Lake Michigan Road Trip: Days 6 and 7

Day 6

Start: Marquette, MI
Finish: L'Anse, MI
Miles: 238
States: Pure Michigan 

I came to the realization that I have been calling this the Lake Michigan Road trip even though it was split about 50/50 between Michigan and Superior. I believe my thinking was that I'd call it the Lake Michigan trip because I had somehow never been to Michigan before. The few people I told this fact to on the trip found it funny that it took 31 years to get across the border.

Day 6 started with a short drive to Presque Isle Park to see what was going on. The first thing I spotted was a lighthouse way out on a concrete and stone pier so I got my walking shoes on and headed out. It took me about 15 minutes to get out because climbing on giant stones without trying to break a leg or my camera took some finessing.

The park overall was pretty cool for being a free public place to go run, hangout, or take the kids to although you could do some damage if you fell off the cliffs surround the whole place. 

View from the lighthouse platform looking out on Lake Superior.

A short hike up Sugarloaf Mountain was next before heading out of Marquette. There were some good views but it got my thinking about how much I miss the views from the "real" mountains out west. Maybe time to plan another trip that way???

Looking back at the small rain shower that was heading my way.

After the hike back down it was on to Copper Harbor. If you look at it on a map, Copper Harbor is way up there and is essentially the farthest place north in Michigan outside of Isle Royale National Park which requires some work to get to. Trip Advisor came up big here with things to do as the town is only 10 blocks long. The first stop was Fort Wilkins State Park. I pulled a quick one here and flashed my park pass from the previous day and got in for free haha! As the name states, the main attraction here was a pretty well preserved army outpost from 1844. 

There were probably 15-20 buildings here you could walk through and most of them had exhibits to check out. Kind of a cool history lesson on vastly different life was back then. Your main goals were finding food and water, fighting natives, and trying not to die of dysentery. I thought the below picture was an interesting exhibit and it reminded me of those Eyewitness books from back in the day that would show cross sections of castles, ships, the human body, and other things.

After getting some ice cream from the gift shop, of course, it was on to Hunter's Point Park and Agate Beach. The name suggest agates were everywhere but it was more like traditional stones but still a change from sand being absolutely everywhere. I didn't take a close up from the beach but this is from google. Obviously I took handfuls of stones and chucked them into Lake Superior like the grown child that I am.

 

 

Here is a picture that I did take though.

 

 

And another one from the point. It was only half a mile from the parking lot but surprisingly empty considering how nice the weather turned out after a gloomy start.

 

Just up the block from the park was one entrance for the Brockway Mountain Drive. It had been about a year since I had New Hotness in low gear and you didn't have to tell me twice to put her to the test again. The whole route was 8 miles but it was only 4 to get up to the summit and parking area.

 

 

700 ft above Lake Superior and 1,300 ft above sea level. This would have been a sweet spot to hang glide off of as the wind was whipping.

Manganese Falls was the last place I wanted to check out before heading back south. This was the easiest water fall to get to as it was literally 10 yards off the road once I decided to head in the right direction. It's nice to find places that require a hike as most people won't do it but on the other hand, it's nice to come across places like this that take 8 seconds to get to.

Up until this point, I hadn't eaten any real meals for supper outside of ordering a pizza so I headed down to the water front for a burger and chips. An hour and a half drive was still ahead of me but this was a very relaxing way to end the day. Had I known that Copper Harbor had so much to offer, I would have planned to stay a night there and I definitely recommend it to anybody looking for a place that has a lot to offer in a small area.

Upcoming: Golfing Timberstone, Timm's Hill, and heading back to Rice Lake.

Start: L'Anse, MI
Finish: Rice Lake, WI
Miles: 289
States: MI, WI

Day 7 ushered in the finale of the trip. I'm on vacation so naturally I woke up at 6:45 to head over to Timberstone Golf Course in Iron Mountain. The drive was an hour and a half but I also gained an hour coming from the eastern time zone so I got there with plenty of time to spare. This course was a recommendation from a friend of a friend and it did not disappoint. Not too exciting to describe a golf course though and I've already done it once so here are some pics of the par 3's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And hole #18 which was probably the coolest on the course. A 600 yd par 5 with 2 or 3 drops that if you drove the golf cart off of, you'd probably be maxing out your credit card on repairs. Had a very makeable birdie putt here and of course I miss it after not trusting my gut that my line was trash.

 

 

There was also a ski jump here and I'm still amazed that people shoot off of those things and don't die. Well, I guess a few of them do.

The last scheduled stop on the way back to Rice Lake was at Timm's Hill County Park. A quick geography lesson for you is that Timm's Hill is the highest natural point in Wisconsin. A 300 yd walk and a quick climb up the lookout tower led you to this view.

And this one.

 

From there it was nothing but driving west on Highway 8. Here's one random thing I came across and had to stop to get a pic. RIP Dale. #3 foreverrrrrrrrrrr.

