QUOTABLE: “We are like books. Most people only see our cover, the minority read only the introduction, many people believe the critics. Few will know our content.” ~Emile Zola – French Journalist, Playwright, Poet

A forgotten item…this “spring snow” is one of my favorite things to watch. It is actually seeds from a cottonwood tree that are floating on the wind. They end up leaving little “snow” trails along the edges of sidewalks and roadways, just like the real thing.

We’ve been watching the wildfire smoke situation coming out of Canada. At one point, our Upper Peninsula (UP) destination was covered up in thick smoke, and we even had a little upper atmosphere stuff in Ohio. The situation up there looks much better right now, so we have decided to continue as planned. Hopefully good winds will keep things relatively clear. I certainly don’t want a repeat of the 1/4-mile visibility in Jasper a couple of years back!

On Monday, June 9, we were up and out very early after hooking everything up the night before. Heading west on OH-65, we crossed the Maumee River on US-6 and followed that west to US-127 north, which turned into OH-15. We crossed into Michigan due north of there on MI-99, then hit US-12 west. At Goldwater, we continued west on MI-86, then zig-zagged a bit, passing through Leonidas and Vicksburg, and ending up at the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek Airport in Portage, Michigan.

Our first stop of the day was at Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Museum, so named because so many of the aircraft have animal names. This Smithsonian affiliate was very cool. They have lots of airplanes, some of which we haven’t seen before in a museum, and one that is the only remaining of its kind ANYWHERE. They had a really good gift shop, a lunch counter, and top notch displays, but the thing they did that others aren’t as good at was have a lot to bring in little kids. There were two or three balloon-themed rides along with flight simulators, interactive displays, video games, a theater, and a toddler tarmac to keep parents coming back. (I know my Boogers would have enjoyed it repeatedly.) There were lots of families visiting when we were there, and I didn’t see one bored kid. I call that a successful STEM experience. We took our time checking out the planes and getting information from docents. One retired guy we talked to enthusiastically showed us a couple of airplanes. His volunteer job was to clean them, and he specifically requested it. He said “who else gets to actually lay hands on and crawl around on these old beauties?!” They have an extensive restoration center, and it is out in the open where you can see what they’re working on. Too cool! It really was a neat place and worth a visit. Here is some of what we saw:

