Yooperland!

 

This past 4 days we were in the Upper Peninsula (locally called “yooper”) of Michigan.  We had driven through this area many years ago when we were on an RV trip from Sault Ste. Marie to Door County, Wisconsin, but we never stopped.  In looking through our 1000 places to see book it had an entry for the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  It sounded just beautiful so it has been on our list of places to stop.  We were not disappointed.

There were not many choices for RV parks in the area, Munising, Michigan,  but all the reviews pointed to one park that was right on the lake.  The problem was trying to get reservations for a site big enough for us and for a few days.  The park is really popular.  Luckily I found an opening for 3 nights during the week.  Our spot backed right up to the lake.

The downside was the mosquitos were out in force.  It was nightly ritual to try and find all of them in the trailer before we went to sleep. 

On Wednesday we saw a portion of the park, walked the town and picked up some Pasties (pronounced “past-tee”) for dinner  They are a local delicacy made of dough stuffed with various fillings.  We tried the veggie, beef and chicken ones, although they do have fruit filled ones.  They were not bad.

The only way to see the rocks, which are high cliffs on the lake, is to take a boat ride up the coast.  The rocks have many colors in them due to the minerals and water is constantly seeping out so it looks like an artists canvas.  Since the cliffs face west the best time to see them is at sunset as the sun is low in the sky and hit the cliffs at a great angle.  They offer a sunset cruise but since we are so far north, sunset is not until 9:40pm!.  Our cruise started at 7:15pm and lasted until 9:45pm.

The views were spectacular as was the weather.

The start of the cliffs.  The cliffs are made of sandstone, so they are very soft.  With the water action many caves are formed.

Starting to see some of the colors beginning to show.

Huge rocks that have broken off.

Interesting rock formation

The colors

Sunset

For our second day we drove the entire park to the town of Grand Marais.  One of the stops in the park is the Log Slide.  This is where, back in the 1800’s, loggers had set up a log chute on the sand dunes to send the logs down to the lake and waiting boats.  What is great is that you can actually slide down the dunes, if you want.  The Park Service has a big warning sign telling people to be careful as help is a long way off and to remember it takes only 5 minutes to make it to the bottom and more than 90 minutes to get back up!

Fran at the top of the log slide with the lake in the distance.

A view of the sand dunes, where the slide is.

On Friday the wind really picked up overnight and by morning it was creating 2 to 3 foot waves on the lake.  I was concerned with the creaking tree over our trailer and how hard it would be to drive the highway so we quickly packed up and drove off at 8:30am.  Once we got on the highway, which is inland, the wind was not a problem until we got to the Mackinac Bridge where we had to take it slow to get over the straits.

We are now in Traverse City, Michigan for the weekend.

Route: From Butternut, Wisconsin we took highway 13 north to highway 77 east to highway 28 east into Munising, Michigan.