Summer 2020 Part 2

Stow City Park

October was our Fall Trip to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We stayed at Stow City Park.   The sprawling park itself had everything –a picturesque lake surrounded with brightly colored trees reflecting on the calm water, baseball and soccer fields, hiking/biking trails and a mammoth dog park that had it’s own lake!  The campground part was small and had no facilities other than electricity at each site but the bathhouse at the nearby baseball diamond was very clean and even had nice warm showers!  Of course face masks, hand sanitizer and wipes went with us wherever we went!   Cuyahoga Valley

Bike Trail

National Park has awesome bike and hiking trails that traverse woods, valleys and amble alongside a set of canals and locks from the old Erie Canal Days!

Tuesday was Senior Day at the nearby 64-room Stan Hywett Mansion in Akron and we were the first visitors there that cool yet bright morning!  In Old English, Stan Hywett means “Stone Quarry” and the 300 ft long Tudor Revival mansion is listed as the 6^th largest mansion in the US – behind the Biltmore!  History was everywhere as we strolled from room to ornate room!  Formal gardens and mammoth stone porches adorned the four sides of the 64,500 square foot “home” that was built for FA and Gertrude Seiberling in 1912.  Mr. Seiberling and his brother were the co founders of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron.  Originally the property engulfed 1000 acres including a quarry but has been slimmed down to 70 acres divided by bricked paths - lined and covered with delicate birch trees, kitchen gardens, flower beds, sunken gardens, a gate house, a greenhouse and a former stable, all of which were artfully decorated in fall attire of corn stalks, pumpkins and every color of mum imaginable.

From Akron we ventured even farther southeast, always on the lookout for more restored canals, locks and even covered bridges!  Fall colors abounded in the small but well kept Guilford Lake State Park.  We did find the canals, locks and even the covered bridge in Beaver Creek State Park after a morning of wandering back roads thru farm and forest!  We also found the Beaver Creek and the

Beaver Creek

vibrant colors of the trees that protected its jagged rocky banks.  A VERY tight corner/curve and a one lane VERY narrow bridge protected the visitor area from large RV’s and trailers and luckily, this time, we were not one of them!!

 On the move again, the “train” pulled out of Guilford Lake State Park and steadily moved west, this time thru the well kept Amish Countryside and the busy (in spite of the virus) tourist towns of Sugarcreek, Berlin, Millersburg and on to Loudonville.  Knowing that Mohican State Park there would be full, we headed up and around the corner to Perrysville and the Pleasant Hill Lake

Guilford Lake State Park

Campground.  While most of this huge park has been modernized, expanded and occupied by semi permanent campers, we chose the old section and away from the rest.   There were only a few well-spaced campers that moved in after us and we were on our way early the next morning.  It was time to head home where we knew it was safe.

Now, Christmas is here!  While our pretty little Christmas tree is still securely packed away under the bed in the trailer – this year, our home is adorned with decorations from my vast Christmas Collection that we haven’t seen in over 14 years!   Our Nativity Scene, which I purchased piece-by-piece when I was a teen, occupies the entire coffee table.  A 12-inch tree, from my working days at State Farm, is surrounded by H’s dollar store plastic train, from pre-marriage days, proudly sits on the kitchen table!

While this year, our holiday may not be as “Merry” as in year’s past, our wish is still for yours to be a blessing.   May you and your family stay safe, stay warm and stay well!  Till we can travel and be together again  - we are still  - H and B

Summer 2020 Part 1

 It’s December 17 ^th  – Christmas music is playing and I’m sitting at the kitchen table looking out the big window – at all the falling snow as it gently floats down outside.  YES – SNOW!  We should be in our favorite Salt Springs National Forest Campground in the Ocala Forest – but we’re not.  Instead we’re home, wearing long pants and sweatshirts and shoveling snow!  Our pretty little Christmas tree is packed away under the bed of the big “tan train” that is still sitting in the driveway.  Our home is decked out with a selection of Christmas items that we haven’t seen in 14 years – ever since we first began our winter adventures!   H made the decision just before Thanksgiving that we should stay home and stay safer since the “numbers” in Florida are way worse than they are up here in Ohio and Michigan!  He still gets restless but one day a week we take a road trip and sometimes never even get out of the car.  We do our grocery shopping online with pickup at the store.  Sunday Morning Church is Dr David Jeremiah on TV!

 

During the summer we slid the boat into a different pretty inland lake each week to see who would catch - the first, the biggest or the most fish!  Or the dice would roll and we would run the boat up the Maumee River, look for eagles and count all the freighters that were moored at the various coal or grain ports.  Google was always full of information on each vessel – her origin, where she was from and what she was hauling!