  • When you pull up out front, in addition to seeing a few airplanes sitting around, you see a giant anchor…at an airplane museum. Turns out that it is the starboard bow anchor from the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63). According to their documentation, it is 18’9″ tall, 10’5″ wide, and weighs 60,600 pounds, and the chain adds another 4,000!
  • As you walk in, there is a P-40 Warhawk hanging from the ceiling to greet you. This gorgeous piece of history belonged to Suzanne Parish. In 1941, 19-year-old Suzanne was enthralled with aviation and learned to fly. A short 2 years later, she joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) and ended up flying P-40s, AT-6s, and BT-13s out of Bryan Army Air Base in Texas. As a woman, she was unable to get a commercial pilot’s job after the war, so she became a wife, marrying Pete Parish, a decorated WWII Marine and production engineer at W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employee Research (founded by Suzanne’s grandfather along with the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company). She then set about being full-time Mom to five children. In 1958, she began flying again when she and her husband purchased a Bonanza, soon to be followed by a Stearman, an AT-6, and a Grumman Wildcat. They continued to collect planes with their last purchase being the P-40. Both Pete and Suzanne flew in airshows, her in the beautiful, pink Warhawk, and him in several different aircraft including some experimental versions. Suzanne flew her last air show in 1993 when she was 70 years old, but continued to fly a T-34 Mentor for fun. Both Pete and Suzanne are in the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame, and Pete is also in the Experimental Aircraft Association Sport Hall of Fame. Pete and Suzanne are also co-founders of the Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum aka Air Zoo. The museum’s initial collection consisted of their personal planes. They divorced in 1991, and Suzanne died in 2010 at 87 years old. Pete lived to be 100, passing on in 2020. I told MW that I would have gotten a pilot’s license if I could have flown that beautiful Warhawk.
  • Here are a few we don’t remember seeing in museums:
  • You might say the original Murphy Renegade Spirit was the up side to an accident. Canadian designer Darryl Murphy, a mechanical engineer, was laid up for an extended period in the hospital and started tinkering with an airplane design for himself. The result was a pretty nifty ultralight airplane that became the envy of his friends when he recovered and began taking it to fly-ins. After being repeatedly asked to build them for others, he broke down and started Murphy Aviation in 1985, which later became Murphy Aircraft Manufacturing. Darryl retired in 2014 and was inducted into the EAA Homebuilders Hall of Fame in 2018. What happened to his little company? Located in Chilliwack, British Columbia, it currently offers seven different models. Hmmmm…that would make a great birthday present, huh?!
  • This XP-55 Ascender, a pusher power plant-propelled prototype (that’s a tongue twister!) built by the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, was one of three experimental models built for the U.S. Army Air Forces for testing. No more were ordered because engineers could not overcome the stall issue, which occurred without warning. Once it happened, the aircraft inverted, and control could not be regained. Two of the three crashed, leaving this one as the only survivor. Today there are several aircraft built in a similar configuration, and we used to have a Beechcraft Starship and a Rutan Long-EZ come into Dekalb-Peachtree Airport (PDK) on occasion. The push-props, though incredibly cool looking, are still few and far between, though. This particular Ascender was ferried from Ohio to Bush Field (AGS) in Augusta, Georgia, which happened to be my first duty station. That was a little before my time, though…1944. One of the other two crashed just a year later in Ohio when the same pilot who ferried this one, Bill Glasgow, lost control in an airshow. He, along with three adults and one child on the ground, died.
  • The Waco CG-4A Hadrian was a bigger deal than most people realize, despite having no engine. Prior to WWII, Germany and the Soviet Union had a little competition going for glider development. As Germany began their march across Europe, they brought gliders into the military fray to help capture the Belgian fort of Eben Emael in 1940. Following that battle, the U.S. Acting Deputy Chief of Staff for Air, Major General Henry Arnold, kicked off the U.S. development. Out of four companies to submit plans, Waco’s designs were the only ones to meet the requirements. They offered 8- and 15-seat versions that could carry troops, cargo, and ammo. The larger one, which was the most widely used, could even drop in jeeps, howitzers, or a small bulldozer. Wow! Their main function was to take soldiers and supplies into enemy territory to prepare for the main assault. They were used multiple times during WWII, including at the invasion of Normandy, where hundreds of gliders sailed in.
  • ONLY 2 DEGREES OF SEPARATION: Some of our Navy friends may remember Taras Lyssenko from the 25th Anniversary ComeAround in Huntsville, Alabama. He is the guy that happened to be staying at the campground while in town for business and graciously came to give a talk about his business, A and T Recovery. He shared pics and lots of information about underwater recovery work, and talked particularly about pulling up WWII aircraft, particularly Scout Bomber Douglas aircraft or SBDs (pilots called them Slow-But-Deadly) from Lake Michigan. During carrier training about 38 of them ended up on the bottom. The Douglas SBD-1 Dauntless at the Air Zoo (BU#1612) crashed in Lake Michigan while training in 1942, taking Ensign Herbert Welton McMinn, USNR, with it. A & T recovered the plane in 1994, and it has been restored and is on display at the Air Zoo. They appear to be the go-to place for restoration, used by lots of museums. They previously restored another Dauntless SBD-2P (BU#2173), pulled out by Taras’ company in 2009, and an FM-2 Wildcat (BU#57039) that they recovered in 2012. That Dauntless now resides at the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum in Hawaii, and the Wildcat is at the American Heritage Museum in Massachusetts. How cool is that??!!
  • They had a small space section with a lot of the regular stuff…Saturn V model, capsule models, explainers, etc. One thing you don’t see often and that I found interesting was a section on those who watched the televised launches and moon landing. Did you know that 1/7 of the entire population of the WORLD watched Neil Armstrong’s small step? Can you imagine watching your spouse get lit up on top of a giant rocket full of fuel? I think it would be totally thrilling, tense, and scary as hell! In January of 1967, tragedy struck as Gus Grissom (America’s second man in space), Ed White (America’s first spacewalker), and rookie West Point grad Roger Chaffee burned up on the pad during a test. How much harder was it for families to watch launches after that? Life magazine did a story on the astronauts’ wives just after the Apollo 11 launch with pics. I found the photo of Joan Aldrin holding the hankie with the slightest hint of a tear in her eye captivating. I also wondered if Jan Armstrong had given any thought about what to tell Ricky if something went wrong.
  • They had one of the best displays of the SR-71 Blackbird that I’ve ever seen. On one side you could see the entire length of the plane, and on the other there was a platform up to the cockpit level where you could look into the pilot’s seat. Their version is the only model B pilot trainer in existence. It has two cockpits with a student pilot in the front and the instructor in the back. Training wasn’t quick, either. Pilots had to log 100 training flight hours before they parked their butts in the driver’s seat for an operational mission. In active duty models, there were two seats on the same level, one for the pilot, and the other for the Reconnaissance Systems Officer (RSO). Both are dressed in space suits to protect them in the event of ejection at 16 miles up. Built by the top secret Lockheed Skunk Works, it was originally introduced in 1964, this beautiful bird stands 18’6″ tall, is 107’5″ long, and has a 55’7″ wingspan. Fully loaded it weighed 70 tons, had a flight ceiling of 85,000′, and could fly 2,900 miles at over THREE times the speed of sound!! Its onboard optical bar camera could take pictures of roughly the area of Wyoming in about an hour. This magnificent piece of machinery was built using brains and slide rules, too, designed by Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, an Ishpeming native that Michigan is pretty proud of! One thing that made me chuckle: To get enough titanium for the SR-71 project without raising eyebrows, the CIA used international shell corporations which allowed them to secretly buy it from the Soviet Union. Bazinga!!

