July 25th we left Farragut after a great visit with family and friends and getting the motor home repaired and serviced. We stopped at Mercer RV Village for the first night.

Thursday we traveled to the Detroit Michigan area where we stayed at the Detroit- Greenfield KOA. We went over to cousin Mary and Joe Tyson’s in Canto MI and went to dinner and a nice visit. Friday Mary and Joe took us over to see Andrea who lives in Stevensville, MI which is across the state on Lake Michigan. We had a nice visit and it was a nice ride over there. Andrea has a beautiful home near the lake.

Saturday Joe and Mary took us on a tour of downtown Detroit. The city is redeveloping the river front and it is really turning that part of the city into a beautiful place. Later we went to a great steakhouse for dinner. We had a great weekend with Joe and Mary.

July 29th Sunday we left Detroit and traveled north to Frankenmuth, MI and the Jellystone RV Park. We then went to Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland the worlds largest Christmas store. The store is the advertised to be the size of five football fields and is filled wall to wall with Christmas decorations.

Monday morning we went to Tony’s Restaurant for breakfast. Tony’s is widely known for large portions and they live up to their reputation. Three eggs, a quart of homefrys, one pound of bacon and two slices of sourdough toast. We had leftovers most of the week. We then went back to Bronner’s to walk off breakfast.

August 1st Tuesday we left Frankenmuth and traveled to Houghton Lake MI. We stayed at a nice campground near the lake. On Wednesday we took a rid over to Cadillac and walked around Cadillac Lake. This is nice rural country, we are getting out of the farming area into more woodland and marshes.

Thursday August 2nd we left Houghton Lake and traveled to Traverse City and Traverse Bay RV Resort. This is a beautiful park.

Friday we took a ride around the scenic circle which includes Suttons Bay, Lelannee, Glen Haven, Sleeping Bear Dunes Nat’l Lakeshore where you can stand atop a 450 foot sand bluff and look straight down on Lake Michigan. We stopped at a Coast Guard life saving station at Glen Haven, then a the lighthouse at Betsie Point. We stopped in Beulah MI for lunch at the “Cherry Hut” known for Michigan’s finest cherry pies. They bake about 350 cherry pies a day plus their other flavors. I come from a family of great pie bakers so I feel I can be a good judge of cherry pies and these pies are very good.

Saturday and Sunday we took short rides around the area and spent some time in town looking around.

Monday August 6th we left Traverse City and traveled north to Petoskey MI where we stayed at the KOA. We toured around Petoskey in the afternoon and returned to the campground for dinner in.

Tuesday we moved on north across the Mackinac Bridge to St. Ignace, MI. where we stayed at the KOA. The Mackinac bridge connects the upper and lower peninsulas and is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of it opening this year.

Wednesday we took the boat over to Mackinac Island for the day. There are no cars on the island. You have the choice of horse and carriage rides, bicycles or walking. The island is beautiful with all the old buildings, restaurants and shops, several hotels including the largest which is the Grand Hotel facing the water. There is also historic Fort Mackinac. We had a very interesting and enjoyable day.

Thursday August 9th we took a ride over to Cheboygan and on the return we stopped at the Kewadin Casino to try our luck for a couple of hours. On our way back to the campground we stopped at Jerries Pasties, we wanted to try a pasty which are traditional pastries on the upper peninsula. They are made with pie crust containing meat and vegetables and then baked. They were very popular with the miners as they were easy to carry and eat in the mines.

Friday we left St. Ignace and traveled north to Sault St. Marie and the Soo Locks Campground. We went over to the locks and watched several freighters pass through the locks. Some of these ships are 1,000 feet long and 105 feet wide and haul grain, iron ore and various other cargos throughout the great lakes and on through the St. Lawrence Seaway on to the Atlantic. We also watched a film on the history and construction of the Soo Locks.

Saturday August 11th we left Sault St. Marie and traveled west to Newberry MI and the KOA there. We took a ride north of town and saw some of the fire area where over 18,000 acres have burned in the last few weeks. There are still areas burning and it may be weeks until they have it all extinguished.

Sunday we took a ride north to Whitefish Point and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. This is known as the Graveyard of the Great Lakes. Lake Superior is known as one of the most dangerous bodies of water on earth. There have been many ships lost in the Whitefish Pt. area including the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. This is also the sight of Lake Superiors first lighthouse.

Monday August 13th we traveled on west to Gitche Gumee RV Park at Marquette MI. This park is right on Lake Superior and has a great view of the lake. We went in town to the ore dock where we saw a large ship being loaded with iron ore pellets. We also saw another ship unloading coal for the nearby power plant. Marquette is a very clean and pretty town with a great waterfront.

