Mackinac Island, MI. June 27th - July 2nd

Ok. Let's see. Where do I start? I'll just do it in chronological order.

The drive from Door County, WI to Mackinac Island was pretty long so we decided to spend one night on the road. We tried a new service called Hip Camp. Similar to Harvest Hosts (which I talked about in a previous post) except you stay on someone's home property and you just pay them an agreed upon amount. I'll start by saying that the nightly rate was $20 so very reasonable. Keep in mind that you have no hook ups. You just park your RV on their property as a place to sleep for the night. Well...it wasn't quite what we were hoping for. It rained the day we arrived and the property wasn't very level. Plenty of room to park but mud puddles everywhere. Not even a spot level enough to put our slides out. Grass hadn't been mowed recently and it was full of mosquitos. Not our best decision and definitely our least favorite night so far but, whatever, we made it work.

Next day we left as soon as we woke up. Drove to a local park with a big parking lot. Leveled the coach. Put the slides out and took showers. Yep, we were those people in the parking lot at the park. 😁 Made some breakfast and we were on our way. Easy drive along the Michigan shoreline and through the Upper peninsula.

Found a great girl (lots of 5-star reviews) to leave the dogs with near Mackinac Island. She had a good size property and let us leave our RV there as well. Super convenient!

Mackinac Island lived up to lofty expectations. Check out the pictures and you'll get a feel for this special island. It's a small island just a 15 minute ferry ride off the northern tip of Michigan and only has about 500 permanent residents. It's only 3.8 square miles in mass but it has about 70 miles of trails. Most of the year it's cold on the island but for about four months in Spring and Summer, it's BEAUTIFUL! That's when the town becomes vibrant. There are NO motorized vehicles on the island so the only form of transportation is to walk, bike, or horse and carriage. During those four months, there are 600+ horses on the island. Bustling town with LOTS of places to get fudge. It's a local thing. Elegant homes. Great dining options. Fun nightlife. Bike rentals. We rode the 8 mile perimeter loop one morning and you'll see how that turned out in the pictures. The Grand Hotel was built in 1887 and it's spectacular. They have 12 bars on-site and we enjoyed cocktails at five of them. Enjoyed lunch on the patio as well. It's expensive but we look forward to staying there if we get back. Next day we met some new friends, Kos and Michelle, who hosted us for cocktails at their beautiful property. Thanks again!

We LOVED our two day get-away and recommend you visit the island if you get the chance.

Picked up the girls and had a few nights to get to Niagara Falls. Decided to stick with Harvest Hosts and that turned out to be a good decision. First night we stayed at Montrose Orchards in Michigan. Apparently I'm just used to the sized of properties in SoCal 'cause we had as much grass for the girls to roam as we had at the last Harvest Host. I got to catch a beautiful sunrise on my bike ride before we left the next day.

We crossed into Canada for our next stop at Greener Pastures Eco Farm. Another awesome property with gracious hosts, two extremely friendly dogs, plenty of other farm animals, and just as much grass for Stella and Rita to enjoy. Neither of our dogs is much of a water dog but Stella enjoyed getting her feet wet in the lake on the farm during our evening walk. And we got to watch the sunset. It's a great day when you get to enjoy the sunrise and the sunset!

Now...since you read this far, you get to hear the entertaining part. We had already dry camped (no hook ups) for a night before Mackinac Island and we had two more nights of dry camping before we got to Niagara Falls. We were a little low on fresh water so we decided to forego showers for those two nights. No big deal. Until we actually ran out of fresh water. Oh well. It's part of the adventure. Ran to the store and bought four gallons of water so we could wash our hands, brush our teeth, etc. And use some to flush the toilet. We also hadn't done laundry in six days since we were conserving water. We were definitely looking forward to getting to our RV Resort in Niagara Falls, where we'd have full hook ups, so we headed out early the next morning.

After a slightly extended stop by customs coming back into the US for not having all our CDC forms filled out, we made it to Niagara Falls. Campground is really nice and we arrived early in the day so yesterday was cleaning day. Betty got washed inside and out. Same for Lou. All the laundry got done. Fresh water tank is full for the next time we need it. Black and grey tanks got flushed out so they're clean and empty. Sensors on some tanks had been acting up and I even had time to fix those. Dinner and finally a shower. Woohoo!

Happy 4th! We'll miss seeing our family and friends but we're excited to celebrate in Niagara Falls. Be safe and remember how fortunate we are to live in this country.