Finne's Follies: June 2022

The Mackinac Bridge from the U.P. side

One of the places I've never been and wanted to visit is Michigan's Upper Peninsula-- the U.P. Who hasn't heard about Mackinaw Island, after all? It would have been nice to see that, but we didn't.

Instead, we found a campground somewhere in the middle called Indian Lake State Park, situated along the southern coast and the north shore of Lake Michigan. We were close to... well, pretty much nowhere, which resulted in long drives to pretty much anywhere.

The thing about the Upper Peninsula is that you need one of two things to properly enjoy it-- a boat (which we don't have), or money to rent a boat or a boat tour (which we also don't have). Consequently, our very short visit of two days yielded two day-trips in our humble automobile-- one to the nearby town of Manistique, and the other to a town on the north coast of the Peninsula (the south shore of Lake Superior) called Munising (pronounced "Myoonising").

There are many many waterfalls in the area where we were, but most required either a long hike or a boat to see. But we did visit one very beautiful one that was only a short walk off the road.

Wagner Falls

Our stay was short because the U.P. is, after all, a tourist draw, which means everything is expensive, including campgrounds. And in today's economy, when fuel costs are through the roof, one has to cut somewhere... and site fees end up taking the hit. A full-time RVer's "cost of living" is essentially split between those two things.

We did, however, try some of the local cuisine while we were there -- pasties. There's actually a "pasty trail" for those pasty lovers out there. I never heard of pasties until I watched the Harry Potter movies, which reference pumpkin pasties a lot. Perhaps pasties originated in England, but whether or not that's true, they are a thing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We noticed an ad for Muldoon's that claimed they were #1 in the U.P., so I had to at least try them. We split the traditional beef -- which was a full pound of food. Yeah... I'm not a fan. They were okay, but a bit bland for my tastes, rather British.

Traditional beef pasty

Upon leaving the U.P., we headed west and south to Sturgeon Bay for one of our favorite places-- Door County. We intended to be there for ten days, but our trip was cut a bit short by the sad parting of one of Mark's relatives, Bev Finnesgard, who passed away on June 21. We pulled up stakes on the 22nd and headed to Minnesota early so we could attend her memorial service, on the 23rd.

Now we are comfortably situated at Lake Washington County Park in Kasota, Minnesota, nearby Mark's daughter, Maegan. We are looking forward to seeing our first great-grandchild, Paxton, who is now going on three months old. He is the son of Maegan's daughter, Heidi.

We'll be here for two weeks.

When we were preparing to leave Sturgeon Bay, we discovered that the water pump on our RV had stopped working. So we've had to order a new one. Again. We replaced it only last year. Fortunately, this is a relatively inexpensive part, though a very necessary one when we are not hooked up to somebody else's water faucet.

Oh... and did I mention we nearly lost the window out of our door? That happened on the way from the U.P. to Sturgeon Bay. We'd been experiencing a lot of wind noise through the door when we travel, and I thought it was being caused by a problem with the alignment on the door. Because it's obvious that there's a problem with the alignment on the door. But when the noise suddenly stopped, I happened to look over and see that the window had pulled away from the door and was hanging precariously by one side seal. Mark pulled over as carefully as possible to the shoulder and maneuvered the window back into its spot, securing it with white duct tape. No more wind noise. But we'll have to arrange with a window specialist to fix it back in place properly. Hopefully that will get done during our stay here in Kasota.