Holiday Travel Park - Traverse City

I have made mention that my favorite private park in Michigan is located on Silver Lake just south of Traverse city, Michigan. It has about two hundred sites of which 70 or so are absolutely beautiful. It is very well kept and has on some sites really unique features like the 10 or so sites on the "isthmus" I have stayed on the isthmus and enjoyed waking at dawn and wading out to catch a few fish on my fly rod. Totally quiet and calm casting as the birds start singing in the morning....pretty hard to beat. There are other amenities like the beach area which is sandy and ideal for little ones. They have rental boats and canoes, playgrounds etc.
Of course not all sites are on the water and those that aren't still are quite nice. The campground was built some years ago by the Wally Byam Airstream owners group and was limited to airstream owners. While the park limits ownership of lots to airstream product owners the lots when not in use are rented as a regular campground. Our lot this time has a separate little area for campfire and is nicely landscaped.
There are new lots that have all the amenities but are somewhat distant from the lake, but they two are nice and of course the campground is so close to everything that Traverse City offers.

NEW POST !!!!!

I have to apologize for the lack of posts, but two problems .....we've been very much homebody's and on our trip to the Magnolia Music Fest to see Lonestar we got caught quite literally in a tornado in Ohio which damaged our DATASTORM Link to the Internet. M ostly though we have been busy. Our Datastorm should be repaired in the next few days and we are starting to travel again. We are now at our favorite Michigan Campground......Holiday Park in Traverse City on Silver Lake. It's an old "Wally Byam" Airstream exclusive campground, except not exclusively Airstream anymore. Were going to be here through the weekend visiting friends seeing the sights. We'll get camera going tomorrow and show you whats up.

Memorial Day - Jackson, Michigan

We have been home long enough!!!! I missed the motorhome and Marge did too. Memorial Day weekend we left early (Tuesday) and decided that we would combine a little of my business with a trip north. I had some contact to make with people in Jackson Michigan and we decided to see what else was of interest and low and behold there was this fantastic old train station that still operates as an AMTRACK stop. What classic neat architecture.....and brick streets too!


We followed along the track to find a Norfolk Southern rail yard and what appeared to be older rail repair and warehouse buildings from a different era that also have interesting architectural details.

We camped at a place called Greenwood Acres that was the sight of the Goose Lake Music Festivals in the late 60's and 70's. Concerts were put on here in an attempt to copy Woodstock. It didn't have the success that Woodstock had but there was a quite a party here when it was active. Below is what was the stage with light towers. Oh and that's us in the Campground.

Thursday we head to the Upper Manistee River

Freighter Adventure

We have been home now for about 4 weeks and its time to do something soon. I have been ready to go again almost as soon as we got home. It's nice to be home and catch up particularly with the grandkids, but we both enjoyed traveling so much that I miss it. We did however share an adventure that was quite interesting that I thought would be worth sharing with everyone. Our boating friends belong to a group of wood boat hobbyists that planned an excursion to a Lakes Freighter that sailed the Great Lakes for almost 80 years. It was built at the same time and with the same methods that the Titanic was built with rivets and steel. It hasn't sunk yet, but is more or less resting on the bottom of the Maumee River in Toledo, Ohio now that it has become a museum.

The ship has obviously seen better days but it was fascinating to see how nice it must have been "back in the day" as our guide put it. Fine wood paneling and surprisingly large kitchen facility. The crew was sizeable in those days (30 +or-)as it took quite a number to be able to load unload and handle that large a ship (700' long and 68' wide) There were only a few passenger cabins but they quite nice, but being in the bow would be uncomfortable if there were heavy seas at all. I tried to take a picture of just one of 4 huge holds but it was so big the flash would not light it all up enough to show.
The view below is from the pilot house back to the stern showing all the hold covers. Todays freighters are capable of moving 4 times as much ore or grain and are substantially more automated with unloaders built in. This was also a steam operated freighter with coal then later fuel oil was used for the boilers.
The picture below was taken amidships towards the bow and pilot house.


While I have enjoyed boating and particularly fishing in the Great Lakes, I can not imagine what it would been like to have been on a working boat such as this. I know I would not have enjoyed any kind of heavy weather.

