We just got back from our big road trip which featured 7 days on a houseboat in Voyageur National Park. We took 3 days each to get there, and 3 more to get back.
Day 1 - DC to Ann Arbor. We had an average meal in the downtown area where there was a concentration of restaurants with outdoor seating, very pleasant and abounding with colorful characters. Lots of Colorado State fans on the eve of their team's slaughter.
Day 2 - Drove north to Munising, on Lake Superior, crossing the Mackinac Bridge with Lake Huron to the right and Lake Michigan to the left. Spectacular! Mackinaw City on the south shore had lots of casual dining options and shops to poke around in. We were really feeling retired and free to be able to just take a couple of hours to stroll around. Munising is just outside Pictured Rocks National Seashore, we stopped for a visit to Munising Falls before checking into our Inn. We had a very nice but very expensive dinner in the Inn, our one extravagance on the trip. Munising lacks diverse dining options but the setting on the lakeshore is fabulous. Caught some "Chicago" blues that evening, great way to end a wonderful day.
Highlight - seeing 3 Great lakes in a single day!
Day 3 On to Ely Minnesota, just a couple of hours from Voyageur where we could finalize our shopping for perishable foods or anything else we forgot.
Day 4- 10 - Departed Ash River on a 51' houseboat and toured VNP for 7 nights and days. There's a lot to talk about, but some highlights:
Seeing northern lights for the first time. They had the courtesy to show up by 9:30 pm so we didn't even have to stay up late!
Hearing wolves in the wild for the first time
Catching my personal best 31" Northern Pike
I quickly learned how to pilot the boat, most critically how to maneuver it into it's resting place each evening. No anchoring allowed, we had to find an allowable mooring site to beach it and tie off to trees or mooring rings each day.
The houseboat trip isn't what I would call a wilderness experience. We would have canoe camped in nearby Quetico Provincial Park if we wanted that, but this trip was ideal for couples for which not everyone would want a hardcore backcountry experience. There were 5 of us for the whole week, plus one couple's son joined us for 2 days. The son is traveling the US camping in all 50 states, and producing Youtube videos to catalog his experiences. So here is his video on the 2 days he was with us at Voyageur:
The houseboat experience was pretty fun and reasonably affordable. Our share of the cost (2 people) was about $2,500 all in (not including any of out 6 days to travel to or from Voyageurs. This included our food & beverages (including a fair amount of whiskey). No more, and probably a bit less than renting a beach house in the OBX for a week.
Return trip was pretty dull by comparison, we opted for the shortest path which passes through Chicago. We spent first night in Chippewa Falls, 2nd in South Bend and last night visited a friend in Morgantown WV.
