On our way out of Mackinaw City I was able to get a shot of the place Jim really wanted to eat. Too bad we never made it over there. Surely this is would be a worthy rival for the world-famous Hillbilly Hot Dogs establishment photographed a few days ago in Ohio by traveling friends.
Wienerlicious in Mackinaw City
We crossed into the U.P. at the northern end of the Mighty Mac (the bridge's nickname, in case I forgot to mention it).
Northbound toll both, entering the Upper Peninsula
The 90-minute drive to our next campground was very pleasant. What's not to like about driving back roads in the U.P. where one rarely passes another vehicle? Our lovely tiny campground (14 sites) is quite a change from the one we just left which, although our site was blessed with great privacy, had sites numbering in the hundreds. This place will have a few more people for the July 4th weekend (including one right next to us, unfortunately blocking our side view) but I doubt it could ever feel crowded. We chose this place because there's very little chance of July 4th noise. The campground doesn't allow fireworks which we really appreciate.
We're hidden in the middle of spacious Paradise Point Campground
View of the St. Mary's River from the back of our site
Midway through the afternoon we decided we should visit DeTour Village's one-and-only grocery store. Of course it's the one-and-only.....there are only 325 permanent residents to keep it going in the off-season. This must be a really tough place in which to make a living.
DeTour Village's IGA grocery store
As you can see, there is a "For Sale" sign prominently placed at the entry. We asked the clerk about it and were told the owners are getting old and want to retire. $150K for a fully stocked grocery store doesn't sound too bad but we wouldn't take it as a gift. We passed an abundance of properties with "for sale" signs out front, so the already low customer base appears to be dwindling. Besides, the store wasn't all that well stocked.....it was missing items we consider to be necessities. We'll have to tough it out till we get to the Soo in a week. People have to drive 60 miles to the Soo to get all the things they can't find in DeTour.
Freighters passing on the St. Mary's River
The St. Mary's River is right behind our site so we get a good view of the passing freighters. This river is the route ships take from Lake Superior down to Lake Huron. From there they either go southeast to Detroit and points beyond (Lake Erie and Lake Ontario) or southwest through the Straits of Mackinac and down Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, Chicago and the industrial area around Gary, IN. The land in the background is Lime Island (U.S.) on the left and St. Joseph's Island (Canada) on the right. The line dividing the U.S. and Canada does some serious wandering around islands on its trip down the river, taking some strange jogs that gave land to one country that would have made more sense going to the other. Probably there were fights over territory before it all got settled.
Being so close to Canada our phone service has switched over. I'm not sure why it's switched since the bigger towns we should be getting service from are on the U.S. side. Fortunately, our new Verizon plan gives us the same deal for both countries so we don't have to worry about which towers we're using like we did the last two years when we were really close to the border.
Jim finally gets a chance to fish
The forecast is for rain, possibly heavy, for tonight and tomorrow. It kindly held off until Jim was able to do a little fishing which he's been eagerly anticipating for weeks. It wasn't worth getting the boats out and set up today because of the rain so we're looking forward to doing that on Friday after the rain passes.
Heavy overcast wreaks havoc with wifi and phone service so we don't know if we'll be able to watch our usual Netflix programs tonight. If not, we'll have to tough it out with our Kindles. What did we ever do without all these electronics?
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