Run for home.

Well, the snow did it! Our plan was to go north see Monument Valley, Four Corners, Durango and other places of elevation and probably SNOW!!!!!. Needless to say we changed course and decided to keep a moderately southern route to avoid the cold and snow. We headed east to the windy Amarillo and then on to Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit with one of our old friends who stood up in our wedding 40 years ago. This is Jeanne whom spoiled us with a great dinner and conversation and memories and my good wife Marge

After our stay in Tulsa which was beautiful with the spring greenup we went on to Missouri and stayed near Fort Leonard Wood just West of St. Louis. Stopped in Indiana and then Home!!! A bit of rush but the bug to get home was strong.

Grand Canyon

After our exciting trip from Oatman we arrrived fairly early at the Grand Canyon Campground. The weather appeared to be turning so we hustled over to the canyon via the transit system which is free and essential if you want to visit the overlooks. The views are unbeliveable and while we took probably 2 or 3 hundred pictures all were fantastic. What we both had problems with is the edge.....no guardrails in most places and foot trails that just wander for miles each way along this edge from the visitor center. Now I'm not real fond of heights. In fact, I wasn't even fond of riding in the buses that took you to the various points along a road that was entirely too close to the edge in my book. Below are just some of the views we saw.

The weather did turn and we stayed the second day thinking it might get better but by early evening SNOW started coming down. We had planned on heading north to Monument Valley after the stay here at Grand Canyon but the cold weather and snow quickly changed our minds and we decided on a more southerly route home. This post was a bit delayed as there were so many pictures and for some reason I had difficulty in posting them each time I tried.

Oatman, Arizona

We left Kathy and her family on Monday and drove to Needles, California which is on the Arizona/California boarder separated by the Colorado river. It was in the high 80's when we arrived at Moabi Regional Park and stayed the night. Lots of TRAINS there but failed to take any pictures. There was even an old Fred Harvey Hotel thats being restored.

We left the next morning and proceeded to take old Route 66 to Oatman, Arizona.
The road was pretty good until we started to climb up the mountain. Now my friend Art had told me about this place and it sounded kinda neat...... Wild Burro's running in the street looking for handouts and some neat old time shops. Well, I apparently misunderstood him, as he drove his car rather than the motorhome to this place....I was driving the motorhome (38 feet) plus towing the car. BIG MISTAKE!!!! First and most important., I need to pay attention to signs that say no trucks over 40' and then we saw no burro's althought we did not stay long enough to see anything more than their droppings. With no room to park or turn around we proceeded to go on to Klingman which turns out to be just over this "hill". I am a reasonably confidant driver, even with the motorhome, as we have had motorhomes for 30 years, but this was white knuckle and hold your breath time.

Marge was taking the pictures while I drove down the middle of the road except when I could hug the side closest to the "hill". She told me later that this allowed her not to view the dropoffs except through the lens and it made her less nervous. There was little or no traffic and what there was pulled off the road for us to get by. I'm pretty sure we did not go over 15 miles per hour until we well down the "hill" on the Klingman side.
This was first great adventure on the trip home may it be the last of this type!!!!

aaghh......Grandchildren!!!

How can anyone resist those smiles!!!!!

As its been a week or so since I've posted anything, you can understand when you see the energy these little ones consume. We have been busy!!!

We've been able to pamper and cuddle and really spend some quality time with these little ones.

Putting puzzles together...

Reading to them, although its sometimes rough reading the same story over and over.

We even went to tumbling class together

We spent a day at the San Diego Animal Park which was phenomenal....although everyone was pretty well worn out by the end of the day.





One of the Primary reasons to go West on our part was to participate in Garretts 3rd birthday. Kathy and Tony threw a party that was fantastic....the theme being dinosaurs...even his cake was a dinosaur.

There was even a dinosaur egg hunt.

The party was very much a success and fun was had by all..... especially the grandparents ....and we hated to leave. But today we left after wishing Garrett another happy birthday and we started our trip back to Royal Oak. This contribution was very hard to put together, we took probably 400 pictures and we were seemingly so so busy with so much happening it is hard to figure out what to put on this blog. Maybe once I figure out how to put a large batch of pictures as in slide show it will be more informative.

