August 2, 2012

Jim thought he lost all our pictures that he had saved on the external hard drive.  He got it working and transferred them to an extra one he had.  Now he will backup all the pictures on both drives. He left them transferring all night and it took 7 hours to transfer the 48,000 pictures.  Most of these pictures were from previous trips -- not all 48,000 have been taken on this trip.  The previous trip pictures were also backed up on DVDs and hard drives at home.

We were awakened by thunder at 3:40 am this morning and we had to get our clothes and chairs from outside.  We brought them into the Casita.  When we got up at 7:00 am it had stopped raining.  The rain gauge showed 8/10 of an inch.  We got ready to leave and a Scamp came by and put their tag on the post.  I told them we would be out in about an hour.  After breakfast and showers we hooked up and headed out for Lake Michigan Recreation Area in the Manistee National Forest.  Before we left we stopped by the Casita people from Canada and talked to them.

There are 4 loops and 99 sites in the National forest campground.  There are no hookups but they do have flush toilets.  We got the only site empty, number 1 of 99.  As we were unhooking, a car stopped and wanted to know if we were leaving.  I told them we just got here.  While Jim was getting out the generator, a lady came up and asked if we were going to camp for a while.  Jim told her, “Yes, through the weekend”.

There were a few sprinkles at camp and we decided to go into the town of Manistee.  We found a geocache along the boardwalk by the river.  Then we went to a couple of antique stores.  We also went to the city park and watched the boats go down the river and out into Lake Michigan.  There was a light station there.  We went to the VFW because the police officer told us tonight was fried fish night.  But the VFW had it last week and they only do it every other week.  Around 4:00 pm the clouds parted and the sun came out.  We went back to camp and I fixed supper. Tomorrow should be OK but Saturday is supposed to have thunderstorms.

We don’t have cell service at camp.  We will be updating the blog when we go to town.