July 10, 2007

July 10, 2007

Clean Again

We started our early morning in the Duluth Wal-Mart with some light rain that trickled in through our broken windows. Luke put shards of Plexiglas that we found on the side of the highway in the driver side window. It was a replacement for the window he shattered in Tucson. It kept a little rain out, but the storm didn’t last very long.
We left shortly after 10:00am, aiming for Michigan. It wouldn’t be the same Michigan we’re accustomed to; it’s the U.P. Our connection in the UP was made through the Van’t Hofs. Luke has hunted up here in the past and stayed at a cabin owned by the Holms family. We were looking forward to the sauna Luke had been telling us about. We hadn’t showered since the 4th of July RV park, and were all in desperate need of some form of cleaning up. A call to Luke’s dad told us that we would have dinner waiting for us when we arrived.
After a good day’s drive, we had gone from Minnesota, across Wisconsin, into Michigan, back into Wisconsin, and then into Michigan, for our last border crossings of the trip. The Winnebago only missed one street on our first try at the cabin. Our directions were pretty good and we made it in time for a lasagna dinner. It was delicious, and hot, and not cereal or soup.
With full stomachs we jumped into the sauna. It was a lot hotter than most of us expected it to be. It hit 170 degrees at one point. It was hard to stay in for very long at a time. We took it in rounds, a few minutes at a time, using buckets of water and some soap to get clean with. After we were done, we dried off, turning white towels brown with dirt. It was the cleanest feeling any of us have had the entire trip.
Later in the evening we walked to the house to check out Mike’s decoy collection (Mike Holms, our host). It was really neat. He makes a lot of them himself and they all look very realistic. We learned the science behind making them work, and we were all pretty impressed. We said our goodbyes to Mike tonight because he would be gone at work before we would be up and moving.
When we left the house it was pitch black outside. There is no light pollution out here at all. We staggered our way back to the cabin, trying not to run into trees on the way. After we got back we broke out the poker chips, mountain dews, and freeze-ices. A couple of hours of poker later, Micah and I both walked away with some extra cash. We put our phones and computers on their chargers for the first time in days and went to sleep in our first beds since we left almost a month ago.
Tomorrow we’ll leave and head for the bridge. Maybe we’ll make it to the lower peninsula and things will start looking more like home. Thanks again to the Holms for a great night off the road; we needed that sauna, bad. We’ll make sure that you get a copy of the DVD when it’s finished.

Winnebago Guys, from the desk of Aaron Tubergen
Iron Mountain, Michigan