~Thursday, July 8, 2021~
Day 389 (Travel Day)
Not only was it a moving day for us, but a day we got to see family. Nothing better than being with friends and family and something we miss the most while doing this RV lifestyle. Tim flew out from Oregon to hang out with us in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan for a few days, so we’re excited to get to experience this place for the first time TOGETHER.
The timing of our arrivals lined up perfectly, as we all arrived mid-afternoon. We landed at Straits State Park in St. Ignace, MI. while Tim got a taxi service from the Chippewa County International Airport in Sault Ste. Marie (a $90 30-minute taxi ride-ouch!!). In hindsight, we should have picked him up, but we originally weren’t sure how our arrival/setup was going to work out. Anyway, this particular airport only has 2 flights/day coming in and 2 flights/day going out, so finding any kind of taxi service is sure to be minimal. That is until Tim worked some magic and found out “Bob” could drive him to St. Ignace. 30 minutes later, Tim arrived at his hotel, the Bay View BeachFront Motel, only minutes from our campsite. It was perfect, except for the room. While he was unpacking, a “Cheaper By the Dozen '' clan was on the opposite paper thin wall, leaving Tim to hear every bit of chaos from that group, not to mention just how depressing the room was in itself. So he went back to the front desk to nicely request a different room that might be in the newer section of the hotel (where the walls might be a bit thicker) and Bingo! A free upgrade to a King-size bed, and a bit more peace and quiet. See, it doesn’t hurt to ask and it wasn’t like they were full, so there were options.
While I started setting things up, Jeff drove over to get Tim to bring him back to our campsite. It was so nice to get a big ol’ bear hug from my bro-in-law. It had been way too long. I just wish Tracy could have joined him too, but she just couldn’t get the time off work. After both of our arrival challenges, margaritas were in order. After hearing all about Tim’s challenges in getting here, including some flight delays, we had to share our slight debacle of arriving at our campsite too. When we arrived at the front gate to check in, the park attendant told us that we wouldn’t fit in the site we had chosen months ago, saying that it was a tent trailer site. She must have asked me 3 times what size our trailer was, and just how we booked the reservation, but since it was a while back we couldn’t remember the details of how we booked it. Something tells me that there were very few sites available at the time, and that our mindset was we’d just make it work somehow. As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes when booking the reservations online, the site dimensions only include the rig, not the tow vehicle. We obviously went with the rig size, alone. After a few minutes of hemming and hawing, she finally let us in, and we later found out from our neighbor, that the rig before ours was an even larger 5th wheel, so squeezing in with our 29 feet was doable. We just had to be a little creative. When we pulled up, our immediate thought was that it was a pull-through site, but that they moved the firepit in the driveway by mistake. Not knowing it was a concrete filled fire-ring, Jeff tried at first to budge it, 🤣😂 but in seconds, discovered it was going nowhere. So our only option was to back in parallel to the site giving us only 2 feet of clearance between the road and our trailer.
There is obviously no room to put the awnings out and hopefully our trailer door won’t be taken out by a passing trailer or truck. But what’s nice about this campsite is that there’s quite a bit of space between sites and that behind the trailer is a pleasant, forested setting which will be the perfect hang out area. The truck would have to be parked a little away from the trailer. But it’s all good.
We had a very fun, relaxing evening catching up on the latest with
Tim over a great dinner of bbq’d tri-tip, smashed potatoes and salad, followed by a cozy time by the fire enjoying a little Kentucky Bourbon. Knowing how much Tim would appreciate a good whiskey, we waited until his arrival to open the bottle we purchased at Bluegrass Distilleries. I thought we were about to shut down the campground until a nice young woman came over and said, “Excuse me”, to which I thought her next words would be “can you keep it down?”. She went on to explain how she and her boyfriend had been trying to start their campfire for 45 minutes to no avail and thought since we had a ripper, that we could give her a few tips. With my boyscout of a husband, Jeff couldn’t wait to show them how it’s done. 10 minutes later, they were in business roasting weenies over an open flame!