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It is not far from Houghton to Union Bay Campground in Porcupine Mountains State Park, yup we are still in Michigan. Susan and I have been to the Porkies a couple times before, once in the late 70’s and a couple years ago.  Camping then was different from now.

The last time we were here about four years ago we stayed at the Ontonagon City Campground. we thought about staying there but they don’t take reservations so making sure you have a spot is tough although most week days in the summer they have openings.  There are a few choice spots right on the lake that would be nice.  We stopped in to check it out and there were two premium campsites coming open in the next two days that we could have had.  But we were only staying for three nights so Union Bay it was.

On our way back through Ontonagon we stopped at a small quilt shop. They sell other craft things as well but the owner is a very serious quilter.  Her husband collects and sells guitars at the shop as well.
Pictures hardly do her work justice.

There are many of her award winning quilts hanging in the shop. They are not for sale but for the right price she will make you one just like it.

The detail was amazing, all done in silk.

We also went to a rock shop where I found a very nice looking natural copper deposit piece.  The copper ore clings to the underlying rock.  Just the right size for our mantle.

Here is a picture of the copper piece, It took more than 20 tries to get it inserted, more than 20 Google failures. No explanation or help, just failures. Typical Google.

The next day we went to see Lake in the Clouds. This is a lake that is more than a mile long. It lies in a fold in the Earth’s crust that makes much of the basin of Lake Superior.  On the right in the picture is what is called the Escarpment. It is a long cliff face that forms the northern side of  The Lake in the Clouds basin.

It is quite a drop to the Lake of the Clouds. This formation heads to the east for several miles.

There were several early copper mines in this area most before the time of the Civil War. Most of the mines were north of the Escarpment towards the lake. They were likely to be found along streams where copper ore was found at the surface. Holes were dug into the stream banks looking for copper. These tunnels were small, just big enough to crawl though, all dug by hand with crude explosives.  There never was much copper found, some to be sure, but I would bet there are more miners to be found in these old tunnels than copper.

We also went to the far end of the park to the Presque Isle area to check out the Manabezo Falls on the Presque Isle River.

We had to go down a long stairway to get to a bridge over the river to see the falls.

And where it runs out into Lake Superior.  There are three falls along this stretch of the river. This one was easiest to get to.

 Rudy and Carolyn made it all the way down..

Susan and the whirlpool.

The porkies are a nice place to visit.  You really need to get out and do some hiking to appreciate what is here.  We will probably go back with more hiking on the agenda.

More later,

Roger and Susan

LOne day we drove up to Copper Harbor way up at the very end of the Keweenaw Peninsula. the road goes right up the middle of the peninsula following the mines which all lie on a particular geological feature created by upthrust and folding.  This is where the very hot high pressure water with dissolved copper laden chemicals was forced from deep in the earth up into cracks in the rocks. The copper deposits were formed as things cooled off.  The deposits follow the slope of the upthrust layers which is why all of the mine shafts are sloped rather than vertical.

Copper Harbor has a very nice Visitor’s Center. Inside were six very nice stained glass light fixtures made with copper, brass and glass. Quite ornate for a Visitor’s Center in a very small town. even the bathrooms were done in tile and local stone and small copper tiles, about 2″x2″, spaced out along the upper part of the tiles area.

We followed a small road and then down a dirt trail towards a small water fall. From all of the signs we thought it would be a big one but it was not.  Maybe in the spring.

We stopped at Eagle Harbor to check out the old Life Saving Service Station.

The Station was manned during the shipping season.  The early equipment included shore rescue equipment and eight man row boats. By the 1920’s much more robust motor boats were used. 

During a late November storm in 1926, the men at the station were notified that a ship, the THOMAS MAYTHAM, was hung up on rocks some 40 miles away. Immediately, the rescue crew set off in their motorized boat and, after braving below-zero temperatures and towering waves, reached the ship and took on its 22 crew members. On the return trip, the lifesaving crew spotted an abandoned ghostly ship so covered with ice and snow that they barely recognized it as a ship. This was the CITY OF BANGOR which had run hard aground. Her crew had made it to shore but were in grave danger of suffering from exposure. After dropping off the men of the Maytham, the station’s crew had to return in another boat to rescue the 29 man crew of the City of Bangor and her unusual cargo, over 248 brand new Chryslers bound for Duluth. 

