Old Folks Home

 7/25/2023 to 7/30/2023          We picked Hartwick Pines State Park as part of a juggling act to get to Young State Park, where we will meet Sam and Kara, their kids, and Kara's parents. We were only there 5 days, and spent one day visiting Kara and the kids (and picking up a new mattress).  Another day we spent in Traverse City, getting lab work and medicine for Scott. So not much time to explore what seemed like a very big, spacious park with interesting trails, a museum, and impressive visitor center.                     Our site was very spacious with views of the woods.    Probably the most memorable things about our stay were that the electricity kept going out and we had almost no internet or cell phone service. We only had 30 amp power, but that didn't matter much, especially when we frequently had no electricity at all. Reading more is a good thing, but it's amazi...

 7/18/2023 to 7/25/2023          Tahquamenon State Park did not disappoint. The waterfalls and river were beautiful. The approximately 50,000 acres provided lots of great trails. And the cool weather made everything enjoyable.  Lower Falls          The lower falls is a series of smaller waterfalls about 4 miles downstream from the upper falls.  Short movie of the upper falls .           We scoped out a kayak trip for Scott. He put in just below the lower falls and expected to reach our rendezvous spot near the bay in 2-3 hours. I got to the spot at the 2 1/2 hour mark. It took him six hours to get there. It obviously was longer than we thought, but part of the problem was that the water was dead calm and he had to paddle hard to make progress. Advil was his friend for a while after that trip.   Calm river water          View of the trail along the river.  Vie...

 7/11/2023 to 7/18/2023         We had another great week. We have our rather boring, pleasant routines, so one week is always much like the next, which is good. One thing that was different was our visit to  Palms Book State Park, about 10 miles away. The spring there, called KITCH-ITI-KIPI, or just "The Big Spring," was beautiful. The color was a brilliant blue green. You could see the spring bubbling up and see lots of big fish. Visitors rode a raft out over the spring. Very cool.           It rained a lot, but stopped long enough to spend some time outdoors every day. We watched a lot of Wimbledon. I was for Djokovic. Scott was for Alcaraz. There were plenty of mosquitos and flies, but not too bad. The first evening the flies were biting us and Annie. We thought we were in for a rough week, but weren't bothered by them anymore. We (yes, even Scott) have become believers in OFF/DEET, long pants, and mosquito net h...

 7/4/2023 to 7/11/2023          We arrived at Van Riper on the 4th of July. The campground of 147 sites in very close proximity was very full - and stayed full during our stay.  Lake Michigamme (view from our site pictured below) has lots of options for swimmers, boaters, paddleboarders, and kayakers.      We saw "moose crossing" signs near the park. We also got a flyer on places to go to try to see moose when we checked in. Unfortunately, we didn't see any moose. We did see a lot of mosquitos and flies, but after our experience at Copper Falls SP, we were prepared with lots of DEET and mosquito net headgear. And while we did see an occasional deer (and frogs and chip monks), we didn't see any of the animals described in very interesting plaques found all along the trails.           Scott paddleboarded and kayaked all around the Lake. One day I dropped him off up the Peshekee River.  He kayaked down the...

 6/27/2023 to 7/4/2023 Thing we liked most: Mosquitos were present in "normal" amounts - nothing like our experience at Copper Falls the previous week.  Thing that we hope we don't have too often: No internet or cell service  - or intermittent service at first and essentially no service the second half of the week. We came into a coffee shop in Crystal Falls for do the blog for this week. We both got more reading done, which is a good thing.            The campsites were in the woods, very secluded and roomy. There was only one hiking trail.  We looked for other trails leading to waterfalls in the area, but couldn't find them. We hiked our trail every day, which was very nice. There were three benches and the trail went by the lake.  Annie after a hike at our campsite: Bench # 1 - Lily Tomlin style: Bench # 2 Bench #3 View from Bench # 3          Scott enjoyed kayaking. There are three lakes joined toge...