with the widows open and it’s almost like being outside. All the windows are screened, too, so you’re safe from the ever-present and pestilential biting bugs. See, glamping at its finest.

The weather was looking set to be calm overnight, so I left the trailer’s awning deployed and fell into bed after another strenuous day (!). There were no plans for Wednesday, thank goodness, so I was looking forward to another non-busy day.

Rondeau in June (1 of 4)

 

Monday

We’re back on the road. When I say road, I mean the road to Rondeau Provincial Park, just forty-four kilometres away, but it is still a road.

Rondeau again, site sixteen again; goodness, we don’t like change. But why would we want to change? A short hop, hardly any driving, and a beautiful park to enjoy, there are all the ingredients of a nice couple of days away, and without too much effort.

We’d booked this trip in April, wedged in between a run over to Michigan, and Charlie’s birthday, and it’ll be our last trip before the schools finish for the summer vacation. We tend not to camp in July and August, partly because that’s the time working parents get to take their kids away, but also because we never plan far enough ahead to be able to book a campground during the school holidays, such is the demand. Anyway, I refuse to be up at midnight the day the sites are released for booking, just to fight with a load of eager beavers who block book sites and then don’t use them (some 46% of booked camping sites in Ontario Parks are not occupied, despite them having been paid for in advance).

This trip was somewhat lacking in its preparation. Indeed, at 0930hrs this morning I hadn’t even opened up the Airstream, let alone packed anything in it. To complicate matters we had decided to keep the trip from Charlie as he tends to get a bit “helpful” when we’re prepping, and just to make it interesting I had to attend a doctor’s appointment mid-morning. Ah well, there’s no real rush for us retired peeps.

We were ready to roll at twelve, but decided to hang around for lunch, and to re-water a load of new plants in the garden. A keen north wind had brought the ambient temperatures right down, so I wasn’t my usual sweaty mess as we exacted a surprisingly slick hitch up process, which was a real bonus. At a little after two, I let the emergency brake off the Toadmobile and we rolled gently into the road, you remember, the one I mentioned in the opening paragraph. The first thing I do as I roll onto the road is to check the manual override on the trailer brake controller, just to make sure the binders are working. The brakes on Airstreams are old fashioned drum brakes but are operated electrically using the car’s brake pedal at one end, and a series of magnets at the other. There’s a lot of scope for things to go wrong in that system, so a pull on the manual override is essential before heading out. Yup, the brakes were working.

Actually, there are a lot of checks you should do before hauling a couple of tons of trailer onto the public road, and I’m pretty disciplined at doing them. I did forget to connect the emergency breakaway cord last time (it’s a device that if your trailer gets separated from your trailer, the cord pulls a pin out of a control box and the brakes are automatically applied to the trailer’s wheels). It was all good this time though.

As well as being quite cool for the time of year, it was also quite windy on the drive down. Side winds will make the whole combination, trailer and tow vehicle, feel like it’s being pushed off the road, although it’s comforting that both vehicles act as one and it’s easy to compensate for with a little tweak of the steering wheel. Head winds are the real problem, even with the slippery shape and low frontal area of the Airstream. The car has to work so much harder when towing into a headwind, and goodness knows how the less slippery and taller trailers cope.

Down at the park we took on water and drained down the waste tanks, although all they contained was a small amount of liquid from my efforts at cleaning the shower, sinks, and toilets. Obviously we drain our waste tanks down before leaving the park, too, because you don’t want to leave any nasty stuff in them. Once drained, we drop a bit of water in and add some tank treatment to neutralise any bacteria, and to make sure they don’t smell. There is a huge debate in the RV community about what you use to clean and/or neutralise the tanks, ranging from gallons of bleach to Dawn washing up liquid. We have used an enzyme-based treatment since the Airstream was new and have never had the dreaded “smelly tanks”. The enzyme-based stuff is also kind to the joints and seals, unlike bleach, so we’ve also not had any leakage issues.

Checking in at the campsite office, I took great pleasure in seeing the significant Seniors’ discount applied to our camping fee; being sixty-five can have its benefits. No one has yet challenged me to prove my age, so I guess I don’t look as youthful as I think I do. At Ontario Parks, they always ask if they should let people know our site number if they should come looking. I always say, “Only if it’s not the Police”, but I suppose it’s a genuine thing, and you may want to remain undisturbed should someone be looking for you, much like in a hotel.

Given that this was a Monday, the campground was looking quite full, and while mostly old farts like us, there were a few young people around. Ever since COVID hit, camping has become extremely popular. We’re surrounded by nice new RVs in the park, and it gets ever harder to get sites booked, but I’m not complaining, while its nice to have a quiet campground, it can be quite nice to hear people around and smell the smoke from many, many campfires. The air pollution might be terrible, but at least people are (sort of) getting back to nature.

Like the slick hitching procedure earlier in the day, the parking and unhitching was similarly slick, and again the coolness of the weather was a real boon. Then we had to erect our little portable gazebo, The Pleasure Dome, and things went sharply downhill. It does “pop up” quite quickly, but the floor mat we use doesn’t match the gazebo’s hexagon shape, and we spent an age just moving the gazebo and the floor mat to get the best position. That took longer than the unhitching.

