ALL DONE!!

FINIS!
Arrived safe and sound back home about 3:30 yesterday afternoon.
SUPER GREAT TRIP!
Our 6,000 mile estimate came in at an actual of just shy of 9,000.
Home movies and a few hundred digital photos are available for sale or rent- just send your requests to dennis7366@aol.com for a quote....(never did get can any requests for the Alaskan stuff but figure New England is probably much more in demand :).....And thank you all for following along. Dennis and Irene

Michigan to Indiana

We have left the Upper Peninsula and crossed the Mackinaw Bridge into “the other” Michigan. Stopped in Traverse City to begin our immersion back into citification. This area claims to be the Cherry capital of the world and based on the number of trees we see just from the roadside they have a lock on the title. Up until this point the number 1 roadside stand staple had been campfire wood but here everyone is selling cherries. Washed cherries, unwashed cherries, u pickem, we pickem, cherry pie, cherry jam, cherry jelly, cherry wine, even cherry BBQ ribs and on and on the topper was a matched set of cherry luggage. After two days there we continued south and stopped at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Visited the museum and took a bus tour of the track…really neat that Irene and I were the only passengers on a bus built for forty and the driver/guide really gave us a nice spiel on the track’s history.

Strange Boats-Ministique

At the pier in the town of Ministique we came across these three steel hauled boats. They are completely enclosed like a submarine but don't look to be able to submerge- at least on purpose. No one around to ask what their purpose was/is so the mystery remains...maybe something to do with logging??

Lake Manganese

Copper Harbor, MI

Arrive at the tip of the Kaweenaw Peninsula-Copper Harbor- and set up at the Fanny Hooe campground on Lake Fanny Hooe, of course. This is the northern terminus for route 41. The other end is 1990 miles south in Miami. It was later in the day so we drove around and took some pictures. Will be here at least two days.

Marquette, MI

We are heading west along the Michigan shore of Lake Superior. It's hard to think of this as a lake...it just looks exactly like an ocean shore line, but the water is fresh and crystal clear. Oh yeah it's about 45 degees too so as inviting as it looks I don't think we'll be doing any swimming. Dropped into a campground in Ishpeming and checked out this old mining town from the 1800's and the lake port of Marquette from about the same time frame. They have a thing here called “ore docks”. The lake freighters, 1000 feet in length, pull in with a load of coal for the electric power plant. The freighters self unload the coal with conveyors and then reload with iron ore pellets brought in by train. The trains back in on these high rise docks and chutes located under the train cars lower down into the ship hold and the iron falls with a roar. We were fortunate that a ship was at the dock. It's quite the thing to witness and we must have been there for over an hour. One of those things you have to witness in person to get the full effect.

Sault St Marie - Day 2

Saw the sights, did the shops, watched the locks.

Sault St Marie – Day 1

Crossed back into the USA about noon. Found a campground, one of two located right in the town of Sault St Marie and headed for the SOO Locks to watch the ships moving between Lake Huron and Lake Superior. Standing there watching this freighter maneuvering into position when I get a tap on the shoulder. Turn around to see my sister standing there. What a surprise. We knew she was somewhere in the Midwest on her summer RV trip but never expected to actually run into each other. Turns out she too had just arrived here from an extensive tour of the Upper Peninsula. Since we’re headed in that direction we had a great visit and she gave us a lot of tips on things to see and do up here.

Chutes- Ontario Provincial Park

Moved north and then west to another Provincial Park but still along the Ottawa River. And like all the other campgrounds we have enjoyed all across Canada we were impressed. All are well maintained and it seems each one has some special feature at their core. In this case it is the “chutes”. In the 1800’s this was big time logging country and the river was the way they moved timber down to Lake Huron for transport to the sawmills. In the center of this park is a series of 3 spectacular waterfalls that impeded those log flows so the enterprising lumberjacks constructed gigantic log chutes out of wood as bypasses. Of course the pictures can’t capture the tremendous force of the water pouring over these falls, the roar is deafening. Guess you just after come here and see for yourself:)

Driftwood Provincial Park

Located Midway between Deep River and Bissett Bay along the Ottawa River some 200 miles north of Ottawa. Try to find those two places on the map. When we first got here we were assigned site #4. Big mistake. Turns out that area is reserved for tents. Shortly after we started down the road it became very apparent we were not going to fit. After a 45 minute exercise in backing up on a very narrow one lane dirt road we discovered the person who assigned the site had just started as a summer student employee and had no idea what she was doing. But it ended up really well. We have a water front site with plenty of room all around and spectacular views in all directions. Stayed 3 nights and loved it. Did go into “town” of Deep River but not much there. Back at camp lots of trails and we had some really long hikes in the woods. Temps in the high 60’s, zero humidity, drizzle in the mornings sunshine in the afternoon. One side note….we have had the heat set for 68 and it’s come on every night since we hit Pennsylvania

Montreal on Saturday

We learn that the subway doesn’t run to the suburbs on Saturday so we ended up driving into the city, again. Fortunately at 9am on Saturday all the locals must be in advanced formula one racing school. It was pretty quiet. First a 3 hour guided bus tour gave us good view of the city and a lot of information ---in English and then again in French. The afternoon attempt to find Irene “an outfit” in the boutique shops in old city Montreal was pretty much a bust. The rains returned with a vengeance and after hours of walking and running streets we gave up the quest. Completely drenched we found a lifeboat--a sidewalk (canopied) restaurant where a little wine, a draft beer or two, seafood dinner, topped off with French chocolate pastry dessert made it all worthwhile. Oh yeah we did go back and get that pair of shoes seen earlier. Montreal Adieu!

Montreal on Friday

Blues skies and mid 70’s have been with us for a few days now and it sure is a welcome change from all the rain at the beginning of this trip. All of the other Canadian provinces we have traveled have been primarily English speaking with French as a second language. Well Quebec is all French, no English, which gives us some tentative moments (at 100 KM per hour) figuring out what the roadside warning signs are trying to tell us. We dropped the trailer at a campsite just south and ventured into the city on a scouting trip. The traffic signals there were more of a mystery with things like flashing green lights I hadn’t seen before and the whole place is filled with adrenalin pumped drivers trained in Boston and all on some life saving emergency mission. Yikes. Plus I think the Florida license plate identifies us as prey. On our way back out of the city we joined the throngs in the 5pm exodus. At least the pace had slowed down but leave 6 inches between you and the car in front and someone will immediately fill that void. Our plan for tomorrow is park the truck and use mass transit.

Vermont surprise

What we had anticipated to be a few hour stop at our friend’s home in northern Vermont turned into a 3 night stay. Bill Hatton and his daughter Carrie her husband Jeremy and their family went all out for us. First off Bill made way for us to park the RV right in the backyard of his house on Lake Seymour and from then on we were treated like royalty. BBQ with all the fixings one night only to be topped with live steamed lobster feast the next and a continuous flow of good food in between. Our mutual friends Howie and Nancy Stevens came up for an overnight visit from their place in southern Vermont and we all had a GREAT time reminiscing our GE days in Daytona. Even though Bill has a dozen things underway like a major remodel/addition of the lake house, constructing a 2 acre trout pond on the farm, and a whole bunch of other projects he still took the time to show us all the sites around his “neck of the woods”. This is the area where Bill grew up and his family settled here around 1900. The Hatton name is well respected in the community even the elementary school where Bill’s grandson Noah attends is named after Bill’s grandmother.