Platte River Campground, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Honor, Michigan My good friend Andy can’t understand how we can travel the way we do. His idea of traveling, with their motorhome, is to simply go where they want to go, stay as long as they want, and leave whenever they want to head out to some new place. Andy doesn’t like to make reservations, preferring not to be boxed in by some pre-arranged schedule. Being a ‘Type A’ personality, I can’t imagine traveling that way and need the security of a plan which I adhere to almost religiously. ‘Almost’ is the key word there, because yesterday is case where we actually did change the plan. I lamented yesterday that we had discovered that this park is much bigger than we originally thought. We had allocated four ... read more

Platte River Campground, Honor, Michigan We finished our northwestern push yesterday, ending up in the part of the Michigan mitten where the little finger would be. Traverse City is probably the nearest city of any noticeable size. This is a campground inside the National Lakeshore here. Unlike most national park campgrounds, this one has electrical service, although when we booked our campsites, six months ago, all of the electrical sites were already taken for this weekend. So we are dry camping for two days. (Sunday, we will move everything over to a campsite with an electrical site.). Electrical or not, this is a beautiful campground as the pictures show. And the great thing for us seniors is that the campsites are discounted in national parks, so all this natural beauty is only costing us $27/night. (Of ... read more

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cleveland/Akron, Ohio Joan is still having some pain issues in her back, but they aren’t severe and, with the bones back in the right places, her shoulder is a little sore, but manageable. She spent most of yesterday sleeping - fighting that much pain is exhausting. But she also managed to shower herself, so she’s going to be able to do a few things on her own. We’ve decided, at least temporarily, that we have so much invested in this trip that we don’t want to cancel it right now. We are going to be leaving Ohio, headed for points north, today so it will be a good test of what its going to take to travel with three arms instead of four. I certainly don’t want to abandon the trip, but ... read more

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cleveland/Akron, Ohio We continued exploring the park on foot yesterday by tackling the second-biggest ‘official’ hike in the park. Called the Plateau Trail, it is south of Peninsula a couple of miles and is accessible at the Valley Picnic Area off of Riverview Road. (There is a larger parking lot with facilities on the other side of the trail area.) It is considered ‘moderate to difficult’ in Park lingo, although even us old folks managed it so I’m not sure about the ‘difficult’ part - the elevation change is only 200 feet over the 5 mile length of the trail. There is a shorter version available, called the Oak Hill trail and using pieces of both trails you can carve out your own path. The trail gets its name because it is ... read more

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cleveland/Akron, Ohio This is truly a spectacular park. And yet, it is very difficult to explain what makes it such a treasure. The mountains aren’t nearly as spectacular as the Great Smoky’s. The hemlock and beech forests are soothing and lush, but not nearly as tall as Congaree or Redwoods. There is no Old Faithful geyser, or anything like it to draw throngs to a single spot. The closest thing I can compare it to is Central Park in the middle of New York City, although Central Park is substantially smaller. Cuyahoga Valley, like Central Park, is known as an ‘urban retreat’, a place city people can go to to restore their energy and re-embrace nature. As we explored this park over the last couple of days we did run into out-of-staters ... read more