4/27/07 (Friday): Well, here we are in Betsie River Campsite in Frankfort, Michigan! After a wet, cold couple of days, the sun is finally out this afternoon. We were so pleased to find that the owners have installed WiFi so that we'll be able to continue our blog!

Wiley is out metal detecting, and I have about an hour before I put together some dinner. Wiley is standing at the entrance, with the road to the left and the bike trail on his left side.



The owners live onsite in a lovely house. The office is located on the right side of the house. I think we'll be in campsite 87--for now we're parked next to the owners' house because the newly seeded grass is just coming up in the campsites and the ground is wet from 3 days of rain.



The campsites are mostly grassy, with scattered large trees (bare now). There are no campers yet; the ones you see were stored here. Many of the campers come for the whole season.











You can't see the bathhouse very well because of the bushes, but they are very clean and modern.












There are several really nice cabins. They don't have bathrooms or kitchens (they use the bathhouse and have a picnic table in front), but they have heaters, electricity and comfortable looking furniture.










We took a quick tour of the area today. We didn't stop much because of the weather, but we drove a big circle to Traverse City and back, noting the places we want to explore in more depth. The area is very hilly and covered with forests of maple and birch with scattered evergreens. There are no leaves on the tress yet. The hills were created by glaciers which dropped loads of sand and gravel. Later, the weather and waves of Lake Michigan created sand dunes. There were a number of cherry orchards, which should be gorgeous when the trees bloom!

There are also numerous lakes, many of them quite large. This is Loon Lake, in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Recreation Area, which was our first stop. I got a Golden Eagle passport, which allows me and everyone with me to enter Federal recreation sites free. It also gives a discount on camping, tours and other activities.








The visitor center is located in Empire, which is a quaint little town right on Lake Michigan. We had lunch at Joe's Friendly Tavern. Wiley had smelt, a local specialty, and I had a homemade vegetarian burger made with rolled oats, dried cherries, corn, red beans, onion, garlic and tomato. As Rachael Ray says: "Yummo!"

Empire was a bustling lumber town in the late 1800's. Lake Michigan made transporting the lumber easy. The town was named for the schooner "Empire," which was icebound in the area during a storm in 1865. The mill produced up to 20 million feet of lumber a year, but fire and the eventual depletion of the forests put it out of business in 1917. The beach and huge dunes were lovely, but it was cold, wet and windy, so we didn't linger!




Our stop in Traverse City was even more brief. We went there mostly to return a book on CD that we'd rented on our way up from Cracker Barrel. After we finished listening to it, we didn't pass another Cracker Barrel! Anyhow, we did stop at the Chamber of Commerce, which is on the Boardman River (it runs right through town). There's a river walk along its shores, and a statue called the "River Guardian."





Our final stop was the little town with the big entrance--Frankfort. It's the closest town to our campground, and it's where we'll shop and do our laundry. It was once a major port, but now is largely a tourist town. As soon as you crest the hill and pass under the arch, you get a great view of Lake Michigan.


Like Empire, Frankfort was once an industrial town. It had a large iron works (these are the ruins). There are two banks and a number of interesting shops. There are also a number of parks on Lake Michigan and Lake Betsie.





Frankfort will probably also be Wiley's favorite hangout. It's got a long breakwater with a lighthouse at the end, and fishing is supposed to be great there!






That's all for now, folks! Stay tuned for the next installment of our great adventure!