This year, we decided to take a week off and travel across Michigan in an RV.
Actually, that's not entirely true. It
was last year
that we decided we wanted to take an RV vacation. However, the
company that I was working for stopped paying me, so I had to seek
greener pastures, and we had to put potentially-expensive vacation
plans on hold. This year, the stars were right, and we rented an RV
and headed west.
We got to see lakes and swamps and dunes; we got to sleep by the
shore and listen to the loons; we got to play pinball and eat ice
cream and watch a planet sail across the face of the sun.
Good vacation.
ABOUT THE RV
I've been asked what make and model of RV we were driving. I have no idea. Here's a picture:
It's a 25-foot RV with advertising on
every available surface. It's not so much a camper as a rolling
billboard you can sleep in. It's awfully nice of us to do
CruiseAmerica's publicity for them (and sure enough, someone did come
up and ask us where we had rented it, and we were able to tell them;
we also gave the name of a competitor we had looked over as well, so
take that, CruiseAmerica).
Here's a few pictures of the exterior and interior:
You can see that we had a small stove,
a kitchen sink, a bathroom sink, a little bathroom and shower, a bed
on the main level, a bed over the driver's seats (which we didn't
use), a dinette (which theoretically could fold down into another
bed), a refrigerator, a little freezer, a microwave, and all sorts of
cabinets for stashing stuff. It was a fine size for two people; we
were pushing it a bit by adding two dogs. Clearly it's designed to
hold even more people, but I can't conceive of it. Mary Lynn and I
had to coordinate our movements closely and keep aware of where our
limbs were at any given moment to avoid collision or injury. With
three or four people? Forget it. It would be a domestic violence
incident waiting to happen.
Mary Lynn drove it. She's got prior
experience driving a camper; I don't. I get flustered driving my
Saturn at times, and I can see
out the back of my Saturn. If we ever decide to get our own RV, I'll
need to learn, but at least I'll have a good teacher.
What I can tell you for certain is that it's loud. You don't
appreciate how much work goes into making a modern sedan drive
quietly until you experience a poorly-maintained freeway in a 25-foot
RV. It rattled and banged and made casual conversation all but
impossible.
Gambit, our cocker spaniel, hated it. When he rides in our cars, he
stands up and shivers the whole time; we were hoping that if he rode
in a larger vehicle, where he couldn't see as much of the world
flying by, that he might be more amenable to the experience. We were
wrong. Some combination of the noise and the motion absolutely
terrifies him. Fortunately, we had planned for this contingency, and
we had made sure that no single leg of our trip was more than a
couple of hours in the RV at once.
DAY 1
Cold Brook County Park was a kind of baseline camping area, a facility neither excellent nor abysmal in any respect, and thus useful for providing an experience that other campgrounds could be judged by.
The site we were placed at was in a
well-populated area of the park; not full to capacity, but possibly
two-thirds full. We were hemmed in by trees on all sides except the
entrance, and so there was really nothing much in the way of scenery
to look at. We had electrical and water hookups – no sewer, but
there was a dump area we could have used while driving out. A
building with bathrooms and showers was located just a few sites
down.
And, of course, we had a fire pit. This
seems to be mandatory at every campsite; there are several basic
designs, but what they all come down to is a round hole where you can
burn stuff. During the course of our vacation, we did see a few
people using their firepits to cook by, but we also saw a few people
that were just burning things for the sake of burning them.
It was a bit noisy; there were people
walking around and chatting, and there were shouting children and an
occasional barking dog. However, everything quieted down in time for
park “quiet time” (a concept that I wish was a universal law) and
so we had no difficult sleeping …
… except for our dogs, of course. Our
dogs are extremely spoiled; one of the ways that we spoil them is
that we allow them to sleep at night on the bed with us. We have a
king-sized bed at home, so it's normally not an issue. The bed in the
back of the RV, however, was only just big enough for Mary Lynn and
I, without a square inch to spare for canines. As a result, the dogs
were very confused and unhappy all night, and wanted to be up and
active very early in the morning indeed. There wasn't a single night
on our vacation that the dogs let us sleep past five or six in the
morning.
DAY 2
Our one and only tourist stop for the day was Klassic Arcade in Gobles. I wish we had something like this near us; it's practically a museum of classic video and pinball games. You can enter and play all day for just $5, and while you're there, you can enjoy any one of many dozens of flavors of bottled soda pop, chow down on fresh-popped popcorn, or take home a growler of Klassic Arcade root beer. I'd come back every weekend if I could. Highly recommended.
These exterior shots of the arcade aren't very impressive; go to the web site to see the interior in all its flashing glory.
