Big Ol' Bug Smacker

Immediately following our nearly 2 week stay in Standish we arrived in Mackinaw City to enjoy an extended weekend. We arrived around 10 o’clock with no reservations anywhere. I did take the time to call ahead to a few campgrounds and found spots available but, there was one place in particular that I could not find any information on. I knew right where it was in fact I had seen it several times as I passed through the area on the expressway. I even found it on Google maps but there seems to be nothing on the internet about this campground.  In the Google maps street view you can even read the name on the sign “Mackinaw City Camp Ground”. I just did not know what it had to offer.

When we pulled off the expressway we first headed towards Mill Creek. This is the big resort up here and I knew that they in fact had room for us. For some reason we chose to turn around and go out to check out the Mackinaw City Camp Ground. I am glad we did, this place was exactly what we were looking for. Now I know I may be letting the cat out of the bag. I actually hope not too many people read this post; it would be nice to keep this little gem a secret. This campground is not very big and is not anything special. It does however have everything we needed for our trip to visit the area. It offers electric, water, restrooms, a dump station and even a grill & fire pit. Better yet, the price is only $15.00 per night. After all we were here to visit the area not the campground.

Friday we took a drive out to Lake Michigan. We discovered some free camping spots near French Farm Lake. Then we headed across the bridge for a scenic trip down US-2 along the north shore of Lake Michigan. We returned home for a nice dinner at Dixie Saloon in Mackinaw City.

Saturday was when we went over to Mackinac Island. The bridge and the island are the two reasons people come up here. The island does not allow any motorized vehicles. The moment I stepped off the ferry I immediately noticed that the place smelled like a big ol’ horse farm.

On the island we rented a couple of bicycles. We started out for the 8 mile trip around the island. Then we rode up to the top of Arch Rock and back down to town past the Grand Hotel to town. All in all we were gone 4 hours and rode over 10 miles. It was great. Made us both feel like kids again.

We returned to Mackinaw City in time to watch 342 Corvettes parade through town on their way across the Mackinaw Bridge to St Ignace. This wrapped up a very nice weekend. I am sorry that after being away from home for over 2 weeks it is now “Go Home Day”.

I will let you know up front, last weekend was a very eventful weekend so let me start from the top.

On Thursday I had a couple of free passes for the Pig Gig. So after we set up camp at the Bay City State Park,  I ran inside the event to grab a rack of ribs from Aussom Aussie. These have been my favorites several times in the past so I knew I couldn’t go wrong. My niece Ashley and I pigged out on these on the way to Grandpa Tony’s to join the family for pizza. I didn’t know it then but these were the best ribs I had all weekend.

We went back out to the Pig Gig on Friday at noon for the annual Special Celebrity Rib Cook-off. We were sitting at a picnic table in the State Farm tent. We were finishing up a rack of ribs when all of a sudden my wife begins to slouch in her chair and gasp for air. She is having some type of heart problem. I called out for help and a woman with a State Farm volunteer shirt on came over. I informed her of our situation and that we needed to call 911. She said she would get help.

Several minutes passed which seemed like an eternity. I then asked her again if 911 had been called. She replied that they were. I thought to myself that even if they had been called, I was calling them again. I got them on the phone only to discover I was the first to contact them. I was shocked.

When someone is having heart problems every minute counts. These people didn’t seem to understand this. The State Farm woman had lied to me. Someone had gone to the stage to make an announcement for a doctor in the crowd and never bothered to call 911. All the time she informed me otherwise. As you can see the workers at the Pig Gig truly had no game plan ready for emergencies.

After the ambulance arrived, my wife and I got a ride to the hospital. By the time we arrived she was doing better. The episode had passed. They ran a bunch of tests and sent us home. Hopefully that is the end of that story.

The Navel Sea Cadets were managing the parking at the Pig Gig this year (I use the term “managing” very loosely). I hope they manage better out on the water than they do on dry land. Their only job was to keep track of how many spots were available for parking. After the parking lot was full all they had to do is let one car in for every one that left. When we arrived back at the Pig Gig on Saturday we were stopped at the gate by the Navel Sea Cadets and informed that we could not come in.  We were told that they had lost count and were just turning everyone away until they could figure out what was going on and how many spaces were available for parking.

Once we got into the Pig Gig we ran into Wendy Dore who runs the event. She was with her dad, Art. Wendy had heard of our situation the day before. We explained how dissatisfied we were with how everything was handled. We went on to tell her how unorganized the event has become. She apologized. Her dad then asked how my wife was doing and said”I guess we should have asked that to begin with”.

