On To The Mitten

(I’ve been on a break from blogging as we finished up 2024 with a lot of travel and some rest. Hope to keep a more regular schedule in the New Year.)

So long Illinois! After a month in IL, Arthur, Estella, and I were ready to make our move further east into Michigan. Our first stop was outside of Holland. We stayed at the Ottawa County Fairgrounds, which was very, very empty, but we did have some squirrel friends that kept Arthur entertained. RV camping at fairgrounds around the country has been hit or miss. This was kinda a miss. 🍫 Certain stays make you grateful for newer bathroom facilities and the safety of just having other campers around – this was one of them. We felt safe the whole time we were there, but it was definitely not the best fairgrounds for a week-long stay.

A lovely part of our location was its proximity to Lake Michigan. A co-worker who lives in the area drove over for dinner one night with her family. We had dinner at The Curragh in downtown Holland, which was a great Irish meal. We also ventured over to Kilwins for dessert. It was so lovely to hang out with their family as we drove around and took a trip out to the lake before they dropped me off. I had forgotten how fun conversation can be with two young boys!

On the Fourth of July, I walked to Holland State Park. For this part of our trip I went without a rental car, and my legs felt it. It was about 3.5 miles each way to the park, but it wasn’t too warm, and I made some stops along the mostly shaded walk and mostly overcast day. The park was packed! There were also numerous boats going through the channel and a lot of people taking in the lake and some beach time. The traffic into the park was unreal. I definitely beat many, many cars on foot.

I also made a pitstop at the Ottawa Beach General Store , which was very busy, but they had everything from ice cream to souvenirs to wine and beer. I picked up some post cards and a magnet and walked a little further down the sidewalk for a snack at Reservoir. I ended up having a Pina Colada, some broccolini, and garlic bread, but it was just want I needed to make it the last 2.5 miles back to the RV.

We spent the rest of the week just working and relaxing during our downtime. (Arthur demonstrating how relaxed he felt.)

A fun surprise greeted us when I started up Estella to head over to our next location. We had the dreaded you-only-have-so-many-starts-til-the-engine-goes-into-limp-mode message that Mercedes kindly provides when something is wrong. 🍫🍫🍫 We’d seen the message before when we were short on DEF fluid, but then it cleared when I put more fluid in. This time, I knew we were good on DEF, so no bueno.

I had already planned to check out of our campsite and drive up to the Hackley & Hume Historic Site in Muskegon, and since we still had 16 starts to go, we made the trip up.

Stay tuned…Did we make it to the next campsite without going into limp mode? Was the Hackley & Hume Historic Site cool? Did Arthur ever manage to catch any fish on the iPad?