Trial Camping

May 20th, 2022

For the last 2 weeks, I have been camped at Metamora/Hadley State Recreation Area in Michigan. This small park is 11 miles north of Oxford and it is close enough to the RV dealership that I can get the trailer back for warranty work if necessary. It is also a campground with good cell phone service, so I can continue to log in each day for work.

The park is small with 2 campgrounds. Each is situated along the shore of a small lake. The far side has a beach and picnic area as well as kayak and canoe rentals. There are several short trails forming loops around the lake or along the small stream flowing into the marshy area above the lake. The campsites have electrical hookups and there is a shower house nearby.

The first weekend I was here, the campground was about 75% full. Out of 25 campsites being used in my area, only 5 were still occupied by Monday evening. The campground was pretty quiet all week, and then it filled again this past weekend. Most campers had vacated again by Monday.

The trails are nice. They are on old glaciated land with small eskers and sinkholes. So, while hills are small, they are steep. Each day I hiked one of the loops. Then I hiked them all backwards (the scenery is different in reverse). The first few days, the woods were open and you could see quite far through them. By the second week, the foliage increased and sight lines were short and the trails felt more secluded.

I have experienced no issues with the trailer. The refrigerator works well and can probably go a minimum of 4 days running on solar only. I have used the stove, furnace, hot water heater and griddle with no problems. I even used the air conditioner a couple of afternoons the first week. The only thing I did not try out is the shower and toilet, as the campground facilities were just a short walk away. I did have a 30 amp power hookup, so except for one night of testing, have not yet taken the opportunity to perform an exhaustive trial of the solar system.

Tomorrow, I will hitch up and head north to Upper Michigan. It will be the first long pull. I am hoping it is not a windy day as I will be crossing the 5 mile long Mackinac Bridge spanning the strait between Lakes Michigan and Huron. That will be a little symbolic, as that will mark the ending of my 26 years of living in Michigan. It is not a place I ever wanted to live. I do not believe it is a particularly desirable place to be. Many people are leaving and moving elsewhere, college graduating students in particular. Coming here was not a good career move. I will come back to visit my son Zach, of course, but would not choose to ever live here again.

Having said all that, I did find a handful of very good friends, who I will definitely miss. I hope if they ever travel to the mountains on vacation, that they would reach out and we could meet. Among these is Tony, who taught Tyler to be a better baseball player and me to know more about baseball than I ever thought I would want to know. He pushed me to get back into bicycling and a healthier lifestyle. I think of Cheng, the database administration student that I have worked with for the last 2 years. She is intelligent and quick to learn. Ant then there is, Sai and Alekhya, sisters from India, who included me in their lives and with whom I had some excellent adventures. They pushed me to hike farther and faster during my therapy after hip replacement surgery, making them partly responsible for enabling my current decisions to travel and head to the mountains.

“Some people come into our lives
and leave footprints on our hearts
and we are never ever the same.”