Back at the Bay City State Park we had several tents come in on Friday and setup on a couple of sites behind us. It was quite a large crowd of people. They took up a large area. A few of their tents were actually on our site.

Throughout the day these people would travel across our site to get water, use the rest rooms or shower. They would come within a few feet of our awning as they passed by. They had no respect for our privacy at all. Though we really didn’t like this, we didn’t want to make a fuss about it. I was not sure if they would even understand me. They were not speaking English. They spoke whatever language people from India speak.

The next morning I woke to find a large pile of trash was placed on our site during the night. I thought to myself that even if these people don’t know the rules of camping in a State Park they should have some sort of idea about what is to be just plain rude.

Once again I just let it slide. That was until one of them in an automobile decided to drive right through our site to get to their site behind us instead of going around on the road. I was sitting outside with my wife and parents when all four of us in unison yelled out “Hey, Stop right there!” Every big brown eye in the bunch was wide open, just like a deer in the headlights. They quickly apologized for causing problems.

You would think that would have been the end of it but, ten minutes later they were back to crossing through our site again.

To top it off we went down to Mussel Beach for a couple of cones of our favorite ice cream. It cost us over $8.00 for two cones where the ice cream barely crested the top of the cone. But it is somewhat hard to complain because Ashby’s Sterling Ice Cream is really good.

I want to write this while I still have the passion in my belly. Let me begin by saying that we did not end up where we intended to. Nor does it look like we will be doing what we had planned for the weekend.

With a last minute change of plans we decided to find a site close to the Chippewa River so we could go kayaking on the Chippewa River on Saturday. So last night after work we packed up the kayaks, hitched up the RV and headed for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe Campground. My wife had made several attempts to make a reservation at this place only to get an answering machine that told her to leave a message and they would call back. You guessed it, they never did.

 We arrived at the campground to find the office door locked and nobody around. I saw a white truck with a campground sign on it and flagged the guy down. I had to leap out of the way as he nearly ran me over turning into me as I was waving to him. Then the guy informed us that there was no room for us here.  He said that it was the weekend of the Annual Saginaw Chippewa Pow Wow.

NOTE:  As I am writing this I checked the campground website and it says that the 26th Annual Saginaw Chippewa Pow Wow is actually on August 6-8, 2010. That happens to be not until next weekend. You would think this guy would have known that. After all it has been going on for 26 years.

Most people at this point would probably just high-tail it back home. But not hard core campers like us. We continued up the road to Pettit Park located 20 miles north in Clare, Michigan. This is a favorite backup spot for us.

For dinner we went downtown to a place called the Doherty Hotel. By the prices on the menu we figured that it was a finer place to eat. We both had the salad bar and I also ordered their Famous Reuben sandwich. The food seemed good at the time but, now is where I start my belly aching. Shortly after we ate my wife and I started feeling VERY sick. I swear it always has to do with the salad. I still feel a bit queasy today.   

As for the kayaks, I still hope to get them off the roof sometime before we head home tomorrow but on top of everything else it has been raining since we arrived at our site. The next post will tell you if that happened or not.

We are camping this weekend at Gladwin City Park and Campground. When we pulled into the park we found only 3 available sites. The first spot was barely big enough to pitch a pup tent on.  Luckily enough the other two sites were actually quite large when compared to the others at this park. There is an upper and lower section. The upper is less level. The sites offer water and electric. The electrical service is only 20 amps.

After we setup camp, we headed over to the Riverwalk Grill which is located inside of the Riverwalk Place.   We were seated at a table overlooking the Riverwalk.  The grounds are nicely landscaped and from our seat we could watch people floating down the Cedar River. For dinner we enjoyed a couple of very good sandwiches. My wife had the “Philly Roast Beef Sandwich” and I enjoyed the “Riverwalk Reuben”.  Both came with homemade chips. This is a very good place to grab a bite to eat while in Gladwin.

The park has partnered with Gladwin Boat Rental which offers canoe, kayak and tubing right from the park. The Cedar River flows right through the campground. The river is fairly shallow and only about 20 feet wide. The current is quite swift.

We did not bring our kayaks this trip. The Cedar River looks like a nice ride. We will be returning sometime soon to give it a try.

This is our 5^th year now coming to Clear Lake State Park for our annual 4^th of July camping trip. I counted 22 people for our cookout. That was a few more than we had last year. As usual the food was excellent. There was BBQ Chicken, BBQ Ribs, Venison, and plenty of salads.

