Bay City Michigan

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We had a fun time in Battle Creek for the 3 nights we stayed at the Elks Lodge in town. Our next stop will take us to the Bay City Elks lodge. A lot of people from the lower peninsula of Michigan will use a mitten analogy to help visitors understand where a specific town is located in the state. Bay City is at the base of Saginaw Bay which creates the gap between the thumb and the rest of the mitten’s hand. It is a little over 160 miles of generally easy driving.

The Elks Lodge in Bay City is not very big and we had limited information regarding what, if any, electric connections they might have. We pulled in early and found nobody was in the parking lot and the lodge was not open yet. We pulled in behind the building where there were a couple of 20 amp outlets but we didn’t get setup until we were sure where they would want us. Fifteen minutes after we arrived, one member showed up and came out to talk with us. He told us we should be fine where we are and can plug in if we wanted. Unfortunately after he left, another group arrived for a meeting and told us they would be having a big cookout the next afternoon and asked if we could park in the back of the lot. We repositioned and let out our slides for the 3 nights we plan on staying here.

The next morning we head out to explore but first I needed to head into town to have blood drawn for my hematologist. It has been 3 months since it was last tested and he wanted to have an intermediate measurement of my hemoglobin to see if I was continuing to improve or had slid backdown the scale. The lab was almost empty and I was in and out relatively quickly. The results came back in just over a day and I am glad to say that every single measurement taken was in the normal (green) range and my hemoglobin was up to 14.0 versus 13.0 from 3 months ago.

Our destination for today was to the town of Frankenmuth. This old German town is around 25 miles southwest of Bay City so it is a quick drive. We start out at one of its more famous shops - Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland. It is touted as the world’s largest Christmas store and coming in with over 300,000 square feet of space on its 32 acre property, who am I to argue with that claim?

Ho Ho Ho!

We start out by walking around some of the displays outside. There are lots of nativity scenes and a small chapel.  We had a virtual geocache outside to complete before we headed inside.

Nativity Scene

Inside Chapel

Another Nativity Scene

The store is nearly overwhelming. They have all sorts of Xmas items for sale and of course they were pumping out the Christmas tunes over the audio system. Personally I’m not into this type of place, but felt like I at least needed wander around a bit and see the place.

Precious Moments Collection

If you need a very specialized Xmas tree ornament, it would be here and you can have them personalized by some of the on staff artists. It isn’t quite mid June but this place was very busy. I doubt you could pay me enough to try to come here in December prior to Christmas. But most of the shoppers were pushing carts full of assorted products. There were some very cool displays and dozens of fake trees already with LED lights decorating them.

Mesmerizing LED Display

Normal Xmas Tree Options

Some of the trees were gaudy beyond belief and I would like to see who might be tempted to purchase one for their home. I will admit that we did find something to buy. We have been looking for some sort of hat that I could wear if we happen to go to the surfing Santa event down at Cocoa Beach on Christmas Eve morning again. An elf hat with ears was the winner. I’ll admit, I was glad to be out of that place.

Over the Top Xmas Tree Options

Jack Models His Elf Hat

Next we drive into Frankenmuth proper. This is a very cute little town but it was equally crowded and quite the tourist trap. Our arrival time worked out very well. Our plan was to have lunch at the Bavarian Inn which is known for its all you can eat chicken dinners. But by showing up just before noon, we were able to listen to the 35 bell carillon strike 12 and then play more music before the glockenspiel starts a show (also at 3, 6 and 9 PM each day).

The Bavarian Inn

Even though it was a rather hot day to be standing in the sun looking up at the tower, it was pretty interesting to watch the various figures moving by. The story being told over the speaker system is that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I’m guessing that at one point in my early years, I had learned of this story but couldn’t remember the details. So watching the show refreshed my memory as to why the Pied Piper had led the children out of town after not being paid for getting rid of the rats.

Pied Piper Leading the Rats from Town

Then Leading the Children Away Too

After the show was over, we head into the inn to get lunch. This place is decorated just like a restaurant in Germany would be. All the wait staff were dressed in classic German clothing. We had a nice meal and then walked around some of the other shops inside the other floors of this large place. We then headed back outside to continue to wander the busy sidewalks of town and checkout some of the shops north of the restaurant.

Bronze Children Play in Fountain

Murals at Museum

The Frankenmuth Cheese Haus has its own large tower with a figurinespiel. Five times a day, a show is put on explaining about cheese making all over the world. Five figures pop out and tell about the history of cheese making in their country.  We head into the store to check out the wide assortment of cheeses for sale.