Tonight we stopped in Moabi Recreational area near Needles, California....tomorrow we should be at the Grand Canyon.

On to San Diego

We have settled in at an RV park in San Diego called Santee Lakes Preserve. It's as nice a place as we have seen and its as clean and well kept as any park we have been in....We even have a babbling Brook outside our bedroom window.

We have been busy and time seems to fly, but just to bring you up to speed.....
Left City of Rocks and got out on the highway heading West into Arizona. The vista's of that area are certainly something to behold. We are seeing everything that has been shown in the Arizona Highways magazines we have seen over the years. As we were heading West however, the weather turned bad for the first time on our trip with sleet, snow and rain. Yes and cold too. I thought Arizona was the place where all the snowbirds went to avoid this kind of weather.

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Stopped for the night in Gila Bend (Sounds kinda neat like something out of the old westerns we watched on TV) There wasn't much there but "Augies Campground" was as neat, clean and friendly with free wireless even and all for the lowest price we've seen for camping at a private campground ($18.00).
We took the southern route (Interstate 8) that follows the Mexican Border quite closely and were stopped a number of times at Border Patrol inspection stops. It is apparent that there is quite a problem with border crossings in the area. At one point we even saw some people being taken into custody

Most of the area between City of Rocks and the California border was pretty wide open without too many surprises except when we reached Yuma, Arizona. With Yuma being right on the border we came across more RV Parks and RV's than we have ever seen in one place. We were told that this area is a major place to stop due to the available cheap Dental and Presciptions available in Mexico. Just east of Yuma, another surprise was the dunes in southern California....almost like the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan although not as big.

From Yuma and the Dunes we quickly hit the mountains and which were a little more that I expected.....13 miles of 6% grades isn't so bad going up, but coming down is very exciting in 17 tons of motorhome and towcar. For some reason, I had thought this southern route was less mountainous. One thing different about these "hills" was the fact that it looked like a big pile of rocks as in some big dump truck dumping huge rocks in a pile and no vegetation. Just different than what we had been seeing.

After driving through the mountains, we arrived at San Diego and the Santee Lakes Preserve, our campground for the next three days. As I said it's quite nice for being in the middle of everything and close to transportation. We have found that taking the public transportation gives us a better perspective of some the places we have seen, and the rapid transit system here is the cleanest we seen....no graffiti. Driving in new cities can be quite exciting and the rail system took us right to "Old Town" San Diego. From there we took the Trolley Tour of the city from Old Town, USS Midway, Coronado, Seaport, San Diego Zoo, El Prado.....a total of 10 stops, all at interesting areas. We stopped at the USS Midway an aircraft carrier from late World War II that was active through the middle 1990's.



We also stopped at Coronado to see the Del Coronado Hotel which is where the movie "Some like it Hot" was filmed with Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis. My Dad was stationed here when his ship was in during World War II and we have pictures of me at this hotel as a child on its beautiful beach.


Last stop for us was Old Town which is nice but a few too many shops for me. The Architecture was interesting though.

Our reason for going to San Diego was to see Marge's cousin Carol and her husband and we had a delightful Italian dinner at a restaurant called Trattoria Di IV an unassuming little place with really good food.

Tomorrow on to see our grandchildren...oh yes and our daughter and her husband too!

City of Rocks State Park - New Mexico

Last year our friends Art and Janey Armstrong visited this State Park and were totally intrigued by it and needless to say recommended it as a must place to visit. We decided to visit for the weekend and it was everything they said, however they did not experience the 40 mph plus wind gusts and cool weather we did. Unfortunately, we stayed inside the motorhome most of the day but did do some walking when the winds died down a little.
This place is really unique, the rock formations are something to behold.

While we were there a group of boyscouts was camped nearby and it was great fun to watch them scurrying about and hiding from one another in all the formations.The vistas of the surrounding area and the sunsets were great also.While the weather wasn’t the best, the place was everything the Armstrong’s had recommended.
However it is isolated enough that a days visit is probably better that a whole weekend.