This afternoon I scooted out to Miners Castle (part of which collapsed a few years ago) and hiked a short section of the Lakeshore Trail, which is also part of the developing North Country Trail (similar in spirit to the Appalachian Trail). Beautiful land (and lake), and it does make me want to hike it properly.
Although I strive to be the antitourist, the best way to see Pictured Rocks is from the water, and since I don’t have time to rent a kayak and do it myself, I chose to take a $33 cruise. Understand that I have a tendency to not allow enough time for things, and it didn’t occur to me that the cruise might fill up. I thought I was doing well when I got there about 15 minutes before the cruise I wanted (5pm) and went to the ticket booth. There wasn’t a clear line, but a family of four whom I think got there after me took the last four seats. {sigh} I suppose that’s better overall than me getting one, then them being one short. The needs of the four outweigh the needs of the one.
So I booked the next cruise at 7pm and used the intervening time to scoot out to Christmas, MI and set up my tent at the Bay Furnace campground of the National Forest Service… kind of a low-rent version of a State Park. I also took the time to have dinner at the Navigator Restaurant a block from the dock, where my waiter may have been the gayest (or at least the prettiest) young man in Munising. Good food but boy howdy they charged a lot for a Labatt.
The cruise was worth the time, expense (I guess), and sacrifice of my principles. I still want to kayak it, but it gave a sense of the lakeshore that you simply cannot get from on land. My t-shirt caught some notice. One little girl pointed out to mommy that I had a map of Michigan on it. A young woman simply said she liked it. A woman my age tried to explain to her non-English-native friend what “Bi-Peninsular and Proud” meant. She didn’t explain the subtext. Which is too bad because it really isn’t clever unless you think of it in terms of the gay/bi pride movement.
The batteries in my camera ran out, which was a little distresssing because these were already my backup batteries. I’ve been gradually recharging the main set using the 12V socket on Flash. I switched back to them, but I have little idea how much charge they really have. I’m also a little nervous that I’ve been asking too much of Flash’s electrical system, charging both my iPhone and now the camera batteries. Flash has been difficult to start today, and a couple times I had to use the kick-starter. So I’m discontuing the battery recharging and trying to do the iPhone only when the engine is running. I bought a set of AAs for the camera.
