Rain happens

Today, our first full day of retirement, was to be our first camping day too. The plan was to drive 12 hours from Albany, NY to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park on the coast of Lake Michigan, where we would pitch our tent. Sure a 12 hour drive was ambitious but the reward was a whole day to play in the park before catching up with Lyss in Traverse City on Monday.

We got a good early start at 5:00am. The weather was a warm 80+ degrees. The forecast was for rain, but the sky was clear and I-90 was wide open. S.D. and I took turns driving. First there was the four hours thru N.Y. and then the four in Canada. The terrain for the whole trip was flat and it was easy to see rain clouds South-West and North-West of us. We didn't run into any rain ourselves.

Until. Just as we were about to return to the U.S. the sky turned black, the temperature dropped 16 degrees and the sky just opened up. I crept into the shelter of the customs booth glad just to be out of the torrent and was genuinely sad when the agent let us go after only 2 easy questions. Seriously, did he not wonder why we had South Dakota plates and Massachusetts addresses? What about all that stuff in the van? Could we not have been smuggling illegal camping equipment and bicycles across international borders? Did we not arouse the least bit of suspicion? Not even enough to warrant questioning until this thunderstorm blew by? Apparently not.

Once back in the states however, we still needed to fill up and it was S.D.'s turn to drive. I checked the radar, and sure enough the forecast had been correct, nothing but rain between us and Sleeping Bear Dunes. Heavy rain, and 50 degrees temperatures overnight. Our first big tent pitch was less than four cold, soggy hours away. Have you ever set up a tent in the rain? It's not fun, and once it's up, it's generally not dry. And when it's cold, there's very little chance of it ever getting dry. Our first night could potentially be a cold, wet miserable night.

We'd been on the road 12 hours and were contemplating our fate when we passed the "Log Cabin Resort" just off rt 115, somewhere in the middle of the Michigan Mitten. I'd read about the "Resort" during early trip research and the reviews had mentioned that they had small, rustic log cabins, and an excellent shower facilities. The cabins would be as close to tenting as you could get and, even after 6 hours of rain, still be dry. S.D. did a 180 (Bruce actually has a decent turning radius) and we scored a sweet little cabin, the last available one they had. So now I'm typing this inside Cabin #1. Our first night of the adventure won't be in a tent, but it's a close, dry second and tomorrow when we pitch our tent at Sleeping Bear Dunes, it will still be dry, and there will be lots of time to play.