Mackinaw Riding

Today's Tracking Where the GPS and Radio Work Together

We have been riding intermittently recently, what with RV travels and sightseeing and all.
In more areas than one, we have not had radio coverage to the extent that the GPS track was logged at all.  Today, however, we arrived in Mackinaw City, MI, so far up north and seemingly in the boonies that I assumed there would be no radio coverage here either.
Out here east of the Mississippi, what hills exist are relatively gradual grades, and Michigan is wonderful in the lack of mountain-style climbs as well.
We journeyed to Kirtland, OH, and stayed at Geneva State Park while visiting the Kirtland Temple and other LDS historical sites nearby.  I think we stayed there 3-4 nights and the cost was $30-something per.  That was a nice park except for being almost totally waterlogged:  Not only is it right on the shore of Lake Erie, but recent rains had left most or all the camp sites with standing water, with barely enough dry gravel to park on.  Several campers and tenters drove in, set up camp, and left within hours after realizing how soggy everything was.
There was a nice cycling path there, interrupted for only a few hundred yards by mud and water.
No radio coverage, but nice cycling.
From there we drove to Caesars Creek state park, where I departed for my 73-mile ride to celebrate my 71st birthday.  After a few days there we drove clear up to Palmyra, New York, to visit LDS history sites there.   Very lovely place except for high prices, especially gasoline.   We stayed the first night in the parking lot of the Fingerlakes Casino, for free, and the only 'legit' place we could find to park the RV was in the Wayne County OH Fairgrounds, where we were the only visitors for most of our week's stay there.  It was lacking in the absence of picnic tables but a very quiet sleeping spot.  Trouble is, it cost $30 a night for electrical and full hookup and since it was $25 for the cheapest spots we gladly spent the extra $5 nightly for full amperage AC power for our air conditioners.
We rode around Palmyra very enjoyably but again had no radio coverage, and the heavy tree cover and nearby metal municipal buildings appeared to block both TV signals and our Tailgater satellite TV system.
From there we decided to go up to Dearborn MI to see "The Henry Ford", a compound of museums and exhibits memorializing American ingenuity, including of course the history of the Ford auto empire.  It cost over 90 bucks to get entry tickets but then every time we saw something interesting inside, we got charged again for almost everything.  $5 each to ride the steam powered train around the complex:
THEN, high prices (Of Course!) for ice cream and other snacks, and of course we had to take a ride in a Model T automobile.  That cost $7.50 or so apiece for something like a 5-minute ride around several blocks of the complex.  These T-models are the genuine article, EXCEPT having been modified with electric starters so the drivers don't have to risk injury trying to crank the dern things to get them going again after a stall.  Fun ride, but more even more expensive than  driving the RV per mile.......
We stayed 2 nights at the Wayne County Fairgrounds in Wayne County Michigan, next door to Dearborn.  $24 something per night, a modest relief from the 30-dollar versions we've encountered elsewhere.  We could have gone back to the Ford complex to see more of the fun, but our legs were tired from all the walking and we decided to go on up the road for more travels.  We are aiming to visit an old Army buddy in Wisconsin, and along the way, we sought to stop and visit (again) one of Jacque's dear friends up here in Mackinaw City, "at the top of the mitten" in Michigan.
Surprisingly, as shown in the top link of this post, the radio coverage covered our cycling travels quite nicely. 
Last night we parked the RV halfway between Fordtown, er, I mean Dearborn, and Mackinaw City at a state park called Higgins Lake.  We were a tad sticker-shocked at the price to merely stay overnight:  40-something dollars including tax.  I would have driven on but was sufficiently exhausted from driving all day that I just popped out the card and paid for it, grateful to have found a place to crash for the night. (Of course the next morning when we left, an interstate rest area popped into view within a mile or two, where we could have stayed the night for free.)
Jacque's Mackinaw friend is all too generous and insisted we could "driveway surf" and park next to her house and blood-suck electricity from her garage outlet.  All very nice, and we arrive soon enough to tour downtown Mackinaw City and get the inevitable commemorative T-shirt.

Ride Started: 6:16 PM    Ride Ended:  9:22 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.2 Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  12.9
Beginning Blood Glucose:  170      Ending BG: 85 
Lowest Temp  64 F      Highest Temp: 82 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  7.43 
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
3.5 MPH                                 4.6 MPH                     14.5 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
2 hours 9 mins                        1 hour 37 mins           32 minutes