Hiawatha National Forest

Tonight we are parked at the Kewadin Casino in Christmas, Michigan (map), just northwest of Munising. While there is a perfectly nice forest service campground right across the street, we actually drove into Munising today, five miles further along MI-28, and spent the evening on a scenic cruise past the Pictured Rocks. By the time we returned to the harbor, we just needed a close-in place to spend the night, as there was not much daylight left. The casino offers RV parking for free, and that includes, believe it or not, 50-amp electric service.

The Pictured Rocks cruise was quite spectacular, and we are glad we did it. We arrived in time to do some grocery shopping and make the 5pm departure. We are only a few dozen miles from where we started the day in Marquette, but we got a late start owing to a haircut appointment.

Today our thoughts are again with the victims of hurricane Katrina. Long-time readers of this blog will recall that we made a complete transit of the gulf coast, from the Florida panhandle all the way to South Padre Island, back in January. As we passed through Gulfport and Biloxi, I remarked that they had been spared major damage from Ivan. Regrettably, both those cities are now destroyed, along with, I am sure, the nice state park where we stayed west of Bay St. Louis. The commercial park where we stayed in New Orleans is now under water, and it looks like the elevated section of I-10 nearby is in ruins.

We are thankful to have had a chance to visit those areas last year -- they will be very different from today forward. Also, we are able to put some of the images we are seeing on the news into a more human perspective -- the extent of the catastrophe seems, to us, far worse than it appears from the media coverage.

We sent our donation today to the American Red Cross. While I do not want to make a habit of doing this here, I would like to appeal to our readers to do the same. Donations can be made online with a credit card by going to their web site.