Great Lakes Rendezvous: Updated Trip Plan

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We are pretty much done with Christmas shopping, except for each other, and since we’re not going anywhere, nor is anyone coming here for the holidays, we are almost idle this holiday season. Strange indeed!

But that means we have time to look at other things, and one of the most pressing is making all the arrangements for our spring trip. It has been five months since I last wrote about the Rendezvous trip and we have enough new material to provide an update. Joan has spent days researching the seven states in our target area and has come up with several things she wants to do. Add her ‘Rebellion Items’ to my ‘Bucket List’ National Parks and Monuments and we have a very full and satisfying itinerary. We’ve also mapped a tentative route and included ‘down days’ (days we try to rest up).

We are now looking at a trip of nearly 6000 miles spread over 97 days. That mileage is only ‘Travel trailer miles’ and doesn’t include sightseeing trips from the various campgrounds. And 97 days is ten more than we did on Southern Charms earlier this year. It is an ambitious trip that will certainly test our stamina as well as our ability to ‘harmoniously’ live with each other in 150 square feet of living space...

So here is a narrative of our trip plan. See what you think.

The trip starts out heading northeast through Colorado and Kansas up to Beatrice, Nebraska. There we will spend a day at Homestead National Monument which commemorates one of the first homestead grants that opened up the western prairies and stimulated the migration west. Then we continue on through Iowa to Effigy Mounds National Monument on the Mississippi River, near Harpers Ferry, IA. There we see huge earthworks fashioned in the shape of animals established by residents centuries before white folks began that western movement. Joan has added a riverboat tour on the river to gain an extra perspective on the Upper Mississippi.

She also added a bicycle ride. We are buying a bike rack and will somehow figure out how to get the bikes up on top of the Landcruiser. While researching this trip, Joan discovered the ‘Rails to Trails’ program that converts unused railroad beds into bicycle paths. She has found several of them and we are adding several days to the plan, in multiple stops, to take some bike rides. I think she is trying to get me to work off some extra pounds...

After Harpers Ferry, we move a little further northeast to spend a day at Wisconsin Dells. I’m not quite sure what’s there, but Joan insists it will be a fun stop with some unique scenery.

Then we drive down to Chicago! This is going to be a real test of our ability to do a major city, using a travel trailer as our home base. On Southern Charms, we skirted the problem by simply driving around Atlanta without even a ‘drive-by’ look at the city. Chicago poses different attractions for Joan, though, and she has mapped an exhausting tour of the city. She has never been there and it has been decades for me, so it should be fun. She has us touring the Museum of Science and Industry, the Chicago Art Institute, and the Oak Park neighborhood of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. Taking a cue from a similar experience in Savannah, we are also doing a Culinary Tour through a half-dozen of Chicago’s restaurants. We will spend a day at Pullman National Monument where the railroad cars that carried thousands, if not millions, were made and the men that serviced all those riders were trained. It is one of our newer National Parks and a first for Illinois! Another stop on my bucket list is Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore where we will spend time hiking and beachcombing the marshes and beaches of Lake Michigan. Joan also has us taking a long drive up the Great Circle that skirts the lake around the western side.

Tentatively we are going to camp at the Indiana Dunes State Park for most of our Chicago visit. It has full hookups, which we would need for a two week stay, and is reasonably close to the Chicago train system which means we wouldn’t have to drive in every day. It promises to be an interesting and challenging part of the trip.

After Chicago, we will be heading south to Vincennes, Indiana, right on the Illinois border. The George Rogers Clark National Historic Park is there, and we will spend some time appreciating the Revolutionary War as fought in the interior - a perspective we normally don’t get. Then we will head back up and east, through Indianapolis (maybe stop for lunch), and into Ohio. We have several places to go in southwestern Ohio and so we will be looking for a state park in the central part of that area, probably around Xenia. We will be there more than a week.

Close by is the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument which preserves the home of Charles Young (no relation that I’m aware of) who led a band of black soldiers to protect and administer Sequioia National Park shortly after it was founded. And in Dayton as well as at Wright Patterson AFB, is the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park which preserves structures and artifacts related to the Wright Brothers original development (but not the first flight) of the airplane. (It also contains the Dunbar House, the home of an important black poet. What his relationship is with the Wright Brothers isn’t known at this point.). And we will be spending another couple of days touring the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park at Chillicothe, Ohio. This sight has very large Indian earthworks constructed around the same time that Chaco (here in New Mexico) was being built. It should help bridge the gap between the Indians in the southwest and the Indian mounds we saw at Ocmulgee in Georgia. Joan has us going into downtown Dayton to visit the Dayton Art Institute and another day to bike the Simon Kenton trail, another Rails to Trails site in Springfield, OH.

