Lake Gogebic County Park Campground near Marenisco, Michigan August 6-13, 2025

After a breakfast of sausage biscuits, we brought the kitchen slide-out in, disconnected the electric hook-up and headed for the dump station at Gull Lake Recreation Area on Wednesday morning August 6th to make a 5-hour drive to Lake Gogebic County Park Campground near Marenisco, Michigan.

But first, we had an 8:30 am appointment back at Discount Tire in Brainerd to have new lug nuts put on all four wheels of Nomad. When we had the new tires put on the previous week it was pointed out to me that the lug nuts were becoming rounded and slightly swollen. I would not want to be on the side of the road replacing a flat tire AND fighting to get the lug nuts off, so I ordered replacements and scheduled to have them installed as we were leaving town.

The staff there handled everything quickly and by 8:45 am we were on the road for Lake Gogebic County Park Campground and a 7-night stay.

This was our first trip to The Wolverine State. Our route took us through Northern Minnesota and Northern Wisconsin, parts of the country we hadn’t previously seen in our travels.

Lake Gogebic County Park Campground

We arrived at Lake Gogebic County Park Campground at 2:10 pm and were set up in site 15 by 3: pm. It’s a gravel site, but level, with water and 50-amp electric hook-ups (though the water pressure was not very high).

Worst of all…ALMOST NO CONNECTIVITY! Our AT&T phones got NO signal at all. Our T-mobile hot spot would go in and out every few seconds with spotty service. Our Verizon hot spot had SOME connectivity, but it was so little that we weren’t able to stream any shows and limited our internet activity to texting, email and a small amount of web surfing.

So Wednesday night we started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD again. Picking up where we left off a few weeks earlier, we finished the 4th season cliffhanger, Redemption, and then started on season 5 with the conclusion of Redemption. The following episode, Darmok, is one of my favorites and guest -starred the talented Paul Winfield as the alien captain Picard must work to communicate with throughout the episode.

Winfield also played a Starfleet captain in the 1982 motion picture Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and is a performer I’ve always enjoyed seeing in different roles.

Thursday we walked Bella around the campground since there are no real trails nearby. Then Cindy and I spent the day reading and napping. The steroids I was taking for my knee tended to keep me awake at night, but the pain was easing and the swelling was reduced a little, so that’s the upside to all the medication.

We spent the evening watching more ST:TNG on DVD during and after dinner.

Friday was spent trip planning for 2026. Cindy does all the heavy lifting on that task; I just say where I’d like to go and what I’d like to do. She finds the campgrounds near where I’d like to go and routes the journey based on the part of the country I’d like to see. Fear not! We, of course, also go to places she would like to see and visit. We’re in this together, after all. She tries to keep the driving distances to manageable miles and hours for me and really works hard at getting us where we want or need to be.

She is the best.

Saturday it rained all day, so Cindy was feeling a little bit of cabin fever. There’s not much to do here or near here as it is, so being stuck inside adds insult to injury, as they say.

Sunday I took care of some tasks around Nomad, including installing magnetic door catches on the door to keep wind from blowing the door shut (slamming is more like it) and doing damage to the door and frame. Hoping they work well and do their job.

Cindy was excited during our evening wall with Bella when we went outside the park and saw a white-tail deer by the entrance. It leapt away from us so quickly that neither of us had time to get a photo or video. But seeing it lifted Cindy’s spirits.

Tigger Times 56

Monday morning, after breakfast, we were both sitting in our recliners. Cindy was on the phone with Amber and I was catching up on emails. I happened to look up at the digital frame I got her last Christmas and a cute photo of our late kitty, Tigger, was showing. When that photo transitioned it was to another photo of Tigger, then another and another. As I watched, every photo was a different one of Tigger through the years he was with us, one after another, until finally, after 56 photos of him in a row, one of a family member entered the shuffle and continued on to some of the hundreds of family photos Cindy has on the frame.

Cindy said Tigger was just saying “Hi” but I think the shuffle glitched somehow.

Later in the day we drove to nearby Marenisco to do our laundry and since there was a good AT&T signal I took the opportunity to call our friend Kirk to discuss our upcoming joint trip to Mackinaw Island and some of his ongoing projects. Then we fueled up Voyager and picked up a few groceries.

I also took my last antibiotic for my knee. It IS feeling a bit better, but it has not healed as quickly or as completely as it did back in January.

We continued watching season 5 of ST:TNG that night.

Tuesday was spent tearing things down for departure on Wednesday and filling our fresh water tank since we’ll have no water hook-ups at our next two stops.

Thanks for following The Wandering Wetheringtons.