North Gemini Lake State Forest Campground, Michigan, United Statesaugust 17 2021 North Gemini Campground - State of Michigan Upper Peninsula
I got up around 6 am and Kara told me to wake her up at 7:30.
. I think I got some coffee and started to blog to catch up for the last two days. It wasn't until 10:30 that we left the hotel. I forgot what else we did - a fair amount of organizing was required to get me in shape to continue on.
We wanted to go back to Charlevoix to do some shopping at the t-shirt store we had seen the night before. So I think that was our first stop. I bought a shirt for me and one for Jerry. We got the inscriptions done on the spot. The store guy was a little testy but we think it might have been a language issue - he seemed abrupt because English was not his native language. Then we went down the block a bit and crossed the street to look at the harbor. Kara mentioned that she saw one of the mushroom houses across the bay. I didn't really know what the mushroom houses were at that point but we walked to try to find an access to the house. Meanwhile Candae called and we chatted. Kara and I took a street too far and backtracked to see some stunning houses with slate roofs and stone siding and altogether rather unique.
Then we recrossed the bridge by the underbrige pedestrrian walkway and went to the shop that adventised having the Petrovsky stones - famous in this area - actually the state stone of Michigan. Kara steered me to the unpolished, cheaper stones that were quite as nice as the polished ones and I got two postcards too. We saw a book on the mushroom houses and got some info on them from the woman in the shop. I think Kara inquired further at another shop and we decided to check them out. Meanwhile our parking meter was expiring, we were hungry - I went to order a crepe at at shop and Kara to attend to the car parking meter. We drove to Park Avenue to see the houses and ate our crepes - a mushroom-spinach-swiss cheese and a banana-nutella one - I couldn't choose. They were very messy and I was covered with chocolate. We walked around the block to take photos of these extra-ordianary houses by a local architect .named Earl Young. I appear to be missing some photos of the crepery and our crepes too probably.
Then we were on our way to go to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The drive was to take 3 hours, but it seemed we were going forever, switching from one highway to the next. We drove along the shore for a while and that was nice. The landscape changed to lower trees, more scrubby areas and maybe some swampy areas with dead trees and more evergreens - more Northern landscape.We drove and drove. At one point Kara was behind a car behind an oil tanker and the car would not pass the truck and we were passed by other cars - sometimes they passed 3 or 4 cars in a row. Finally we foundd the Park Visitor Center. When we inquired about our campground reservation, we found out it was backcountry - at least 1 mile plus to hike in - without coolers because of animals so we scrapped that idea and forfeited our payments. The Park Rangers were nice and recommended trying one of the state areas where there were several campgrounds - on a first come- first-serve basis.
We seemed to drive on and on forever again - at least 3o miles - I had no idea of the scale of the maps and the gps kept going out on us. Finally we reached the first road off to the campsites and took it - a very narrow, dirt road sunken into the ground. We drove for a while before reaching a self-serve e registration station that said to go ahead find a site and then come back register and pay. We were so happy - we found a site facing the lake toward the setting sun.
We set out the damp tent. Since it is quite breezy here on the UP, it dried fast and we set it up and set out our feast for the day. We used up the rest of the Mexican restaurant platter condiments, the Italian bread, the little pieces of leftover cheese, the dill dip, the remaining marinated mushrooms, the tortilla chips and finished off quite a bit of the odds and ends, as well as the white wine we had - Pinot Grigio. We don't have wi-fi here, but Kara has discovered she can play computer solitaire anyway. She had wanted to go for a walk but I said I needed to blog first so she went in search of a walk and came back and is now immersed in computer solitaire.
I am now finished recording our day. We will probably go to bed right after the sun sets. Which won't be that long since it is now 8 pm. I don't usually go to bed so early, but I don't know that I have slept that well and I definitely had bags under at least one of my eyes this morning.
2025-05-22