Frankenmuth - A Bavarian Town

July 19 - 60 miles to North Branch.  The highlight of the day was spending time in Frankenmuth (a town themed like Levenworth, but way bigger).  We heard they were famous for their chicken dinner, micro brewery and the worlds largest Christmas store.  We we skipped the Christmas store but did manage to have chicken dinner (it was good), sampling of beer and tour of the brewery but the most interesting site was visiting a reenactment camp taking place in the park.  It was the French and Indian War of the 1750's.  They had a British camp and a Indian camp and an American camp set up. They had their lodges, tepees, and period dress.  Also in the park was a Viper car show with over 200 fancy cars.  We ended up spending a good part of the day there.  Got into camp after 5:00 which is a late finish for us.  Our Campsite was noisy for most of the night and nobody got a decent sleep.  Seems that about every other night we manage a good sleep.  Weekend especially are noisy at the campgrounds.

July 20 - to Marine City - 76 miles.  Marine city is a nice resort area along the St. Claire river.  You can watch boats and barges go up the river (it is connected to the Great Lakes).  Couldn't get a campground so we booked the only hotel that had space called the Anchor Inn.  It is right out of the 60's!  They are letting us park the RV here so we are in good shape.  Sussie and Patty stopped at a town down the road because they didn't want to go so many miles and they are biking here today, our rest day.  John and Marilyn, biking friends that we met in Arizona, live close by so they came and we all went to dinner.  It was fun seeing them, Marilyn baked us brownies and drove us all to town.  We knew that they were from the Detroit area but we didn't realize that we were so close to Detroit. Luckily, Marilyn was following the blog and saw that our route in Michigan was close by.

The most challenging part of the day was biking through dense fog for the first couple of hours.  We left camp by 7 and the fog was heavy.  Russ led because he had a front fog light and the rest stayed close behind.  Patty got out in front once and we lost sight of her within 200 feet.  She quickly realized that and pulled over to wait for the group.

Today is a rest day and tomorrow we take a ferry into Canada.  It is a short ride across the river and we anticipate taking 5 days to complete the Canada portion of our trip.  While in Canada we won't have phone or internet service.