It’s time for a change of pace. Up to now we have been driving towards destinations: Wooster, Cleveland, Niagara, Toronto, Detroit. The drives themselves have been a means to an end and the cities we’ve been visiting have been the highpoints. But now, as we head up into rural Michigan, it will be the journeys that we start to relish.

Today’s takes in the “thumb” (so called because if you hold up your left hand it looks like lower Michigan, and hey: we’re driving around the thumb).

This takes us up the shoreline of Lake Huron, which we first glimpsed crossing over from Canada. And on this route, there are plenty of opportunities to enjoy the lakeside views. This has to be the most picturesque lake yet, not just for the scenery but also for the forested avenues we drive down, the hundreds of lakeside cottages that line the route, the small towns that are straight out of the 1950s, and the dozens of garage sales, yard sales, and driveway sales that make the M25 (yes, really) a thriving marketplace. It’s like Michigan’s car boot bonanza.

We stop off several times, enjoying Pointe aux Barques in particular. Here stands one of Michigan’s many lighthouses (they’re really important: some estimates reckon there are up to 10,000 wrecked ships in the Great Lakes!).

And as luck would have it, a little bit further down the road, we find the Caseville Cheeseburger Festival in full swing. We’d heard about this last night when a delightful lady in Nemo’s bar in Detroit told us about it. Well, you have to partake, don’t you? So we grabbed a $3 burger along with the hundreds of locals who had found their way to the tiny village.

It’s been a great day – and we’ve been kept company by bikers all along the route (perhaps they fancied a cheeseburger).

Towards evening we finally make it to Bay City, our stop for the night, to find a great riverview from our hotel window, and a lovely sunset approaching.