After a waffle breakfast at the hotel, we got on the road because we had another long day of driving to get to Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We also wanted to stop at the International Crane Foundation (ICF) in Baraboo, Wisconsin. After we had been on the road for about 45 minutes, the trailer tire completely blew out on routine 90, which is a major highway with lots of truck traffic. The spare tire was flat, so we had to unhitch the camper and get the spare trailer tire filled with air at a gas station. Luckily, we were right near an exit, so we filled the spare and went back to get the camper. Fortunately, there was a wonderful, old fashion full service gas station that was owned by Mike Arnold, who was the 2nd generation Arnold to own it. It was clean and locked in time. He was not only the gas station owner/mechanic, but he was also the fire chief for the town. He was a really nice guy and was able to find us a new trailer tire. While our tire was being sorted out, Laura and the kids went grocery shopping across the street at a Piggly Wiggly, classic mid-west grocery store. The cheese section was as big as the meat section; after all, we are in “Cheese Head” land.
It is a good thing we left early for our long day of driving because we lost about two hours getting our tire sorted out. We arrived at the Crane Preserve around 11:00 pm. It was filled with all kinds of cranes from throughout the world. It also had a film about the amazing conservation effort to reintroduce the nearly extinct Whooping Cranes back into the Wisconsin area, by training a group of young adult cranes how to migrate to a given area using an ultra-light aircrafts. Amazing stuff! We were really glad we went, but now it we nearly 1:00 pm and we still had a long way to travel to the Upper Peninsula.
It was after 9:00 pm before we arrived in St. Ignace, MI at the Strait State Park campground; 10:00 pm their time since we had crossed another timeline. We set up in the dark and walk down to the lake shore of Lake Huron, which over looked a 5-mile long bridge that connect the Lower Michigan peninsula and the upper Michigan peninsula. It was lit up in beautiful colored lights – red, yellow, orange and white… beautiful! The Strait’s campground was a really nice place; good clean bathrooms, quiet campers, good location right on the lake. Our site was one campsite back off the lake, but had a path to the lake right across from our site.
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