//------------------------------//
// June 11 [Muskegon to Platte River] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
//------------------------------//

 June 11

Aric woke up at the same time that I did. He said that he didn't sleep as well in the back of Winston as he did at home. It certainly wasn't as comfy as a normal bed; even with the blankets and stuff he'd put down it was still pretty hard.

We didn't have sex, 'cause he said that there were too many people around and some of them might get mad, but he promised me when we got further north that wouldn't be a problem. Right now we were too close to all the tourists.

It was funny to watch him get dressed, 'cause he couldn't stand up, so he had to pull on his underwear and pants while he was sitting down, and he could put on his shoes but not tie them. I was glad I didn't have to worry about that.

He had to get out first and open the tailgate for me, and then we went to the little bathroom building that they had, and he asked if I wanted to get on the road right away, or play on the beach a little bit.

I said that since we were up, we might as well start driving, unless he wanted to have breakfast first. He said that we could get it on the road, so we got in the cab and he started up Winston, and we stopped at a Tim Horton's and got breakfast and coffee and then stopped at a gas station so that Winston could have gas, and then we went back on the Lakeshore Drive, which was now called Scenic Drive.

We had to go around a lake and there was a short section of road that was almost on the beach. Aric said that when we got to the Upper Peninsula, there was a lot of road like that, and I told him that the train in California had been right along the beach, too. It looked like when it was stormy, waves could come right up over the road, and there was a lot of sand that was covering the sides of the road.

The road turned a little bit after that and we had to go through Whitehall and Montague before we could get back to the lake. There were a lot of lakes and channels and harbors and there weren't a lot of bridges across them until you got inland. I didn't mind, though; it was fun to look at the harbors and all the boats in them. There were lots of sailboats, although most of them only had one mast, and other boats that didn't have masts at all. Aric said that the bigger ones had an engine like Winston, and the smaller ones had an engine that hung off the back called an outboard motor. I'd seen those kinds of boats when I was in South Haven, and some of them were pretty noisy. I think I would rather be on a sailboat.

We had to backtrack a couple of times, 'cause the roads Aric found that went to the water didn't intersect with any roads that went north, and the one that he did find ended. It had little houses on either side that he said were cottages, and he said that people went to them for vacations, but usually didn't live there all year long.

We stopped at another park called Silver Lake, and that one had a big sand dune that was covered in all sorts of cars and trucks that were racing up to the top of the sand dune. They all had big flags on them so that they could be seen, and I said that he ought to get a flag and we could go drive on the dune, too, but Aric said that Winston wasn't built for that kind of thing. He said that it took special tires and four-wheel-drive and besides you had to have a bunch of permits.

It was a lot of fun to watch, though. There were open cars that were called dune buggies, and there were also cars that were just a frame of pipes which he said were called sand rails.

I flew around a little bit, but I stayed a little bit away because sometimes they were going so fast that they jumped when they got to the top of a dune, and it looked like if they went much faster they could fly for a while, and I didn't want to get hit by a flying car.

When I'd landed, though, Aric said he didn't think that could happen. He said that cars couldn't fly that far, but I thought it was still better to be cautious about it.

It took a while before we found a road that went along the lakeshore again. He thought that probably all the sand dunes was why there weren't any—he said that this part of the state was mostly sand dunes on the west side, and he said that somewhere up here there was a big artificial lake that was a pumped-storage facility, which was where extra electricity was used to pump water into a lake and then when there wasn't enough electricity, it was drained out which turned turbines that made electricity.

He told me that that had been built because it took a really long time to turn Pallisades Nuclear Power Plant on and off, but he thought that the same idea could be used for wind turbines, which were windmills that made electricity. He said that he thought that Michigan could get a lot of money that way, but he said that the current governor wasn't interested in clean energy or clean water.

When we got to Ludington, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant he'd heard about called PM Steamers. He said it was named that because the Pere Marquette Railroad used to own a fleet of ships that took trains across Lake Michigan all the way to Wisconsin, but they didn't do that any more. He said that there was one of them still in Elberta, and we could see it when we got there. And he said that there was still one in Ludington that took cars across Lake Michigan, and I thought that would be really fun to ride on. He said that he'd never done it, but maybe we could on the trip back.

The restaurant had lots of pictures of the ships and trains, and I would have liked to get a closer look at some of them but it would have been rude to fly over people's tables as they were eating, so I had to look at a distance.