Tuesday we took a ride to the former K I Sawyer Air Force Base which is now an International Airport. There is a nice display of the aircraft that was based at Sawyer while it was an Air Force Base.

Wednesday August 15th we took the Tilden Mine Tour. This is an active open pit iron ore mine which includes a processing plant that separates the iron from the rock and form the ore into sixty-five percent pure pellets to be shipped to the steel mills. They also show how these pellets are loaded on railroad cars to go to the ore dock in Marquette and transferred to ships and on to the steel mills.

Thursday we went to the Michigan Iron Industry Museum in Neguanee MI, overlooking the Carp river at the site of the first iron forge in the Lake Superior region. We saw a video on the early life on the Michigan iron range and a lot of nice exhibits.

We then went to the Cliff Shaft Mine Museum where we toured the historic mine site in the heart of downtown Ishpeming. The guide took us thru the daily routine of the miners day from going into the “dry house” to change into their work clothes and the on down into the entrance of the mine where they would enter the cage and be lowered into the mine shaft. This mine was closed iin 1963. very interesting tour.

Friday August 17th we left Marquette and traveled north to Houghton and the City RV Park located right on the waterfront. This is a very nice park with full hookups and a great view of Portage Lake.

Saturday we took a ride up to Copper Harbor which is the most northern town on the Keweenaw Peninsula and is the termination of route US 41 which begins in Miami FL. This is also the site of Fort Wilkins which was established in 1844 to keep peace in the copper country. Today it is a well preserved example of mid nineteenth century army life on the northern frontier. We returned to Houghton byway of the western coast of the peninsula.

Monday August 20th we took a ride up the eastern coast of the peninsula to Lac La Belle. This road stays right on the lakeshore and is a beautiful drive.

Wednesday August 22nd we went over to Porcupine Mountains Sate Park, We saw Lake of the Clouds and Summit Peak Scenic area which is the highest peak in the park. The mountains are not very high, but very scenic. We also stopped in Ontonagon which is a nice lake port town with a beautiful city park on the lake shore.

Friday August 25th we went to the Houghton County Fair in Hancock. One of the special features was a bear act from Florida. The bears were European brown bears which looked just like grizzlies. The couple that handled the bears put on a great show. These bears have appeared in Disney movies.

Saturday we left Houghton and returned to Marquette and stayed at the City Tourist Park this time. After getting set up we went down town to the library to check our e-mail and get a bite to eat. When we returned to the park I noticed that our friends Dave and Bonnie Smith were parked a couple of sites from us. They came over and we had a nice visit. They had just come in from Wisconsin and were on their way to Ohio to see family.

Sunday we took a ride over to the ore docks to see if there were any ships being loaded, but there were none. We then went to the park for a while, and then went to Perkins for dinner. Bonnie and Dave came over later.

Monday August 27th we left and traveled south and east on Rt.2 and stopped for the night at St. Ignace.

Tuesday we traveled on south to West Houghton Lake for the night. We were here before and it’s a nice Passport America park and very reasonable.

Wednesday August 29th we moved on south to Elkhart IN and the Elkhart Campground where we will stay until the Escapade in Goshen which starts Sept. 9th.

Thursday we went to the Monaco/Holiday Rambler factory and took the plant tour. We have done the tour before and it’s very interesting and I learn more each time we do it.

Friday August 31st we went to the Roadmaster Chassis Factory tour. This is a Monaco facility where they build the chassis for their diesel motorhomes. This was a really good tour with a really good man who explained all the different phases of the construction.

They do everything in this plant from the ground up. They bring the raw steel in one end of the building and a rolling chassis goes out the other where it is loaded on a lowboy trailer and transported ten miles down the road to the coach assembly plant in Wakarusa, IN where the finished motorhome will be completed.

Saturday we went to the nearby RV/Motorhome Hall of Fame and Museum which is a nice display of early RV’s and honors the people who pioneered the developed and promoted the RV industry from its beginning to the present.

Monday Sept. 3rd we took a ride down to Goshen and got our mail. Goshen is in the heart of Amish country so we passed lots of horse and buggies on our way.

Tuesday we went sightseeing over to the Mishawaka area where we stopped at Circuit City and shopped for a new TV. We are going to switch to a flat screen TV and need to find one that will fit in the existing cabinet.

Wednesday Sept. 5th we went to the Travel Supreme Motorhome factory in Wakarusa for their tour. It’s really interesting to see the how the different manufacturers using different methods come up with their end product. We had an excellent tour and its easy to see why Travel Supreme has such a good reputation.

Thursday we went to the Damon Motorhome plant here in Elkhart where we had another interesting tour. We then stopped at Perkins for dinner.