Sunday, May 9, 2010

Mesick Michigan

Mesick Michigan

Well here it is our first trip out with the mobile motel of the 2010 summer season. May 8th, and what do we get? SNOW ! That’s right I said snow. After several days in the 70s near 80 at home, we decided to head north to Mesick Michigan for their annual morel mushroom festival. We knew the weather forecast called for cool weather and rain, but we didn’t expect the snow. In Mesick we had no accumulation of snow, however in nearby towns they had accumulations of 3 ½ to 2 ½ inches of snow. Needless to say the crowd for the parade Saturday noon was a little sparse also both venders and customers sparsely attended the carnival and huge flea market. Several of the venders that were set up on Friday decided to close up shop and leave early and forfeit their spots for Saturday and Sunday because of the cold weather and few people.
We did get in a lot of exploring of the Manistee National Forest. The Jeep functioned well, with the heater and windshield wipers working so that it was comfy and we could see to find our way through the forest on the snowmobile trails that we were following. The four-wheel drive was needed on a few occasions to transverse these trails. Many miles of exploring and several stops to check for mushrooms resulted in no mushrooms in our basket.
Something good did come from the foul weather, it gave us an excuse to hop in the Jeep and explore the surrounding towns. One of the towns was Interlochen, Michigan. In Interlochen we stopped at the Interlochen Center for the Arts to check on tickets for the N P R radio show, A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keilor, scheduled to play there in August. It was a good thing we stopped, according to the N P R web site these tickets are not on sale yet, however at the Arts box office the lady there said the 4,000 seats were just about all sold out. We were able to buy two of the few remaining tickets. We now have seats in Row 2, seats 1 and 2. We were also able to reserve a campsite at the state park across the road from the arts center. That means that we should be able to walk from our trailer over to the show.