Day 1 -- to Sleeping Bear Dunes

Greetings, and welcome to the 2020 Social Distancing edition of the Long Family travel blog. We weren’t sure if we could pull off a trip this year, but I think we, like most everyone else, have been itching to get out of the neighborhood and stretch our legs a bit, so we planned a road trip with some built-in isolation.

Unlike in years past, we will not rub cheeks and shoulders with a group of sweaty Scottish country dancers at a late-night cèilidh, like we did in Nova Scotia in 2010. We will not crash a backyard birthday party in Puerto Rico, like we did on Vieques last year. Nor will we unwittingly join more than a million Londoners in an urgent Brexit protest, like we did in October. 

Instead, as we explore the north woods of Michigan and Minnesota, it shouldn’t be difficult to keep to ourselves. We’re looking forward to spending time on lonely, windswept beaches and rocky shorelines – just us and the call of a loon.

The current itinerary is Plan B, actually, or C or … G, depending on how you count.  Starting in April, I spent weeks mapping out a grand tour around lakes Superior and Huron, with stops at Rainbow Falls and Lake Superior provincial parks as well as Bruce Peninsula National Park in Ontario. It took me until mid-June to realize Canada wouldn’t open to us in time, so at the last minute I jiggered the itinerary to keep us on this side of the border.

As Covid finds a way to complicate every aspect of our lives, even attempting to book campsites has been confounding, with public health guidelines varying from state to state and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. A Michigan state park was open for business, but the National Park Service site down the road was not, and even the reservations system was shut down. It was a feat to find out exactly what would open, when. 

And of course, we’re not the only family who has decided that camping offers an excellent opportunity for a low-risk getaway. When the NPS finally opened online reservations for Sleeping Bear Dunes campsites at 8 a.m. on June 23, they were almost completely booked through July and August by the middle of the afternoon.

Lucky us, though! We snagged a primo spot at the D.H. Day Campground, a stone’s throw from the Lake Michigan shore. We rolled out of our driveway late this morning, bypassed South Bend, Ind., drove straight through Grand Rapids, Mich., skirted stunning Glen Lake and pulled into our campsite around 6 p.m. It’s just a short stroll on a boardwalk across the dunes to the lake. We left behind oppressive heat at home: mid 90s and humid. Here’s it’s only in the upper 80s. What a treat!

After logging a few hundred miles in the car today, the coronavirus somehow seems a world away. Of course, I know that the pandemic, by definition, has affected most of the planet. But for a good chunk of the day, we were allowed to forget about it. People here are keeping to themselves in their campsites, and are more-than-amply distanced on the beach, but the mood is still happy and relaxed and … normal. 

When I registered at the campground office this afternoon, I was perplexed by the awkward placement of a broad brochure rack directly in front of the counter, where the ranger was checking me in. Only toward the end of the transaction did I realize that it had been strategically placed there to keep campers distanced from the front desk staff. Ah, yes. Covid concerns. Even here. Even now. We cannot escape it.

(Nevermind that both the park ranger and I were masked. Nothing strange about that. Masks are second-nature these days.)

The campground has this awesome firewood vending machine. It's part Dumpster, part Zoltar fortune teller. You slide in five bucks and the machine belches to life and spits a bundle of firewood out the drawer at the bottom. Super cool.

We treated ourselves to ham and cheese sandwiches toasted over the campfire, and stayed outside until the bugs drove us to bed. The air has cooled a bit and the sky is clear. I had been planning to keep the rain flies off the kids’ tents so they can enjoy the fresh air. But just as we were shutting everything down for the night, Clare declared (after consulting the weather app on her phone) that there is a 70 percent chance of rain at 4 a.m.

No way, I say. I’ve been checking the forecast for days, and rain isn’t expected until Friday. 

But Clare insisted. So we stumbled around in the dark trying to get the rain flies on and staked down before turning in. I hope it doesn’t get too stuffy in their tents.

Good night!