The Trouble With Sleeping Around

As countless 20-somethings know, sleep around enough and you’re bound to run into some losers.

And so it is for us.

Every couple of nights, we lay our heads somewhere new. Fortunately, most of the time, it all works out great. Our biggest concern when we open our eyes on any given morning is just remembering where we are. But every so often, we have a rough night.

The first couple days of our travels to and through Michigan demonstrated this yin and yang of RV life.

The Sarnia Walmart

Upon leaving Niagara Falls, we headed west across the portion of Ontario that leads back to the U.S. After an afternoon of driving, we stopped for the night at a Walmart.

Now, eagle eyed readers may be asking themselves “Didn’t she just say that they weren’t going to stay at any more Walmarts?” And the answer, dear readers, is “Yes. I did say that.”

What I did not say – ever – is that I actually know what I’m talking about. We’re just making this stuff up as we go along and we change our minds every four minutes. Simply put, this is not the place to look for consistency.

So, what happened? Well, when we left Niagara Falls, we had to cross about 200 miles of Ontario before we could cross back into the U.S…

…and there are almost no campgrounds along the western third of this particular route. In fact, I could only find one decent looking campground in the area and, when I called several weeks before our trip, they were already booked up (because – they’re the only game in town).

That left us two options: 1) stay at the Walmart in Canada that is located just before the border crossing; or 2) cross the border and then stay at a campground in Michigan.

We quickly decided against option 2.

We have now done the US/Canadian border crossing multiple times and in our experience, the U.S. crossing is always more time consuming and frustrating. Every time we’ve crossed into the U.S., we’ve had to sit in line for a very long time, we’ve been asked a bunch of questions, and then we’ve had to stand outside while one or two Border Patrol agents have entered our motorhome to take a look around. And we’ve actually been super lucky with this – our friends, MonaLiza and Steve, just had their entire RV searched, top to bottom, for well over an hour.

On a somewhat related note, about 50% of the time, after a long day of driving, one or both of us is fed up and in a bad mood. It is just a fact of our lives: Travel days make us cranky. But because we realize this, we try to avoid stressful stuff at the end of any drive.

So, our trip from Niagara was already going to be long, we were going to get stuck waiting at the border crossing, we were probably going to be grumpy, and then some baby-faced Border Patrol agent was gonna want to take a look-see in our cabinets and drawers – or worse, rifle through all our possessions. Knowing myself and my penchant for sarcastic (some would say “downright unhelpful”) commentary in such situations, we decided the worst thing we could possibly do was attempt to cross the border that afternoon.

Ergo…Walmart!

Fortunately, for once, Walmart came through for us and we had a perfect stay! The parking lot was clean, level, well lit, and devoid of any weirdos. There were two other RVers in the lot, and, when we checked at the front desk, the employee said we were more than welcome to put our slides out and our jacks down. Score!

After a good night’s sleep, we headed for the border where we sat in a line for well over an hour before answering the agent’s questions and allowing him to take a look around our house. At least we didn’t have any undue aggravation, but dealing with all of that while being fully rested was definitely the right call.

The rest of that drive was a bit tricky as our GPS rerouted us through the middle of Flint, Michigan. Poor Flint is a disaster – not just when it comes to water, but roads as well. Heavy traffic, lots of construction, terrible pavement…. the works.

But, at the end of it, we got to a nice little county owned campground full of green trees located right next to Lake Huron.

Finn Road Park

Of course, Thor was excited to go swimming in another lake, but we took one look at the water near the campground and nixed it. There was a ton of algae floating on top of the canal that leads from the campground to the lake.

Dogs and algae do not mix. In fact, while we were at Finn Road, we saw news reports of a family whose 3 dogs died after swimming in a pond. Unbeknownst to the owners, the pond contained a particularly toxic type of algae.

Later, I ran into this article that discusses the prevalence of huge algae blooms in the Great Lakes as well as other parts of the country. Scientists believe the blooms are the result of runoff from nearby farms.

Needless to say, we were not going to let our dog go swimming in any water in which we could see this stuff floating on the surface.

Not to worry though! There were plenty of hiking trails to explore right near the campground… We headed off to check them out and promptly ran into this sign:

Nevermind…

Why on earth these two things would overlap, I have no idea, but we weren’t about to go wandering around with the dog. So, we told Thor to sit, and as we looked at him and he looked at us, we said, “Thor… You’re screwed,” and we went back home.

Mackinaw Campground Craziness

When we got to Mackinaw City Campground, we were thrilled. I had run into this little gem on Campendium – a small, family owned campground located just down the street from the Mackinac Island ferry. $20 per night gets you a water/electric site under the trees, a nice big field, a playground, and fresh eggs and firewood purchased on an honor system. Awesome!