18 cars were lost in the storm and the cars on the decks were covered in snow and ice. A rescue mission chopped the cars free and drove them down a snow and ice ramp. Drivers were paid $5 to return the cars to Detroit for rehab. One of these cars is still at the Eagle Harbor Light House Museum.

Another interesting day, you never know what you are going to see until you stop and look.  So much gets missed in the hurry up drive by road trips.

This trip seems much faster paced to us than we would normally like. Part of that is because we are traveling with others who haven’t been here before.  And it has been nice to share this part of the country with them.

Douglas and Amanda are heading off in a different direction when we leave here. We are heading to a couple of days in the Porkies with Rudy and Carolyn and then to Bayfield and Duluth.

More later,

Roger and Susan

The Keweenaw Peninsula is home to copper mining in this part of Michigan. Copper mining was actually done in many parts of the Upper Peninsula, on Isle Royale and on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. The really big successful mines are north of Houghton.  The expansion of telegraph lines and the introduction of electrical power in the 1800’s increased the need for copper. We visited two of the mines. 

The Quincy Mine is right in Hancock just across the river and up the hill.  This mine started in the mid 1800’s and was in production up until the Great Depression.  That shut it down and when things got better so much of the mine had flooded that they just closed it down.  Copper mines in Michigan produced about 11 billion pounds of copper.  The leader of the Quincy Mine tour said that they estimate that less than half of the copper has been removed.

We had to wear hard hats and jackets to look like miners for the tour.

We started in the remaining hoist house where immense steam engines drove a giant steel drum that had more than 3 miles of 1-1/2″ cable wound around it and threaded into the mine shaft.

The two ends of the cable went up to the shaft house and down more than 9,600 feet following the sloped mine shaft to the more than 60 levels where side shafts went off in to the hard rock looking for copper. Several different types of cars rode up or down the rails in the shaft. Some hauled water, some ore, some miners depending on what needed to be moved. Miners rode down in a 30 man car with no lights and the top of the shaft just inches from their heads.  The bottom of the mine was more than 6,000 ft below the surface.  There are more than 320 miles of tunnels following the copper deposits in this mine.

We rode down a steep inclined railroad to a drainage tunnel that lead into level 3 (of more than 60).

The tunnel has been enlarged by students from Michigan Tech University’s mining school while learning how to drill and blast.  Boy, I would have like to have had that class.  Now with and enlarged tunnel an electric tram can carry visitors into an underground area to see how mining was done.  It actually passed by a classroom for the mining students blasted out of solid rock..

At first the mining was mostly all done by hand in the very hard rock. Later powered drills and TNT improved productivity.  There was almost no safety equipment. An injury ended your career.  Most miners did well to last 20-25 years in the mines.  Every level below level three is flooded.

The early miners used candles for light that they had to buy themselves. So often a crew of three would only use one candle while one miner held the steel drill and the other two hit it with sledge hammers.  Four holes, two feet deep took this crew two 10 hr days to complete. Some black powder packed in the holes made some small headway into the rock.  Not a job I would have wanted.

It is amazing how hard these miners worked and how hard the work was.

We also visited the Central Mine which closed in the 1890’s. Susan’s early relatives worked at this mine. It was a very productive mine and had an entire town built up around the mine for the 1200 miners. Most of it is gone now except for a few buildings and sites.

We had to laugh at the visitor’s center. It was closed when we got there and in what must be Yooper Language, the sign said “Shut”.   A peek through the window revealed wooden floor boards that were probably 16″ wide.

Later the sign said “Open” and we got to have a look at the historical displays.. They have a picnic here every year for descendants of the miners, lots of people attend.

The drive home along the lake shore found some nice overlooks. The South Shore is really pretty nice.

