One of the reasons I travel is for the spirit of facing the road and life with a positive attitude, and another is for the joy of seeing the landscape unfold. If that’s part of your driving psyche, too, you’ll feel right at home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, or “The UP” as the locals call it. Stretching 310 miles from Sault Ste. Marie near its eastern end to Ironwood near its western border, it is a wilderness separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Mackinac Bridge and from Detroit (293 miles to the south) by major cultural differences.
I was born and raised in the western Lower Peninsula of Michigan, and I can remember in elementary school singing the unofficial state song, “Michigan, My Michigan” (to the tune of “Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum“). In the 1970s I used to travel to UP for vacations. Despite moving to California over 30 years ago, I keep coming back to my hometown, but I hadn’t been back to UP since 1975. So I was especially excited with the opportunity to travel there for a few fall days last October.
On this latest ride, I found the UP refreshingly unchanged, and instead of my early-’70s Honda CB450, I was now riding a loaner Electra Glide Classic from Bald Eagle Harley-Davidson in Marquette. I was also joined by Brad Kolbus, from Munising, in his Road King; he publishes a guide for UP cyclists, seems to know everyone and knows where to ride and what to see.
Right after we started riding along the shoreline of Lake Superior in Marquette Bay, I immediately stopped Brad in a vision straight out of a Star Wars movie to ask, “What the hell is that?” that“It was a huge, massive, gray structure, hundreds of feet long, a succession of tall, close-set concrete arches extending into the water. Brad informed me it was the old Lower Harbor Ore Dock, now It’s no longer the Railroad.Cartloads of iron ore were diverted onto it, workers lowered ramps, and ore rattled noisily into the holds of the huge ore carriers that used to dock here.
Next we ride west, where we notice signs of the upcoming fall season: pontoon boats on blocks, firewood neatly stacked on porches, and leaves turning yellow. We got to Big Bay; this small town was the scene of a 1951 murder that inspired the book Anatomy of a Murder and the 1959 film of the same name starring Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick. We had lunch at the Thunder Bay Inn, which was the setting for scenes from the classic movie. The pub we ate in was built in the hotel for the filming.
Although Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are known as “The Great Lakes,” they are actually large inland seas. In Munising, I boarded a 60-foot observation boat for a cruise along Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The captain informs us that Superior only contains enough fresh water to cover the entire continental United States down to a depth of 5 feet! It’s cool and windy today, and once we leave Grand Island, we’re on Lake Superior proper, where the waves begin to rock and roll. Most patrons leave the cold, windswept open viewing area at the top for glassed-in seats on the main deck, as I consider abandoning my lunch overboard. Throughout Pictured Rocks, we get a humorous comment about rocky cliffs that have been eroded by eons of wind, rain, and freezing weather, and painted in shades of browns, tans, and greens by limonite runoff. copper, iron and manganese. We sail past caves, arches and a rock called Cabeza del Indio. A wide transparent waterfall falls like a veil from the ridged cliffs.
The next day Brad and I traveled east from Munising on the M28 along what is called “the Seney stretch”, a straight 25 miles through bushland filled with trees and stunted pines. Thirty-odd years ago I stopped in Seney to commemorate that it was right here, where Highway 28 and Highway 77 intersect, that a young Ernest Hemingway had disembarked from the train in 1919. Wounded in World War I, Hemingway had walked north to fish the Fox River, and would later fictionalize the experience in one of his Nick Adams stories called The great river of two hearts. But wait, Two Heart is actually quite north of here; Was Hemingway wrong? No. Like a true fisherman, he had misnamed the river in an attempt to keep his favorite fishing spot a secret.
We drive east on a tree-lined two-lane road, and as we pass the Deer Park sign, I remember camping near it at Muskextension Lake in the 1970s. My evening was enlivened when five raccoons came puffing up from the lake, begging on its hind legs. I gave them some bread and half an hour later I was toasting marshmallows over the fire when something hit me on the shoulder. Startled, I turned to find a raccoon, and when I turned around, another was running with the toasted marshmallow as two others scrambled into the darkness with the entire bag between them. They don’t wear those bandit masks for nothing!
