Exploring Michigan

The last stop after Walnut Grove as we made on our way home was to explore northern Michigan a bit. We drove through the Upper Peninsula and crossed Mackinaw bridge into northern Michigan. We were heading to Grayling, which is a large National Guard base centrally located in northern Michigan.

As we drove through the Upper Peninsula, we passed through the town of Escanaba, which apparently has a movie about it. I've never seen it, but Mr M, his dad, and a couple uncles watched it while we were at the reunion, so Mr M made sure I took a couple pics as we drove. These are for you, Papa! :)

When we were working on our 5 and 10 year plans a couple years ago we identified a few places we’d potentially like to move to in a few years. We’d decided on them based on several criteria, among which were job availability, homeschool-friendly laws, topography, and weather.

Northern Idaho and northern Michigan were on our first list, though Michigan had the better job prospects since Mr M would most likely be able to get a job at the National Guard base in Grayling. Idaho is closer to family, so that was preferred, but had worse job prospects.

Mountains, lots of trees, and snow in the winter are a must for us, but job availability is no longer a deciding factor since we’ve decided to focus on being entrepreneurs and building our own businesses.

We visited northern Idaho earlier in our trip, and it stayed on our list: it's homeschool friendly, has mountains and trees, and winter with snow (something we've been missing here), and we loved the area. We could very easily see ourselves living there, building our businesses, and raising our family.

While we no longer plan on Mr M working for the National Guard or Reserves, we still wanted to check out Grayling. Michigan has good homeschooling laws, lots of trees, lots of snow in the winter, and maps showed ski resorts, so we thought there were mountains as well.

Imagine our surprise when we were driving through Michigan, and all we saw was lots of trees. It was beautiful, but it was so flat.

So, so flat.

Not a mountain to be seen.

Turns out that any hill of a decent size is used for skiing, but they're definitely not the ski resorts you'll find in Utah or Colorado.

we stopped and dipped our toes in the Lake Michigan, but the rusty color of the water was more than a bit unsettling, and didn't tempt us to go swimming

It’s a good thing we checked it out now, rather than in a few more years when we’re ready to move. The lack of mountains is a deal breaker for us, so we won't be looking for land in Michigan.

We spent the night at the base campground in Grayling. This was only the second night of the whole trip where we had full water, electric, and sewer hookups, and the price was very reasonable- only $17. The campground was almost full, but it seemed like a lot of the trailers were parked there more or less permanently, with their owners staying in them just on the weekends. We were there in the middle of the week, and a lot of them looked deserted.

Despite our disappointment with the lack of mountains, we are looking forward to returning and riding our bikes on some of the miles of trails. We’d planned on a bike ride while we were there, but an afternoon rainstorm nixed that idea.

The next morning we continued on our way, and after one last night in a Walmart parking lot, we arrived home, five weeks after we started our trip.