After checking everything out for an hour or so, we made a quick lunch stop at a nearby Wendy’s. (I think Dave would be highly disappointed at what we’ve experienced the last two or three times we stopped at his place.) Back on the road, we continued north right through downtown Kalamazoo, then took MI-43 and zig-zagged over to MI-66 north of Battle Creek up to Nashville. Further north at Woodbury we turned east on MI-50, then skirted the northwest side of Lansing to US-127. The last leg was north of Clare, where we turned east on MI-61 over to Gladwin and arrived at the Gladwin City Park & Campground. It had been a long, grey day, but it didn’t really rain on us too much. We also caught sight of a few deer and a turkey along the way.

On Tuesday morning we were up early to take a walk to Northern Espresso, the coffee shop in town. In addition to checking out the park along the way, we found a pretty large snapping turtle on the edge of the road and spoiled breakfast for a decent-sized doe.

Back at Priscilla, we hung out waiting for time to go to our evening’s entertainment…MiLB BASEBALL! We headed over to Midland, Michigan, a little early so that Mr. Wonderful (MW) could do his stadium scoping out thing. The Great Lakes Loons are the L.A. Dodgers High A affiIiate, and their stadium is very nice! Lots of food choice, nice seats that have a little leg room, super clean bathrooms, and much more. It was a perfect night for a ballgame, but the home team didn’t fare too well against the Wisconsin Rattlers, remaining scoreless up to the 8th inning, while the opponents racked up 9 runs. MW was not happy that he forgot his hat, because he is convinced that rally hat thing works. I did offer to let him wear my popcorn box, but he turned that down. Finally, in the 8th inning, the Loons scored 3 runs, which kept them from the dreaded donut.

Wednesday turned out mostly rainy, and I never even changed out of my pajamas! I did a little writing and a little napping…it was awesome!! MW took a walk around the park and did a good bit of relaxing, too. We’ve been watching all of the Jesse Stone movies, so we ended the night with number 8.

