It was a drizzly/rainy day on Saturday, so we decided to take a little “country road trip.” Our destination was Lake Hudson Recreation Area near the Ohio border in Southeast Michigan. This allowed us to check off state park/recreation area #62 on the list of 106 total. We weren’t disappointed! We checked out the “day use” area (aka beach), as well as the campground. We didn’t take photos of the campground, but jotted down some site numbers that looked decent for future reference. It looked very “tent friendly,” which means…NO HUGE RVs! Sometimes it’s nice to take a camping trip without having to look at RVs that are half the length of a football field (they do kind of clog up the scenery a bit rather than blend in like tents tend to do better).

Beach at Lake Hudson Recreation Area. The cloudy weather kept crowds away (score)!

On our way to the park (we took a very, very scenic route), we passed through towns I’d never seen before – Bridgewater, Manchester and Manitou Beach.

Funny, I lived two years in Saline, a town a few miles east of here – and never bothered to check out the bustling burg of Bridgewater! Pssst…it’s NOT really a “bustling burg,” though it is kind of a pretty drive to get there! And their ice cream joint looked “bustling” on this Saturday afternoon. Onward Manchester ho!

Manchester has a “cute” downtown AND a “famous chicken broil,” apparently! If you’re going to play pub trivia in this town, you’d better damn well hope that there aren’t any former 2005 champs in the bar with you!

Scene from Manitou Beach. If you like cramped living, then you’ll LOVE lake living!

On our way back home – along U.S. 12, we passed through what was likely a big tourist spot…in days past. It’s become quite decrepit as of late, with dilapidated buildings, rotting dinosaur replicas and other trappings of places formerly designed to trap tourists – and take their money (many now listed for sale).

One of those places, which is still very much alive (though dormant because of COVID 19) is the Michigan International Speedway, which is usually a “hot spot” on weekends in June – when there is not a plague going on. Things were quiet and sedate on this particular Saturday afternoon (I did not take photos of the speedway since it was on the wrong side of the car…but here’s a photo I found online, I do not own the photo):

In 1997, I was working as a “cub reporter” at a newspaper in Adrian and came very close to having to cover a “race weekend” here! I weaseled my way out of it – thankfully there was someone lower on the totem pole than me at the time! I knew there would be endless tall jokes uttered by this drunken crowd, which would probably result in assault charges (on me)!