Sorry about how some of this looks.  Try to do this blog on the iPad – it looks one way. Try to do this on the laptop – it looks completely different, different fonts, different picture placement.  and then it gets published and it doesn’t look like either on the blog and if you are getting the email feeds, it looks different there as well.  If you are going to do a blog start with WordPress or anything other than Google Blogger. 

More later

Roger and Susan

It is quite easy to get behind posting about this trip. I am trying to catch up.

After a week in Munising we headed over to Houghton, MI halfway up the Keweenaw Peninsula.

We stayed in the Houghton City Campground with full hookups available for those who prefer it that way.  It is right on the channel that splits the Keweenaw Peninsula.  Hancock MI is on the other side of the channel.  We had nice campsites. Nice view of some nice wooden boats going by and the lift bridge.

The lift bridge goes up high enough so that ships can go under it.  It is a double deck bridge, cars used the upper deck and trains used the lower deck.  There are no trains anymore so in the summer the lower deck is used for cars and most boats can get under.  In the winter they lower it down and cars use the upper deck and snowmobiles use the lower deck.

Amanda and Douglas got everyone tickets for a three hour cruise (lot of Gilligan and the Skipper jokes) on the Ranger III, the National Park Service passenger and cargo ferry to Isle Royale National Park out in the middle of Lake Superior. 

The Ranger III is the largest moving thing the National Park Service owns.  It makes three round trips a week to Isle Royale. The trip each way takes about 5 1/2  hours. Being from Minnesota we were always thinking that Isle Royale was a wilderness park.  That is likely because the ferry from Grand Marais, MN goes to the western end of the island.  From Michigan all of the ferries go to the eastern end of the island where there is a lodge, stores and cabins for rent!  We were shocked! 

The cruise went from Houghton east through the channel to Lake Superior on the east side of the Keweenaw Peninsula and back.  There was the six of us and 122 college kids scheduled to be on the ship.  Only about 40 of the college kids showed up so we had plenty of room and the “senior faculty” got to sample all of the goodies they brought along for the 122 ravenous kids. The 40 ate what they could and we rummaged through the left overs.  Lots of fun.  And it was the 100th Birthday of the National Parks that day.  So Happy Birthday to our national treasures and thanks Amanda and Douglas for the treat.

The sun set over the canal each evening one of which featured baby back ribs, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole on the patio.  It sure is easy when everyone pitches in.

Lots of bike riding here as well, great bike trails along the channel in both directions.  Susan and I rode our bikes to the Farmer’s Market. S&R and A&D rode to Pilgrim Point and back, about nine miles.  I figure we have done close to 50 miles on this trip so far.

More later.

Roger and Susan

Amanda and Douglas (Susan calls them AmanDoug, Carolyn calls them the Children) are SCUBA enthusiasts. They carry all of their diving gear – tanks, dry suits, wet suits and a ton of other stuff with them.  They needed to get an August dive in so off we went to the laundry. They went to Sand Point on which there is Sand Beach to suit up.  We did our laundry, washed and dried, and drove to Sand Beach to see how they were doing. 

Their car was there but they were no where to be seen.  And then we spotted their diving flag so we waited.

There were bubbles and then up popped two creatures dressed  head to toe in formal black.  They were out there for a long time doing something. Later they were telling us that they were having a hard time getting one of their flippers off.

They thought it was funny that we came to see them.  They sure had a lot of gear. Timers, depth gauges, weight belts and lots of things hooked to hoses.  They were in dry suits with layers of clothes underneath.  Amanda was dry, Douglas had a leak around his wrist so his sleeve was wet.

They saw some fish and some small white crayfish like things and brought up a pebble as a keepsake.

They were going to try diving near the high school but there was no easy access to the water but they got in their August dive.

More later

Roger and Susan

Grand Island, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

We are at the city of  Munising Tourist Park Campground. It is a pretty nice campground with a variety of types of accommodations. We managed to get full hookups which means electricity, water and a sewer connection. We are one row back from the shore of Lake Superior.  We were just not quick enough to get the front row seats.  We have been there before and they are spectacular.  

It has taken me a long time to get Munising (Mew nis ing) to come out right.