In July we chanced our first summer camping trip when H secured 5 nights at our favorite Petosega County Park and Campground up east of Petoskey. I’ve written about the park MANY times before, but this time was different – the new management will only allow 7 days camping and we could only procure 5 because it was fully booked for the weekends.  That infamous pipeline that runs from Canada, under the Straits of Mackinaw and south to Ohio had now been run thru the campground – taking out 13 campsites.  The pipeline was not allowed 500 feet near any campsite so the pipeline company agreed to build a new loop, restore 13 new campsites and add a new modern bathhouse.   Our site was rather secluded to begin with and the nearest neighbors were seniors and doing the “social distance” thing just like us!   We had to move out of the campground on Friday and had hoped to move to another county campground for the weekend.  That campground was nothing like our beloved Petosega!  It was way overcrowded and absolutely no social distancing - so we hurriedly moved on and headed farther south.  On the AuSable River, right near the Lumberman’s Monument is the peaceful and quiet Huron National Forest Campground.  No electricity and no water at any

National Forest Campground

 campsite however, the facilities were the cleanest outhouses we’ve needed to use in a long time.  During the night the storm hit!  We heard later that several trees in Petosega were uprooted and a big limb had fallen on the elderly 5^th Wheel that had taken our site.

 

August’s jaunt was revisiting yet another delightful State Forest Campground up on Tubb Lake near Big Rapids!  See Previous

Tubb Lake

Michigan Blog!  We had the Rockwood Trailer back then and the big picture window looked out over the beautiful little lake!   This time our even better campsite was at the end of the “cul-de-sac!   It was good sized, shaded, private and had it’s own little path to the waters edge to watch the delicate colors of the setting sun!  And the fishing wasn’t bad either.

Tubb Lake

H was really restless AGAIN in September and we headed north one more time!  Our first night was at the deserted Burt Lake State Park!  What few campers there were thoughtfully spaced out with several empty sites between each trailer.   As we attempted to begin our run for the Mighty Mac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula (the U P!!) – the truck would not start.  Thankfully H had brought his battery charger!  Our first stop was the nearest auto part store for a new battery.  With that problem solved we headed for the Woodland Park City Campground in Grand Marais Michigan, up on the jagged Lake Superior coastline.  The campground was crowded but we were only spending two nights there.  Our trusty bikes were unfolded and we headed off for town, which was just one block away!  Not much

had changed in the quaint tiny town but we still had to make sure the diner where we had gotten ice cream on our last, warmer visit was still there!  Our second day was spent out exploring the coastline, its myriad of waterfalls and having Pasties in Munising!

 

On this Lake Superior Circle Trip, our next stop was to be at another picturesque lakeside town – L’Anse, but we had to go thru Marquette first – dragging a 35 ft trailer!   Marquette is a college town whose busy campus takes up both sides of the main street in downtown!   Just north of town is Presque Isle Pointe Park and H decided we HAD to go see it because it sat high on the cliffs that overlooked the bay.  The views were breathtaking and the roads thru the park were too - because they were narrow and winding and there were no

parking lots that could handle the “train”!  We both held our breath for several of those tight turns!   Just east of Marquette, H found a tourist trap like no other and we HAD to stop there also!  Remember Solomon’s Castle we visited last winter down in Florida?  Lakenenland is another place that is built out of someone’s junk and turned into extremely unusual “sculptures”.      H failed to see the sign that “suggested” that no buses or trailers be taken thru the park and we had again held our breath on some of those tight, rutted roads that rambled thru the cluttered park.

 

We had one of the best sites in the pretty little L’Anse Township Park and Campground.  The park sits high on a bluff overlooking the Keweenaw Bay and it was our base for the next few days as we wandered up and back down the Keweenaw Peninsula and retraced our steps thru Fort Wilkins.  On our way up we detoured out onto an alternate route that took us up the coast on the west side of the

peninsula thru Eagle River and Eagle Harbor. Besides the small tourist town and the unique wooden bridge, Eagle River, named after the river, also sported a plethora of small waterfalls either along a narrow footpath or conveniently hidden in a deep crevice on the side of the road!  In Eagle Harbor, nestled in a natural harbor area we stopped to explore and H got out his drone and got several great pictures and videos.

 Up at the tip of the peninsula we found the very beginning of US RT 41, which finally ends up in Florida were it crosses the Everglades to Miami!

 

We spent one night at Indian Lake State Park before we headed back over the bridge to the Lower Peninsula and had one more night in Petosega – in the now opened loop!  That next morning started with a dusting of frost on the dainty little mushrooms, nestled in the still growing grasses between the campsites!   H still wasn’t ready to

head towards home so we meandered down along the Lake Michigan coastline from Petoskey, thru Traverse City and stopped for the day in Orchard Beach State Park near Manistee.  The park was almost full because it was Saturday but we selected one of the last 4 sites available – right on the end of a row with no one next to us!

Looking south over the Mighty Mac