Our destination campground was Gile's Campground in Allegan (I've seen it spelled both "Giles" and "Gile's", so I'm picking one and sticking to it), which is a private campground, and by far the best campground we
stayed at. Instead of facing a row of RV's or a dull wall of trees,
we had a view of a wide, placid lake. We had water, electricity, and
a sewer hookup, which allowed us to dump our tanks at our
convenience. The rec hall building was immaculately clean, as were
its restrooms and showers. When we were out walking dogs, we had our
choice of surroundings: a bright grassy sward paralleling the shining
lake, or a broad park normally reserved for tent camping (though it
was unoccupied when we were there) or a tree-sheltered lane that
provided glimpses of of a quiet swamp.
Here are a couple of photos of the view from our site:
And we had wi-fi. The campground has a
nice, fat, secure pipe to the Internet, broadcast reliably through
most of the grounds. The rec hall had an ethernet plug-in for those
guests who needed real speed, but honestly, the wi-fi was plenty
fast. The staff also take the precaution of changing the access
password every few days; a wise choice, given how far their antenna
was providing signal.
It's amazing just how much you can
accomplish with an Internet connection these days. I was able to:
- Check and respond to e-mail
- Download the official Java and Python documentation packages, which I needed for a little project I was working on
- Search for more campgrounds (and I could have made reservations at a KOA)
- Connect to my Steam account and chat with a friend in Wisconsin (and, if I had so chose, I could have plunked down a few bucks and downloaded a shiny new game)
- Connect to Mary Lynn's Netflix account (we didn't watch any videos, but her instant queue was right there, waiting for us, and we certainly had enough bandwidth to stream whatever we liked)
DAY 3
This was Monday, and we weren't due at Warren Dunes State Park until Tuesday, so we spent a full day at Gile's, with a brief trip away and back for groceries.
I probably shouldn't let that last bit
go at half a sentence. With a 25-foot RV, one does not simply pop
into town
for groceries. We went into Allegan, a trip that was made complicated
by several factors: the fact that we didn't exactly know where the
grocery store was; a narrow bridge that indicated a four-ton limit
(were we under four tons? All I know is that we crossed the bridge
without incident) and a downtown district that was plagued by road
construction. We found the grocery store, but getting into and out of
the parking lot was a delicate maneuver each way. Clearly, on future
RV vacations, better planning and storage of food ahead of time was
required.
There was a closer store – just on the other side of the lake, in
fact – but it was more of a convenience store that was grafted on
to a hardware store and then merged with a hunting/camping shop. They
didn't have the fresh produce we had our hearts set on (and thus had
to go into town for) but they were able to sell us the special
chemicals and toilet paper we needed to keep our RV's blackwater
system happy, and they did sell us a Powerball ticket.
The campground was just as charming when we returned. I also want to
mention here that we saw quite a few RV's that seemed to be there
more or less permanently; they had gardens and patios and lawn
ornaments and a variety of other improvements that had clearly taken
a great deal of time to set up. Many of these long-term-stayers
didn't actually appear to be present; their RV's were there, but the
owners were nowhere to be found. One presumes they move their RV's in
for the season (or longer) and just leave them there, coming to visit
once in a while, on the weekends, perhaps.
Here's a shot of our RV (in the middle) looking quite small indeed between the untenanted juggernauts we were parked next to:
DAY 4
We left the sunlit shores of Gile's and proceeded due west to the edge of the state. Our first stop, at around noon, was at Sherman Dairy, which was a nice (if expensive) neighborhood ice cream parlor. The ice cream was good and came in generous helpings, along with optional innovations such as pretzel cones or chocolate-chip-cookie bowls. I myself had some Red Velvet Delight ice cream, which tasted nothing like red velvet cake, but was good just the same. We sat in the little dining room, listening to some dawn-of-rock-and-roll classics and enjoying our sugar buzz.
The
main event was at Warren Dunes State Park. We not only stayed the
night there; we watched the transit of Venus there.
About the park first: the campgrounds were mostly unoccupied. In
fact, at our site, you absolutely could not see any other campers:
That's us, surrounded by nothing but trees and empty camp sites.
Our nearest neighbors to one side were around a tree-rich bend; to
the other side, you could walk quite a ways before sighting another
vehicle. We only had electricity – no water, no sewer, no wi-fi –
but we had solitude in spades. Apart from that, the grounds were well
kept up; the nearby shower/bathroom building was reasonably clean;
and if we had needed it, there was a tiny little store near the park
entrance where we could have bought some basic food and supplies,
though probably at a premium.
And just a short drive away were the dunes themselves. One moment,
you might be driving through the park, along an ordinary-looking
road, with pretty but unremarkable scenery … then you come around a
hill, and you find yourself staring at Lake Michigan, dominating the
horizon to your left, and these giant piles of sand towering along
your right. It's a striking sight, especially when you come upon it
suddenly as you do. It's as if you've been transported to a different
planet.
