We awoke at Manistique Lakeside campground fairly early in the cold and thick fog.  We waited until the Cedar Street Café in Manistique to open at 8AM, and had an excellent breakfast (and we brought lots of it back with us for later.)  We then debated checking out Fayette Historic State Park and Harbor and decided to go for it.  It was a 25 minute side trip from our route to Tom Crossmon’s house, so we decided to drop Khan (our RV) at a Dollar general and just drive the jeep to the park.  That turned out to be a good decision.

The park was excellent – despite the fact that we had to pay $10 for another Michigan State Park “passport” for the day.  Fayette is a ghost town that was an iron plant built in 1864 or so, and abandoned 24 years later in 1891 as their costs were higher than iron plants elsewhere in the region.  It was a whole town – built on the water – that at its height had 500 people.  In addition to the factory, there were all the places you would expect – store, hotel, music hall, barber shop, doctor’s office, etc.  After the town was abandoned it became a resort community of sorts, so many of the buildings were preserved.  It was a great time as we roamed around and read the descriptions in the buildings.

We then drove through the nearby town of Escanaba and Scott noticed the several Pasty restaurants and started craving one (despite the fact that we weren’t really sure what they were, other than sorta a meat pie.)  We decided that we would stop at the next Pasty shack we saw.  We then went two hours with nary a Pasty shack, so we stopped by the side of the road, turned on the generator for A/C, and ate leftovers.  Minutes later we passed a huge Pasty place.  Go figure.

We learned and expensive lesson in Michigan on Diesel flavors and prices.  Most of the trip through the UP was desolated and deserted like the desert, but with lots of trees and water. Worried about running low on fuel in the middle of nowhere we decided it would be best to top off before getting too low We had half a tank after our lunch and decided to fill up when we saw a sign that said $4.99 Diesel – a pretty good price.  Midway through filling the tank Scott noticed that the price on the pump said $7.30 a gallon.  Turns out there are two flavors of Diesel – number 1 is far more expensive and only used in the winter, though there was no indication of this on the pump.  A $30 mistake that would have been worse if we had done this when the tank level was lower than when we filled up.

While discussing dinner plans with Tom Crossmon on the road to Duluth, we heard a loud crashing sound on the roof area that Tom described as “like an industrial ice maker dropping a fresh batch of ice.”  We abruptly ended the call and pulled over to the side.  After inspecting the roof of the camper, the jeep, the inside around the kitchen, we could find nothing to explain the sound.  About a half hour into the trip Scott remembered one of the warnings we received on delivery.  “If it is hot don’t turn the air conditioning down too far and run it on high.” the technician said.  Scott couldn’t recall exactly why, but he thinks that this causes the air conditioner to freeze up.  When it finally cycles off, the thawing ice would break up and cause a sound like that.  We can’t be sure that this explains the problem, but if it doesn’t return we will mark that as the cause.

We then drove to Ashland on the shores of Lake Superior on the Chequamegon Bay.  There we took the last of our lake we-were-there selfies – on Lake Superior, our fifth Great Lake.

The drive from there to Tom Crossmon’s house was fairly uneventful.  We had delicious Pizza that Tom got from his local brewery. Tom graciously allowed us to “camp” in his driveway, though we had to wire our own 30A socket to his breaker box to plug in Khan.  After a quick trip to Home Depot for the parts, and wiring by Tom and Scott (with Steve holding a flashlight occasionally,) we were all set for our two nights here.