Saturday, August 10, 2024
(We spent today trying to get caught up so we are posting twice tonight)
We had a peaceful Thursday night at our Boondockers Welcome site, but were up bright and early to go to Kitch-iti-kipi (The Big Spring) at Palms Book State Park. The park opened at 8:00 and we were there at 8:07. We had been forewarned about long lines at the spring. Kitch-iti-kipi (Chippewa for The Great Water or The Roaring Bubbling Spring) is two hundred feet across, and 40 feet deep. It is Michigan’s largest freshwater spring. 10,000 gallons of crystal-clear water per minute gush from fissures in the underlying limestone. The flow continues throughout the year at a constant 45 degrees. Visitors to the park can step onto a self-operated raft and float out over the spring and watch the water bubble up through the sand. You can also see huge fish swimming over the spring eruptions. Our raft had 10 people. (By the time we left there was probably 40 people on each raft trip.) Everyone was just looking around and no one was propelling the raft so Anne read the directions (of course) and then started moving us out over the spring by turning the big wheel. Soon everyone wanted a turn at “skippering” our raft which was fine because we all wanted time to watch the spring erupt too. A number of years ago we did a lot of scuba diving and watching the spring was very similar to diving in one of the Florida springs. The unique thing here was the self-propelled raft so anyone could see the spring. Very cool!
From Kitch-iti-kipi, we drove to the Manistique Lighthouse. It was said it was painted “fire engine red.” It was beautiful in the morning sun. We were able to walk out the breakwater to the light, but it is not open for tours. We spent most of the rest of the morning walking the beach and looking at the rocks. The Great Lake beaches are covered with all sorts and colors of rocks and you can see many people picking up the stones. It’s not illegal most places.
After leaving the beach, we headed northwest to Marquette and stopped at the Laughing Whitefish Falls State Park. The road turned to dirt a mile or so before we arrived. It had been raining earlier so BB isn’t very clean right now. The hike to the falls is about a mile round trip, BUT to go to the bottom of the falls there are 157 steps – one way, so total of 314. Max just loves finding steps for us to climb. Oh well – building muscles. The falls got their name from the Laughing White Fish River, which got its name from the Native Americans who thought the mouth of the river looks like a laughing whitefish. On the way back to the van, it began raining again. YUK!
We drove on into Marquette and it was still raining. The forecast was for more rain. We decided it was a good afternoon to do laundry and found a very nice laundromat (although expensive) across the road from Walmart.
RVing With a Purpose 