We vacationed for a week at Bewabic State Park on Fortune Lake in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My sister, Terri and her dog Ted, “The Elegant Dog”, joined us from her home in southwest Wisconsin. We camped in our 5th wheel “Moving House”, and Terri in her Class C RV. We had a quiet week,visiting old haunts and reminiscing. We visited Sunset Lake Park and Horserace Rapids. Returning from Horserace Rapids on M-424, we saw Carney Dam Road and tried to find the dam. Afer the road narrowed down to one-lane, red mud, we decided there is no Carney Dam. We drove past the house we grew up in and the house where our mom grew up in, which now is about to fall down. We had pasties twice and Riverside pizza once. We grilled brats and ate 'Smores. Teddy demonstrated his good appetite and poor judgement by eating an old, dried corncob that some previous camper had left on our site. There were no bad consequences to Teddy. We took kayaks onto Fortune Lake one morning when the sky was blue and the lake smooth. We saw two loons fishing and a snake swimming. I gave a talk about the James Webb Space Telescope at the Beechwood Town Hall. Attendance was good and they brought cookies and bars. We visited Bates Cemetery, where our parents and grandparents are buried. Our grandfather has a stone marker, but our grandmother’s is wood. We plan to have her marker replaced by a more permanent one.
The Moving House at Bewabic State Park	Teddy, Gail, and Terri on the lawn near Fortune Lake’s beach
Gail, Teddy, and Terri on th trail to Horserace Rapids	Gail at the rapids
Terri with the mural of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox that she and our mother ...	... helped paint for the Iron County Museum almost six decades ago
Al and Gail by a poster for his talk at the town hall	Two slides from the talk
The family monument at the Bates Cemetery	Markers for our grandfather, Victor, and grandmother, Frida
Our group on the Apple Blossom Trail by the Iron River	Terri, Gail, and Ted in our Moving House

On our way home, we stopped for a day to visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. We had a good time. The lowest level was a museum that took you from the roots of Rock and Roll, featuring photos and stories of performers from blues, jazz, country & western, swing, and gospel, through to the stories of the latest inductees into the Hall of Fame. There were lots of artifacts: instruments, costumes, handwritten playlists and lyrics, and more. There were videos ranging from brief samples of music of the earliest performers to extensive interviews with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. We especially enjoyed the roots music and the rock of the 50s, 60s and 70s. It was interesting to watch performances by more recent artists. We were familiar with many of the names, but not the music.

The building on the shore of Lake Erie	Us

The End

The Damage

We had planned that this would be our last camping trip with the Moving House. It suited our needs when we volunteered as hosts at state parks around the nation. We would spend a couple of months at each park so the 5th wheel provided a comfortable base of operations during that time period. However, our volunteer work came to a screeching halt when Covid hit in March of 2020. Covid is still with us, though less dangerous, but we are older now and less able to work as park hosts. After we arrived back in Columbia but before we reached the RV storage facility, we were stopped at a light on Snowden River Parkway when a man in a car in the next lane shouted at us to ask whether we wanted to sell our trailer. This was quite a surprise because we did not have a “For Sale” sign or anything to indicate that we were planning to sell it. Steve, that was his name, said he lost everything in a hurricane in Florida last year and wanted to buy a trailer that his family could live in. Sadly, just minutes after we talked with Steve and during the last 50 yards of our travels, the left, front side of the Moving House scraped against a steel and concrete post in the storage facility. The post did not give, but the side of the Moving House crumpled. The manufacturer no longer makes this model, so all parts have to be custom made. This probably is the end for our Moving House.

A Vacation Potpourri

At a wayside park on Lake Michigan	The Journey	Al photographing a butterfly at Fortune Lake
	We spent seven days on the road and seven days at destinations. We pulled the Moving House 2,123 miles and drove an addition 325 miles in local travel at our destinations. We had originally planned to travel to southwest Minnesota for a family reunion as we did in 2022, to the Twin Cities, and to Madison as well as to the UP, but both Gail and I got Covid-19 - our first time! - at the end of June. Mine lasted three weeks so we had to cancel most of the trip.
Terri’s Co-Pilot	Seven Embers Coffee
		One day, we ate lunch at the Seven Embers Coffee at the Mapleton. Seventy years ago, this was the Cactus Bar. It functioned as the neighborhood social club. There have been a lot of changes inside, but they still had the old bar from 70 years ago. It was originally named the Mapleton Inn, but the owner renamed it the Cactus Bar in memory of her son who had been killed while serving as a member of the Cactus Division (103rd Infantry Division) during WW II.
Manistique Lighthouse seen from highway US-2	Terri’s Class C RV at Bewabic State Park	Morning at the Tiki Campground in St. Ignace
Bird Watching	Keweenaw Brewing’s Widow Maker beer	The Beechwood Town Hall, originally a school
When I travel, I like to look for birds, especially birds I haven’t seen before. For example, the only time I’ve seen a Scarlet Tanager was at Horserace Rapids, but that was about a half century ago. During this trip, we weren’t looking for birds and we didn’t see many. The two Loons were good of course, Red-winged Blackbirds, Common Grackles, and a Cedar Waxwing were routine, and then there were Canada Geese. I see why the geese want to hang out on the beaches where people might swim and on the lawns where people might picnic, but their droppings contaminate those areas for people. I wish they would spend their summers where they belong by the Artic Circle.
More of Horserace Rapids	Some of the Rock & Roll exhibits we saw	The Iron River, no longer the color of ore

Created by: Albert Holm, 8 August 2024; updated 4 September 2024