We almost never choose this level of hookups, electricity is plenty for us and if it is not available we can get along for days.  We have a generator and a diesel boiler for hot water and heat and lots of batteries. Plus with 105 gallons of water and 160 gallons of waste tanks we can normally last 10 days or so. Can you get by on 10 gallons of water a day for two people?

Our travelling companions like water hookups and sewer if possible. They both have clothes washing machines. Douglas and Amanda just put in a front loading stacked washer and dryer. It is very nice and fits well in their 40 ft coach.  It takes up and entire closet, something we would not give up in our 36 ft coach.  It usually only takes a couple hours or less to do our laundry once every ten days or so. Douglas and Amanda also just put in a top loading drawer style dish washer. Wow!

There are water falls everywhere nearby, the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore extends several miles to the east, the Lake is right here and there is this big island, a Grand Island, that is now part of the National Lakeshore. It was, many years ago, privately owned but over time it became part of the National Lake Shore.  There are a few private homes left, now leased back to the original owners for one more generation. There are several camp sites and a few rustic shelters for back packers on the island.

There are some gravel roads and a some trails too.  A ferry brings visitors to the Island to hike or bike or take a “bus” tour of the historic sites. The “bus” appeared to be the back seat of someone’s old SUV.

Douglas and Amanda brought their bikes because they knew we were bringing ours. So we packed picnic lunches, lots of water and with bikes on the rack, headed for the ferry and Grand Island.

A Four Bike Rack is Handy If not for Four Bikes then Two Bikes and Two Beach Chairs

The ferry ride was on a pontoon boat the first time we were here. Now they have a pretty snappy proper ferry launch.  More like a nice barge.

Pretty Nice Pannier for Lunch and Stuff

We stopped in at the Visitor’s Center for some history and a map.  Twenty plus hard miles counterclockwise. Eight to ten up if we went to the middle of the island on one side, across and back down the other.  We chose wisely.

These were the good roads. pretty smooth and not too hilly.

High bluffs and big hills is where we did not go.

Douglas and Amanda are good smilers.

Can you guess what this is?  Pretty fresh bear poop.

We stopped at Duck Lake for a rest.  There were lots of ducks.  Ducks eat stuff on the bottom of the shallow part of the lake, heads down and you can probably guess the rest.  First there were two ducks, then three.  The lunch wagon was in and soon there were five ducks feasting on bottom goo.

So from the dock it was clear that Synchronized Swimming at the Olympics has competition.

We stopped for lunch and a chance to cool our feet. This was a very nice beach where a summer home once stood long ago.

I liked this old stump by the water. it was about 8 ft across.

We made it to the 20 mile post (with a short cut or two). A bit butt weary but that’s biking.

The ferry ride home was quiet. Same with the ride back to the campground.  We were able to stay up for s’mores though after supper.  No campfire songs from this bunch of tired folk.

More later

Roger and Susan

Pasties.

One cannot go to the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan without being assailed by Pastie shops.  Some spell it pasty or pastys. Not so Yoopers. Pasties (pass tees) are meat pies with origins back to the Cornish Miners who came to this area in the mid 1800’s.  They were particularly skilled folks with copper mining experience from England.  One branch of Susan’s ancestral tree belongs to this bunch. Pasties were a lunch bucket staple of the hard working miners. 

Pasties typically look like a small (6-8″) calzone.  Some look like a half of a softball with a folded up crust around the bottom. Some are like a rustic tart with the crust folded up around the sides towards the center on top. Real pasties have chunks of beef and pork, rutabagas, potatoes and onion, salt and pepper, suet and butter inside a pie crust made with lard. Store bought pasties have ground beef for meat and carrots. The Cornish miners would be rolling over in their graves at this but then they would eat them anyways.  It is not so much what is in them but the care and love that goes into each one for the well being of those they were made for. 

From Susan and Roger

Susan  has her mother’s hand written recipe handed down from one lunch pail to the next over generations.  We follow this, the Gospel of Pie, almost exactly.  We leave out the suet (the birds get it) and to make them a bit more heart healthy, we leave out the lard. We added some of our own decorative embellishments and baked up a batch to share in the convection/microwave oven in the coach. It really smelled good.

