11 years ago today, Day 23

My journal entry for this day begins, "I hate the interstate.  I unequivocally hate the interstate.  Horrible, vile thing, especially with construction and traffic.  But I get ahead of myself."

It was cold the night before.  I put my afghan over my sleeping bag, and woke up with a cold nose.  I made up for it fifty miles down the road in Alpena, Michigan, where I treated myself to breakfast out as well as doing my laundry in a laundromat run by a retired military fellow who'd once been stationed at the naval shipyard in Bremerton, less than an hour's drive from Tacoma.  Small world. 

After that, I tooled around the Lake Huron shore to Bay City, stopping to see lighthouses along the way:

Forty-Mile Point Lighthouse, which is actually north of Alpena

Sturgeon Point Lighthouse south of Alpena

It was a lovely drive.  I wish I'd known better enough to stay on the coast road around the "thumb" of Michigan, but I wanted to get within shouting distance of Detroit by evening, so after lunch at Bay City, I reluctantly climbed onto I-75 and straight into traffic and construction hell. 

This sort of thing was one of many reasons I drove less than 1000 miles of Interstate on a 14,000 mile trip. 

I did manage to get to within an hour's drive of Detroit, and stopped at a state park (I'm not sure which -- Seven Lakes State Park appears to be in the right place on the map, but I didn't note the name in my journal) for the night.  The campground looked like it had been recently carved out of an old quarry:

But the restrooms were clean and it was peaceful and quiet, and it soothed my rattled, interstated nerves.

Next day it was on to my second big city of the trip.  I had my reasons for wanting to go to Detroit.  Really.