You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.
Our first night, Staunton to the La Quinta just north of Morgantown, WV, 28 May 2025, with dinner in the Greene Turtle Sports Bar
We find La Quintas the most reliably 'pet friendly', with normally good accommodations and reasonable prices, though that's not invariably the case. The La Quinta in Perrysville, near Toledo, was pretty far otherwise, 29 May 2025 (but we scored dinner at a Culvers [a double Butter Burger!]).
Welcome to America!!
Emphatic Fireworks signs and patriotic flags the size of aircraft carriers. It's so reassuring, here near Bridgeport, Michigan, and the scene is likely repeated along every Interstate.
[We stayed in nearby Frankenmuth two years ago, quite cute, in its own way.]
So here we are in Grayling, MI, 30 May 2025, staying in the newly renovated and charming Windmoor Lodge just outside of town.
[We would have preferred the Badger Car Ferry but couldn't find a pet-friendly hotel anywhere near the Ludington docks.]
Cats await the grand leash-removal ceremony, and will then settle down.
The proprietor of the Windmoor is an affable and forward-thinking gentleman, who's hit upon the best way to upgrade an old-style roadside motel, both by the thoughtful furnishings inside and . . .
. . . by the variety of casual infrastructure for tired motorists. Like a basketball court and what we suppose is a 'fire pit' for small parties.
And cookout stuff, bucket swing-chairs, and what appears to be a sauna perhaps?
Tomorrow will be a rest day, three quarters of the way up Michigan to the Mackinac Bridge to the UP.
So today's relaxation will be a walk round Grayling, and tomorrow a visit to the 'Old Growth Forest' at the nearby Hardwick Pines State Park.
It's easy to suggest that these small midwestern towns, say in the 2,000 citizens range, all seem to look alike (we stopped in Gaylord, MI, last year), but most of them do have a few things worth noticing.
Like this classic old hotel or whatever it is.
We'll just stroll along Michigan Ave in the downtown area and see what's what. That Paddle Hard Yard just two pix up is interestingly an 'Airy, wood-filled gastropub featuring housemade & regional craft beers & eclectic flatbreads'. The photos on Google Maps looked really nice, we should have had a go at that one perhaps.
The Grayling Restaurant under the red awning, sampled the next day, is a very nice 'old-fashioned neighborhood nook since 1917 offering homestyle American bites for breakfast & lunch' (in our case, very good BLTs).
A certain architectural uniformity perhaps
This is all very nice -- the Tip'n the Mitten gift shop looks sprightly, and the Main Branch art gallery, though possibly, judging from the façade, a little too fish-oriented. The tattoo parlor at 204 Michigan is shown on Google Maps as the Integrated Martial Arts System, with a battered old truck outside announcing 'Asymmetric Warfare Team' on the door.
[The truck's decal is sublabeled 'Camp Grayling', which we've subsequently discovered is located on a lake a few miles southwest of town and happens to be 'the largest US National Guard training facility in the United States'. And we missed it!]
Something for everyone: Clothing. Gifts. Art. Trout Flies.
The charming establishment in the foreground is the Heart of the North Salon.
A teensy civic park in the heart of downtown, which however does get to boast about . . .
. . . an intriguing bird thing on the wall next door.
The AuSable Artisan Village -- the Au Sable river runs past Grayling and turns eastward to Lake Huron; it used to host the grayling species of fish, hence the town's name, but they were wiped out by 1936 by introduced brown trout.
That looks like a charmer, but we're out of time alas.
Time for dinner soon
On a local recommendation, we're here at Ray's BBQ ('blues & brews'), and I've just been reminded that we liked this place exceedingly.
Yak! What's that thing?!
(That must be the Musk cyberbeast people always talk about. Jeez!)
Next day, a look in at the state park just north of town
To the Visitor Centre
There are a number of short and longer trails out from here, but we're aiming for the Old Growth Forest Trail and the Au Sable River Trail, just to the east.