Real Home Made Pasties

For comparison we bought three beef pasties from Muldoon’s in Munising. They are reportedly the best Yooper Pasties so they were going to be the competition. Amanda and Douglas baked them up in their oven.  The game is afoot!

Douglas Presents the Competition

Half Softball Shaped Pasties from Muldoon’s

The True Pasty with Flakey Crust, Beef and Pork on the Left Or Muldoon’s With Ground Meat and Carrots On the Right (no idea what the red thing is)

August 12-13, 2016

Kayaking!

This is something Susan and I have wanted to do for some time. Last summer when we were in Wyoming there were kayaks for rent and it looked like fun. Then we saw them on the Snake River just for fun and with folks fishing. So now I want to try both.

The park folks delivered the kayaks to our site the evening before. It was a short portage to the river where we found a good launching spot. That was the easy part. Getting ourselves in and out of the kayaks was not pretty. But after a few tries at it we sort of got the hang of it. It still bordered on graceless

Douglas and Susan went first. Up stream and then back down for about 45 minutes.

Amanda and I had a go at it next. I wasn’t sure how my shoulder was going to do. A half hour into it and it was aching so I adjusted paddling procedure a bit and that seemed to help.

Rudy and Carolyn were the safety committee. Ready to whip out that new iPhone and do something.

When we got back it was time for a break after demonstrating our Olympic Exit Style.

It was easy to paddle once we got in. The river was calm with a low current. There was a

light breeze. We were using ten foot kayaks. After talking to other kayakers we think longer paddles for us and maybe 12 foot or 13.5 foot kayaks would track better and give us some more leg room.

Amanda and Douglas went out again for almost an hour and then Susan and I did too. We all tried heading down river first and then upstream.

Susan and I went downstream almost to the lake.

At one point I was paddling through water lily pads that were blooming. They smelled quite nice.

So we all got in about three hours of kayaking practice. All were experiencing some arm and shoulder fatigue. What else were we going to do but have home made ice cream courtesy of Douglas and Amanda.

We liked it. We will do it again.
More later,

Roger and Susan

August 12-13, 2016

This was a good day to head to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point at the entrance to Whitefish Bay. We left Tahquamenon St Park and headed into a nearby town named Paradise. There is a town in lower Michigan named Hell so there is a lot of jokes going back and forth.

It was about 15 or 30 miles along the lake to get to the museum which is right at the end of the point of land. 


This is another critical lighthouse for ships coming off the main part of Lake Superior into the eastern end of the lake at Whitefish Bay.

The light station is still in operation although it is now automated.  There are several museum segments, the Keeper’s House, the Light Station, the Rescue Station, an Edmund Fitzgerald Theater and of course, a Gift Shop.

And the Edmund Fitzgerald in tens of thousands of Legos.

The Keeper’s wife (a replica shown here) had a lot of work to do running the household. The restoration and depiction of everyday life was pretty amazing.

The Edmund Fitzgerald Theater showed a program about how the events unfolded the night the ship was lost.  The facts were not clear, just as the weather had not been. The movie went on to the search for the Edmund Fitzgerald and when found, a long underwater investigation failed to determine a cause. But the bell tower on the Fitzgerald was found to be upright and intact.  So the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum Foundation cast a new bell with the names of each of the crew. A deep diving crew removed the original bell and replaced it with the new bell.  The original bell is now at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.  Many of the family members of the original crew were on board the ship as the bells were exchanged and a service of remembrance was held to honor the lost crew.  The bell rang out 29 times for each of the crew.

It was another nice visit to a familiar place. One that tells the story of so many ships and men lost to the storms, bad navigation and the Lake. More ships were lost in ship to ship collisions than any other cause.  The Light Station Service, the Rescue Stations, the Weather Stations and later the Coast Guard and many technology advances made shipping on the Great Lakes much safer.  The 1975 loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald was the last major shipwreck on the Great Lakes.