rvingwithapurpose

Day 4 in the UP

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!

The operator is really just moving the raft along a cable.

We really enjoyed looking down through the boat at the bubbling sand and huge fish.

The crowds started growing as we were leaving

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.

Manistique LIghthouse. We try to wear red shirts on Fridays (even though one of us usually wear greys and blues) because RED means Remember Everyone Deployed.

Once you get past these first few rocks this is an easy breakwater walk out to the lighthouse.

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!

It was a very nice path to the falls surrounded by large ferns.

Laughing Whitefish Falls from the top viewpoint.

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.

Really, not so much!

Day 3 in the UP

Saturday, August 10, 2024

Thursday morning, we remembered the crowds Wednesday at lower falls, and arrived at the upper Tahquamenon Falls about 8 am. We visited all the lookouts and 92 stairsteps down to the brink and climbed down all the steps of the gorge trail (116 one way) and were almost back to the van before we saw the first person. (416 stairsteps done before breakfast). We saw a total of 6 people on our morning hike. The upper falls are far more impressive than the lower but there is no swimming, so families probably like the lower falls better. The Tahquamenon River feeds the upper and lower falls as it runs north to Lake Superior. The Upper Tahquamenon Falls is Michigan’s largest waterfall. The Upper Falls are nearly 200 feet across and 50 feet high. Each second you spend at the viewing platform, up to 50,000 gallons of water flow down the falls right before your eyes! Pretty impressive.

Upper Falls parking lot at 8:15 am. At Lower Falls the day before people were driving round and round trying to find a place to park.

Some of the steps to the base of Upper Falls

View from the bottom of Upper Falls

After our trip down to Upper Falls, we came back to the campground and cooked up a package of bacon, some of which we saved for future use.

We left Tahquamenon Falls State Park around noon headed for the north shore of the upper peninsula. Two of our Bible study friends, Geane and Bill, recommended we check out Oswald’s Bear Ranch in Newberry, MI. We did and are glad. There are about 40 North American Black bears at the ranch who for many reasons are not able to live in the wild. We could have spent much more time in the park, but we had a boat to catch.

At some of the enclosures there are elevated platforms so visitors can look over the fence.

Visitors can buy apple to feed the bears, so the bears try to look cute so you will feed them.

This little cub looks sad but we have to remember all these bears are rescues and probably would not have survived if not for the ranch. Actually, this cub was on picture duty. Visitors could pay $10 have a picture made with it.

He headed on to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. You may recall we were at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore a few years ago and Sleeping Dunes National Lakeshore earlier in this trip. Those are the only three National lakeshores in the US. You can see a lot of the beauty of the lakeshores from hikes but we decided to do the boat tour at Pictured Rocks. We had a two hour tour on a catamaran and it was great! Pictures really don’t do it justice but it’s the best we have for you.

Examples of some of the colors in the rocks caused by different minerals brought out of the rocks by water seepage.

The captain advised us not to show our love by jumping off Lover’s Leap because the water is on 3′ deep underneath.

The Flower Vase. There is not enough soil on top to keep the tree alive. It depends on the root that extends across to the other rocks. The root developed on a rock bridge that has since collapsed leaving the root in the air.

If you look closely in the previous picture, you can see one of three Bald Eagles we saw on the cruise in the top of the tree.

We also saw this juvenile eagle and one other adult in flight.

Spray Falls and more examples why this is called pictured rocks. Our captain told us people saw all kinds of images in the rocks – from pirates to dinosaurs. He told us one boy said he saw a picture of Dwayne Johnson, but all he really saw was the Rock.

The trip out was cloudy and windy but we were able to get the pictures we wanted. The trip back was rainy so we just looked.

The rain broke long enough to get a picture of the East Channel Lighthouse

Next we headed back south to Lake Michigan and another Boondockers Welcome site.

While we were working on the blog at our site, we got a message from our hosts that there was a rainbow over the lake. Of course we had to rush out and get a picture for you.

Day 2 in the UP

Friday, August 9, 2024

Wednesday morning we left the Walmart parking lot and returned to the Rotary Park thinking it would be nice to watch the ships while we had breakfast. We had breakfast but not a single ship passed by the park. Guess that was why there was nobody else in the park. The locals know the schedules and we obviously did not. We still enjoyed the quietness of the park.