Frankenmuth Cheese Haus

Cheese Makers from Around the World

We head north along Main Street until the shops thin out and then head back picking up a few geocaches along the way. One of the shops has a cool kaleidoscope that points into a flower pot. Between rotating the kaleidoscope lens and the flower pot, the view is rather hypnotic.

View in Kaleidoscope

Butterfly Artwork

We head across the covered bridge over the Cass River to visit the Bavarian Inn Lodge. We have an Adventure Lab to tour us around the grounds. A paddle wheel tour boat was heading back to the dock just a block away.

Covered Bridge Over River

The Bavarian Belle Returns

The Inn Lodge is a rather massive place with all sorts of shops and restaurants as well as all kinds of kids entertainment venues. Outside was a cage with a couple of peacocks strutting their stuff.

Outside Bavarian Inn Lodge

All White Peacock

We managed to get a good look at all the inside options like miniature golf and many swimming pools and an arcade. It was very crowded with kids running all over the place inside.

Chris on Her Throne

Mini Golf Course

Sprinkles the Horse

Back outside, we walk over to another shopping area called the Frankenmuth River Place Shops. There was a wide variety of stores with lots of things we don’t need but were fine to look at. When we got to the boat dock, they were putting out the last call for the next boat tour. We likely could have made it in time, but by now we were getting tired from all the slow walking around town so we just head back to the car and drive back to Bay City.

Bavarian Belle Prepares to Head Out

Side View of Covered Bridge

We did stop at one highly favorited geocache in town before going to our rig. This one was in somebody’s back yard which can sometimes feel awkward but the description sounded like we might find it interesting. Sure enough, we found a 55 gallon plastic container full of colorful plastic eggs - many hundreds of them. The problem is only one of the eggs contains the log sheet to claim the find. We have done several caches with a similar concept, but never on such a large scale. The only way to tackle one of these is to sit down and dump the eggs all around us and start looking - one egg at a time. Surprisingly we only needed about 5 minutes before we lucked out and found the winning egg. When we got back to the lodge, people were starting to show up for their big event. It was definitely a good thing we had parked as far back as we did since the lot was full.

An Eggs-cellent Geocache!

The next morning we head just to the north side of town to visit Bay City State Park. Since we have plans to be in Michigan for over 5 weeks, we know that we will be visiting lots of state parks along our way and it makes sense to buy an annual vehicle pass so we can go to as many as we want. We weren’t 100% sure if we could purchase a non-resident annual pass at all state parks, so we decide to use the closest one to find out. The kid at the entrance booth had everything we needed and headed into the parking lot to check out this park. It turned out the visitor center was closed but we still could walk along some of the trails.

Bridge at Bay City State Park

At one of the bridges, we spotted a green heron perched on an I-beam intently staring into the water below. The only problem seemed to be the fact that the water was covered in chick weed, making the view a green mess. We were curious if this bird would actually be able to catch a fish in these tough conditions so we stopped to watch. Sure enough, the bird either used X-ray vision or possibly great hearing to locate a fish swimming just below. It dove into the green muck and came up with a small blue gill in it’s beak.

Green Heron Patiently Waits

Comes Up with a Bluegill

We walked along some of the sandy beach in the park but not many people were out early on a Thursday morning so we had the place to ourselves. We had a couple of geocaches to find and one of them was rather creative. Finding the container wasn’t too difficult since it was shape like a fishing bobber but on the large size - about 15 inch diameter! We were provided with the combination to open the cooler and inside were a couple dozen normal sized bobbers. In order to open the inner locked compartment, we needed to solve a puzzle. Each bobber had a letter and number written on it. We had to some up with the next step in the Fish Recipe: 1. Catch fish, 2. Clean fish, 3. Dip/coat fish, 4. XXX fish. We needed to find the 3 bobbers that would spell out the last step and then use those numbers to unlock the inner compartment. Very creative hide!

Empty Beach at State Park

Big Bobber Geocache

Steps to Eating a Fish

We continue back to the car to take advantage of a picnic table in the shade to have our lunch before heading to our next stop.

Solo Flower in Lily Pads

The USS Edson is a Navy destroyer. Built by Bath Iron Works in 1958. This ship is 418 feet long with a beam of 45 feet. Its home port was Long Beach, California but spent a great deal of time in the Far East near Taiwan and later on missions during the Vietnam War. It was decommissioned at the end of 1988 and was eventually moved here to Bay City as a museum ship in the summer of 2012.

USS Edson

We had not planned a visit far enough in advance to get a guided tour, but we were okay with doing a self guided tour with the booklet provided to help navigate such a large ship. There are also arrows pointing the intended direction of the tour and plenty of informational signs to help describe the various parts of the ship.