Gladwin City Park & Campground was a really nice park. It is located right in town, but it was surprisingly quiet and peaceful along the Cedar River. One caveat…our site was towards the back and there is a daycare center just over the fence. Daylight hours were filled with lots of laughing, playing, and sometimes screaming and fighting. The park has tennis, basketball, and volleyball courts, a playground, a beach for swimming, pavilions, and a path along the river. There are rental bikes and several places to sit along the river, too. Cell signals were strong, and there was plenty of over-the-air tv. Lodging options include two small and two larger rustic cabins, and the campground. The latter has a tent camping area and 58 RV sites that include a handful of full-hookup 50-amp paved back-ins, some pull-thru 50-amp electric and water, and the rest 50-amp electric and water back-ins. Note that, on their reservation page they say that all of these accommodate vehicles up to at least 54′, but due to the layout, we would have had a really tough time getting in and out of our site if there had been someone right across the street. That said, we would stay here again, just being a little more selective on the site we choose. For this stay in June 2025, we paid a little over $40 per night for 3 nights.

Thursday we hit the road at 8 AM, heading west out of Gladwin, then taking MI-30 north to West Branch. There we turned east on MI-55, then north on MI-33, which took us all the way up to Onaway. Just west of town, we followed F05, then picked up US-23 west into Cheboygan. What a pretty little town! We stopped for lunch downtown, where there was plenty of parallel parking. Our first pick wasn’t open, but Mulligans across the street was really good. I had a grilled cheese sandwich that had bacon and tomato…yum!! Afterwards we walked around town a bit, popping into a couple of stores. At the Bittersweet General Store, we looked for gift items and found some amazing-looking cookies. (They tasted as good as they looked!)

We continued on US-23 up to Mackinaw City, then crossed the Mackinac Bridge onto Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. After a quick stop at the overlook to take a few pics, we continued west on US-2, then north on MI-117 and east on MI-28, ending the day at the Newberry Campground.

Friday I did laundry at the campground, which had five or six washers and four dryers. Afterwards I headed into town to look for a compression sleeve (more on that later). The welcome sign says that Newberry is the moose capital of Michigan. I’m pretty sure it’s just an advertisinig line, though, because we didn’t even see one!! Before going back to Priscilla, I parked myself in the corner at McDonald’s to do a little writing. Then it was home to relax.

Saturday morning we were up and out early to catch breakfast at Zellar’s Restaurant in Newberry. MW had a pretty darned good breakfast burrito that made two meals, and I had a couple of eggs for protein. The real reason for visiting this particular place, though, was THE BEAST! The menu simply says “homemade grilled buttered cinnamon roll”, but outside information said it was an absolute must. It was as big as the one I had in the Yukon a few years back, but more gooey deliciousness. We ended up eating it over several days. A little boy at the next table ordered it, too, and he was so excited. I don’t think he ate more than a couple of bites before getting a to-go box, though. After breakfast we headed over to Munising for our activity for the day. On the drive over, MW spotted a giant bird in a field in the distance. We turned back to get a closer look, but couldn’t make it out until I saw the pics later. It was a pair of sandhill cranes.

The last time we passed through the Upper Peninsula, ten or more years ago, we booked a boat ride out to see the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. It was a really grey and threatening day, and no sooner had we sat down on the boat than the bottom dropped out. The company offered everyone a reschedule if they didn’t want to go out in that weather, and we got off. Thankfully, since we were visiting from North Carolina at the time and were leaving the next morning, they just gave us a refund. I was really disappointed, though, so MW got us tickets for this trip. We arrived just a few minutes early and were underway fairly quickly. The trip is about 2 hours total, straight out to run up the shoreline and return by the same route. This time it was also grey, but not threatening rain, and we enjoyed the ride and the views. The Captain talks about points of interest along the way and points out interesting formations. All in all, we enjoyed it. Unlike almost every lake in the south that is jam-packed with houses and docks, Lake Superior is relatively wild. Around towns there are a few full-time houses, and in some of the more rural areas you may find clusters of small vacation cabins, or singles here and there, many with no electricity.

