Michigan - Day 13 - Milford

Camp Dearborn
Saturday, 13 July 2019

The campground is really strict about kicking people out of their campsites by the check-out time of 12:00 and not letting people check in until 1:00.  Since I had to move anyway, I stopped in the office to extend my reservation, because this seems to be a nice campground and I like the location (less than an hour from both Lansing and Detroit). 

Because only a few of the areas in the campground allow pets, I was limited in my choice.  The only place they could give me for tonight that didn't have us completely boxed in (no easy access for walking the dogs) is in the 20-amp section.  This worried me because it's been hot enough that AC seems a necessity, and I didn't think I could run AC on a 20-amp plug.  But it was more important to me to be free of dog challenges than it was to sleep with air conditioning, so I took it.  And they could give me a relatively accessible 50-amp site for the following 4 nights, and yet a different one for one night after that.  By then, the month will be so advanced, I'll need to high-tail it northward.

For today, I absolutely had to go to the grocery store because I was almost out of dog food and milk.  I decided to head into the village of Milford and spend several hours in the grocery store parking lot while I waited for the magic check-in time.

The Huron River runs through Milford and, because it's so near the source, the river isn't very big here.  More of a creek, really.  When I crossed it down by Ann Arbor, it was river-sized.

Milford looks like what you would expect a village to look like.  Small town with parks and locally-owned shops and decent-looking houses and apartments.  The young man working at the grocery store told me he likes living here very much because the lakes are so close by.

Looking at a map, I'm guessing he means the several small lakes within a 20-mile radius.  One of them is a state park (Proud Lake), and Camp Dearborn itself has 5 lakes.  The campground is on the smallest one, which is actually the size of a large pond.  They've trucked in sand (surely there wasn't sand here originally) to make a beach area - heavily used by campers.

I walked the dogs around the neighborhood a bit - plenty of sidewalks were nice.  We spent a couple of hours in the parking lot, where there wasn't any shade to be had, so it got pretty warm for all of us, just waiting for the 1:00 check-in time to roll around.  I spent the time researching my itinerary for side trips to Lansing and Detroit.

When I got to my assigned spot, the previous people were still there and said they'd been waiting for the folks in their next campsite to move out so they could move in.  Because the folks had just left, they were almost done getting set to change sites, and I was surprised to see them leaving within about a minute of me getting there.  Popular campground, you see.  Hard to find a space on weekends.

These 20-amp sites are up on a ridge above the main part of the campground, and I discovered there's a nice breeze up here.  Very helpful as a substitute for AC, but it didn't take long for me to realize I had to have the fan on to help out the breeze.  I can (reluctantly) stand a fair amount of discomfort, but the dogs - especially Gracie - were just too hot.  And as the afternoon went on, even the breeze and the fan and the awning spread out to block the direct sun weren't enough when the temp got up to 90°. 

By around 5:00, I finally decided to risk my electrical system for a little while, and turned on the AC on low, with everything else off except the frig.  I did that for a couple of hours and was relieved it all seemed to go okay.  I wouldn't want to do it often, but I guess I got lucky and didn't damage anything. 

What to do at bedtime had been bothering me, because I knew as soon as I lowered the window shades, about 98% of the breeze is cut off.  I decided to give up privacy for one night in favor of breeze and left the shades open.  I turned the fan on too, which helped not only with air movement but also white noise - with the windows open it was easy to hear all the other campers, and I didn't want to.  So all in all, it worked out better than I'd expected.