Michigan - Day 2

Muskegon KOA
Tuesday, 2 July 2019

We stayed in the campground all day to give me a chance to get my bearings.  Also, it absolutely poured for much of the morning, including lots of thunder.  With so many in this park staying in tents, I sure hope they thought to put up rain tarps.  I've noticed before in campgrounds that some people do it as a regular part of their tent set-up.

The people next to me are tenters and they don't have any extra rain protection, so the stuff left out on their picnic table got completely drenched and, presumably, so did their tent.

When I got us set up yesterday I noticed small ant hills all over this campsite, so I went to serious lengths to keep my hoses off the ground.  I pulled the RV almost to the back of the site to get the water hose connector port far enough away from the site's faucet that the hose is pulled off the ground.  Only by an inch or so but I'm hoping it'll be enough.  And the electric cord I fixed so it's as short as possible and still plugged in, which is keeping it off the ground.  I imagine other campers look at this set-up and think I'm nuts, but I'm still seeing occasional ants in every part of the RV, and the last thing I want is to start up that battle again.

When it rained so hard this morning, I felt like my precautions were justified, because I'm sure the rain drives the ants toward higher ground.  They can still get in via my tires, but at least I'm doing what I can, levitation not being one of my skills.

I spent the day working on my blog from yesterday and beginning to take a look at what Michigan has to offer.  Michigan is the only state with 2 distinct parts, both of them peninsulas.  They both would have borders with Canada, if the St. Lawrence Seaway weren't running through the connecting areas.

The Upper Peninsula has a land border only with Wisconsin, and water borders with Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.

The Lower Peninsula has land borders with Ohio and Indiana, and water borders with Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Erie.  Michigan's got 4 of the 5 Great Lakes, creating a shoreline that they say is 2nd only to Alaska's.  Although I think Maine says the same thing.  But you get the idea.

Apparently there are enough differences between the peninsulas that a while back there was a moderately serious push by the Upper Peninsula to secede from the Lower and become the 51st state, called Superior.  But in the '50s there was a bridge built connecting the two, and that's gone a long way toward making the them feel more like one state.  And in case you're wondering why they're one state in the first place, there's an interesting little history article at this link.  https://upsupply.co/journal/why-the-upper-peninsula-is-not-part-of-wisconsin