Kissing Moose in Manistique

On Tuesday we left Menominee to head for St. Ignace.  While in Menominee we stayed at the only game in town, the city owned River Park Campground.  The train came through sometime between 11PM and 3 AM, the horn blowing long, loud, and over and over and over.  For $30 night you get that, a view of the wastewater treatment plant and traffic noise all night from the bridge.  And the sites looked level but had weird dips in them so we had to switch sites to keep from twisting the chassis.  Why was anyone else staying there?  No idea.

Halfway to St. Ignace lies the town of Manistique, where we stopped on a whim when I spied a moose in front of the Big Boy restaurant.  He was wearing Big Boy's red checked overalls and was so cute I had to lean in for a kiss.

There was also a variety of wooden play equipment for kids between the restaurant and the neighboring motel, which I tried to get Wayne to play on, but he told me it was still my turn to be the foolish one.

Despite his protests that he was too big for it, I finally convinced him to be the engineer on the train.

The fit was even tighter when I convinced him to try the airplane.

The motel had a moose of their own, he was outfitted in much more formal attire than the one at Big Boy.

As if all that wasn't fun enough we spied a public parking lot across the street that had a boardwalk that led to the Manistique Lighthouse.  The great thing about a shorter travel day is the ability to give in to unplanned whims, so we had a nice 15 minute walk in the sun out to the Light.  I saw a few dragonflies, and this cute Monarch caterpillar on a milkweed plant.  This poor fella is probably in for a long flight to Mexico in two weeks.  We're going to stop at Stonington Point in Rapid River on our way home and hopefully we'll be there at the right time to see some Monarchs gathering for the migration to Mexico. 

The light was built in 1915 and is 35 feet tall.  At this time it has a plastic lens and a solar panel on the side.  Ah, progress and technology.

After our unplanned stop in Manistique it was on to Straits State Park in St. Ignace.  All the towns on the south shore of the Upper Penninsula seem to have French names, I'm sure we'll learn more about that over the next few days.