After more than a week exploring that corner of Ohio, we move northeast to the Cuyahoga River Valley. We will be spending a week probably at a state park somewhere between Cleveland and Akron while we take in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This is an urban park that incorporates not only the river, but also portions of the Ohio and Erie Canal. There are old structures from previous centuries, beautiful waterfalls, hiking trails, and another bicycle path up the canal towpath. There is also a 110 mile train ride through the middle of the river valley with the promise of outrageous views. The Cuyahoga River was so polluted that it actually caught on fire back in the 70s (if I remember correctly). They’ve done a good job of cleaning it up.

After Cuyahoga Valley, we head west and north about 430 miles up through the middle of Michigan and over to the little finger of the Michigan glove. We will likely stop for just one night in Saginaw before moving on to Empire and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. This is another park on the shores of Lake Michigan, but is much more remote than Indiana Dunes. It has two islands (North and South Manitou Islands) offering beautiful and isolated hiking country, as well as bicycle paths and huge sand dunes accumulated on top of glacial moraines. It should definitely be worth another few days.

From there we will be heading even further North for the real highlight of the trip - the Northern Wisconsin and Michigan Peninsula. Joan has us biking Mackinac Island which is right off the bridge separating Lake Michigan from Lake Huron, so we will be there for two nights. Then on and up to Picture Rocks National Lake Shore, on Lake Superior. The sites there pretty much have to be seen from tour boats so we will be on one of them. This is a place of more dunes and beaches, but also strange formations and colorful rocks.

Then we drive a few hours down to the Keweenaw Peninsula. There is a National Historical Park there, incorporating 19 different locations, that seeks to preserve some of the largest and richest copper mines that ever existed. The peninsula was, at one time, pretty much the sole source for American copper and there is lots to see about that important industry.

More importantly, this is where we board the ferry for Isle Royale National Park. Located closer to Minnesota, it requires a five or six hour boat ride across Lake Superior from Copper Harbor to reach the island which is one of the least visited national parks in the system (only about 17,000 visitors per year). Noted for wilderness camping and hiking, it does have one major lodge (Rock Harbor) which is where we will be staying for three nights. We are looking into making reservations now for a package deal that includes the ferry ride, three meals a day in their restaurant, and a three night stay. (This is sort of the long-pole in the tent and we are awaiting dates for this reservation so we can flesh out the dates for the rest of the trip.). The island is a Mecca for kayaking and canoeing, and we will attempt a brief canoe trip along part of the shore. But it also has hiking with wilderness access to to wildlife like moose and wolves. We are assuming this will be one of, if not the top, highlight of the trip.

After a week in this part of Michigan, we will drive down to northern Wisconsin a couple hundred miles and take a ferry out to Madeline Island which has a campground that will be our home base for a week. From there we will explore Bayfield, including another bicycle ride and a highly recommended restaurant. Then, using boats as our transportation mode, we will explore the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. More a cluster of islands, than a lakeshore, they offer lighthouses, hiking, and boating cruises. This National Lakeshore is the fourth one on this trip and promises to be much different than the other three.

After Apostle Islands, we drive down around the western edge of Lake Superior up to Finland, Minnesota. There is another State Park there that looks promising. From there we will be taking day trips to explore Northern Minnesota. One will be into Duluth to check out downtown and another promising restaurant. A second will be northwest up to Ely to see the International Wolf Center (I don’t think we should take the girls to that one). Then a third trip will be up to Grand Portage National Monument which preserves a portage site used by furriers a few years ago to trade pelts. Joan is interested in this one as her ancestors (the Rougier’s) may very well have been through here. Our last major stop continues along this line as we head up to Voyageurs National Park to spend a few days right along our Canadian border exploring islands and waterways. We just might include another short canoe trip while there.

After several days in Minnesota’s North Woods, we begin our journey home by turning south. We will spend a day in St. Cloud to regroup and to see the Munsinger Clemons Gardens. And then will proceed southwest into the prairie region of Southwestern Minnesota. Joan has us touring the Prairie Water Region north of Marshall, and my last bucket list stop for this trip is at Pipestone national monument, a place preserving a spot where plains Indians quarried and made stone pipes.

From there it is just a long drive home. We are hoping to stop in Northeastern Colorado to see my sister Missy, but otherwise it is just burning the pavement. It will be hot in the Great Plains by then and we will be appropriately exhausted.

So that’s the trip. I get a little tired just writing about it. But we are also excited and looking forward to the history, ecology, and beautiful and exotic locations on our Rendezvous with the Great Lakes!

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Photos

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Great Lakes Rendezvous: Rough Trip Plan

Comments

[Randall]

Love the idea
This trip sounds fabulous!