July 14, 2008

Hi Everyone,
We've spent the last two weeks in Wisconsin and Michigan. (Right now we just arrived at an RV park near Ann Arbor, MI.) Wisconsin is beautiful -- especially if you love trees and lakes as we do. It was a quiet time for us.
But it was in Michigan that we did a bit more exploring. Probably the most fun we had was taking the ferry over Lake Michigan to Mackinac Island. Now, Mackinac Island is home to 400 people -- the Grand Hotel -- small shops (especially home-made fudge shops -- we bought two pounds) -- horse carriages and lots of bicycle rental places. No cars are allowed on the island. We rented a tandem bike and asked the young boy who prepared it for us if the island was hilly. "No, it's all flat," he said. Well --- we biked up and down the hills, really getting our exercise, and had to push the bike a number of times. We said, "how can he say that this is flat?"
Nearly two hours later when we returned the bike, we asked him why he said that the island was flat. We told him where we biked and he said "Oh my, you did that?" Turns out that there was a flat bike trail that circled the island close to the water. Guess he didn't figure that old folks would take to the hills. Turns out that we were the only ones on tandem bikes traveling the hills. But, in doing so, we saw the Grand Hotel and other island wonders of nature. (The Grand Hotel was the place where "Somewhere In Time" starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour was filmed.) We asked how much it cost per night to stay there and were told that rooms go $250-$400 per night.
On a more sober note, the high cost of fuel has certainly put a damper on this country's RV economy. One day, we traveled 300 miles and only saw 11 other RVs along the way. RV parks make their money in the summer time. Most of the parks are near empty. (See photo below. In that park, there were 145 spaces and only six RVs were there last Saturday night.) We, ourselves, have decided to travel less and stay longer at the various places we visit. (We will update our map of projected travel shortly.)