Yesterday Anne-Marie and I pulled the trailer away from Southern Michigan, to escape the severe thunderstorms that were pounding the Mid-Western states. After traveling just 30 miles north, we broke away from under the thunder storm clouds, and have had good weather since. We made a short stop in Grand Rapids Michigan, to visit the ever necessary Penzey’s Spice store, to allow Anne-Marie to provision up on vital supplies.
During Anne-Marie’s shift at driving the van, somewhere North of Cadillac Michigan, we decided to look for a RV Park just anywhere interesting and towards the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. As the navigator at the moment, I calculated that Traverse City or something close might be fun to look at, and it was within 40 miles of our present position. I chose the closest RV Park to town, Traverse Bay RV Resort, and gave them a call. The RV Park had room, but they asked for a description of our RV first. I was told that we had to have a motorhome or 5th wheel trailer longer than 28ft, and no older than 10 years, but we have an Airstream Trailer, and it’s 34ft long and only 6 years old. We fall into the same category as the vacationing tenting folks, and therefore we are undesirable, and not allowed to enter their RV Park. This is the first time we have been snubbed, and denied entry to a RV Resort, because we were a trailer.
The second RV Resort that I called, was Timber Ridge RV Resort, and all’s OK. Great, and it’s in the van’s GPS database, so plot a course to it. We were on a State Hwy, and the GPS showed the shortest route.
All was well till we were within 1/4 mile of the RV Park, and the GPS showed turning down a narrow gravel road, and Anne-Marie did, and the road got narrower, and quickly down to this sandy dirt road. We were about three trailer lengths and two bends down the road, and we stopped. I called the RV Park and told them where we were, and she said “Oh Oh, you did that too”, she said that a few other motorhomes got stuck there also, and they made it through, but they got scratched up from the tree limbs. She said If you can’t turn around, go slow and this road does come out on the back side of the Park. Anne-Marie behind the wheel, and I navigating, we looked over a driveway to a house, that branched off, pondering will the trailer be able to back through the trees, to the main road, or turn around here?, Anne-Marie said “if they said that we will fit through the trees, we can just go slow”, and we did. the narrow slot that the van is parked in, had plenty of room for the trailer, about two inches on each side, I had my forehead pressed against the window looking in the mirror, and Anne-Marie had a death grip on the steering wheel, watching her mirror. We got close, but escaped giving the trailer some more battle-scars. This is the first time that our GPS did that to us, but the database shows it as a county road.
In 2009, TripAdvisor named Traverse City the number two small town travel destination in the United States, and we can see why. This is a wide picture of the State Park on the bay, and the people are small in the picture, but this was a busy place and a lot of people were on the beach.
This is the City Park area, and there is a lot of activity, swimming, boating, and we saw someone with a parachute, being pulled by a boat.
The State of Michigan has a school here, The Great Lakes Maritime Academy. There is a lot to see and do here, and I think that there is a couple of weeks of exploring available here, but we have reservations at a RV Park on the Upper Peninsula, at Munising, for tonight and tomorrow. Tomorrow we have reservations for the Glass Bottomed Tour Boat, to view some shipwrecks, on Lake Superior. So we must travel.
Yesterday Anne-Marie and I cruised through St Joseph, Michigan and looked at a few sights, before driving North to Coloma, Michigan. We had blue sky's, and we got to look at Lake Michigan, and further north, visit a country market.
This is a 1955 Chevrolet on top of this drive through restaurant, The Neon Grill. The side windows have sun shades, and the car looks to be complete. A few days ago there was a circle of cars all around the building, waiting to place an order.
Lookout Park, and Lake Michigan in the background. This area back in the early 1950s had houses along this strip of land, with large backyards, overlooking the waters of the lake, about 60ft below. Large rainfalls, storms, and a change in the natural current flow because of two piers constructed to the North, all this combined created rapid erosion of the bank, and the undermining of 13 homes. In the 1970s the properties were made into this park. Wonderful views, several parking areas, and warning signs all over, Stay Away From the Edges.
Bob’s Barn is located out by Coloma, and it is worth stopping by, just for the samples. The building looks to be a bit tired, and maybe even a little neglected. The old red truck is the only real bright spot that will arouse the curiosity of a traveler.
Once inside Bob’s Barn, the well lit, well organized displays, bring out the Wow factor, and I couldn’t help but say “Wow” upon entering this store. Not a large building, but clean and bright inside. The owner makes pies and pie type pastries, and does them well. I believe nearly everything in the in the store is made somewhere close by. Maple syrup comes from a farm a few miles away, honey is provided by a local bee keeper. All the fruits and jellies have Bob’s Barn on the labels, but the owner is quick to point out that he doesn’t make any of them, but he seemed to know where the farms are located where they are made.