Our next stop was Whitefish Point which is the most northerly point on the east side of the UP, and about 75 miles from the Rotary Park. We enjoyed another beautiful day walking the shore of Lake Superior and admiring the rocks. Whitefish point is also the home to Whitefish Point Lighthouse and Whitefish Point Shipwreck Museum. We arrived just after 3 buses of children arrived – maybe a day camp? Anyway, we decided to view the outside of the buildings and take pictures but did not venture inside. The adults were struggling to herd their cats and we decided to stay out of their way.

This shows how large a ship’s rudder is.

A nice stroll on a pebble beach on Lake Superior

By then it was time for us to go to Tahquamenon Falls – lower falls. We arrived before our check-in time so we would have time to hike to the falls and see everything on the lower end and still have time to be ready for Bible Study. We did not count on the huge crowds of people at the lower falls.

There’s probably many messages in the words on the back of the Lower Falls sign

Tahquamenon Lower Falls. The water is brownish because of all the tannin it picks up coming down the river.

Crowded Lower Falls area

One of the places on the trail not full of people

At 3:00pm and not one minute before, they allowed us to check-in. Very inefficient way they handled the check-in process – but maybe they have their reasons. We made our reservation on Tuesday and got a nice pull through site. The only catch was that the trees had grown from what was shown in the online pictures. Starlink would not work. We thought that would be okay because we had excellent coverage with AT&T and Verizon. We had coverage all afternoon when we were preparing for the meeting but, when everyone else in the campground came home for the night and began streaming, we had nothing. We quickly drove to the front parking lot and set up Starlink with about five minutes to spare. Then, while we were streaming our meeting, there were some loud noises outside our window. We then noticed the big green steel box in the parking lot with us. It was a firewood dispensing machine. Insert you credit card or 6 dollars cash and there is a loud thump, you open the door and there is your neatly wrapped bundle of firewood. This was our first experience with automated firewood dispensers, but others obviously knew all about them. There was a steady line of trucks and cars purchasing firewood Wednesday night. Just added a little extra laughter to our meeting.

We are enjoying our visit to the UP. In some ways it reminds us of our 2014 Alaska trip. Beautiful scenery. For the most part quiet and peaceful.

First Day In The UP (Upper Peninsula)

Thursday, August 8, 2024

Tuesday, after crossing the Mackinac Bridge, we stopped at the St. Ignace Welcome Center. This may be strike three for us but again the Welcome Center was closed – on a Tuesday. Sign said closed Tuesday and Wednesday. How is one supposed to know these things? There were a few brochures outside that helped. However, without any help, we found the Wild Blueberry Breakfast and Bakery. We did have to turn around because we didn’t see it quickly enough. Yes, it was very good.

Traveling in BB makes essential u-turns easy.

The blueberry cream cheese croissant did not survive long enough for the picture.

Next stop was the Wawatam Lighthouse in St. Ignace. This is where we ate our first pastry. We also met a little four-year-old girl who didn’t have a shy bone in her body, and was spending the week with her grandparents. She introduced us to them. Thought we were going to spend the day at the lighthouse listening to her talk.

Just a few miles later we stopped at Castle Rock. We had been told it was sort of a “road side attraction”. It costs $1 to climb to the top of Castle Rock (171 steps) and from there, you could see for many miles on this beautiful day. It was also a big souvenir shop and no we didn’t buy anything but our ticket to climb the rock. The people were very nice and friendly. We decided we really liked the little town of St. Ignace.

Anne loves all these steps we keep finding.

After climbing the steps, you walk out this boardwalk to the top of the rock.

The real purpose of this little side trip was to get to the Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. This has been a long-term bucket list item. A lot of you probably don’t know that we owned a boat at one time and considered buying a larger boat and doing the Great Loop instead of buying an RV. That’s when we learned a lot about the locks and dams and became interested in the Soo Locks. The Soo Locks raise and lower boats between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes and complete more than 7,000 vessel passages every year moving over 75 million tons of cargo. Vessels locking through vary in size from small private boats to 1,000 foot long ships carrying up to 77,000 tons of freight in a single load. Currently there are only two locks operational because two others were torn out and they are building one larger lock. There is a large viewing platform where you can watch the huge ships and small boats like we owned, lock through. Interesting to us was that the huge ships lock through basically the same as we do in a little boat. Anyway – it was a fun afternoon for us.

The Soo Locks

One 1,000 foot ship can haul as much as 700 train cars or 3,000 large trucks.

Ship and tour boat leaving the two operational locks at the same time

From the Soo Locks, we drove to the Rotary Island Park in Sault Ste. Marie to just have a little rest and eat dinner before we headed to Walmart for groceries and a good night’s sleep. It was another very nice day – and it’s finally cool enough for jackets.