If we had to have rain, Marquette was the place to have it. The small city, the U.P.’s largest city, is full of great shops, cool old buildings, beautiful views of the water.
Fortunately the rain held off until after we visited the famous Miners Castle, a tall tower of water sculpted rock that’s a highlight of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The easy to access overlook also offers a sunning view of the high wall of orange-pink stone rising above the dazzling green and blue water of Lake Superior.
Rain halted our plan to hang out at Miners Beach although we did manage to picnic near the beach before the downpour. The storm made the scenery even more dramatic (that’s the bright way of seeing things) with the sky its own drama of clouds, mist, from dark grey to light grey to bright white.
I’d been told I’d like Marquette and I do! It’s an interesting and attractive place with college kids (this is the home of Northern Michigan University), artists, makers and, I’ve been told, Democrats! (Amen.) the city reminds us a bit of Duluth, with lots of grand old buildings in town and industrial fishery/mining buildings on the water. It also has a gorgeous park with jagged black rocks north of town on Presque Isle, where daredevil kids jump off high black rocks into the cold water.
Favorite shops/restaurants: baby cakes muffins (also excellent takeaway sandwiches, lemonade), zero degrees gallery (in the cool third Street corridor), the thoughtfully curated Snowbound books, Marquette co-op (which reminded me of the coop in Iowa City). We also enjoyed the Saturday farmers market (lots of flowers and tomatoes but no fruit, which I’ve been craving). We had a great dinner at Vierling brewery, a famous old place in a brick building by the waterfront, it was packed at 6:39 on. A Saturday but we found two seats at the bar and I had absolutely delicious whitefish piccata with wild rice.
FRom the Port Isaac car park (where we left our car with help from our kind host Michael), we drove to the amusingly named village of Pityme to pick up some tshirts for the kids at the brewery that makes the popular local beer, Doom Bar (another great name…named after a treacherous sandbank in the local Camel estuary.) Then onto the town of Rock (where we were told the young royals vacation) to take a sweet little ferry across the river, winding through several sandbars to the tourist town of Padstow. Quite a change — pretty place but far more touristy. We had excellent Fish and Chips from the town’s major food entrepreneur Rick Stein, plus ice cream at his deli.
Our one misstep was trying to drive to the Lizard, way down in the south, which we realized was too far so we turned back and drove to tiny Port Quinn where we bumped into our host Michael drinking wine with two friends while sitting on a little rocky landing in front of the tiny undeveloped harbor where a few kayakers were finishing for the night. We ended up joining them for some wine and kibitzing. A perfect end to a perfect day.
TakeBetsywithyou 