Thursday - Aug 13
160 years ago the Coopers left Canada and moved into
Michigan, today we are following in their footsteps. We still don’t know the
whole story, but part of it is that a farmer in Michigan needed someone to
manage his farm while he went off to fight in the civil war and our family came
to the rescue. Once they arrived here in Michigan, they seemed to spread out a
bit.
We are continuing our quest into family history with a stop
just west of Flint in a town called Durand to visit with a 3rd
cousin that I met online through Ancestry.com. He is descended through my great
great uncle Charles. We had a very nice visit with Dan and enjoyed a great meal
in a local eatery with a promise to keep in touch with each other as well as
keep the family trees up-to-date. We were so into our first meeting that we
forgot to take pictures, so all you get is the story, as with our next stop.
Friday – Aug 14
We are doing it again, moving over to East Lansing and
meeting with another 3rd cousin, Jennifer whom I met online. You
know it’s like you’ve known them all your life and feel relaxed, I guess it’s
just because they are family. As with Dan, we will keep in touch. We did find
out that there is an annual Cooper family reunion here in Michigan, we might
have to try and make the next one.
Saturday – Aug 15 – 24
Lake Muskegon!
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| Lake Muskegon Sunset |
That’s the view out our front window. Now I know why our
friends Al and Mary are so comfortable here. Al and I got out and played 5
different golf courses while we were here. We also sampled several restaurants.
Pat and Mary could be found at the local farmers market where, as Pat tells it “everybody
knows Mary.” I guess that would be true, it is her home town where she taught
school for many a year.
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| Muskegon Ferry |
I’m standing on a WWII submarine the USS Siversides in the channel between Lake
Muskegon and Lake Michigan taking a picture of the Lake Express, a twin hull
ferry that travels between Milwaukee and Muskegon in just 2 ½ hours.
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| Muskegon Lighthouse |
I jumped across the channel to take this picture of the
Lighthouse at the start of the channel. To say that we enjoyed Muskegon is
almost an understatement, we’ll be back.
Aug. 25 - 26
We departed Muskegon and headed north to my father’s home
town of Charlevoix. This will be my third visit here, my first being 1956 and
my second being 2005. When I arrived for my second visit, I was taken aback by
how the sleepy little town I remembered was now an elbow to elbow bustling summer
community. The house that my father grew up in was still standing in 2005 and
was much smaller than I remembered it as a young lad, but when we visited it
again, the current owners had upgraded it to the point I had a hard time recognizing
it.
We visited the historical society and with the help of a
very nice young man did some digging into the archives and came up with some
old photos.
The 4th guy from the left is my uncle Ted. I just
had to share this, I love the old car/bus. One of the photos had a picture of
my great grandmother in it, although she is a bit blurry. We decided to go out
to the golf course where my uncle Frank was the golf pro at in his day. On the
way there we came across an old cemetery that I wanted to stop at just for a
look to see what we could find. It was quite large and Pat just said, I doubt
if you will find any of the graves.
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| My Greats |
Oh what a naysayer she be, my wife. We found my great grandparents
and a great great Aunt.
We didn’t stop in town because it was so crowded, we could
hardly find a parking space, we did stop and look out over that big lake, which
with the rainy weather was kicking up a bit.
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| Lake Michigan - Charlevoix |
Aug 27 - 28
We are returning to Midland, MI where we spent a summer not
too long ago. I surprised the bunch of old geezers that I played golf with by
showing up and joining them for a round. It was really nice to see them all
again. While we were there, we went into town where Brent and his wife Chris
have set up a new venture called Grape Beginnings Winery. Wow, if you go, you’ve
got to try it. Oh yes, who are they? Brent is the son of my best friend,
Alan Whitted. And yes, we returned with some of their wine.
Aug 29
We drove across the state and back to the Lake Michigan
shoreline with a stop Coloma, MI for an overnight. We got a hankerin’ for some
good ice cream, so the campground owners sent us to South Haven to a place
called Sherman’s and of course it was mighty fine. Look for the big blue cow on
the roof. Maybe we should ice cream across the country, mmmmm……
Aug 30
An overnight in Effingham, IL and dinner out at the Gabby
Goat, not bad. Al & Mary happened to stop there a week later and had the
ribs which they say were fantastic. Guess we should have waited for them.
