Ok, so I got into the ADMIN site settings page finally, by entering an "s" when it redirected to http://xxxxx after using the menu. And I updated to set SSL settings as being used on the site. I then got into the Page Settings part of Admin using the same trick of putting the "s" after http://xxxxx when it redirected through the Admin menu to add/edit pages.

I set that page to enable SSL but not force SSL, however now when I click the Admin menu and go to Pages, it get what is referred to as an endless loop of redirecting from http:// to https://. I have seen several posts on it from Mitch Sellers and others on this issue, where your Admin or HOST menus are caught in an endless loop. Firefox will report this however IE will not. (go figure!) 

So I still am looking for a viable solution to this. Or for someone to tell me where the source code does this so I can investigate further.