The name Fifth Third Bank’s name looked unique to me but Anne-Marie says that she has seen several in Wisconsin?
Today is a travel day for us, and we are moving the trailer somewhere North. A band of storms is pounding us and the mid-west, and it looks like 50 miles north should get us into nicer traveling weather.
Good smells in the trailer most all day, but at a price. When the electric pressure cooker got put into use, the outside circuit breaker tripped, because the A/C was on. To keep the cooking in progress, I had to turn off the A/C, and open windows and vents, now the door, kitchen window, and all vents have fans a blowing. We are on 30amp electric service, and the A/C draws over 20amps alone, and with the two electric hot water heaters in use there isn’t room for multiple electric cookers. At least we are in Michigan, and closer to the cooler weather.
The black and White pictures were found on another website, that included many stories and pictures about the development of the House of David Grounds, and I am only using them to show the past grandeur of the Amusement Park.
The lion and Tiger building, early 1900s and today. After the park stopped having visitors, the building had several different uses, and now is used for storage.
The auditorium early 1900s, and the hotel, restaurant, greenhouse today.
The ball field during a night game, and a wide view of the area that once was the ball field. One of the volunteers told us that during High School, this was their home field for games, I guess that by his age, during 1950s. The ball team continued to play after the amusement park had long closed.
The train depot during the early 1900s, and the building today. The new owners have fenced the area off to keep curious folks such as myself from the old falling down buildings. The Depot is used on weekends during the time that they are running their miniature train. They seem to have organized work crews in building/restoring the train tracks, and clearing the 80 year old underbrush from around the aged and tired old buildings.
During the 1920s seemed to be the peak of activities here, then scandal about the founder, and his death in 1927, fractured interests with the followers dividing into different groups. The grounds have evolved through three or four owners since, and these present owners have a plan that seems to span 10 years to restore all that they can.
Anne-Marie and I think that we will stay another night here, and depart on Tuesday.
Anne-Marie and I arrived at the RV Park, located the nearest to downtown St Joseph, here in south west Michigan. The St Joseph River separates two cities, Benton Harbor and St Joseph, and before we arrived I thought that it was all the same town. The Park owners were busy with the miniature train line that they have rebuilt, when we arrived, and after we were setup at our site, I walked around the park. This place has a lot of history clear back to 1903, when it was a religious society, colony, commune, and built up to hundreds of members, and the grounds were built up to be an attraction for thousands of visitors. The grounds had over a mile of miniature train tracks, a small zoo, pony rides, baseball teams, over 100 hotel rooms and cabins for overnight guests, and they could feed and entertain over 1000 guests a day. I read where this amusement park, pre Disneyland, was one of the largest in the country, in its day. The core group had political issues between them and seem to have fractured apart a few times. The grounds have fallen into disrepair, and in some areas become overgrown to the point of unrecognizable. The current owners of the RV Park, are in the process of expanding the miniature railroad to a greater length than original track area.
The deteriorating structures are fenced off so as to keep visitors, like myself, from getting hurt. The railroad tracks have been newly rebuilt.
I found this picture online, and it shows that this was a large, and grand hotel in its day.
This shows the train depot, with the arched roof, and the old hotel in the back. The owner told me that the depot building has been rebuilt a few times in the last 100 years.
There is a Museum and walking tours of the other side of the grounds, called Mary’s City of David, apparently when the group divided, so did the property back in the 1930s.
St Joseph is a coastal town with beaches and parks, and the St Joseph river has pleasure and working boats docked along each side of the bridges entering into downtown. We drove through a part of the downtown area last night, and something was happening, there wasn’t any parking, and a lot of people were on the sidewalks.
The TV channels seem to come from Milwaukee Wisconsin about 80 miles away across Lake Michigan, and the antenna is very sensitive on where it is pointed to keep reception. This is a bit confusing because when using TVguide.com the programing is off by an hour, because we are in Eastern Standard Time Zone.
Now that we are all set with safe tires, and Anne-Marie is happy with my new shorts from Macy’s, we will be traveling North today. St Joseph, Michigan is the goal today. We will stay two nights here, and be touring the town tomorrow (Sunday). This is a vacation town on Lake Michigan, and it has beaches and parks all around. There was a favorite bakery that Anne-Marie and I chased down last year, and a special meat market that we found. The Lookout Park gives views of the water, looking towards Chicago, but it’s a bit too far away to see the lights at night.
Anne-Marie is low some of the spices that she uses for breakfast every morning, and as I remember sometimes substitutions aren’t fun to eat. Monday morning we will drive north to Grand Rapids, with the trailer in tow, and visit the Penzey’s store.
Anne-Marie and I journeyed east a couple of hours, and after making the tire store stop, we parked the trailer, and found a restaurant for drink and a dinner.