Aug 31
Grizzly’s RV Park, what kind of a name is that? Well it was
not bad, just an overnight not much to tell
Sept. 1-2
Time to settle in for some looking around and a day of golf.
We are in Little Rock! Passed through and around it but never stopped, so here
we are! The campground is in the city, next to the Arkansas River and almost
under a bridge that crosses over to the Clinton Library.
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| Downtown Riverside RV Park, Little Rock, AR |
That is the Little Rock skyline to the left, we are tucked
in on the lower right. This picture was taken from up on the pedestrian bridge
to the Library. At night they do a light show on all of the bridges.
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| Little Rock Pedestrian Bridge |
They go through a spectrum of light that flash or just fade
in and out.
We caught a trolley in front of the Library for a tour of
Little Rock. The cost was only a couple of bucks and well worth it. The next
day while I was playing golf, Pat walked over the bridge, caught a trolley into
town and enjoyed some museums. Speaking of golf, I was able to join the Wednesday
old guys group of about 40 guy ranging in ages in the 50’s to the 80’s for a
shotgun start. At the end, get your quarters out and start paying for the
various best of. After paying out a couple of bucks, my group hit a win, I
walked away a buck and a half to the good.
If you’re looking for something to eat while you’re here, I recommend
The Whole Hog Café. And, yes this is barbeque at its best. If you are going to
eat here, do not order the chili, but everything else we had was excellent. We were
going to go out the second night, but were too tired, so we ate in.
Sept. 3
We stopped for an overnight at a dump called Shady Lake RV
park. Noticed I called it a DUMP. Well I would not have been harsh had we not
had the problems. We plugged in and blew 4 breakers, the microwave/convection
oven & one of the converters. First time in 15 years of RVing that we have
run into such a bad electrical problem. When I informed them of the problems,
they had someone just put a meter on in a pronounce it ok. Later when we
learned how much had actually been damaged, we notified them that they really
needed to get a professional electrician to look at it, they claimed that they
did. We slammed them on the internet reviews.
Sept. 4 - 5
Found a Park in Georgetown, TX, it’s a holiday weekend, hard
to find sites. After we found new breakers to replace the ones fried by our
problems the night before, we went into Georgetown to look around. What a nice
little town. Of course we really liked it when we found a great restaurant called
Monument Café for diner.
We liked the Café so much we stopped there for breakfast on
our way to Austin the next morning. Ok, what are we doing in Austin? We’ve been
Texans for 15 years and we’ve driven through the city many times but never
stopped in to look around. So, here we are. We found the visitors center where
they had a bus tour and off we went on a 2 hour tour. It was very interesting
but I have to admit we did not take one picture. We thought about going back
with the car and taking some pictures, but the parking was very limited and the
traffic was not pretty. That was one of the points made on the tour, how the
city population grew but the infrastructure did not keep up, so basically,
everywhere you look is road construction. There was one point where we had some
really good views of the capital building, however because of the spotty
showers and the heat, we were not on the upper deck with the good view. Just
like Nashville, Austin had its music avenue only where Nashville was alive and
kicking in the morning, Austin doesn’t get going until the evening.
We got out of the city and went to the Lady Bird Johnson
Wildflower Center which was the place to go for ideas on landscaping our place
in the valley.
Throughout the center
were gardens from different areas of Texas. Some were just laid out with
similar plants together. While others were laid out in a complete garden with
complete with path.
This one looked a bit like a jungle. As much as we enjoyed
our time in the Center, it was quite hot and we glad to leave and head back to
the rig.
Sept. 6
It’s Sunday Morning and you could not ask for a better day
to leave. Austin has become the worst of the worst to drive through during the
week, so Sunday is great. We were able to drive straight down the I35 through
the city and head for home without dealing with heavy traffic.
We arrived home that afternoon to high heat and, you guessed
it, more electrical problems. The A/C in the house was struggling.
Tuesday, they came out and got it working, while we did a
little sweating. Overall, it was a great summer, I hope you enjoyed the ride-along.
