October 16th 2022 - Fall road trip Warp Up - Gaylord Michigan to home - a few hikes

Our Thursday trip to Gaylord was kind of long but it went well.  The reason we decided to stay in that part of the state was to be near Hartwick Pines State Park.  More on that later.  Compared to the other areas we stayed in, this was more sparsely populated and the actual town of Waters where we stayed wasn't much of a town at all.  We ate a light dinner across the highway from our lodging at the Waters Inn.  The Waters Inn is pretty basic.  A strip of about 8 rooms all in one building.  Our room was pretty minimal in size and furnishings, the floor boards squeaked and the shower was minuscule.  So we didn't spend a lot of time lounging around in our room.  We did go on a short hike called the Pine Barron trail which was close to our motel.  

 







We had a light dinner at the bar directly across the highway from our room. It was an interesting chance to people watch although it wasn't really that different than a similarly rural bar we might see here in New York.

I imagined Hartwick Pines being the outdoors highlight or at least the hiking highlight of our entire week.  It is a nicer state park than Fort Custer where we stayed in the cabin.  The landscape is more deeply forested and colorful and the facilities were more modern and attractive.  The hike itself was the longest of our trip at about 7.5 miles but it was surprisingly flat.  There were no little creeks or brooks to admire nor any hills of any appreciable size. It was just a wide fire road type trail in a roughly rectangular shape.  The fall color was amazing and there were subtle differences in the closeness or the density of the trees in different sections of the trail but it kind of all looked like the same fall wonderland and while I was glad I finally felt well enough to do a 7 mile hike, I was also glad to be done with it since it was kind of featureless.  After the hike we went to a casino back West in Williamsburg Michigan.  It was an indulgent thing to do on our last full day of vacation.










Saturday we headed out early knowing that we had a long day ahead of us to get all the way home.  I did have a stop I wanted to make.  On Google maps I found an intriguing single photo of a set of stairs at a location called Largo Springs.  Given how flat the rest of Michigan had been I figured anywhere with a bunch of stairs would be an atypical spot in the mainland (not UP) of Michigan. This turned out to be quite a nice stop. There are literally 300 steps down from the trailhead to the wetlands and the springs that the area highlight. Looking over the wetlands was very peaceful and the running water all around us was great.










The rest of the trip home was pretty routine.  We had lunch at a McDonald's in Standish Michigan then drove a series of state highways south and then East through the 'thumb' of Michigan. We crossed the 'thumb' on MI-46 which went razor straight West to East through the middle of the thumb.  That part of Michigan, despite being relatively close to Detroit, is very very sparsely populated.  It mostly reminded me of the Oklahoma panhandle.  Just miles of farms and not even a lot of mini marts or gas stations to break up the miles.  From Port Sanlac we headed South to Port Huron and then entered Canada (zero wait at the border!) and proceeded absolutely non-stop across Ontario, not stopping until we got back into the US in Buffalo, again with no border wait.  We had dinner at Mighty Taco then pounded out the last miles on I-90, getting home about 9 pm.  Including the stops we spent about 13 hours getting home but it was worth it to have all of Sunday at home to recover.

The trip to Michigan was overall a good trip.  We saw so much of Michigan that I feel like we got a good feel for the whole state.  The many miles of driving were all pretty enjoyable.  We went on a number of walks but I was a little surprised how flat everything was but given how lousy I felt for most of the trip, flat might have been a hidden blessing.  I think the highlights were probably Douglas (quiet, gay, relaxed) and Grand Rapids (culture, food)

Our next big road trip is probably going to be Winnipeg Canada in the spring.


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