It’s taken 66 years for this native Michigander to make it to the Upper Peninsula. Quite the culture shock going from the upper-lower Peninsula (around Traverse City, Charlevoix, Harbor Springs). No more fruit stands, picture perfect farmsteads, manicured villages. As we’d been told, the UP, at least where we’ve been, along the Lake Superior coast, is much wilder, densely wooded, sparsely populated, with the occasional rough looking trailer or house, ammo stores, and way too many Trump signs. But once we got to the shoreline, I understood what the fuss is about. The landscape is spectacular, especially along Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
Grand Marais, a windswept outpost, is the gateway to the eastern entice to the shoreline. There wasn’t much to the town, beyond the exquisite scenery. We drove west to sable falls, a pretty waterfall in the woods, one of many up here but the real stunner was the view of the dunes from Log Slide overlook. From on high we looked out at a crescent shaped ball of dazzling green and blue water with steep dunes rising up from the shore line. (We also stopped at Tahquamenon Falls en route to Grand Marais, which rootbeer-colored water that reminded us of falls in northern Minnesota.)
Next stop, nearby twelvemile beach, where the water was surprisingly warm and the flies surprisingly undeterred by bug spray, alas. We stayed long enough to collect some rocks in so many astonishing color combinations (this is agate country, although I don’t know how to spot one.)
We are staying in a sweet little cottage Airbnb outside Marquette, In a rural county road. Dinner was a long haul to the very atmospheric Lumberjack Tavern, north of Marquette in Bay City which has an interesting claim to fame. Not only was it the scene of a murder in 1952 and a subsequent 1959 Otto Preminger movie about that murder, filmed onsite, starring Jimmy Stewart, George c. Scott, Lee Remnick, Ben gazzara and even Duke Ellington called Anatomy of a Murder. It’s very much a local hangout. We sat at high top shellacked rough edged wood tables and had a good bacon cheeseburger and watched the Lions on TV. When in Rome, err, the UP.
TakeBetsywithyou 