Only to be informed belatedly that the Au Sable River Trail is closed -- apparently it's undergoing or awaiting repairs after a destructive ice storm in March 2025.
Clean-up crews including five National Guard units carted off 40 dump trucks full of downed tree-wreckage, and the work evidently continues.
We'll have a look round here later. First . . .
. . . the Old Growth Forest Trail. Wheelchair enabled (not that we need that yet).
[No need for a caption here.]
The park boasts a sizable area of Eastern White Pine and Eastern Hemlock trees up to 350 to 425 years old. The much wider area was heavily logged from 1840-1910 but after an 1890s economic downturn there was a pause, after which the company resumed its profitable undertakings having forgotten about this section.
The area was donated to the state in 1927 by the widow in honor of her lumberman husband, who'd died in World War One. Apparently it was once somewhat larger, but after a nasty storm in 1940 it's now down to 49 acres (20 hectares).
It's all pretty interesting . . .
. . . in short doses. Luckily, the Old Growth Trail is only 1.25 miles long, and . . .
. . . much of it is quite similar to the rest of it.
We passed a cute little log cabin chapel that was miraculously spared the recent ice storm, but there was a wedding party gathering in front of it and we didn't want to look paparazzi-ish.
That's probably the Logging Museum, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1934-1935.
Some displays in the Visitor Centre, including . . .
. . . a memorial to a famous old tree.
Good to know. Now, after a hasty dinner in town in the Dead Bear [sic], memorialized in our notes as 'not too good', we're on our way again the next morning.
Just a bit over an hour from Grayling, Lo! The Mackinac Bridge over to the Michigan UP.
And they don't even take the E-ZPass.
Rte 2, passing through 'forests' apparently a lot the worse for ice storms, runs along the northern end of Lake Michigan, something like . . .
. . . 80 miles from St Ignace at the north end of the bridge to Manistique, where we've stopped for the night rather happily in the past few years at the Quality Inn on the lakeshore, at one end of a 2 mile boardwalk along to the lighthouse and downtown area (for the healthful exercise, oh and the scenery).
This, it has to be said, is a fairly grim stretch of road, but once through Manistique (we're not stopping this time), we have only 50 miles round Lake Michigan to Escanaba, and then . . .
. . . straight west, through some more of the Upper Peninsula, and then the rest of the 140 miles in Wisconsin, past Iron Mountain, Eagle River, then Arbor Vitae which is nearly 'home'.
Iron Mountain in the UP should not be confused with Iron River, Ironwood or N. Ironwood, or indeed, with Bessemer.
The northern Wisconsin roads can be their own kind of fun.
Almost there. The sign says Nat'l Forest Campground.
A seven-hour junket brings us to Kristin's cottage on the lake, with Kristin driving and both cats (Melvin thoughtfully, Choupette sedated) presenting no problems for the identified pet-chaperone in the passenger seat.
The cottage has been spruced up considerably in our absence, very nice.
A sibling's house next door
The dead end driveway back through the family enclave (with its good luck totem pole)
The boathouse in good order
And brother Eric has got the hydrobikes nicely prepared for the season.
Kristin's cottage again, and somebody's jeep-or-whatever
The past on the lake stores away many memories. Not all good.
Choupette is likely reacquainting herself with the out-of-doors (they've been locked in a downtown condo in Virginia for eight months). Tomorrow we'll turn them loose and see how they handle it.
In the meantime, they've resumed their traditional sentry posts in the corner window, and then . . .
. . . wisely corked off.
Preparing the hydrobikes -- two brand new ones (replacing an older one that ended its useful life last year), and the ca. 30-year-old antique that we're pleased to think of as 'mine'.
This photo was taken on 2 June as we were settling in, and, as I write this on 2 July, today was the first time we've seen anyone take one of the new bikes out. (They're normally meant for younger folks, perhaps, and that lot has just been filtering in to the seasonal family get-togethers in recent days.)
Next up: A photographic renewal of our hydrobiking round the lake, probably not easy now that Cousin Rob's left us.
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All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 2 July 2025.
