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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 course, the current administration is working real hard to raise prices on everything, so we may not keep our senior discounts too much longer.)
But the campground and surrounding area is gorgeous. All this green is just amazing to us New Mexicans, used to the browns of the desert. The only problem we have encountered so far are the mosquitoes, so we’ll be
using a lot of bug spray while here.
First half of the drive up was rather unremarkable as we headed pretty much due west out of the Lansing area. Once we got to Newaygo, we turned north on Michigan 37 and it was a green dot route pretty much the rest of the way in. The road runs through forests that are just dense with different kinds of trees, each with a slightly different color of green. We are also noticing, as we move north, an increasing percentage of the trees are needled evergreen trees.
Stopped for lunch in Baldwin at a placed called Barski’s, which was right off the road and had a nice parking lot to house the rig. As the name implies, this is a Polish place and I had the Polish plate which was a combination of grilled kielbasa on toasted rye with horseradish sour cream, potato pierogis in a wild mushroom sauce, and kapusta, which was sort of a sweet sauerkraut. It was terrific and I heartily recommend you stop here when in Baldwin. Joan had the perch and said it was cooked well, but she wasn’t thrilled with the fish flavor.
Speaking of Joan, she’s doing well with her arm in a sling. I’m concerned that she might be working it a bit too hard, but she insists she isn’t and I can’t argue that point with her. We were told to see an orthopedist as soon as we can, but it really isn’t clear how you do that when you are on the road like we are. So we are still discussing things.
Driving up from Ohio, we’ve entered a different eco-region, and you can tell it by the density of the forests. This area, known as the Mixed Wood Plains is a little more hilly than land south and west, but not really mountainous. It was scoured during the glacial periods and is not known for really good soil. As the name implies, it is a mix of hardwoods and pine trees, with oak and hickory predominant. It really is a transition zone into the very different ecosystem further north.
So that’s about it. We are tired and desperately need to do some laundry, so will be taking a downday today. I’m hoping we can get to the visitor center this afternoon and at least get some
plans made for this park.
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