Anyway, all set up and in preparation for supper, we had a nice walk around the campground (trying to stay in the sunshine for the warmth), and sat on the beach for a little while, just enjoying our surroundings. I keep saying it, but we’re so lucky to have this gem of a park right on our doorstep.

The evening in the the Pleasure Dome was shortened a little as the air temperature dipped down to 11C and we were getting a little chilled. Still, we were happy listening to the bird song, and watching the Chipmunks go about their business. Back in the Airstream, we did fire up the furnace for a few minutes to take the edge off the chill and broke out the duvet to put on the bed. The temperatures looked set to go down to 6 or 7C overnight, not really June weather, but Towed Haul is reasonably well equipped to deal with any weather, so we turned in prepared for a cool night, but looking forward to a few quiet days.

Non-Airstream run out to Michigan

 

Not an Airstream trip, but travel, so I’ve included it in the blog.

The back story is that I was contacted through Ancestry.ca, by a woman from South Carolina who said that she was a relative of mine. My family tree exploration hadn’t dug up anyone in the USA, so I was intrigued. Mary, my contact, gave me the name of one person in the level above the furthest I’d been able to research in my family tree, and from there the whole family tree just opened right up. Thanks to a Mayne from the Leeds branch of my family heading to New York in 1822, there was a vast Mayne dynasty in North America that I hadn’t known about, and yes, Mary is related to me as my fourth cousin, once removed. From that one name, I also discovered a similar Mayne dynasty in South Africa, and a smaller collection of Maynes in Australia. I had fallen down not so much a family tree rabbit hole, but a chasm.

Mary isn’t so far from us in South Carolina, but she told me that she was going to be in Michigan visiting her brother, also a fourth cousin, once removed, or course. It was too good an opportunity to miss, so a trip was planned to Fremont, home of Gerber Baby Foods, in mid-Michigan.

It’s a run of about 440Km, or 275 miles using the Sarnia/Port Huron crossing into the USA. It’s shorter going through Detroit, but much busier, so we settled on the northern route. The weather was set fair as we headed up the eastern side of the St Clair River to Sarnia, followed the signs marked “Bridge to the USA”, and found ourselves on the Bluewater Bridge, high up above the river, stuck in the line for the border. The bridge was down to one lane thanks to construction (isn’t it always?), but once it widened out there was only one lane for cars and RVs to get to the control kiosks. There were only four kiosks open for cars, so it took us fifty-five minutes to reach the booth, although only fifty-five seconds to clear it once we’d arrived there. Border control doesn’t follow normal rules, and a back up onto the bridge is of no consequence to those that are in control, so opening a few more kiosks simply wasn’t considered. I’m moaning, but I know that it can be much worse, so maybe our fifty-five minutes was to be treasured. If I may make a social comment here; certain US politicians will claim that the folks at southern US border are allowing millions of people to cross, seemingly without documentation. I know those politicians are lying, but if those voters that believe them were to try to re-enter their country using a land border point, they’d find out very quickly that what the politicians are saying just simply cannot be true, those borders are closely controlled.

The border guard in the kiosk was not the usual dour, border agent. He actually made a small joke about one of my answers to his questions, then made another! That’s a rare event. Anyway, having established that we weren’t carrying a case of Ketchup chips (crisps), he waved us through with a cheery smile. Stranger things have happened, but not often.

Then we set of westwards on Interstate 69 towards Flint and Lancing. Michigan roads are not the best, but this two lane (each way) highway was quiet, and with a speed limit of 75mph (120kph), we made very good progress. Here’s another social comment; because the Michigan Police actually apply the traffic laws, there were very few drivers going over the 75 limit, well, not by much anyway, and there’s a lesson that I think the OPP could learn.

We stopped off at a rest area before Flint and were very pleasantly surprised by what we found. Michigan’s Interstate rest areas are just that, areas that you can pull off the highway, stretch your legs and have a “comfort break”. There is no gas station, no fast-food outlets and no line ups. There are toilets (very clean toilets), a couple of vending machines, picnic tables, and a dog run. There’s parking for cars and for trucks, and everything is set in a well tended wooded area a few yards back from the road. I couldn’t help asking why Ontario can’t do the same, instead of the commercial crap that the On Route service centres offer.

Back on the road and we were being warned of delays due to the highway being closed just outside Lancing, but there were no delays, just a bit of construction and a quarter-mile length of road closed off, easily skirted using the ramps to an intersection. Don’t believe everything your navigation system tells you.

One weird observation was the number of Deer carcasses at the edge of the road, thirteen between Port Huron and Lancing. These are not small animals, so what on earth is happening to the vehicles that hit them?

