September 4-10, 2003 Zoom towards Ohio

On September 4th we decided to drive to Fargo, ND or Moorhead, MN for two night and then head on after picking up our mail package.  While maneuvering Fargo we noticed the car was attached strangely, somehow one of the locking hitch pins came off.  We ended up with damage to the RV Underskirt and the electrical cable.  We ended up going to the Moorhead, MN KOA after driving 195 miles and checking in for two nights with the option to extend.  We were able to determine how the problem could have happened, the lock could not engage and look OK but come loose.  We were able to get the cable fixed, get a new locking hitch pin, and Bill fixed the Underskirt himself.  Now we double check our pins when we set up for towing. 

Fargo is exactly what we expected all of North Dakota to be like, flat and boring.  Here is our campsite:

At least there were trees and we had a nice sunset:

On September 6th we drove 171 miles and camped at the Ripple River Motel and Campground in Aitkin, MN:

The campground was on the Ripple River:

Earlier in the day we had driven over the Mississippi River at Brainerd, MN, we were officially in the east now.  We looked at the campground guide and noticed that Aitkin was also on the Mississippi and had a public access so we drove to it:

Doesn't look like much, does it?  "Big Muddy" is not much different than Ripple River this far north:

We did not see much to keep us in Aitkin, so we drove 155 miles to the city campground at Kreher Park in Ashland, WI the next day, the 7th.  This was a great campground with large sites on Lake Superior:

There were two problems: 1) we had no cell phone reception and needed to be available for the house sale; 2) the closet bar in the closet had come down.  Bill drove to Wal-Mart and bought more screws and glue and with the aid of a drill tripled the number of screws holding the closet bar on the ceiling and covered every screw with glue.  The closet bar was a piece of angle aluminum with holes in it for coat hangers, a sorry excuse for a closet rod. 

Evita really liked the campground, it was quiet, there were birds, it had trees close by, she wanted to stay.  We really liked the place, but because we had no cell phone coverage we needed to move east fast.  Then the sunset came over Lake Superior and we really felt bad about leaving:

We decided to drive US2 to Escanaba, MI the next day and what a drive it was. US2 was either under construction, had just completed construction, or badly in need of construction due to the bad surface.  It was a long drive with detours and when we got to Escanaba we decided to head to Gladstone but stopped for gas.  Evita got on the dashboard and complained, she had about had enough of driving that day and wanted us to know it.  We moved on to Gladstone and camped at the city park, 234 miles later.  This campground was on Lake Michigan and we could see the lake from our campsite:

We walked down to the lake and took the boardwalk:

Another nice place, but now we were roaming on our cell phone. 

The 9th we drove 154 miles to Mackinaw City and Mackinaw Mill Creek Campground.  We crossed over the dreaded Mackinaw Straits Bridge, which didn't seem so bad for us Washington State people with all of our bridges.  We missed the campground entrance and had to keep driving a ways for a spot to turn around, Diane was driving.  On the other side of the road appeared some wild turkeys, wow look at that.  One of the big ones decided to fly across the road right in front of us.  Diane hit the brakes and we didn't know the motorhome could nosedive like that, but the turkey crossed within two feet of the windshield.   Once we calmed down we went and checked into the campground.  It is a huge campground, but they must have liked us since without asking for it we were camped looking at Lake Huron:

Three stops in a row, three lake view campsites, three of the Great Lakes.  We drove the car into town for some mailing supplies, we needed to be able to handle some large stacks of paperwork.  We bought a couple frozen pasties, since we didn't have a chance to try fresh ones while in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan.  Our cell phone was still roaming and we had taken one roaming call this day already.

In the evening we walked down to the water and here was the view:

The bridge:

Once it got dark we could see the bridge was lighted, but we didn't take pictures.  We would have to come back to see Mackinac Island, which we finally did in September 2005.

We were still in search of cell phone coverage and we had our mail shipped to Huron, OH so we needed to keep driving.  We drove 176 miles to Hoyle's Marina in Linwood, MI and stayed at this campsite:

The two city campgrounds were $20/night and $15/night, the fancy one in Mackinaw City was $28/night and this one was $27/night.  We felt ripped off, but couldn't really complain.  Our cell phone was no longer roaming, it was September 10th.

Linwood is just south of Pinconning, which has a couple cheese makers, so we drove up, tasted and bought cheese.  It was really good.  Some of the other customers were from California, so it was also a tourist destination.  We hadn't seen any cheese makers in our brief time in Wisconsin, so we were happy to buy Michigan cheese.

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