THE LOUNGE CHAIR LEGENDS: Lake Michigan Road Trip Pt. 2: Day 5

Day 5

Start: Ironwood, MI
Finish: Ironwood, MI

Miles: 149

States: MI

The whole time zone issue caught me this morning as my phone was on central time so I got an hour late start but what can you do. On to the Porcupine Mountains! The first stop was the tourist trap known as Lake of the Clouds but you kind of have to check it out.

THE view.

Looking up river.

Lotta hikes around here but you're not going to get a better view than this so I went a different direction and hiked the 3 miles from the main road down to Lake Superior. Hiking is really just walking, sometimes with a slight incline or decline, and 90% of the time you're just staring at the ground but when the end game is a view or water, that's good enough for me.

On the way down.

Hanging out with Gitche Gumee.

Managed to get out here without dropping anything in the water.

I pulled that little guy on the top out then felt bad and put it back haha.

Spending 2.5 hours hiking was a bit unplanned but it turned out alright. I did miss the turn to get easy lake access so I had to machete my way through the forest, without a machete though.

Next stop was a drive to Summit Peak. You can basically drive to the top then walk the remaining .5 miles to the lookout tower. The amount of complaining I heard from people about the "LONG" walk to the tower annoyed me so much. Just stay home next time!

Only 21 ft below the highest point in MI.

Because of that lost hour I had to book it a little to make my way to Copper Peak and the coolest/scariest item on today's list.

Yup, we're going to the top! An 18 story elevator ride gets you up. The chair lift up to this point was also broken so you had to drive.

Looking towards Lake Superior. You could see 50+ miles and you can supposedly see Canada on a clear day.

A radio tower for reference.

Hey, there's New Hotness.

M'fers that go down these are crazy.

They said you can walk down the steps instead of taking the elevator so I did. As you can see, the actual steps stop about 2/3 of the way down.

The whole thing wouldn't fit into one shot!

From the elevator shaft to the very top is all metal steps that you can see through. I was pooping em a little as you can feel the whole thing swaying in the wind. Beats the one in Lake Placid, NY because you could go all the way up.

It was time to keep my feet on the ground so I drove on down the road to the Black River Harbor Pavilion. This was a cool little park area divided by a suspension walking bridge.

There's a nice beach right around the corner. Couldn't take a picture because it was busy and I didn't want to look like (more) of a creep.

Limit of 2 on the bridge at any given time.

Between Copper Peak and here I passed like 5 different signs for waterfalls so I gave one of them a shot on the way back. This was the Gorge and Potawatami Falls loop.

Potawatomi Falls.

No sure what this was.

Gorge Falls. This was actually closed but a co conspirator and I hopped the barricade. Anything to get a shot for the Gram.

30 minutes later I was back in downtown Ironwood at the local bar & grill. You already know I ordered that bacon cheeseburger and fries along with a little local flavor.