North Country 2011--Day 15

A day of waiting and then a little sightseeing.

Yesterday's wind kept coming all night and into today. The Service Manager at the nearby RV dealer said they could not get anyone over here to see about our slide topper awning until after lunch. It was about 1:00 PM when the guy showed. He thought he would be able to remove the awning to see if they had the parts to fix it. If not, I could at least store it away and wait until we returned to Oklahoma to have it repaired. Currently, there is no way we can drive the coach until it is either repaired or removed. After going back to the shop to get a helper and another ladder it was decided that the wind was just too strong for them to get anything done. Now we'll have to wait until they can work us into their shop. Fortunately they are directly next door to the RV park so I should be able to ease over there without tearing up the awning. Anyway, once they were gone we decided to get out and look around. First stop was the Welcome Center that we found closed yesterday. This is the place that has a great view of Lake Superior.

After picking up some tourist info we took a drive around the downtown area of Marquette and then headed back to Ishpeming. Here we went to Da Yoopers Tourist Trap. Basically, this is a large gift shop that has many unusual decorations around the outside. Whoever put this all together definitely had a good imagination. One of my favorites was "Big Ernie", a huge rifle mounted on the back of an antique truck. This is a working firearm. It is loaded with a projectile through the muzzle and is then fired using a 12 volt electrical igniter system using propane and oxygen. Another item was a 3500 pound chainsaw that was operated by a 350 cubic inch Chevrolet engine. The place was surrounded by these outlandish pieces of equipment. After returning to the coach for dinner we relaxed and watched the sun go down.