We departed from Sleepy Hollow around 10AM – the rain had stopped during the late night and the dripping from the roof slowed down.  We had breakfast of eggs and sausage – we all ate together inside the camper the first time.  We got a fairly early start and drove North, towards the Mackinac bridge.  Shortly before crossing the bridge we stopped at Breakers https://breakerstopinabee.com/ – “more than a bar.”  We managed to squeeze the camper into a (large) corner of the lot and had a great lunch.  After lunch we detoured slightly to stop at a “real” Walmart for our long list of items we needed for the kitchen and dinner.

Then over the bridge and a long drive West across the Upper Peninsula (Aha – that UP) on Route 2 to our campground at Manistique Lakeside Campground in the quaint town of Manistique. The UP shoreline includes sand dunes and is dotted with small 60s style motels and not much else. We only passed a few fast food chains, so it is sort of like stepping back in time. No moose were spotted.

After Scott’s somewhat-successful Shepard’s Pie, Steve decided to make a version of his wife’s Instant Pot Goulash.  At Walmart, Steve purchased many spices and tools he figured he would need to cook it.  However, when it came to the Instant Pot part of the preparation, it was clear that Steve had never actually touched the appliance himself, but Scott helpfully lorded his superior Instant Pot knowledge over Steve – “Saute” – “pressure cook”  – hit “+” until you have the right number of minutes, “slide the switch to vent but DON’T put your hand over the vent” – that kinda thing.  While the pasta was a smidge al-dente, we all agreed it was good and Tom had 3 servings.  Scott ate the almost-last two Ray Bentley ears of corn – there is one left.

After dinner we went on a tour of Manistique waterfront, with a walk to the Manistique lighthouse that allowed Scott to reach 6000 steps for the day (should be 8000 by bedtime.)  Steve then suggested Ice Cream, and Scott recalled that we had passed a nice Ice Cream store on the way in.  He found it, barely, and we had award winning Ice Cream cones and cups.

When selecting tonight’s campground Tom – still smarting from the Michigan Passport incident in our $31 state-run site, decided to go commercial with a $71 deluxe campground right on the water.  This one advertised wifi, and when we arrived we found that we had a strong 5G signal.  For the first time on  this trip, we thought that we would not need to use the Starlink.  We measured acceptable if a bit slow (by Starlink standards) service on the campground wifi.  However, when we returned from dinner we found the campground wifi to be saturated and slow.  For some reason using our phones as hotspots was also slow despite the strong “5G’ signal.  So we popped out the Starlink and within 10 minutes it was doing great on the picnic table despite what seemed like pretty serious trees.  Starlink saved our blog again!

Manistique is far North and on the Western side of the Time Zone, so it was after 9pm before it got dark (but this means sunup will be later too). We checked for Northern Lights, which seem to be more active these days, but we didn’t see anything. The lack of contrails in the sky in this region makes the blue skies even bluer.