I didn't like our waitress; she had kind of a scowl and took her time giving us food. When we were done eating, Aric said that he was tempted not to tip her, but if he did she'd probably still have bad feelings, so he left her a ten dollar bill under his glass, which was half as much as the dinner had cost.

We had to zigzag a lot after we left Ludington, and he wound up on a couple more roads that just ended near the lake without connecting to anything. He said that they needed better signs, 'cause he went past a lot that said 'No Outlet' and 'Dead End,' but they didn't all say that. And he found one road that was dirt and had an open gate at the end and we started going down that and after a while where there weren't any houses or signs or anything else he said that he thought it might be a fire trail, and he couldn't decide if he should keep on going or back out, until we got to a hill that he didn't think Winston could get up without getting stuck, then he did have to back all the way to the road, because there wasn't any room to turn around.

After we got through Manistee, he found Lakeshore Road again, and we kept following that up the coast, and then it went back inland to get around another harbor and he found M-22, which he said was also a very scenic route, and he said that we'd follow that for a while.

It was nearly dinnertime when we got to Frankfort and Elberta, which Aric said was near the park where we were going to camp tonight. He went around the harbor but couldn't find the ship, which he said was really odd because he remembered that it had been there. I said maybe they were using it again, and he said that was unlikely. It was more likely that it had sunk, but he said that he didn't think the harbor was deep enough for it to have disappeared all the way.

He stopped in a parking lot and said that maybe it was somewhere close and he just didn't remember exactly where it was, but after he checked his pocket telephone a bit he found out that it was in Manistee now, which meant that we'd passed it without seeing it.

We found a restaurant that was called L'Chayiam, and Aric said that name sounded really familiar to him but he couldn't remember why. They had lots of different sandwiches, and an open kitchen where you could see them making the bagels, which was really neat. I was a little wary, because I'd tried bagels before but they weren't very good, but Aric told me that there was a big difference between these and the ones that the dining hall had, and he was right.

Plus the people there were all nice. An older couple came over and introduced themselves and were really curious about me because they said that they'd seen pictures before but never seen an actual pony, and they wound up sitting with us, and we talked through dinner, and then they insisted on paying for it, too, which was really nice of them.

When we were done eating, we drove out to the beach and walked all the way out to the lighthouse at the end of the jetty, and I flew over the harbor a little, but not too far, since I wasn't wearing any of my flight gear.

I managed to attract a bit of an audience of people who were already on the jetty, and so I did a couple of wing-rolls and a loop just for fun, then got a bit of altitude and swooped down along next to the jetty, just above the water, before going up and over and back the other way, and I heard a couple of people clapping for me when I landed.

On our way back, we passed a few kids who wanted to pet me, and one little boy who asked if I knew Iron Man, 'cause I flew like him, and I said that I didn't, and so the boy told me how awesome Iron Man was. He said that his friend Billy from school said that Wolverine was better but Wolverine couldn't fly so obviously Iron Man was better.

We drove to the Platte River campground, and there were a bunch of Arveys parked in some of the loops, but Aric found one where there were hardly any people, and he said it was because these spots didn't have any electricity. So he backed into one that didn't have any neighbors on either side, and then he gathered together a bunch of wood for a campfire, and set it up but he said it wasn't time to start it yet, because we ought to go down to the beach and watch the sunset.

We had to walk along the beach for a while, because we were in a bay and the shore was looking north, but I didn't mind. It felt good to stretch my legs after being in Winston most of the day.

The sunset was just as beautiful as it had been last night, and when it was over we kissed and then made our way back to the campsite. It was pretty dark when we got back, and Aric started the fire and then got out some beer and we sat next to each other watching the flames and drinking beer.

He said that tomorrow night, we'd be far enough north that instead of having a fire, we'd go and look at all the stars. I could tell even through the gaps in the trees that there were a lot more of them than I could see in Kalamazoo, and I would have flown up to get a better look but it was nice sitting by the fire with his arm around me.

We shared memories of being in the wilderness at night while the fire burned down and when it eventually started to really die out, Aric poured a bunch of water on it to make sure it was really out and then he used a small folding shovel to stir around the ashes.

Aric used a lantern to pick up the empty beer bottles and put them on the picnic table so that we wouldn't accidentally step on one in the night and break it, then we got in the back of Winston and I said that we didn't have any nosy neighbors tonight and he said that was true, and took off his clothes.