And speaking of a different planet: we had come to the dunes to join
the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society for the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. We got
there early, when there were only a few dozen folks, and perhaps half
a dozen telescopes. As we got closer and closer to the celestial
moment, more and more people showed up. The parking lot filled with
cars, and a crowd spread across the sand-strewn pavilion. A long row
of telescopes and binoculars were aimed heavenward, some attached to
complex and expensive arrays of equipment. We satisfied ourselves
with the three-dollar pairs of sun-proof eclipse-viewing glasses.
As six o'clock rolled around, it started to seem as if this would be
a disappointment. Folks gazing skyward through their dark glasses
could see nothing but good old faithful Sol, round and unmarred as
usual. As the minutes passed, though, folks began to announce that
they could see a nick taken out of the sun's disk, at about the one
o'clock position. The serious astrophiles, with their high-powered,
USB-guided optics, indicated that the transit had, in fact, begun.
And by six-thirty, the fact was unmistakable, even to us folks in the
cheap seats. When I looked up through my dark glasses, I could see a
small hole in the sun, just as if some cosmic prankster had come up
and run a needle through it.
(No photos of the transit. Sorry. We put the dark glasses in front of our digital camera and aimed it at the sun, and just got pictures of a bright spot.)
We retreated to our designated, neighborless site, and spent a quiet
evening there; at least as much of it as the dogs were willing to let
us enjoy.
DAY 5
This was a decision point for us. It was Wednesday. We wanted to be home on Thursday, so that we could take our time cleaning out the RV before we returned it on Friday. We had initially wanted to spend at least one day at a KOA to see if it was everything that the pile of brochures in our camper said it was. However, there were no KOA's at a convenient halfway-point between us and home. There were two KOA's very close to us on the west edge of Michigan (and very close to each other, these KOA's – was there sufficient tourism to support both of them? Or did the owners have a long-running feud, complete with incidents of sabotage and slander?) but a Wednesday night stay on the west side of Michigan would lead to a four-hour drive home on Thursday. This would have been the longest single-day trip we'd made.
In
the end, the appeal of two shorter journeys overruled our curiosity
to see just what puts the K in Kampgrounds Of America. On the
previous day, we had located and made reservations at Rockey'sCampground, near Albion. Today we reached it, with a stop at a rest
area along the way for lunch and to give the dogs some freedom.
I
want to start out by saying that there was nothing outright wrong
about the place, and I would not warn anyone away. We were able to
park the RV, hook up to water and power, walk the dogs and enjoy the
breeze. If you were to list the features in a series of bullet
points, it would come out looking much like Gile's – but in
practice, it constantly came up short of Gile's, in every respect.
There was a lake, but it was smaller, less impressive. There was a
main building with an office, a laundry, bathrooms, and even a little
store (which Gile's didn't have) except that the laundry was
basically a couple of machines under an overhang on the side of the
building, and the store was a cramped little cubicle, packed full of
camping supplies, basic health, medical, and grooming products, a
shelf of battered VHS and DVD movies, a couple of coolers with soft
drinks and cold cuts, and a freezer full of ice cream. There was a
game room in a separate building, which held a jukebox, a ping pong
table, a few arcade games, and possibly another table game – I
honestly can't remember for sure, because there was nothing about
that room that made me want to linger. It was constructed of bare,
cheerless wood, and choked with shadows from end to end. It gave the
impression that the people who had housed these games here had never
intended to return; that they'd fled as soon as they'd given the
cabinets power, leaving the games to fend for themselves in this
drab, soulless shed.
And there was wi-fi, but it almost goes without saying at this point
that it was unsecured, with only enough signal strength to reach our
RV when the wind was right.
But still, it was quiet enough (when they stopped mowing the grass)
and it gave us the prospect of a short drive in the morning that
would carry us home. And in the evening, walking along the lake shore, watching the the fireflies flare and fade in the twilight, it was downright pleasant.
EPILOGUE
So are we going to run out and buy an RV?
Not immediately. First of all, the dogs were less than thrilled with the whole setup. Logan endured it stoically, but Gambit, as previously mentioned, was a nervous wreck any time the vehicle's engine turned over, and they both wanted more freedom. So it didn't really solve our "how can we take the dogs on vacation with us?" question.
For a humans-only vacation platform, though, it was just fine. Staying at campgrounds was certainly more scenic than staying at hotels, and it was nice having our own little kitchen and fridge and what not.
Filling the tank wasn't cheap (when refueling an RV, don't look at the total price if you have a weak heart) and I imagine maintenance could get costly. I've never had to bring a vehicle into the shop to have its toilet repaired before.
Renting wasn't cheap, but the RV came to us clean and in good working order, and when we were done, we got to give it back. No giant vehicle looming in front of our house all year taking up parking space.
So if we win the lottery, then sure, we'll pop down to the dealership and score ourselves a nice rolling vacation home. But for now, we'll probably stick with our Saturns.
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