VACATION – Monday Monday

 

(This blog being sent on Wednesday when aircard signal was available)

As Sunday night went on… it got hotter and hotter during the night.  Winds whipped up from the south, bringing hot and humid air over the Great Lakes.  Thinking it would be cooler along the coast of Lake Superior, boy were we ever wrong!   It was just as hot here as it was further down the state.  I woke up about 2 am and turned on the air conditioning and shut all of the windows.

 

We woke up Monday morning to hazy sunshine and humid conditions…. after a quick breakfast, we took the dogs for another romp on the beach.  Not many places let dogs on the beach, so we were going to take advantage and let them have another go up and down to enjoy themselves.  With doggie bags and leashes, off we went.

 

We noticed that some folks seem to buy up these run down beat up beach cottages, and then park their big motorhomes in the yard.  Nothing is done to the cottages which have fallen in disrepair.  But they all have a cheap great parking spot overlooking the water!

 

I hopped in the Tracker about 15 minutes before Steve was ready to leave with the rig… to drive the five miles down the road to the Little Girls Point county campground.  We figured the office would be open by about 10 am and we would see about getting a site there for a couple days.   This is the campground we checked out on Sunday’ ride.  When I got to the caretaker’s house, he said his wife went to town (25 miles away) to do the banking deposit and pick up supplies and would not be back till noon.  After all it is a Monday morning after a busy weekend.  She takes care of all the reservations and knows which site is paid for and which is empty… and he dare not let someone on a site till she gives the okay!  LOL   So he showed us a nice shady spot to park in the parking lot crosswise  and he showed us where the path is to the beach so we could enjoy the morning till she came about noon.

 

When she got there, we were lucky enough to get the site we had looked at, Lucky Number 13~  haha…. the campground has about 10 sites along the water, each site perched up on a high cliff… wow what a view!  they are separated by enough brush and shrubbery that you feel you are on your private retreat.  The lots on each side of us are reserved and paid for all week through the holiday weekend, but nobody is even on them yet!  So that makes it even more peaceful---  though we do have to vacate it by Wednesday as it’s reserved for the weekend too.

 

This is the site we are on, the water is wayyyyy down over that cliff behind the fence.

  

Once we were set up, we decided to take a little ride the short distance back to Superior Falls….  a nice waterfall that is tucked way back among the trees and rock formations before it dumps into Lake Superior.  When we got to the midway point of the cliff along the path, I said enough was enough, that long twisting trail down down down meant we then had to come back up up up, right?   It was getting very hot and humid, so I waited at the top of the trail and let Steveio down to see if it was really worth the look-see.  LOL

 

(that is Steve—wayyy down that hill, the tiny red dot)

I stayed up high on the cliffs, to catch the slight breeze coming across the water.

 

I sent the camera with Steve so he could snap photos while down by the waterfalls…      he did a GREAT job!

Meanwhile, I was sweltering along the path in a patch of grass, trying to cool off. This weather is so unusual for the U.P. of Michigan. It was in the 90’s but the humidity so high the heat index had to be well over 100.  Icky!

We came back to our wonderful campsite and made ready for the beach…  this beach also allowed dogs too, as long as they were on leash and you had pooper scooper bags along of course.  There was even a bag receptacle on the sign where you could grab one if you forgot one to take with you.

OUCH… this beach is all rocks!  Big Rocks, Little Rocks, Gravel Rocks and not so much sand.  We wish we had worn tennis shoes or water shoes instead of sandals.. then we would have worn them right into the water.  It was had to find a good spot to stand because the rocks kept slipping away underfoot, thus making it hard to find your balance.  A lot of the kids and grownups were using big logs of driftwood to float out on to deeper areas, instead of walking on the rocky bottom of the lake.  Smart!

 

The dogs had their turns being brought out and let free to swim back in.  There was no romping along the shoreline escapades like at the sandy beach, because the rocks were too hard to maneuver with their paws too, just like our feet.  But we all got cooled off and rested a while on the blanket…  It sure felt great!

 

 

 

As a kid, when we would come to Lake Superior, it would be frigid cold and we would dip in quick and back out and that was that.  This time with all this heat, it felt good to be in the water and we relished getting wet time and again, then going back to the blanket to rest…

 

Steveio found some energy on the way back to the campsite, to be a “kid” again!

 

After beach time, we hit the shower to get the water off, as there were signs posted about Swimmer’s Itch…  and we sure didn’t want that ruining our vacation for a week or so.  Swimmers Itch is a small parasite that usually affects the skin surface if you don’t wash off well after swimming, usually prevalent in the lakes around here during August.  Icky!

 

We had a quick supper of tacos, then we left the dogs behind in the rig (with the air conditioner going) and we hopped in the Tracker to check out the parking situation around a museum I want to go to on Wednesday, if we should take the rig there and let Steve wait for me or if I should just go to Hurley myself and double back to join up with him here at the campground. 

The museum is a live working museum of rug weavers who are there M-W-F and Sat. from 10-2 and I would like to see their process and write an article for The Weavers Friend magazine about my visit, and include some photos.   Well, there is plenty of parking there so that is fine, but the quickest route there is all road construction, newly tarred blacktop and rough going.  I think Steve will hang with the rig and I will just come back the 25 miles from the museum, meeting him in the tiny town of Saxon near the highway.  Then when we leave on Wednesday afternoon, we will be going west on US2 and perhaps into Minnesota.

We also hit Walmart in Ironwood for a few supplies before leaving town… and checked out a small netbook for Steveio.  He burned up his old laptop by setting it on a blanket on the ottoman last week at home, and covered the air cooling vents.  We looked at some Dells and Acers, and the Compaq my sister just bought that was full size.  Not sure yet.  So will keep thinking about it.  Looking for a great deal and save some $$$.

 

Got back to the campground after dark and pulled in and went to bed… with the air conditioning going full blast to try to beat this heat.  At least we had a good night’s sleep with the AC, thank goodness we found a park with hookups, otherwise I would have insisted on running the generator all night to stay cool.