Today we continued our drive westward across the top of the U.P., largely along the shoreline of Lake Superior. We passed through the little town of Christmas, Michigan where it’s the festive season all year around!
The 52-year-old welder, Tom Lakenen is the founder and owner of Lakenenland, a drive-through sculpture park in the Upper Peninsula woods just east of Marquette. The park’s 37 acres are populated by dozens of large iron figures of pigs and dragons, flying saucers and sunflowers, mermaids and pink elephants, all standing at various intervals alongside a winding road. We drove through the park, a bit gobsmacked at the extent of the man’s work
In the larger town of Marquette, we stopped to take a look at their lovely red lighthouse, perched on a point overlooking the lake.
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — the U.P. — is a land of snow, mosquitoes, pasties, smelt, and Bosch beer. And Da Yoopers Tourist Trap explains it to all who would venture to this outpost on the edge of civilization. The Yooper dialect is a hybrid that you’re not likely to hear anywhere else. If you go to the UP, you might stumble on some words and pronunciations you’ve never heard before. Strong Finnish and Scandinavian roots in the region have affected language: for instance, you’ll hear “d” for “th” (“dere” for there, “dat” for “that”).
We stopped in to check out the offernings and to use the free “Batrooms” ! It was one of those quirky roadside stores that sells all sorts of tourist tat, but this one also provides a little entertaiunment for the traveler with a some of those “Big Things” that can’t help but make you smile. Here we had “Big Gus”, the chainsaw and a Big Adirondak Chair.
We were ready for our usual lunchtime picnic when we arrived in the riverside town of Houghton Michigan.
After lunch we crossed the river and headed for the Isle Royale Seaplane base to catch our ride to Isle Royale National Park. Isle Royale is a rugged, isolated island, far from the sights and sounds of civilization, only accessible by boat or seaplane. Surrounded by Lake Superior, it offers unparalleled solitude. They weighed our luggage and soon we were boarding the plane with a couple from Traverse City who were heading to the Island for a few days of backcountry hiking.
The flight was great fun, flying out across the mainland and out over the expanse of Lake Superior. We all wore headphones so that we could hear the pilot and life jackets in the ( hopefully unlikely!) event that we had to go down into the lake. For some distance we could see nothing but water, it really brought home to me again how vast the lake is!
Finally we spotted the island coming up ahead of us and we swung around to land in the long sheltered inlet that lies behind the peninsula where Rock harbor is located.
Rock Harbor Lodge is the only accommodation on the island but there are many campgrounds and keen hikers can be dropped here or at the bottom tip of the island at Windigo Bay. There are three ferry services a day that come to the island from two ports in Michign and one in Minnesota. We’re actually much closer to Minnesota here than Michigan and we’re closer to Canada that Michigan too! In fact as we flew across the lake Neil received a text on his phone from Telstra, welcoming him to Canada! Once we arrived on the island though we lost all signal, so were having an Internet detox while we are here. We decided to use the Seaplane service to get here as it’s so much faster than the ferries, giving us more time on the island and also, for the fun of it!
The baggage service is great here to. A guy from the lodge came down and shuttled our bags direct to our room. When we leave tomorrow we leave our bags in our locked room when we check out and they will transport the bags to the plane dock. After we arrived we were required to check in with the park rangers office and received a welcome briefing. We’ve never struck this before in any of the national parks, but because this one is really so much wilderness they want to make sure you know the ropes before you go out hiking. Of course, it’s really more relevent for people doing overnight camps etc – lots of advice on filtering and boiling water etc.
Our room is in one of the lodge buildings set right on the water, with a lovely view of the lake from our little verandah.
We wandered around the Rock Harbor area and then bought ourselves a bottle of wine from the shop to enjoy on our verandah before going down to the restaurant for dinner.
The service was a bit slow (unusual for the USA!) but when it finally came I really enjoyed my chicken pasta. We sat out on the verandah watching the stars come out but we were both nodding in our chairs before long so we called it quits. Looking forward to some hiking tomorrow.