 

I also had to get a pic of the old train in Ladysmith which brought back memories from my childhood.

That's another trip in the books and I'm not sure where my next one will be to but it may end up on this blog for your reading and viewing pleasure. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Eric drives somewhere and "writes" about it.

Eric

Lake Michigan Road Trip: Day 5

Day 5

Start: St. Ignace, MI
Finish: Marquette, MI
Miles: 360
States: Pure Michigan 

With the storm passing through yesterday, day 5 started out super muggy and foggy. The first stop didn't really need to be a stop but I ended up getting a couple of cool shots of the Cut River Bridge at a roadside park. If I recall, the bridge is 147 ft above the river which dumps into Lake Michigan.

 

  A shot from the trail below.

I thought the next stop was going to be a hole in the wall but it turned out to be quite busy for how small of a state park it was. Kitch-iti-ipi in Palms Book State park is a naturally fed freshwater spring and was something I came across while searching google maps for places to visit. You hopped on this wooden raft and were ferried about 100 ft out to the center of the spring where you could look down 45 ft to the bottom.

Below is a view from the center of the raft. The spring was stocked with lake trout that had once lived on a fish farm and are now spending the last 2-3 years of their lives here in "retirement."

It's hard to tell from the picture but the cloudy area in the bottom left is one of the spots where the water comes up at an overall rate of 10,000 gallons per minute. The spring never freezes and it's 45 degrees year round. The video I recorded was too big to upload but here is a cooler video of the spring using a GoPro. About halfway through shows the water coming up from the bottom of the spring. This video was posted in 2015 which must have been before they started stocking the spring with fish.

Don't worry, here is a video of just the fish.

I wasn't planning on making the next two stops but the lady managing how many people got on the raft suggested they were worth the drive. First up was Tahquamenon Falls State Park and since I had a day pass to all state parks, it seemed like a no brainer. The park was broken up into 2 areas, the upper and lower falls. The upper falls came first and was a quick 5 minute walk from the parking lot.

I was informed that the lower falls was a lot busier and they did not lie. It was a 3 mile drive to the lot which was full and cars were backed up to the main road so I kept on driving. I've been to Niagara Falls so not too many water falls are going to beat that. 

The next stop was Whitefish Point which gave me my first views of Gitche-gami along the way (props to you if you get that reference). This place is home to the oldest operating lighthouse on Lake Superior and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum which is best known for housing the bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald that was recovered in 1995.

I would have liked to visit the museum as I'm all about history but there were too many people and I had one more stop on the list for the day. 

That stop was Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. This was a place to really spend a whole day or two but I did not have the time so I found a beach to drive up to that offered views of the cliffs in each direction. There was also a spot to check out a small water fall on the way.

Plenty of places offered boat tours of the cliffs and kayaking which would have been fun but you'd be better off bringing your own kayak and spending a whole day going up and down the coast.

I ended the day by making my way to Marquette which is home to Northern Michigan University if you didn't know. 

Upcoming: Presque Isle Park, Sugarloaf Mountain, and Copper Harbor.

Lake Michigan Road Trip: Day 4

Day 4

Start: Cadillac, IN
Finish: St. Ignace, MI
Miles: 268
States: Pure Michigan 

As I previously mentioned, the U.P. was stingy with their internet even when they claimed to offer it at the places I stayed but here we are. Day 4 opened with nice weather which had my hopes up until I looked at the radar and saw a lovely gale making its way southeast. The first stop was Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and I attempted to get there and hike a bit before it started storming.

The pinpoint on the east side of the storm is the exact moment I pulled into the Sleeping Bear parking lot. I waited about half an hour in a downpour only because it was entertaining watching people sprint down the Dune Climb in the rain while dodging lightning strikes.

View from the top of the Dune Climb

From there I drove back south to kill time and hopefully come back when the storm passed or at least once the lightning quit. I ended up at the Point Betsie Lighthouse which was closed until further notice. My first guess was Corona but it appeared that the lakeside front of the property may have been eroding at an alarming rate. There were metal barriers in place to prevent more erosion but I apparently didn't take a picture so here is the beach on the other side of the street.

Slowly making my way back north I came across Crystal Downs Country Club. Nothing may seem special about this but it is rated as the 10th best golf course in the US and 18th best in the world. Why not try to get a round in you ask? Because it's completely private and the only way you get on the course is by befriending a rich asshole who is a member. The course is set in the middle of resort community and I drove around/through it a couple of times to get a look. Here is a shot from the first tee box that I may have walked up to. Anything for the people. Reviews say it has the best front 9 of any course on Earth.

And a stock photo of the 17th green.

It was time to head back to Sleeping Bear and of course it started raining again once I pulled in to the lot. I gave it another 30 minutes and was about to head out when the rain finally let up. Immediately people began jumping out of their vehicles to head up the Dune Climb and I joined them. The parking lot is down below in the previous picture.

