Putting the unpleasantness and disappointment of “Boblo” behind me, I had lupper in Cheboygan. Since the meal was serving a both lunch and supper, I splurged at a sit-down place on Main Street, called Mulligan’s. Their tagline is “Good food. Bad shots.” The second part is a reference to the golfing cheat of retaking a bad shot, called a mulligan. The place is also a full bar, so they serve… shots. A throng of bikers had been thru for lunch; it was 3:30, so I’d missed all but the last straggler. But I was early enough for the lunch menu.

Back at the state park I hit the trails. Once you’ve seen one northern hardwood forest by the big lake you’ve seen them all, so it wasn’t really special. But despite the bugs, it was a good hike. One leg of the trail was thru loose sand, behind the shore treeline. The walking actually got easier on the return leg, which was on the beach: a stereotypical east-coast beach of hard sand, rocks, and grasses. 🙂

I had a couple neat bird sightings. The first was a flock of swans bobbing on the waves, acting like oversized ducks: sticking the heads in the water and their tails into the air. The second sighting was a trio of bald eagles eating a fresh kill at the shoreline. They were behind some plants so they didn’t see me at first; I noticed one of them flapping its wings, which were way too big to belong to a shorebird. I crept closer, sticking to the trail like a good camper. Then one of them saw me (they have amazing eyesight) and they took off. I managed to squeeze off a couple of shots as they flew off, one of which is pretty good (ignoring the blurriness). (The iPhone sucks for wildlife photography, so those will have to wait until I get home and can upload the photos from the good camera.)

For those watching the map on the main page, today was the day that it didn’t change. I was in two counties (Bois Blanc is actually the same county as Mack Island, St Ignace, and a bunch of the UP) but both were repeats from last year. I’ll start lighting them up again tomorrow.

The weather is beautiful, partly sunny but breezy and not too hot. However that’s forecast to change, with a small chance of rain tonight, and 60-70% chance of rain tomorrow, all the way to Tawas Bay, my next campsite. So I’m expecting to scoot in the rain. The outlook for tomorrow night improves, then the day after should be back to partly sunny. I’ve checked radar, and there’s something really ugly in Minnesota that looks like the cause of these dire warnings for tomorrow. Regardless, it’s full rain protocol for the camp tonight: everything under cover as if rain were certain, just in case.

It’s my first night at Cheboygan State Park. This is the first time I’ve actually camped one place for two nights in a row. I’ve booked sites for two nights before, but didn’t actually use them both.

The campground isn’t full, but it’s pretty well-used tonight. There’s a whole string of sites unoccupied between mine and the ranger office; I suspect they’re tent-only sites, since mine is a tent, and the next one is a tent. Most people bring RVs to these places.

At least my reservation puts me far away from the annoying remote-control toy car at one of the sites closer to the water. I don’t know if it actually uses petrol, but if not it’s designed to sound like it, and the buzz is… irritating.

I rode pretty much straight through to Cheboygan, stopping only for stretches, fuel, and the odd photo shoot. It’s been sunny all day. Fortunately the safety gear also protects most of me from the sun, so with a little judicious sunscreen I was OK. It’s been windy, which has kept the heat down. It’s mostly out of the west, which only helped me a little with speed. But rarely strong enough to cause trouble staying on course.

I checked in at the state park at about 12:30. I’ll be here two nights, so I took care to find a soft place for the tent (not on the rocks). The park is a few miles east of the city, which is a little inconvenient, requiring me to double-back to go to Mackinac this afternoon.

Since I know that Mackinaw City is not very good for restaurants (and the island worse) I’m eating lunch in Cheboygan, getting a whitefish sandwich at Alice’s Restaurant on Main Street. (You can’t get *anything* you want, but the usual assortment of burgers and sandwiches, heavy on fish.) This is the kind of city that *has* a “main street” with shops and such (in addition to strip malls).