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Thursday, August 5

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The first ten days of our road trip were personal – using the time to visit family. The next six days were planned as a celebration of our 58th Wedding Anniversary which is coming up in September. You will notice that this part of the trip was a bit “touristy”.

It was bittersweet to say goodbye to Kinza, Kevin and Judi after spending a short time (one day two nights) with them.

We have a special connection with them, because they lived with us for a month during the beginning of Kevin’s adoption process, then in 2016 we were honored to attend his adoption ceremony at a Harrisburg courthouse.

This is my favorite photo at the courthouse. When the judge announced that he was officially adopted, we all clapped and Kevin joined us. He was 2 years old by this time.

A favorite picture of Kinza. They were visiting us in 2015 when our daughter Deb brought a deer that she was caring for in a rescue situation after it’s mother was killed in a road incident. Kinza told me this is one of her favorite memories of living with us. Cherry blossoms had recently blanketed our yard making this picture extra pretty.

Back to our recent visit. Kevin gave me 7 hugs, because his 7th birthday was coming up in a few days. Later in the day, when I discovered that I left my bag of backup camera batteries at their house, Kevin was hoping that we would come back for them. 🙂 By that time we were too far away, so the bag is being mailed to us.

We weren’t far from their house when we saw two Sandhill Cranes along the road.

I have seen them at a distance on several occasions, so seeing them so close to the road was a special treat.

We had seen some in a field across from Bob and Doris’ house a few days earlier, but they were too far away to photograph.

Bob said the farmers get frustrated with them because they dig up large patches of fields looking for grubs.

While driving toward the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we were detoured into Amish country. It was a beautiful area of Wisconsin. The wind turbines in this area aren’t as tall as we have seen in other states.

We entered Michigan near Menominee.

This became a trip of eventually visiting 4 of the 5 Great Lakes. Our first sight of Lake Michigan was somewhere between Menominee and Escanaba.

We weren’t too farm from our destination when our GPS placed us on a dirt road. We were a bit suspicious, but before long we were back on a regular highway.

Our motel in Munising near Lake Superior.

After securing the motel room we had reserved, we went to the dock where we were getting a Pictured Rocks cruise on Lake Superior the next morning. I went inside the visitors center to ask a few questions, so we had our “act together” in the morning and knew where to get the ship. There were several cruises going to a variety of destinations. We had secured our cruise tickets six weeks earlier.

Next, it was time for supper. Munising is a bustling lake town due to Lake Superior cruises and other activities.

Dogpatch is a fun, hamburger type of restaurant. Our motel hostess said they have the best hamburgers in town. Cerwin ordered a hamburger. I ordered a fish sandwich.

Back in our motel room, I was amused by the friendly-looking bear who was holding our toilet paper.

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I will have lots of pictures of our cruise in my next post.