Just after Lancing we joined Interstate 96, the road from Detroit, and that was quite a bit busier than the I69. The road surface was also not great, essentially mile after mile of patched concrete. Still, it was getting us closer to Grand Rapids where we were to head off into the countryside. Mid-Michigan seems to be a lot more wooded than Southern Ontario, and the land doesn’t appear to be as intensively farmed which, when added to the gently rolling hills made for a very bucolic run. The highway took us north of Grand Rapids and we drove through some nice countryside to arrive in Fremont, a neat little mid-Michigan town if ever I saw one.

Fremont is famous as being the home of Gerber Baby Foods, a name that resonates even with foreigners like me. There’s a whole history to it, and the main production facility still resides in the town, but I’m not going to recount it all here. If you’re interested, try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerber_Products_Company

Our home for the next few days was to be the Gerber Guest House, the one-time former home of the Gerber Family. It’s only a block off the Main Street and is a delightful small-town home. The rooms have been retained in a reasonably historic manner, and reflected, maybe, the décor of the later 1940s or early 1950s. The garden and patio is very cute, and the place looked wonderfully set to host weekend gatherings like weddings, or graduation celebrations. The odd thing was that there was no staff at all on site. We were given an access code to the doors and left to get on with it. The system worked perfectly well, but it did seem strange to have no one there except us, and as we discovered later, a family from Norway.

I won’t go into detail about the family gathering, other than to say that it was wonderful to meet my cousins and to spend a bit of time with them. Pizzas from Cousin Cyril’s fire truck pizza oven, he’s a caterer, was a nice end to the day, though.

On our only full day there, Cousin Mary ran us around the area, and took us to see Lake Michigan, so I could tick another Great Lake off my list; just Superior to go, now. We visited White River Light Station, Muskegon and Pere Marquette Park, all great places, even with the wind strong enough for the Kite Surfers to be having a fantastic day out on the lake.

We also had a little walk around the town of Fremont, interesting as it bore more than a passing similarity to our little town. Downtown Fremont is struggling in its original format, a lot of businesses being shuttered on Main Street, thanks largely to the strip mall leading to the big out-of-town stores on the city’s western edge. For all that, it’s a well-maintained place, and the city fathers have made the development a bit more spread out than in our little town, making it seem lighter and more airy. The area behind Main Street was interesting as there was nice, free, parking lot and a covered area that could be used for a market or other community gathering. I think I need to send the Chatham-Kent council to Fremont for a fact-finding mission.

When it came time to leave, my first job was to buy some petrol. Being in the USA, it’s sold in US Gallons and, also because it’s the USA, it’s priced in fractions of a dollar, that is “nine-tenths” rather than its decimal equivalent, “point nine”. Ah, they’re so quaint hanging onto the old ways. I paid $3.429 for a gallon, which worked at around CDN$1.24 a litre. Our going rate is CDN$1.50 or so, so it’s a bit cheaper in Michigan. The thing is, though, that it’s not so much cheaper, and that $3.429 I paid was the lowest we saw in a State with a wild fluctuation in price, some places showing $3.93. Ah well, I don’t mind paying a bit more tax in Canada, and I remind myself of that each time I don’t have to pay to visit the doctor.

We went back the same way as we had arrived, albeit that we had to make a little detour through the streets of Grand Rapids because the on-ramp to the I96 was closed. Here’s the thing, this closing of roads can’t be helped, but it seems to be a North American thing to have drivers very surprised by the closures because nowhere on our route from Fremont to Grand Rapids was there any indication that the ramp wasn’t open. The first thing to see was the orange barriers across the road. That happens a lot in Canada, too, and it’s almost as if they don’t think there will be any out-of-towners using the roads.

We used another really nice, really clean rest area on the I69 just east of Flint. You simply can’t fault these places, and I feel like writing a stiff letter to the Ontario Ministry to Transportation to let them know how it should be done.

At Port Huron, the line up for the border was a bit crappy. Two lanes, one for cars and one for trucks, were both stopped about a mile or so out, in large part thanks to the trucks not staying in their assigned lane. There are two bridges at Port Huron, one for Eastbound and one for Westbound traffic, but today the eastbound span was closed, so all the traffic, masses of trucks mostly, were having to use just one lane. We did get to see a big lake freighter passing under the bridge as we crawled across it, which was nice, and then once into the border check area away from the trucks there was no line and the (predictably) dour border guard asked only question before letting us go on our way. I always like to make trips away, but it’s always nice to get back into Canada.

Before heading home, we indulged ourselves with some Bridge Fries from Albert’s in Sarnia, followed by an ice cream from the little store on Front Street. Even there, though, I went to make a left turn to go to Point Edward and the road was closed; no signage, no nothing, just a load of orange barriers. It’s a thing, this keeping people guessing. Fortunately, grid-system roads always allow for an alternative route.

So, back home safely, it was time to decompress. Mid-Michigan is very pretty (excluding the dead deer littering the roads), and Lake Michigan was a picture. It was an easy run, even with the pain of the border, and I have no doubt that we’ll be back in that area at some point in the future. The Gerber Guesthouse in Fremont was lovely, and comfortable, and the town itself just very typical of mid-Michigan. A good trip all round.