We stayed on Lake Superior at a township park in Ontonagon, Michigan. The park employees were very nice, and it was reasonably priced especially since we were right on the water. We were able to open the patio and see the lake out the back. As Evelyn mentioned, we rented kayaks and a canoe and paddled around the lake. Renee and I paddled to a small lighthouse while the kids returned their canoe. We got back just before a large rainstorm hit.
I rode my bike around the town a few times. It's very small. There is a nice walking trail in the woods adjacent to the campground. It was an Eagle scout project. It is very quiet due to the tree canopy, and it feels like a rain forest. We walked Sammy there off-leash several times, and he enjoyed it.
One of the campground employees recommended getting a pasty. It's basically a meat pie with some vegetables. We had seen signs around town advertising pastys, and I wondered what they were. I thought they had misspelled a different word, and I wasn't sure that we should ask about them. However, we got a few at a local church along with some homemade soup. It was good. You don't typically see pasties at a church.
We also visited the Quincy copper mine in Hancock about an hour from Ontonagon. They have a cog railway car that takes visitors into the mine. The original deep shafts are mostly filled with water, but the shaft we entered was about 400 feet below the surface. There is a room carved out of the rock that was used as a classroom for mining students. They would study in the classroom and then practice what they learned in the mine. On the surface there are many buildings to tour, including a huge steam hoist in the main building.
After Ontonagon, we traveled east along the top of the MI rabbit (upper peninsula) to Sault Sainte Marie to see the locks and the Valley Camp, a Great Lakes freighter ship that was turned into a museum. Along the way we stopped at Pictured Rocks on the south shore of Lake Superior near Munising. It's a national lakeshore known for its multicolored rock cliffs. We stopped long enough to hike around and take a few pictures. The view would have been better from the water, but we didn't want to spend the time nor money on a tour.
We stayed at the Aune-Osborn campground on the St. Mary's river. It's close to the locks run by the Army corps of engineers. Late that evening Shane and I watched a freighter travel up the river to the locks. We visited the Valley Camp museum ship the next day, Oct 5. The interior of the ship has been converted into a museum with many exhibits from ships that have traveled on the Great Lakes. There is also one of the lifeboats from the Edmund Fitzgerald on display. We filled out the scavenger hunt questions. I like doing those. We checked out the locks and watched two freighters make their way through the locks from the lake into the river. It was fun. We had dinner across the street at Lockview Restaurant. The food was very good.
We had a campfire that night, but the wood did not burn very well (foreshadowing a recurring theme for the next few weeks). Against my better judgement I drained some gas from the toy fuel tank and used it to encourage the wood to burn. While visually spectacular, the end result was no better.
On Oct 6 we traveled to Mackinaw city and stayed in a KOA not far from the ferry that travels to Mackinac Island. The mainland and the island have period recreations, including Fort Mackinac on the island. The cost of the ferry plus tickets to tour the fort informed our decision to stay on the mainland. We visited the shops on the town and then checked out a lighthouse near the campground. Unfortunately Renee was stung by a yellow jacket several times and suffered from pain and swelling for a few days. Sammy enjoyed playing in the water. As they say around the lakes, no sharks and no salt.
At the campground we watched a movie on the TV mounted on the side of the toy hauler for the first time. It was pretty silly. Combining that with the gas fire, all we would need is to crank up Def Leppard to truly demonstrate our inner rednecks.
On Oct 8 we traveled south to Belleville, MI to spend time at the Henry Ford Museum. I'll cover that in another post.
Eric
Thank you for continuing the blog, and I enjoyed those spots of Eric humor!
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed this blog. Keep sharing.
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