The Last Days

We can see the end!  It has been a long 7 days.  Wanting to get through Duluth early because of the annual Grandma’s Marathon, we decided to eat breakfast once we passed the city.  We actually got on the road at a decent time for once and headed through Duluth and over Lake Superior’s Saint Louis Bay into Wisconsin. I wanted to get a picture of the sign coming into Wisconsin and missed it…. so we went back over the bridge into Duluth in order to turn around and drive past it again.  By doing that, we went back into Minnesota. Since I didn’t get a picture of a welcome to Minnesota sign going into the state the day before, I took one here on the opposite side of the state.

We found a little diner type restaurant to stop and eat breakfast at, Julies’ Family Restaurant.  I ordered a southwest omelet.  It said that it came with salsa and sour cream.  The picture below shows what that was, a small squeeze packet of sour cream and packets of taco sauce and picante sauce.  Not exactly what I was thinking of.  While we were waiting I saw this incredible looking french toast. I had to have some, so we ordered an extra breakfast and shared it. They took big cinnamon rolls and sliced them and made french toast out of it.  It was amazing.

With full tummies, we got back on the road headed toward Saint Ignace, Michigan.  The ride was pretty uneventful and pleasant.  The countryside was beautiful. A nice thing about being in this part of the country is that all of the rest areas up this way are completely inside which is nice because we can get cooled off when we stop. When we got to Hurley, just before heading into Michigan, we stopped at one that had some mining exhibits to look at. Apparently there is iron in this area and it is known for mining.

We continued on into the upper peninsula of Michigan. We stopped for gas and that is when I realized that Kirk and I weren’t following the same route to St. Ignace.  I thought we were following the coast of Lake Superior, but he took a lower road so we ended up adding about an hour to our ride because it was out of our way a bit.  We met a lively old man at the gas station.  He had built a camper himself and lived in it.  He said that he put a keyboard in it so he could play his music and a picture of his family, and he had a jug of water as his water source.  It was very interesting.

I was frustrated because we were not on the right route, but there was no way to get back on the road I wanted to be on without going even further out of our way, so we continued on. After a bit, we made it to the north coast of Lake Michigan and traveled along it until we had to cut across to get to St. Ignace.

We went to get something to eat before the restaurants closed and then went to the hotel to check in.  I was having such a difficult time finding a hotel for last night, so I decided to go ahead and make a reservation for tonight. I didn’t want to run into the same problem.  We got to the Quality Inn Lakefront in St. Ignace and went to check in only to find that I had made the reservation for the night before in all the confusion.  I was so tired and upset that, as hard as I tried not to, I started crying.  I felt so stupid. The only rooms they had left were ones with Jacuzzi tubs in them but she gave us one for the same rate that I booked the room for the night before.  Then told us to check with the manager the next morning and she might be able to refund us the money for the night before.  I really felt bad, but Kirk gave me a big hug and kiss and said that it was ok, not to worry about it.  The room was older, but nice and had a balcony that overlooked Lake Huron.  Off to bed we went (after relaxing in the Jacuzzi).