Preplanning a Trip

I’ve been busy this week planning my proposed trip next summer. I hope to make it similar and as full of attractions as the trip I took last June to the Northwestern US, but it will probably be a little shorter in miles and days.

My plan is to travel up to Muskegon, Michigan, which should take two days of driving. Then there will be at least two days of meandering up the coast of lake Michigan and all the way to Sault Ste Marie to see the locks there. That part of the trip will include a ferry ride to North Manitou and South Manitou Islands and stopovers in Traverse City and Sault Ste Marie.

The next day I’ll continue over the Upper Peninsula to Tahqaumenon Falls and the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior—wonderful scenic views there—and spend a night in Munising.

From there, it’s on down the western shore of Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, and then on to a huge dairy farm in Fair Oaks, Indiana, where you can actually tour the whole farm and watch all the activities there. That includes watching the cows birthing calves in a special birthing barn.

There are literally hundreds of lighthouses on Lake Michigan, and I hope to visit several of them along the way.

Of course, I plan to keep a daily journal again, and I will probably send it with pictures of my daily activities on a nightly basis, like I did on the NW trip. (I didn’t get any complaints about that, and I did get a ton of compliments)

You might well ask why I start planning for a trip 6-8 months away this early. Well, I have taken many driving trips in the past twenty years, and on several of the earlier ones I unknowingly drove past some pretty spectacular sights that I only learned about later. I always regretted that I had missed those places, so now I preplan thoroughly and research all the nearby sights along my route.

I also plan out my overnights with a maximum of 200 miles of straight line driving per day once I get on my sight seeing itinerary. That way, if I find something I want to spend extra time exploring, I can fit it in and not worry about getting to my hotel before dark.

Believe it or not, I’m already getting excited about this trip, and I hope my wife will go with me this time. If not, I’ve already made contingency plans to take a friend along to share the sights. He probably would have gone with me on the last trek, but I didn’t think of it soon enough to ask him and plan it for two instead of one.

I can assure you that my present travel plans will change several times in the next six months as I add or subtract certain features, book hotels and learn who, if anyone, will be traveling with me.

On my prior trip I had several disappointments. For instance, my plan to visit Timpanogos Cave near Salt Lake City was scuttled when I learned that I would have to waste a whole day to see it. And the huge ball monument along Interstate 80 in Utah was not accessible from the eastbound lanes. Fortunately, I had other places to go and other sights to see, so I was able to improvise.

Hey, if you have ever been in the proximity of the areas I intend to visit, and you know of some really fantastic “do not miss” place or event nearby, let me know and I’ll see if I can add it to my itinerary.