Lake Superior is cold, gray, and blanketed in white on this windy day, and when it starts to rain, I huddle in my electrical gear and turn up the thermostat to “weld.” The Classic’s fairing and underbody shield me from the worst weather, and Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting directorial “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” plays through the stereo on our trip to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. The song recounts the maritime disaster that occurred on November 10, 1975, when the ore carrier sank in a storm with all 29 men, just 17 miles northwest of here.
In the museum’s boathouse I meet with Tom Farnquist, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. There is speculation that the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was too close to Caribou Island, about 40 miles northeast of here, where 35-foot swells in 45-foot water allowed the carrier to bottom out, damaging its hull and causing it to capsize. fill with water She eventually broke in two and sank in 535 feet of water off Whitefish Point. Farnquist dove into the wreck and personally helped recover the ship’s bell, which now comprises the centerpiece of the museum.
Dinner was at Antlers restaurant in Sault Ste. Marie, which was packed this Friday night. Yes, it’s a Yooper’s place, with trophy heads and stuffed animals arranged along the walls and between the rafters. Suddenly, a siren sounds, the lights flash, and we ask the waitress what the hell is going on. “Oh, they do it every time they open a new barrel,” she explains.
In the morning we walked across the road from our motel to see the famous Soo Locks. Unfortunately, at this particular time there is not a ship in sight. The International Bridge looms in the distance with Canada across the way.
It’s about a 55 mile freeway trip south to the Mackinac Bridge, then we turn west on Highway 2 through low scrub with Lake Michigan on our left. At Blaney Park, Brad introduces me to Steve Zellar, who runs an annual motorcycle event called The Blaney Park Rendezvous. He gives us a tour of his vast campground that accommodated 3,000 riders last year; his 2010 rally will take place June 18-20.
The thumb-shaped Garden Peninsula dangles into Lake Michigan and is home to Fayette State Historic Park. Fayette was established in 1867 as an iron foundry operation with huge furnaces, a sprawling dock, and living quarters; about 500 people lived and worked here. When the market for coal iron declined, the operation was discontinued in 1891, and Fayette was abandoned. Today, it has been left as a detained ruin, a gift from the past with its unpainted foreman’s houses, old hotel and stone remains of the castle-like foundry in picturesque Snail Shell Harbor.
We stop in Nahma at the Nahma Inn, a bed and breakfast with 14 charming rooms and a full bar and restaurant. Brad introduces me to the owners Charley and Laurie Macintosh (he seems to know everyone) who are planning a bike event there in the near future. Next door is the old general store, which was abandoned in the 1950s with some of its merchandise still intact. Its owner, a gentleman named Pat, gives us a tour of the inside of his time capsule.
Brad takes us on the H13 north to Alger County, and this fall Sunday afternoon we enjoy the turning leaves as the Harley feels surprisingly agile following the hills and gentle curves of the road. Every few miles, a trail or two leads into the yellow forest, where dirt bikes and muddy ATVs disappear; we long to follow them into the forest.
From there it is to the west that we visit the Da Yoopers tourist trap near Ishpeming. As an ex-Michigander, it was as cheesy as I’d hoped, with life-size dioramas of a Jeep being driven by a deer with a hunter tied to the hood, deer playing cards, the place littered with Yooper stickers and memorabilia. . In front is “Gus”, the world’s largest working/working chainsaw (it’s in The Guinness Book of Records), and “Big Ernie”, the largest working rifle.
The Fayette ghost town serves as a symbol for much of the UP which, sadly, is suffering financially.
Along the roads are abandoned houses and factories. Tourism is now the main economic engine for the area, and the UP has a lot to love about it. For me, the real charm of the place, with its pines and cedars, maples and birches, hidden lakes and bays, and rustic cabins, is how it all comes together. On this autumn Sunday we drive up the back roads to The Up North Lodge near Gwinn. Sunlight dapples the red and yellow maple leaves, and there’s a cool moisture in the air from a recent passing shower. We cheat on the inside when the fragrance of wood smoke billows from the stone fireplace. Many customers turn to nod and greet us. Burgers and haddock, ribs, white and pearl fish populate the menu, and a football game lights up the big screen. This cozy, rustic friendliness confirms that this is still Michigan…my Michigan.
