Epic Summer Road Trip 2019 (Day 37): Chelsea, Michigan

Olivia, Drew and I were able to leave Erie by 9:30am after saying goodbye to Wendy, Dan, and Carol.  That’s right, I have written Wendy off of the blog.  Fortunately, she was only sent back to Seattle via Pittsburgh and not eaten by a zombie like in my horror blog I just made up.  It was tough not seeing Wendy for so long and it was even tougher on the kids to see her for only a week and then having to say goodbye again.  Tough for me also.  Drew was pretty sad for a couple of hours that morning on the ride to Michigan.  The plan was to drive straight through to see one of my good friends from Starbucks, Wendy Rivers.  As we were driving, I asked Olivia to see if there was anything interesting to see on the way out.  She did some research and mentioned a couple of museums before saying, “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame”.  Someone in the car scratched the record with the needle pretty hard, because I immediately said, “That’s where we’re going!”. 

We spent a few hours seeing all of the different exhibits and listening to music from the Hall of Famers before we made it up to the second floor and got a chance to play with some interactive instruments that you’re allowed to play including electric guitars, drums, basses, etc.  A lot of fun despite the huge amount of money to park a trailer outside of the Cleveland Browns parking lot.  I would have thought that by now the Browns would be paying people to park in their lot simply for some additional exposure! 

We eventually made it to Sugarloaf Campground in the Waterloo State Rec Area just outside of Chelsea, MI.  It was quite the adventure with limited signs and strange dirt roads before we eventually made it to the campground.  Our campsite was right next to the lake and the day use area so the kids had full access after the area closed for the evening.  We met up with my old colleague, Wendy Rivers, her husband Marv, and their twin girls who are a year older than Olivia.  They treated us to some delicious shish-ka bobs for dinner along with a nice stroll through their property complete with a plant that contained these cool hairless kiwis which Marv is desperately trying to ripen to the point of being consumable.  We eventually had to say goodbye as I didn’t want to try and navigate back to the campground in the dark. 

Marv's homemade lime pickles (middle)