My cousin Jean was 18 years old the day I was born, and she joined the army 8 months later. Two years after that, she married her sweetheart and moved to Wisconsin. Needless to say, I never knew my cousin. We met for the first time at her mom’s memorial service about 10 years ago. We decided we needed to connect and planned to do so at some time in the future which finally happened this week…
Continue reading “On Wisconsin: Pelican Lake and the Apostle Islands”
The ‘Simply Superior, part 1’ title for the earlier post started out as a joke – I saw it on a roadway sign and thought it sounded cool. Yet, there is decidedly an eastern and a western UP – we’re not sure where the line is. We clearly crossed the line somewhere between Munising and Marquette, MI. Both halves share the beauty of Lake Superior and its shoreline, a penchant for winter sports (the locals talk wistfully about snowmobiling and ice fishing all summer), and the highest average daily spotting of tourists driving around in RVs since we started this adventure. The Hiawatha National Forest with its endless views of flat terrain, scrub pines and wetlands dominates the eastern half and most of the towns cater to tourists whether lake or snow related. The western half is all about mining (and evidence of its related current or former prosperity) and higher education. The terrain becomes hilly and the forests more deciduous. Hard to explain, but palpable…
A useful mnemonic for the names of the five Great Lakes:
Huron
A quick scan of the pantry revealed that we were getting low on grains. As Vermont-hippy-vegetarians, grains are of course a mainstay of our diet and we needed to find a natural food store to replenish. I googled it and found two natural food stores in the UP, the nearest an organic grocery in downtown Sault (pronounced Soo) Ste Marie, the other a coop in Marquette, a few days west. We’d gone back and forth on whether or not to visit The Soo, another post-industrial-turned-tourist city, but nevertheless we needed food and we set a course…
Although we’re not much for planning our itinerary, we did plan to stay at Straits State Park on the shores of the Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Straits, and visit Mackinac Island on a weekday. The State Park is a destination in itself – gorgeous views of Mackinac Straights, Lake Huron and the Mackinac Bridge just a few steps from our campsite. It’s also walking distance from downtown St. Ignace, home to 3 ferries, 2 Native American museums and several nice restaurants.
Recall from a previous post, we put friends’ recommendations for places to visit in MI on a map and tried to visit most of them. Jula, a friend from VT, suggested several, including 3 in NW MI – amazingly varied, totally cool places to visit. Thanks Jula, you nailed it!
Since we left in May, we’ve been following the wind and the music and making up our itinerary as we go along. We’ve stayed at an interesting mix of campgrounds, friends’ and family driveways and alternative ‘boondocking’ sites. That worked just fine until we hit MI in July… Kids are out of school, campgrounds in MI are awesome and popular, and State Parks are sold out until well after Labor Day on weekends. We arrived in NW MI and found zero camping options, yet plenty of places we wanted to visit over the weekend. What are a couple of Destinators to do?
We left Ann Arbor with a round of hugs and no plan. We wanted to make our way to see Great Lake Michigan and eventually see Sleeping Bear Dunes. So, point the rig northwest and drive.
