Great Lakes & Football Fun & a New RV!

Since my last post, we’ve visited new (Wisconsin/Michigan) and familiar (Indiana) places, bought and moved into a new RV, and had a 5-week break to spend time with our family in western NC.

Looking back to September, we had a few days left to do something fun at the end of our week-long trek from the Yukon. We were headed toward Michigan for a day trip to Mackinac Island, but it was raining there so we stopped in Wisconsin instead.

We lucked out with a great first-come first-served city park along the Lake Superior waterfront in Ashland, WI.

Near Ashland, we hiked at Frog Bay Tribal National Park, along the Apostle Island National Seashore, and had dinner in Bayfield at the Pier Plaza restaurant.

We drove through more forest than I ever imagined in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, across the Mighty Mac bridge connecting the U.P. to the rest of Michigan, and stayed in Mackinaw City the following week.

On Saturday, we took the ferry to Mackinac Island. A couple of ferry departures each morning take a detour under the bridge so we made sure to be on one of those.

Mackinac is a very touristy island in Lake Huron where the only modes of transportation are foot, bike, or horse carriage. It’s also famous for fudge.

We rented a tandem bike, which went better than expected, and biked the 8-mile outer loop around the island.

After lunch at the Pink Pony, we walked up to the Grand Hotel.

We’re excited to spend more time around the Great Lakes area in the future, but for now, we moved on to Indiana to pick up our new Brinkley fifth wheel! Michael has wanted more space for a while but we needed to travel to Baja and Alaska with the older smaller rig first.

We spent a week at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds Campground in Goshen, IN, land of farm fresh corn, the Amish, and RVs, to be near the Brinkley factory for a tour.

We were also close to South Bend so we had to visit. We walked around Saint Mary’s (my school, top left) and then around Notre Dame on game day checking out the Grotto, Golden Dome, and Touchdown Jesus. We didn’t have tickets to the game but tailgated with our friend Maura!

And then it was time to say goodbye to our dependable little trailer that saved our big idea of full-time RVing after our motorhome was flooded in 2020. Over the past 4+ years, we’ve towed it over 50,000 miles, visiting 39 states, 2 Mexican states, and 4 Canadian provinces, and most of it has been as perfect as a dream.

We spent the following 2 weeks at an RV park outside Indianapolis near the dealership settling into our new home on wheels, a Brinkley Z3100. We have felt like newbies again with a new type of RV.

It is much brighter and residential feeling inside. And we have so many more luxuries than before, like an entire living room! Michael and the Cody kitty love it, but they are still trying to convince me (the one who figures out where to park) that bigger is better when it comes to an RV.