Vacation Mode

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I'm still struggling to get back into the swing of things after a long weekend camping in Northern lower Michigan. For some reason, this one seems to be a lot harder to recover from than the last couple. Perhaps it was that fresh northern air (before the Canadian wildfire smoke moved back in), I guess I don't really know.

I saw someone mentioning online the other day that they feel the number of campers has declined in the past year and I would probably have to agree with that. As you can see from the opening photo, we saw quite a number of empty campsites this past weekend. That's a stark contrast from just a couple of years ago when countless people decided to take up camping as a new hobby during Covid.

Pro Tip: If you are in the market for a use travel trailer, now might be a really good time to get a deal on one!

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We were staying at Straits State Park this past weekend which is just across the Mackinac Bridge in the upper peninsula of Michigan. We stayed there last year and it was a great time. We had pretty decent weather for the first part of the weekend and you can see @diamonddave in the photo above sitting around the campfire once they got pulled in and set up late Thursday evening.

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After we got set up, @mrsbozz looked at me and said "you know what sounds really good right now?", I honestly had no clue, so I said no, and then she surprised me by saying "a beer". It's been a while since either of us have craved a beer, so we drove to the store and picked up this nice Hefeweizen called Hefe' Royale from the Keweenaw Brewing Company.

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It was a delicious light beer and perfect for a hot summer day. Along with the breeze coming in off lakes Michigan and Huron from the straits of Mackinaw, it did the trick in cooling us down. Although we enjoyed this beer on Thursday, we also had another can on Saturday evening, so I am going to include this as a #beersaturday post hosted by @detlev.

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Friday, @mrsbozz and I went out for a hike, but I am going to talk more about that in another post, so you will just have to wait. The photo above is a preview of that hike, so you might want to be sure to check back either later this week or next week for that post.

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Saturday was a bit of a washout for us, we spent the morning in the trailer getting hammered by some of the heaviest rain I have experienced in quite a while. It's good, because we have needed this kind of moisture, but it kind of makes for a dull weekend. I was just happy that we no longer camp in a tent. There were a lot of folks around us who had to be a little damp. If you look in the background of the above photo, the green canopy was starting to fill with water, and we thought it was going to collapse.

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By the afternoon, the sky had cleared up and we got to watch countless people drive to the dumpster and throw their rain damaged EZ-Up canopies into the trash. Those things can handle a light rain, but if you don't pay attention to them in a heavy rain they just can't handle the weight of the water. I can't tell you how many of those we have seen get damaged from heavy rain like this while camping.

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Saturday night we burned through the last of our firewood and then started packing up our sites so we could make a hasty retreat back home on Sunday morning. We ha to move back away from the fire for a time because a small rainstorm moved through the area again. We sat back under our awning and enjoyed the fire until the mosquitoes became too thick to handle.

It was a pretty awesome trip, but it is hard to believe we are almost halfway through our summer now.

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My Sports Account - @bozz.sports

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced