October 9, 2012 - Bay City State Park

October 9, 2012 - Bay City State Park.  The drive from St. Ignace to Bay City, MI, along the coast of Lake Huron is awash with color.  Highway 23 curves along the shore line granting frequent glimpses of the sparkling green water.  Pines and deciduous trees line the highway offering varying shades of green, yellow, orange, rust and red.  The highway is lightly traveled this season, so for most of the day, it was just us and the colors of autumn.

Bay City State Park is carved from a stand of mature trees.  Many campers have decorated their sites anticipating Halloween.  We biked around the campground for an hour or so, photographing as we went.  There are boughten spooks and some created by that trickster, Mother Nature.  She created scary faces and body parts in the trunks of trees here.  The creations of nature are scarier and funnier than the boughten ones.

Tomorrow, we will drive the coast of Lake Huron on the "thumb" of Michigan.  If Michigan looks like a hand on the map, the mainland below Saginaw Bay is the thumb.  Tomorrow night will find us somewhere in Ontario, Canada.  The day following, we will reenter the United States in northwestern New York, probably above Buffalo.  From there, we will make our way to Vermont on the back roads of upstate New York.  We might even take in Palmyra, NY, the place Joseph Smith said he was visited by the angel, Moroni, who presented him with the gold tablets which Smith eventually translated into the Book of Mormon.  I read somewhere that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has bought land around Palmyra in order to preserve the history of the beginnings of Mormonism.  Joseph Smith's log cabin has been reconstructed on its original site.