The Big O Tires Store in Indianapolis got the tires installed on the van, and I had them put on the front of the vehicle. When the tires are needed to hold the weight of the trailer, and stopping it, the cost of the tires increases, a lot. The cost of two Load Range E tires for our van is $467.04, installed, and it seems to be in line with the tires we bought 1 1/2 years ago. We should be done with buying tires for a few years.
Anne-Marie choose the RV Park that we are checked into, because it had “Resort” in it’s name. We both studied the available RV parks, and we decided that this end of town would give us a day of big town shopping. We have never been to this RV Park before, and it was a surprise to us after we checked in. The overnight/pull through section is kind of bleak, look at the wide picture. There was a nice looking Koa RV park next to the freeway, and we got our expectations a little high, and then a little bummed after we paid for two nights, and saw the parking sites. Next time we need to stay at this end of Indianapolis, we will stay at the KOA.
We chose this little restaurant for dinner, the parking lot was full, and the inside was packed.
Tired, thirsty and hungry, we both ordered food and drinks. We has an enjoyable dinner with a lot of people watching. This is a small restaurant, and customers were being fed, enjoying company, some even being loud and laughing, and all of this reminded me of some of our favorite restaurants that we have found throughout the country.
After dinner we seemed to wind down, and were ready to head back to the quiet of the trailer. I was more tired than what Anne-Marie shows in this picture.
Anne-Marie wants us to find a Macy’s near Indianapolis to buy me some more Dockers brand of shorts, because the ones that I have are a bit frayed around the bottom edges.
I can see us staying here only one more night (tonight), and then we move north. Retirement and travel, sometimes is hard to do for very long. Whenever someone asks, “How much does it cost to travel in a RV all of the time?” my thoughts are, about all that you got and some savings too. If we run short of funds, we just stay a little longer at a place that we like, and we do overspend sometimes, and lengthen our stay. We don’t have the energy or the funds to travel every day, and we have to tour the area’s sights on layover days. What this means, is we will have to do another lay-over day (two nights stay), somewhere in Michigan. It’s fun to be a bit flexible, and not need to be somewhere, and our mode of travel suits us just fine.
Our last full day rewarded us with another weasel sighting, right here in the RV Park.
The weasel is standing on his hind two legs, directly in front of this power structure. The little guy is not even a foot long counting his tail, but he can stand up and look around about 6 to 7 inches tall. Anne-Marie and I watched him for a few minutes while I was digging around for the camera, and we saw him dive forward and catch an insect in the grass, and eat it. I set the trail camera up on the post on the right, about 18 inches high, and aiming at the close by hole that looked to be the most used. All the pictures were of passing cars, and me when I retrieved the camera, no animals, or birds. Some day this trail camera will take animal pictures all day and night.
Our first stop of the day was at The Country Salvage Store. Note that the thermometer indicates 100, and I think that it got a little hotter during the time we were inside. This store has a greater amount of commercial goods, than Beachy’s, but everything about the style of the store is Amish.
The common lighting throughout the store was gas lighting, and what looked to be electric lights were actually skylights. The picture of the ceiling shows the skylights, and the gas lights with the mantels uncovered.
Carriages, and wagons were common, and really didn’t look out of place.
Rockome Gardens, one of the first things that we saw was the giant rocking chair, and Anne-Marie and Grace gave it a try. The first activity we did was to take a carriage ride, before the heat wore us out. Sara and Grace inside the carriage.
The Amish don’t have a problem with using compressed air, to power anything. We have seen fans in Beachy’s store that had air lines plumbed to them, and this sewing machine has a blue air line in back. I read that some houses would have a air line plumbed into them from the shop, to power the sewing machine.
The Wedding Triangle, this table is arranged in the traditional manner to show placement of wedding party, and family. The guests didn’t have as nice of settings, but this was to display and honor the bride and groom.
Some of the garden area, and not a weed to be found.
The name of Rockome must be because of the extensive use of rocks as decorations in the landscaping, and the wide view of the lawn area, shows cement and stone arches and pillars of many designs. The wide view of the barn shows the stables and all of the harness stuff, hanging by each horses stall.
The use of horses to provide power isn’t limited to pulling carriages, and farm implements. This saw is powered by the horse harnessed to a wheel, and through gears, shafts, and belts, the saw cuts wood quite well. The wide picture of the Blacksmith shop shows it as smoky, dark, and dreary as it was. The picture doesn’t give you the feeling of the acrid amoke, and uncomfortable heat that also was present.
A snapshot of carriages on display, in front of this carriage builders house. They do all of this with no electricity.
Today Thursday, Anne-Marie and I are pulling the trailer to a Big O Tire shop in Indianapolis, Indiana. After the tires are done, we will head north to cooler weather.