Chuck and Rande made an encore appearance as the Host Campers. It was nice to see them back again this year at Clear Lake. They didn’t think they were going to be allowed to return to the same park again two years in a row.

We had to relocate a bit from our usual campsite. The one we normally reserved had already been taken. The spot we ended up with was just about as nice. It was large and had room for a couple of tents as well.

The big story this year was the power problem. Clear Lake State Park has a real problem with the power when they get near capacity. We shared our electrical post with three other RVs. Out of the four outlets only two are 30 amps, the other two are 20 amps.

This year unlike the last year or two, they were filled to the max. We had 5 RVs and 4 tents in our group alone. The power for our group went out several times during the day and night. Every time it went out we had to hike down to Chuck’s site so that he could flag a park ranger down and have the power reset.

Another problem this year was the weather. When we arrived on Wednesday the temperature got down to 50 degrees that night. By the time the weekend rolled around the heat had climbed to the mid 90’s with high humidity. With heat like that you really need to be able to run your AC in the RV.

One Ranger came by and informed us that we were going to need to turn off our air-conditioning. He also stated that if we continued to run the AC in our RVs that he would not restore the power next time it went off.

Before we left, I spoke with a Park Ranger by the name of Greg Kinser. He informed me that this has been a problem for quite some time. Greg said that Clear Lake State Park is an older park and was never designed to support today’s modern RVs. He informed me that the larger rigs demand more power and overload the circuits in the park.

 I find this somewhat hard to believe since the power always went out at the main, not the electrical post. You would think that if your rig were to demand to much current that it would cause only your breaker to blow. Not take out everyone else. This means that there simply was not enough power for the outlets throughout the park.

Greg stated that he hoped the new Recreation Passport which will take effect on Oct. 1, 2010 will help offset the revenue loss the Parks have been realizing the past few years. The Recreation Passport will be available to Michigan residents for $10 per registered vehicle, or $5 per registered motorcycle. This will replace the resident state park and boating access site stickers. Vehicles registered outside the State of Michigan will still be required to display a Michigan State park permit.

All I ask for is a campground where I can get online. Is that to much to ask? Guess so, I have spent hours trying to find such a park here in Michigan. I don’t care if I get to use the park’s WiFi or if I need to whip out the mobile broadband router. I just want to be able to get online while camping.

The forecast is rain, rain and more rain. So I figured it would be a good time to catch up on these blog entries. I just need to be able to access the world wide web. I researched the cell phone coverage maps and did several searches for RV parks with WiFi and came to the conclusion that what Michigan needs is more broadband coverage.

I know most people go camping to get away from all the grief that the wired world forces on them at work, but I on the other hand don’t have the time I need to keep up on these blog postings unless I do it while I am away from it all.

So I took a chance and headed up to OAI Wilderness Resort with the hopes of getting a mobile broadband signal and to my astonishment I am right now receiving 4-bars of 3G service. Not bad! Not to long ago I needed to stand on a picnic table here to talk on the phone. Must be a new cell tower or some kind of cosmic thing. At least I am able to tell you about it, that’s all that really matters.

We met Paul, who is the Resort Manager here at the Wilderness Resort. We got to chatting about kayaking. I brought it up since my wife and I recently got into the sport. Paul was kind enough to give us several pointers on kayaking down the Rifle River. I do have to say that all the people at this resort are very kind and will go out of their way to help you.

I can’t go any further. Our 10 hour trip is now pushing 15 hours. With the stop and go traffic due to accidents and construction this has turned into a VERY long day.

We did stop for a bit to grab a bite to eat. I certainly don’t have any regrets there. The place we ate at was Sonny’s Real Pit Bar-B-Q. We had heard a lot of good things about this place and wanted to give it a try next time we saw one. I didn’t realize that the place we happened to choose was also in the place it all started, Gainesville, Florida.

I did not know what to try when we arrived. The waitress suggested the all-you-can-eat BBQ. She said I could try all the favorites that way. That is exactly what I did. The all-you-can-eat included Sliced Pork, Bar-B-Q Sliced Beef, Sweet & Smokey Ribs, Bar-B-Q Chicken, Pulled Beef Brisket and Pulled Pork. My wife ordered the Baby Back Ribs. Between the two of us we tried all the best BBQ Sonny’s had to offer and let me tell you it was exceptional.

Can you believe it, the all-you-can-eat Bar-B-Q is only $12 dollars. Thats less than a rack of ribs anywhere else.