Houghton, MI to Bayfield, WI

There is no question that the four of us fell in love with Houghton, MI and the wonderful city park where we were parked in the over-flow which was behind the picture of our coach. The city RV park must be reserved way in advance and is full service and has cable TV and Wi-Fi! We headed out yesterday and headed to Bayfield and had problems with the campground not having adequate electric power. We ended up heading to downtown for our sunset cruise and we encountered mist and light rain as we departed. The town is very hilly and has a small harbor that serves the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and Madeline Island.

Views along the way and snow depth "thermometer"

Today we drove up to Copper Harbor and the end of US 41! Beautiful scenery along the way

Eating our way around Lake Superior

Here in Marquette, Michigan we have fallen in love with a restaurant called Latitudes and is pictured in upper picture. We have been there twice in two days and their spaghetti sauce is the best ever. We had them make us pizzas with the sauce for lunch today and they did! New menu item started. The 2nd and 3rd pictures are the Elizabeth Chop House. It look absolutely spectacular but since we were not celebrating a special occasion we departed after checking the menu and the prices. Lunch would be a better time to visit (for our pocketbooks). Bill and Jack have been hunting out bakeries along the way and they have been happy campers. We started finding the soft ice cream places in Cincinnati and we don't as yet know the difference between soft ice cream and frozen custard but we have gotten good at hopping into the line for our ice cream cones!

We are staying in Ishpeming which is just west of Marquette and this campground is wonderful and you can walk to anything you need - from an RV store, bank, car wash, grocery, etc. This campground is Country Village and although we will have spent 3 nights here - a week or two would be better! Full service campsites with cable, good cell phone reception and WiFi!

Iron Ore Education Day

Yesterday we started out with the Tilden Mine Tour (no photos allowed) and we saw the process from the loading of huge trucks with raw ore from the open pit mine through the seperation process to the making of iron ore pellets. This was a vey interesting tour and I couldn't help but wonder about all the evironmentalists who own stoves, refrigerators, cars, and work in buildings with steel reinforcement who fight to stop mining and yet have no clue to the fact their life is dependent on this very industry. We then were most fortunate to return to Marquette and find that a freighter had just arrived and we spent a ton of time watching the loading process which included trains delivering the pellets to the dock, dumping of the railroad cars, and the filling of the ship. We went to dinner and returned to find "our" freighter still there and still being loaded and the arrival of a 2nd freighter! Wow! We had beautiful sunshine then the fog rolled in and finally lifted later on.

Blue Heron Rescue

While exploring the beautiful waterfront area of Marquette we happened upon a man who had been fishing. He had cast his line as a blue heron flew into the line and became hooked on his tripple hook lure! The bird would struggle and pull out line and then he would reel it in but then could do nothing. I had sissors in the car which I got, along with my sweater. Unfortunately we had no blanked to throw over the bird. The lure was hooked into his body under his left wing and I was unable to remove it without wire cutters. Finally I had to cut the lure loose and let the bird go free and hopefully he will be able to either live with the lure or pull free of it. At least he now can run, fly, and eat since he is free of the mono-filament line. My left arm ended up a little cut up and bloody since he bit me but it is healing well.

Wal-Mart in Marquette

This stop in Marquette allows us to restock and recycle. Michigan charges 10 cents for cans and bottles and has machines to accept the cans and bottles. The machine then prints out receipts. We discovered that some of our wine bottles were not accepted but the Diet Coke cans all went though.

Casino Camping

In Christmas, Michigan we spent the night at the casino - free camping with 50 amp service. Betty and I decided to "invest" our camping fee and let the casino have some income. Betty started off with $5.00 and I had $4.00 and we ended up leaving with each of us having $11.50! We ended up having them pay for us to stay there! Since the four of us are not regular visitors at casinos, we obviously spent time watching what appeared to be regular gamblers and we had some concern about their ability to pay for gambling and if they were using funds that should have gone into savings, food, and housing.