On the Rear Deck

Long Hallway

Cramped Living Quarters

Multifunction Game Table

We took our time exploring and checking things out. One of the rooms was showing clips from the Edson’s appearance in an episode of the Twilight Zone from 1963 - The Thirty Fathom Grave. We would subsequently find it on one of our streaming services and watch the show.

Large Round of Ammunition

Machine Shop

$800K to Fill Up!

Pressure Gauges

I think the mechanical rooms were the most impressive with all the pipes and wiring to propel and control all the complex systems of the destroyer. But there was also some unexpected touches like the “screaming man” inside one of the boiler chambers!

Steam Turbine Engines

#2 Fire Room

Yikes!

Medical Room

As we worked our way through the different levels, it seemed like the ship just kept on going with the mess hall and cafeteria and laundry and even a barber shop.  It when you have over 200 men serving for months on end, there is a lot of normal stuff that needs to get done. The bow of the ship seemed to be way more angled than we were expecting  it does have a nice view.

Burgers Look Stale

Barbershop

Independence Bridge West of Ship

Front Deck

On the upper decks are the pilot house and signal bridge. We had thought that the engine room looked complicated but the room full of racks of old school electronics was quite impressive.

Which Knob Should I Turn?

Crew Member Still Working

Main Bridge of Ship

We spent a good two hours exploring the Edson and found it to be quite enjoyable. I’m not sure we could be crew for such a complicated ship although there were so many jobs required, there likely was something we could have been qualified to do. Although I suppose knowing how to swim might be a good skill to have so that might be my Achilles heel. I guess the career path I picked worked out okay for me.

Mark 46 Torpedo

More Knobs to Turn

Old School Circuitry

Goodbye USS Edson

We now have two days to get to Marquette Michigan in the Upper Peninsula for our next reserved camping spot. At just over 250 miles, we figure to break the trip roughly in half. Our next destination will be an overnight stay at the Elks Lodge in Gaylord Michigan. It isn’t too far off of Interstate 75 about 150 miles away.

This lodge does have some 30 amp outlets on one end of the parking lot. We arrived before the lodge opened and when we scoped out the parking situation, we decided to park on the opposite end of the lot and forego having electric. See, this lodge is somewhat unique in that it has an actual elk park right next to the lodge. We had watched a constant stream of traffic coming into the parking lot, stopping for 10 minutes or so to get pictures of the elk and then head out. The problem was that the electric outlets were on the busy end of the parking lot and we felt like the rig would be safer away from all the action.

Decent Sized Rack

A Few Elk Chilling

Of course, we had to head over to check them out ourselves. There were probably a few dozen elk in the 100 acre fenced property. The hay was just inside the fence line which tended to keep the elk nearby.

New Antlers Emerging

At one point, a local shows up with his small dog running around off leash. Turns out he shows up fairly often and the elk seem to quite interested in the dog. They sniff each other and the. The dog runs 100 feet along the fence and the group of elk follow it. Back and forth they went - quite unusual.

Getting Close as Dog Runs Around

We headed into the lodge after it was open and sat around talking with the local members as well as another couple that was just visiting but not camping here. It was a very short stay in Gaylord and about all I managed to do was drive around a bit to find some geocaches in Michigan counties we didn’t have yet. In driving around I did notice that there was a fair amount of tree damage. I had remembered seeing something about Michigan having a severe ice storm at the end of March this year and apparently Gaylord was one of the hard hit areas with up to 1.5 inches of ice! I didn’t stop to take pictures but I saw some woods next to homes where hundreds of trees had the tops broken off. It looks like there was going to be a significant amount of cleanup and it will take many years to recover.

The next day we cross over the Mackinac Bridge. At 5 miles long, it is an impressive structure. We had traveled across this back in 2017 but heading the opposite direction. It wasn’t too nerve wracking of a drive but it also wasn’t very windy which might factor into the equation.

Mackinac Bridge

Near the Midpoint

Our goal was to follow US Route 2 along the southern edge of the UP to the town of Manistique. Our destination being the Kewadin Casino. They actually have a few camping sites but they are in the grass and charge for using them. We instead just use the back gravel parking lot and have maybe 5 other rigs join us for the night. From here is will just be a little over 100 miles to the private campground in Ishpeming to take part in a Habitat for Humanity RV-Care-a-Vanner build for two weeks. It will be nice to have full hookups again. We haven’t had that since leaving The Great Outdoors 51 nights ago! And we haven’t had power in a week.