We used the campground as a base for our explorations to Mackinac Island which I’ll discuss next post. We also enjoyed sitting out having fires and just generally relaxing. It was a great stop… but there was some serious craziness while there that had us counting ourselves as very lucky.

On the Friday night of our visit, around 4:00 a.m., I was awoken by the sounds of loud banging and yelling somewhere near our rig.

Bang!

“Get outta here!”

Bang!

“Get outta here!!”

Bang!

“Get outta here!”

Over and over and over.

The yelling and banging was so intense, I remember thinking that I was about to hear a gunshot.

When I realized I wasn’t dreaming, I looked up and saw Kevin walking through our bedroom on the way to the back bathroom. As he looked out the window back there, I asked what was going on and he said he didn’t know. He was trying to figure out where the commotion was coming from.

By this point, the banging and yelling had ceased, though, for a moment, Kevin thought he heard some voices speaking quietly nearby. But as we looked out our various windows, neither of us could see anyone and we couldn’t figure out what we’d heard.

We both remembered there had been some college-aged tent campers a couple spots over and, for a moment, wondered whether they were screwing around or arguing or something. But we realized we hadn’t heard two voices but rather just one male voice screaming “Get outta here!” over and over.

As we were looking out our front window discussing whether we should call the police, we watched as a marked SUV drove into the campground. The officer quickly circled around and pulled in right behind our immediate neighbor’s travel trailer.

A police officer got out and we heard him say “Come over here… Come toward me. Show me your hands. Show me your hands…”

And from the far side of our neighbor’s travel trailer, we watched a young male walk over to the officer. The officer had him stand up against the back of the police SUV, patted him down, and asked him a couple questions – most of which, unfortunately, we couldn’t make out. We did hear him ask how old he was, to which he responded “21,” (which he could have been, but he also could have been much younger.) We heard him ask what he was doing there and he said something about having friends in the campground or visiting friends or something like that. The bits and pieces of answers that we could make out didn’t make much sense. He would repeat things, ramble, stall, and generally not answer the question.

It was apparent that he was extremely intoxicated.

Within a minute or two, another SUV pulled up, this one from the local sheriff’s department. There were several officers on scene and, at one point, one of the officers mentioned that there was a party going on in the residential neighborhood up the street from where our campground was located.

Our guess, based on what we saw and what we could make out of the various conversations, is this guy got massively intoxicated and wandered off from the party and into our campground where he started raising hell. And for unknown reasons, he decided to attack our neighbor’s trailer.

One of the officers pointed out that he had ripped the trailer’s license plate all the way back (in the photo below, you can kinda see it all crumpled up), and broke out one of the trailer’s brake lights. In fact, the officers found the remains of the brake light right next to our RV – under our bedroom window. Apparently, he ripped the light out and then chucked it at our rig.

We’re still not sure if the banging we heard was him beating on the back of the trailer or whether he was actually trying to get in the front door, but whatever was going on scared the crap out of us from 20 feet away. I cannot imagine what it was like for the people inside that trailer. They were an older couple and, after securing the male in one of the SUVs, the officer called for an ambulance to check on them because one of them was having a hard time breathing. Thankfully they were OK and the EMTs left a little while later.

The male was moved from the officer’s police car to the sheriff’s car and then transported to the jail where, presumably, he woke up the next morning with one hell of a hangover and several criminal charges. Meanwhile, we crawled into bed and tried to get some sleep.

All I could think of, though, was how lucky he was. Given the number of RVers who carry firearms, and given what the residents of that trailer must have thought was happening, the whole thing could have ended in a huge tragedy.

Of course, my comments at the top of this article notwithstanding, this whole incident had nothing to do with camping or the campground we were at. This guy could have just as easily wandered through the residential neighborhood and started raising hell there.

Our Guard Dog

If you’re wondering what Thor was doing during this whole incident, well, rest assured! He took full advantage of the situation by stretching out and taking over the entire center of our bed while we were up investigating. He was utterly unconcerned.

Dixie would have broken out the front door, hamstrung the bad guy, punched a cop, and stolen the ambulance.

Thor?? Well, Thor just wished everyone would stop making so much noise so he could sleep in peace.

Sigh….

Of course, during our other recent event involving an extremely drunken middle of the night visitor (we do seem to attract these guys, huh?), he gave some solid German Shepherd “I’m gonna murder you and everyone you’ve ever known” warning barks, so… who knows? He’s unreliable. (Though, to be fair, that guy actually knocked on our door whereas, in this event, the activity didn’t involve our home.)

Anyway, when not monitoring police activity outside our door, we had a completely wonderful time exploring Mackinac Island. More on that next.

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Where we stayed:

Finn Road Park, Essexville, Michigan

Mackinaw City Campground, Mackinaw City, Michigan