I, like most others, didn't realize how for of a hike it actually was from the lot to Lake Michigan so I made it about halfway and decided to head back. The main path from the lot wasn't much to look at as pictured above but the lakeshore covers 35 miles and more than 32,000 acres. The weather left much to be desired.

Stock photo of actually making it to Lake Michigan. I heard somebody mention that the park has actually lifted people by helicopter off this dune because they couldn't make it back up haha.

By the time I made it back to my car it was already late in the day so I was officially off to the U.P. To get there, I had to cross the Mackinac Bridge which I've always wanted to do so since I saw Mike Rowe climb up the suspension cables on an episode of Dirty Jobs.

Once in the U.P. it was a short drive to St. Ignace where I stayed for the night. Unbeknownst to me, my motel was about 30 yards from Lake Huron which I have never seen before so I walked on over to check it off as the last great lake I had to experience. To cap they night off, I went into town and got myself a nice ice cream shake.

 

 

 Upcoming: Cut River Bridge, Kitch-iti-ipi, Tahquamenon Falls, Whitefish Point, and Pictured Rocks

Lake Michigan Road Trip: Days 2 and 3

Day 2

Start: Valparaiso, IN
Finish: Manistee, MI
Miles: 252
States: IN, MI

The day started at 7a with my alarm clock and then hearing a woman yelling outside. The other person who stayed at the Airbnb I was at was unfortunate enough to have her dog lock her keys in her truck. I walked outside at 7:45 and a police officer was just picking her lock. "2020, right?" she says to me. The first stop of the day was Indiana Dunes State Park. I spend a good 2 hours here walking up and down the beach letting the dunes slip through my toes like sands through an hourglass. I also stopped at Mount Baldy Beach which was just down that road and had a fun 5 minute hike.From there it was an hour and a half drive to South Haven where I stopped to stretch my legs and check out a lighthouse from 1872. There were beaches on either side of the lighthouse and both were absolutely packed with people. We're never getting over Corona. I then made the drive to Muskegon with a short stop in Saugatuck to check out another beach that was a bust. The coolest thing in Muskegon and what I had been looking to most so far was taking a tour of the submarine USS Silversides. I remember touring the German submarine U-505 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago when I was a kid but this one was in the water and still operational (they said not to touch any buttons or pull any levers lol). Also, funding must be low at the museum because tours were self guided so you bet I want through that sub twice. There was a 0% chance of it sinking but you bet your ass I was planning which way to run if it decided to go down. I can't imagine being in there for months with it only taking 1 depth charge within 25 feet for you to never come back up. Docked next to the sub was an old Coast Guard Cutter you could check out as well. Neither one will let you forget the smell of diesel fuel/oil/grease any time soon. Just down the street from the museum was a nice beach so you know I had to check it out and get my tan on for an hour.After that, I drove to Manistee where I spent the night. I spent some time watching the sunset from yet another beach. Lots of sand in this state.

The last thing of the day was getting a shot or 2 of the 1930 steam ship S.S. City of Milwaukee which was right across the street from my hotel. This ship is a ferry that carried rail cars across the great lake and was built to replace a previous steamer that sank in a gale and took all on board down with it. You can apparently book a room on this through Airbnb but it must have been shut down because of Rona otherwise I would have been there in a heartbeat.The weather overall was perfect. Off to the west over the lake, there wasn't a cloud in the sky until a few miles inland. I imagine science can explain the "lake effect" behind this but we live in America, science is dead to us.

Day 3

Start: Manistee, MI
Finish: Cadillac, MI
Miles: 79
States: Pure Michigan 

I was able to sleep in a bit today as the only thing I had planned was golfing Arcadia Bluffs. My tee time wasn't until 12:40 so I headed a few miles north to check out the scenic outlook called Inspiration Point. I then headed to the golf course around 11:30 to get a few shots in before the round. Shaun, you'll be happy to know that I spent $200 on this round!

I got lucky and played with a threesome that was on their annual golf trip and they were pretty laid back about everything. The course was in incredible shape and definitely penalized you for making shitty shots. Pictures do not do the course justice but below is hole 12 which plays along Lake Michigan and offered some pretty cool views. Left of the fence is not a cliff but damn near and it's 200 feet down to the water. The course used to actually encourage hitting a ball from the tee box into Lake Michigan but has since posted signs advising against it.Many holes had pretty extreme elevation changes and it seemed like they all had bunkers you could get lost in. The bunker guarding the green on hole 10 had to be 15 feet tall. Here is the green on hole 18 which is right in front of the clubhouse and a sizeable crowd sitting in lawn chairs. I managed to put my 45 yard bunker shot on the green and 2 putted my way to a double bogey and no fanfare (lost f'n ball).               After the round, we grabbed a drink and watched a few groups come up 18 judging them all the way as is custom after shooting a below average round. I ended the day by driving an hour out of the way because I didn't find a place to stay until everything was booked. I made up for it by getting a big, fat, greasy, buffalo chicken pizza.

Upcoming: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and I'm not sure what else.