After making it back to dry land, we walked around a little arts and crafts fair in town. They had a cool thing for kids. A big foam gun was spitting bubble foam in a huge area on the lawn. Kids were running through it, swimming in it, and covered from head to toe. It was awesome. We took a different route back towards the campground, stopping in Grand Marais on West Bay. There was a lot of seaplane activity and something over loud speakers, so I checked with a local. They were in the middle of their four day Splash-In on the Bay seaplane competition. We hit the day where they were doing takeoff distance, landing on a specific spot, and balloon dropping on a target events. It is an annual event and draws a decent (and, as it happens, descent) crowd. It was amazing how close these guys were getting to the targets. We watched for a bit, then walked over to the Lake Superior Brewing Company for sandwiches. When we were on the boat in Munising, the Captain pointed out a fishery and said that they supply whitefish and lake trout to the entire UP. For lunch I had a chance to taste the whitefish…yum!!

LAKE SUPERIOR FACTOIDS: This lake was named Lac Superieur by the French, which means “Upper Lake”. They probably didn’t realize at the time, but superior was definitely the right word. It actually dwarfs all of the other freshwater lakes in the world. The Ojibwa call it Gichigami which means “Big Sea”, and its surface covers 31,700 square miles. (That’s about the size of South Carolina!) She is 350 miles long and 160 miles wide. Her average depth is 483′, but at her deepest part, you’re looking at more than 1/4 mile. That gives her somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 quadrillion gallons of water. How much is that? Enough to cover the entire surface of North and South America with about a foot of the wet stuff. Although Lake Superior is non-tidal, weather and pressure changes on one side of the lake definitely affect the other areas, creating waves and what looks like small tidal changes. For those of you interested in swimming, the average temperature of the water is 40 degrees. I’m thinking no amount of summer sunshine is going to get that warm enough for me to dip a toe in!! I also found out that the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sits under a little more than 550′ of water about 30 miles ENE of Grand Marais.

On Sunday we found the First Baptist Church in Newberry, Michigan, where Pastor Jon Michael gave a good sermon about waiting patiently for God’s guidance instead of losing patience and putting ourselves in the driver’s seat. He asked “Have we ever strayed from God’s path to take care of ourselves?” If he asked for a show of hands, mine would have gone up! Afterwards we grabbed a bite at Timber Charlies in town before heading back for a quiet afternoon. Aside from a little bit of writing, my only other activity was walking around the campground taking pics.

Newberry Campground is located just south of Newberry, Michigan, and within driving distance of Whitefish Point, Tahquamenon Falls State Park, Munising, and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior; Manistique on Lake Michigan; and Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island on Lake Huron. Plus, the Upper Peninsula is full of fishing opportunities. This former KOA has a lot to offer families with a store/office, heated outdoor pool, game room, putt-putt golf course, playground, basketball court, horseshoe pits, and a laundry. There are also showers, a pavilion, free wifi, onsite firewood sales, and a dump station. Folks can stay at one of seven cabins, each with a double bed and bunk bed, electricity, grill, fire ring, picnic table, and water outside. The campground has a good mix of RV sites with both pull-thru and back-in, 50- or 30- amp electric, water. There is also a large area for tent camping with part in an open field and part in the trees, some rustic and some with electricity and water. All sites have picnic tables and fire rings. This campground is older and needs a bit of TLC, but the bathrooms and showers were really clean. Sites were mostly gravel, fairly level, and while all would not fit larger rigs, there were plenty that would. Cell signals were okay, but there were no over-the-air tv stations. Also, the owners and her parents were onsite, picking up trash twice a day from the sites and taking care of issues. We would definitely stay here again. For this visit in June 2025, we paid just under $57 per night for a 50-amp back-in with water for 4 nights.

OMGosh…I’ve caught you up! On to the current post. Yay! Coming up…Michigan and Minnesota. See you on the path!!

Talisa

P.S. Thank you so much for reading!  Use the buttons at the top right or bottom to be notified of new posts, and please SHARE, SHARE, SHARE on social media!