Great Lakes Rendezvous Trip is a GO!

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Over the last five weeks, the Great Lakes Rendezvous Trip Plan has gone through five more iterations. It is now nearly complete. We will be leaving towards the end of April and return the tail end of July. The trip, barring unexpected events, will take 100 days, which makes it the longest road trip we’ve ever done.



The long-pole-in-the-tent was the stay at Isle Royale National Park. That’s an island, so there are no RV campgrounds there and the boat ride to get there takes a full six hours. This is not one of those parks, even like Dry Tortugas off of Key West, where you hop over, spend the day and come on back. You have to spend at least one night there. And there are only two options for spending the night. One is to tent-camp at a primitive campground somewhere. You know - backpack in with tent, sleeping bag, Coleman stove, fishing gear (hoping to catch our own dinner), and water purification systems so you have something to drink. Don’t know about you, but that’s just a bit too ambitious for us old folks.



The more reasonable option is to stay at a lodge with a large, comfortable bed, a balcony with chairs to watch the sunset, and a dining hall on the lakeshore serving all kinds of fresh fish and game. There is one, and only one, such place on Isle Royale - Rock Harbor Lodge - and, right after New Year’s, we were able to book a room there. We bought a 3-night package that includes a room with a queen-size bed, three meals a day in the Lodge Dining room, a half-day rental of a canoe, and a Sunset cruise on one of the park boats. I admit it isn’t exactly cheap, but we will never be there again and spending three days and nights on an isolated island in the middle of Lake Superior among wolves, moose, northern lights, woods, and hiking trails, certainly sounded like fun. We are viewing it as the highlight of this trip. There is no WiFi there, so no daily posts - I’ll still write them, but they won’t get posted until we get back.



Anyway, once we had dates for the Isle Royale trip, it was easy to simply roll the calendar backwards and forwards. We had the sequence of each of our stops laid out, based on proximity and driving distances. And once we added in down days for rest and maintenance (roughly every four days), then we had the outline of the trip and the dates of all our travel and sightseeing days.



Once we had dates, then Joan applied her magic. She is a whiz at identifying campgrounds. Generally we like to stay in the parks we are visiting, but that isn’t always possible. Many of the parks don’t have campgrounds, or, if they do, then they are often more for tent campers than RV campers (like at Isle Royale). In those cases, we try to stay in state parks, finding that they offer the best combination of amenities (like hookups and showers), beautiful locations, and relatively cheap prices (usually between $30 and $40 per night. So she frequently finds us State Park campgrounds near the National Parks and they work just fine.



Except when they don’t. On this trip, there were at least three different state parks that we wanted to stay at that were already booked full for the dates we wanted them. Some of the state park systems are now allowing reservations a year in advance and it appears that mid-westerners are grabbing the sites as soon as the opportunities open. As an example, we really wanted to stay at Big Bay State Park on Madeline Island, just a short boat ride away from the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin. But we found that during our planned dates to be there, all 150 campsites were taken. Instead we will be staying at a private campground in Bayfield, on the mainland. It isn’t our first choice, but it will be fine.



Anyway, Joan excels at making all those arrangements and she has booked more than a dozen campgrounds already and has a list of options for campgrounds at other locations where, at least at the moment, we don’t think we need to make reservations.



So the current version of the trip plan has our full itinerary by day, or at least, groups of days, with reservations at nearly all campgrounds now made. Next step is to get all the campgrounds into Google maps and plot out the driving routes. Generally, we like to take US highways, but on days where we really just want to book some miles, we will likely hop on the Interstate. We also look for ‘green dot’ routes and incorporate them whenever we can. Those are especially scenic roads indicated by green dots on our road atlas. They may take a little bit longer, but are always well worth the drive.



One thing I’m working on, sort of on the side, is identifying the ecological zones we will be traveling through. This trip takes us through three major zones, one of which will be a brand new experience for us. The Great Plains occupies nearly all of the drive through Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa and we know that zone pretty well. The Eastern Temperate Forest occupies southern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, as well as anywhere we are going in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. We saw a lot of that zone when we did Southern Charms last year. We will be further north, so there will be some variation, but still a lot of hardwood forest. It is the Northern Forests of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota that will be really different for us. The land has been scraped nearly barren by glaciers and the forests are made up of spruce and fir. Some of the rock formations there are among the oldest on the planet, dating back 4 billion years. We are both looking forward to the new experience.



So the trip plan is set and we will be leaving in late April. Between now and then, we have a lot of preparations to make. The Land Cruiser needs a thorough inspection and service - we’re going to be asking a lot out of that vehicle over what is likely to be about a 9000 mile trip. And, because Joan is adding multiple bike rides to this trip, I need to get a couple of bike racks installed on the luggage carrier. The bikes need a tune-up. The trailer too is going to roll over most of those miles, so we need to have the suspension, wheels, tongue, brakes, and tires thoroughly serviced. We fixed several interior problems last summer, so I think all the living systems (AC, heater, refrigerator, stove) are all functioning fine. The girls will be going to the vet next month for their physicals and we will need bordetella shots so we can board them at a kennel for our Isle Royale excursion. And we have to get our clothes ready - we will probably need layers. We’re not expecting any real heat until the trip home (in late July across the prairie). But evenings in the far north might get chilly on occasion. Once we get closer, we need to plan food and supplies. We are planning on periodic shopping trips, but it isn’t our idea of camping to spend our time in grocery stores buying staples, so we want to pack as much of that kind of stuff as we can. In short, there is plenty yet to do, but the plan is prettty much done.





Great Lakes Rendezvous is now a big GO!

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