Friday September 29th

Gurp and Melissa went off to their respective work, and left me to exit after peak hour, around 9.30. It was quite a misty morning, and I was glad not to have been getting off in the dark before the traffic.

I drove along the outskirts of Chicago, getting onto I-94, which would eventually take me most of the way to Detroit, where I would cross the border into Canada. After crossing into Indiana about half an hour into the trip, my first stop was Indiana Dunes National Park, after about an hour of driving. It was along the beach on Lake Michigan, and a fair size. I chose Porter Beach to stop at, going along some small roads until I reached the lake, and a couple of parking lots. One seemed to be for people who had passes for the park, so I parked there and headed to the beach. It was starting to clear, and there were sunny patches.

It really did look just like the sea, with some waves, beaches, hills with sand dunes on them, and you couldn’t see the other side. Except for it not being salt, it was hard to distinguish it from being by the sea. I walked barefoot along the beach for quite a while, till I came to a track leading up a sand dune, and climbed up to see if I could get a view. The track led to a lookout after a while, up on a bit of a hill, but there wasn’t much of a view to be had.

I walked back down, and got some photos of the lake from up on the sand dune before I went down to sea level. One strange feature of this beach was the smoke stacks of a power station not far from the end of the beach. It was a bit clouded with some remaining mist, which meant it didn’t spoil the view much. From there I walked back to where I was parked, past a big building on the beach with a restaurant, and toilets and changing rooms.

By the time I got back to the car park it was getting to be around 12 or after. Also, though I didn’t realise it, the time zone had changed when I crossed into Indiana, though I don’t think my phone had updated – I wasn’t too far over the border, and perhaps it was still running off a tower in Illinois. I had thought the time zone didn't change until I got into Canada. In any case, I effectively lost an hour during the trip, after putting the clock forward.

Only about 10km after the park, I crossed into Michigan. After a couple of hours on I-94 I stopped at a rest stop at Battle Creek, 2pm by my body’s time, but 3pm really, and had lunch. It was a nice spot, with flowers planted by the main building. There were just toilets and vending machines, I think no shops, but I made my lunch and ate it outside sitting on one of the picnic tables on a grassed area with quite a few trees planted in it. There were some small touches of autumn colour. I had a couple ask me if I was a representative for Escape Campervans – the name was on the back of the van, and we had a chat about the van and what it was like.

From there it was about an hour and three quarters to get to the border crossing, continuing on I-94 to Ann Arbor where I got fuel, then onto I-96 through Detroit. I didn’t really get the feeling that I was going through a big city while I was on the interstate. I think maybe this was because there were embankments or walls along a lot of it, so I probably didn’t see a lot of the city.

Traffic was flowing quite well, and I got to Ambassador Bridge, which crossed the Detroit River that formed the border between the two countries, and flowed between Lake St Clair, and the great Lake Eerie. The bridge had a toll, around $7. There was a lane for people with cards, and a kiosk for those with cash. I went to the card one, and there was just a bare card swipe, I didn’t see a screen anywhere. I swiped my card and was glad that the boom gate opened!

Over the bridge I drove, about 5.15pm. There were signs saying cars stay left and trucks to the right. Arriving at this time on a Friday was definitely a mistake! There was a line-up even on the bridge, to get down to the border crossing. Some cars were going to the right, which was wasn’t banked up, and I didn’t know if you could really do that, or would find yourself in a truck lane later. I think in the end it would have been possible to do. But I stuck in the banked-up left lanes, and it took about an hour to finally get to the border crossing, which went smoothly enough once I was there.

Finally I was over the border into the town of Windsor, and set off after 6pm to my campground at Wheatley Provincial Park, about an hour’s drive away on Lake Eerie. I went straight there, as I was running out of daylight. The speed limits were amazingly slow. I drove along a beautifully maintained two-lane highway at 80km/h for nearly the whole hour, with few cars on the road. After getting out of Winsdor, the highway went through the country, along quite flat territory. There were some beautiful wildflowers along the road in some places.

Eventually, near sunset, I got to Wheatley. There were signs warning people to boil water for at least 2 minutes or something like that, apparently something had gone wrong with their purification plant. I got into the campground, which looked like quite a nice place, though I didn’t really have time to explore it before sunset. I drove on on a little road for quite a while before getting to my campsite, which was in a nice spot, within sight of the facilities, and backing onto trees and vegetation. The toilets weren’t the normal plumbed ones, but better than pit toilets: they had some kind of a metal trapdoor that opened with the weight of matter that you deposited, and I don’t remember them being smelly.

The campground there also had signs about boiling water, so I boiled up a pot of water to refill my bottles when it had cooled. It was dark or pretty near it by the time I had dinner. I could hear people walking off to some pond nearby – I think they were going fishing.