“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends… The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

So, it was with the trip billed as our “Last Hoorah,” the finale in a series of adventures that began 16 years ago with a trip to Florida and the Keys and included romps through the Northeast from Niagara Falls to Maine to the Statue of Liberty, a hair-raising climb through the Rockies including Glacier National Park, Yellowstone and fishing Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, a look at the Grand Canyon and Death Valley and a hot air balloon ride over Napa Valley with a trek up the West Coast into the great Northwest to a whale watching expedition in the San Juan Straits.

The “last hoorah” was a trip due north, where we had never been. We rendezvoused at a Pelham, Ala., campground and headed to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with Lakes Huron and Erie to the east, Lake Michigan to the west, Lake Superior to the North, and Lake Ontario to the Northeast.

Our mode of travel was a 43-foot motorcoach that included a master bedroom, two foldout beds, a shower, commode, and lavatory, and a small kitchen with a good-sized refrigerator and ice maker and a dining nook.

The mastermind behind the trip was Scenic98Coastal’s Zeb Hargett of Fairhope, Ala., an entrepreneur and global explorer who also functioned as navigator. Captain and commander of the motor home was Doug Weber of Gonzales, La., retired president of Weber Marine, a marine service company on the lower Mississippi River. Doug and Zeb did the driving, and I went along sort of as a deckhand and entertainment director. We left Pelham, Ala., about 7 a.m. on a Thursday (Capt. Weber had traveled solo from Gonzales to Pelham the day before) and headed north to our first stop in Louisville, Ky.  

Zeb, never one to miss an alcoholic opportunity had arranged a tour of the Jim Beam Distillery on – no kidding - Happy Hollow Road in Clermont, Ky. After touring the facility and sampling some of the products, we set out for the fabled Churchill Downs for a look at the racetrack and dinner at Matt Winn’s Steakhouse, which in addition to steaks, has an impressive collection of rare bourbons. (Is there a pattern developing?) The trip quickly set its own pace and agenda, based primarily on diesel consumption and space availability at campgrounds, most of which had already been calculated and arranged by Doug, who made sure the fuel tank did not get more than about half empty.

The next morning after the Churchill visit, we headed for the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, just outside of Detroit in Dearborn. This large history museum focuses on American industry and life. It began with Henry Ford’s collection of artifacts but has expanded far beyond that in the decades since it was founded. Even the exterior of the building is historic as it incorporates facades of Philadelphia landmarks like Independence Hall. Inside is an enormous exhibition space full of vehicles, trains, machinery, and other items. As befitting a museum originally owned by one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, there’s a large collection of vehicles on display ranging from early designs to the classic cars of the ’50s and ’60s to newer designs.

We then headed north on I-75, up the eastern side of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula toward Flint (we did not drink the water) passing through Saginaw and Bay City and the scenic village of Gaylord, which is located on the 45^th parallel, exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole. Along the way, we stopped in Frankenmuth, Michigan, a lovely little Bavarian-style village, and spent some time at a farmer’s market where we stocked up on homemade bread and two pounds of delicious Michigan cherries.

We spent the day traveling north along the east coast of Lake Huron and made a white-knuckle crossing of the Mackinac Bridge, a suspension bridge connecting Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. We pulled into Straits State Park Campground which served as our base camp for the next two days, which we celebrated with a campfire dinner of hot dogs, beans, and chips.

The next morning, we made a side trip to visit Tahquamenon Falls, the state’s largest waterfalls and one of nearly 200 dotting upper Michigan. The state park trails surrounding the falls provide spectacular viewing. Later that day brought one of the highlights of the trip – the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum and the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. With the words of Gordon Lightfoot running through our minds, we rolled onto the grounds of the museum near Whitefish Point.  

In addition to the shipwreck museum, there is a weather building, an underwater research building, a lifeboat museum, a museum store, and the Edmund Fitzgerald movie theater where a short video describes the ship’s sinking and what is being done to protect the site. The ship’s bell has been recovered, cleaned, and restored and now is a centerpiece at the museum as a memorial to the 29 men who died in the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Next up was the Soo Locks in Sault Ste Marie, a set of parallel locks that enable ships to travel between Lake Superior and the Lower Great Lakes and are one of the largest and busiest waterway traffic systems in the world. There is a 21-foot drop in elevation of the St. Mary’s River between Lake Superior and Lakes Michigan and Huron. On the day we were there the only traffic was a sight-seeing boat, but the locks are still worth visiting.  

For the fudge lover, Michigan is fudge heaven. There are more than 17 fudge shops on Mackinac Island, a lovely little piece of land in the Straits of Mackinac on Lake Huron, between Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas, and the site of the Grand Hotel, one of 110 hotels on the island. We spent the better part of a day on the island, a short ferry ride from the mainland.  

Fort Mackinac, an 18th-century fort is a major attraction but also is a good hike up a steep hill. There are several small museums, historic houses, restaurants, and historical sites. There are no cars on the island but there are thousands of bikes and a good number of horse-drawn carriages, which make you watch where you step. We rode the ferry back to the mainland with a man and his wife and four lovely daughters. When he learned we were from Alabama we exchanged hunting and fishing tales and he said he was thinking of moving South. He said, “The one requirement I have for dating my daughters is you have to own hunting land.” Felt like home.

That night, I made a cherry pie topped with ice cream that would make your knees buckle, just like I did out west on an earlier trip through Washington state five years prior when my traveling companions questioned my baking skills. The next morning, we broke camp and again crossed the 26,372-foot-long Mackinac Bridge, the world’s 27^th longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere, and crossing it in a big motor home in a brisk crosswind is almost enough to bring up the cherry pie.  

Doug aimed the motor home southwest along Sturgeon Bay through the famous Michigan Highway 119 – the Tunnel of Trees - that provides a stunning drive along the bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan. The Tunnel of Trees is one of the most scenic drives in the United States, but it is a little tight for a motor home. We had heard a lot about the village of Harbor Springs and its similarities with Fairhope, so we pulled into the village’s downtown beachfront area to see for ourselves.

Harbor Springs is located on the North Shore of Traverse Bay and the area is known as a historic summer resort. The downtown area is very walkable and there are two beaches within the city limits, along with a green space and picnic areas, all of which were being taken advantage of as we walked past. The flowers along the street were breathtaking and the village did remind one of Fairhope.

At that point, it was time to head home, which for Doug was 1250 miles and nearly 20 hours away, a little less for Zeb and me. The next two days were a blur of truck stops for diesel and Arby’s with an overnight stop in Indianapolis at an urban campground we struggled to find because of road construction and poor lighting. But we made it back to Pelham late in the afternoon of the second day. We unloaded and Zeb headed for Fairhope, and I headed for home in Hoover. Doug spent the night in the motorhome and drove the final stretch to Gonzales solo the next day.

Was it the last hoorah? Who knows? Doug says he plans “get rid” of the motorhome after 16 years and buy something more practical like maybe a gyroplane or a small three-person submarine. We’ll see. Maybe an underwater trip…

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