Carolinas, Michigan 2017 Summary

In the spring of 2017 we explored the beaches of the South and North Carolina Coast. After spending mid summer at the cottage we spent late summer exploring the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Click here for the first post of the trip

The map below marks the major places we visited. If you click on one of the blue diamond marker you will get a link to the first post for that area.

Favourite Days

While almost everyday of the trip was great and I encourage you to look at them all, these are the ones I consider the most memorable. From the size of the table there were a lot of memorable days.

If you click on the picture you will be taken the post for the day.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore	Apostle Islands National Lakeshore Cruise	Apostle Islands Lakeshore Trail
Sleeping Bears Dunes Hike	Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore	Kitchi-iti-kipi Spring
Tahquamenon Falls	Superior and Saxon Falls	Munising Waterfalls
Crisp Point Lighthouse	Presque Isle River Falls	Montreal River Falls
Whitefish Point Lighthouse	Ohiopyle State Park	Cape Lookout
Chrysler Museum of Art	Jockey Ridge State Park	Cape Hatteras
Carolina Beach State Park	Battleship North Carolina	Ocracoke

Statistics

83 days spent in the RV since we left home (April 13 – Sep 14). We spent month and a half in the middle staying in the RV at our cottage but that doesn’t really count in the total.

Together with other years that makes 1019 days we have stayed in the RV.

8000 pictures saved (who know how many taken, at least double). It seems I posted over 2300 to the blog.

Distances

1. No idea on how far we hiked. It was not a year for long hikes.
2. 6000 km on the RV
3. 4000 km on the CRV just in day trips.

Money

I didn’t keep track of the money. It was not an expensive summer as we mostly stayed in state or national park campgrounds. The two cruises at Picture Rocks and the one at Apostle Islands were the only expensive things we did, at around $50 a person.

Sep 13 – Cherry Republic and Fishtown

Today we played tourist. Our first stop was just north of the park in the town of Glen Arbor. I had read about the Cherry Republic store in a blog and it looked like a fun stop. This area is a huge cherry producer.

There is a store, café and drink sampling buildings.

They had some dangerous sampling stations.

Anyone for 5 lbs of chocolate cherries (only $79).

They also have a pit spitting area.

There were an awful lot of pits very close to the rope.

We checked out some of the other stores in town.

I really liked this metal art but large was $380 and small $89.

These Lazy Susan's were interesting but not $425 interesting.

The tree of lost soles.

We stopped back at the Cherry Republic Café for lunch. We ordered a Cherry Chicken Salad Sandwich and a Chicken Cherryaki Lettuce Wrap. Mine also came with two cherry corn muffins. Everything was very good.

Our next stop was called Fishtown, just a bit farther north in the town of Leland. It is a small historic area down by the harbour to preserve some fishing shacks along a small river.

You gotta love the classics. The beautiful Datsun 240Z was parked nearby.

On one side of the river the shacks are now all small stores, except for the very last one which is still used by a family of fishermen.

If we hadn’t already had lunch, I was told to go to this place for their sandwiches.

The buildings on the south side looked to be homes.

There is a small manmade waterfall at the shore end.

A photosphere.

To get to the bridge over the falls you have to go down an narrow unmarked alley. It just seemed to be in the right place and we found it.

Down by the lake end there were a lot of fishing charter boats and this one that I couldn’t quite figure out.

It looked like a tour boat with those benches on the upper deck.

But the only way up was that vertical ladder, which a lot of tourists would not be able to handle.

We wandered around town for a short while.

A mushroom picture.

On our way home we decided to stop at one last easily accessible beach in the park near Glen Haven.

The water wasn’t as vividly blue green here but it was very clear.

A last photosphere.

After a while the sun got to us so we headed home.

And we are done for this summer. Tomorrow we make the long drive home to be there in time for our niece’s wedding on Saturday.

I hope anyone who actually followed along enjoyed the pictures. Although I am really doing this for myself and Jennie so that we can remember every detail (I know the post are getting very long) of our trips, it is nice to think that others are enjoying it as well.

I am not sure I believe the Google Blogger stats on page views. For instance today it said I had 50 views, yesterday 58. Whenever I check (and I do not fixate on it) it could be anywhere from 20 to 200. Over the lifetime of the blog it says there have been over 60,000 views.

What leads me to not believe the number is that a significant portion of the views come from Russia, Ukraine and China. So probably a lot of bots.

A summary post will be coming soon.

The tentative destination for next summer is southern BC and Alberta. Hopefully they are not burning as much as this year.

Bye for now.