2nd Day at Onaway State Park, MI

It's now Friday August 4th at Onaway state park near Cheboygan, Michigan. We decided to take this campsite for two nights because we were unsure about the weather. It was supposed to be up in the mid to high 80s and humid for both Thursday and Friday. So we decided to hunker down with electrical hookups to be able to run the air conditioning. 

But Mother Nature tricked us and Friday was absolutely beautiful!

So far we have traveled 277 mi since leaving home in Oconto Wisconsin on Wednesday morning. We really only like to put on about 200 miles a day. So the first day was just under 200 and the second day was only 79. That's good enough for us. 

Although the sites were a little close together, closer than what we prefer, we still made the best of it and relaxed in the comfort under our awning. We really didn't need to be anywhere so it was just fine to take it easy. 

The sunset on Thursday night was just amazing. We do not have a waterfront site, but I asked permission of our across the road neighbors if I could cut through and snap a few as the sun went down.

It was so pretty, I couldn't decide which picture I like the best. Actually, the sun was a lot brighter red than what it shows in this photo. My cell phone camera couldn't quite catch it.

We woke up on Friday morning and I decided to bake up one of Steve's favorites. It's the Krusteaz cinnamon swirl coffee cake mix. It takes an egg and some oil and some water. I have a large deep dish pizza pan that works very well in our convection / microwave oven.  With fresh perked coffee, it was a wonderful combination to start out the morning. 

I've had a few people comment now that I should do a blog post on baking with the convection oven. I'm still kind of new at it myself. But I think I will do a future post and catch up a few things on how I use it and some of the modifications we made to the rack that came with it. But I will save that for another day when I have nothing else to write about. 

Onaway Park is a really nice location along the eastern shore of Black Lake. The beach is situated quite a ways away from the campground and it was a nice walk through the woods to go over there. We also walked up on the upper portion of the campground as the two loops are separated by a bluff. 

We happened upon some big huge puffball mushrooms growing alongside of the path. I made Steve stand there and stretch his hand out just for scale. No, we did not pick them!

We love this sign that we saw at various locations around the campground. All campgrounds should have signs like this!

As we walked past the dump station, we noticed something quite interesting. They had two lanes to do dumping one from each direction. But only one hole to dump into. So some enterprising Park employee came up with a great idea!

Not only can two RVs dump at one time, but with the park provided hose and bayonet coupler, the dumping process can go even faster. People are not having to use their own individual hoses and pull them out or rinse them out and stow them away. Thus, taking less time and moving people through the line at a much faster pace!!

Now after talking about dumping, ugh, let's talk about dinner. I took out my beautiful wooden tray that our camping friends Roger and Lila from Washington had made for us. I spread out my beautiful Mexican tablecloth that I got on a journey into Mexico with camping friends Mary and Rich from California. So many wonderful memories floating around us while we are remembering fond camping times with friends of the past. 

While we were cooking supper, we took little Binney back outside. All afternoon a sassy little chipmunk had been dashing back and forth to her water dish to drink out of it. Now that Binney was sitting next to the dish, that sassy little chipmunk came flying out to grab another drink. At the very last minute it saw Binney. It made a funny little squeak of "Oh my God" and ran back as fast as it could into the woods! It happened so fast, Binney didn't know what to think. She was just as surprised as the chipmunk!!? 

Steve was grilling up some thick center cut boneless pork chops while inside I was doing baked potatoes in the convection oven. And that I will leave it right there until I tell you another story in a future blog on convection cooking! I also steamed up some broccoli and cauliflower. We need to use up all of our fresh vegetables and potatoes and eggs before we go over the border into Canada.

That was about it for Friday because we weren't going anywhere or moving on. We sat outside until dark, watching another fantastic sunset. We curled up in the motorhome with our Roku stick and watched a couple HGTV shows before heading to bed. 

I will end this now and catch up with the next blog about Saturday. Stay tuned for seeing Ocqueoc Falls and Ossineke State Forest.