Enjoying Our Dash

After the beautiful views at Sleeping Bear Dunes, we headed up to Gaylord to play some golf and do some more exploring. We stayed at the Gaylord KOA and had a great campsite surrounded by lots of tall trees. We played golf on the Signature Course at the Tree Tops Resort, a beautiful resort with several courses to choose from. The course was gorgeous and the views from the (back) tee boxes were amazing! You never know what you are going to see on a golf course. These wild Turkeys were out looking for lunch while we were waiting to tee off. The City of Gaylord maintains an elk herd and provides viewing areas for the public to stop and watch the impressive herd.  Under the city’s care the roughly 40 elk are contained on 108 acres.  City staff feed the animals corn, hay and sugar beets, plus vitamins.  We were able to see several of them up close after a walk in Aspen Park. A portion of the trail passed by the back end of the preserve. There was also a Fallow Deer that w...

After Ohio, we headed to Indiana to check out the Indiana Dunes National Park. This park is another one that covers diverse areas and terrains. Our first stop was the Lake Michigan beach at Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk. Once we arrived at the area, we were greeted by some massive dunes and beautiful sneak peeks at the lake in front of us. The views on the beach were just gorgeous. It was interesting to see major steel mills on either end of the beach. The coolest part was that we could the city of Chicago across the lake. Next we headed over to Bailly Homestead and the Chellberg Farmhouse. Here we enjoyed trails through the woods and a working farm. Cole had fun checking out the goats! This guy is always up for an adventure, so we headed north to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. This area is located west of Traverse City, Michigan. We stayed at Indigo Bluffs RV Park and Resort https://www.indigobluffs.com/ . This is one of the nicest campgrounds we have been to. We...

After Niagara Falls, we began our trek west. Our first stop was south of Cleveland. Here we checked out the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Cuyahoga Valley National Park is a 33,000-acre park that borders Cleveland to the north and Akron to the south. The park protects 20 miles of the Cuyahoga River, which flows north into Lake Erie. This park has a lot of different types of areas to explore. Unfortunately we only had a short time to explore the park. From the map below, you can get a sense of just how large the park is. We headed over to the Brandywine Falls area and hiked the Brandywine Gorge loop. It was very hilly, but a good time was had by all. The ‘falls’ were pretty, but considering where we had just come from, they looked more like a faucet! Our next stop was the Toledo area. Ed and I both lived in this area for several years. We had a chance to drive past our old houses and the Chrysler (Jeep) factory we were part of building back in 2000. In additio...