8/18/14 - The day
cleared and under cool weather and mostly blue skies, a free shuttle picked us
up and delivered us dockside in St. Ignace for the ferry over to Mackinac
(pronounced mackinaw) Island, the famous resort of the rich and glamorous where
horseless carriages have been banned since they briefly first appeared.
Bikes, feet, and horse-drawn carriages are the way to get
around, and all are evident here in vast hordes, especially in town and the
principal route around this small island. As our bikes were in need of serious
TLC after months of rain and sludge on the bikerack, we left them on the rig
and rented after disembarking. Our error was probably in blindly selecting a
tandem model instead of a pair of lightweight mountain bikes. The one they
prepped for us was a heavy-duty cruiser style with Texas longhorn handlebars,
which I was unable to get astride in front without assistance. Nancy wisely
refused that spot. Despite seven speeds, the thing was so ungainly to propel
forward that once in motion, it seemed the only way to keep it going straight
and stay upright was to keep it moving as fast as possible. In this vein, we
embarked from town clockwise along the road encircling Mackinac, weaving and
bobbing through the throngs of families slowly meandering along on bikes, with
strollers, and the occasional horsedrawn carriage. People stopped everywhere,
to take in the sights, build rock cairns on the shoreline, or even make the
occasional plunge into icy Lake Huron. We barreled on, praying we wouldn’t mow
anybody down in the process. A pretty route, but I was overjoyed to arrive back
in town and get rid of the iron monster.
Once on foot and splitting an ice cream, we strolled up to
see the Grand Hotel of ‘Somewhere in Time’ fame, but since they charge just to
enter the grounds, and neither of us had seen the movie, we did not dally
there.
We headed instead over to Fort Mackinac. Since we had
visited Fort Joseph in Canada, tying the two stories together was intriguing.
Unlike the Canadian fort, Mackinac was a full reconstruction, so you could
visit all the buildings and walk the palisades and fortifications. They had
period-costumed soldiers demonstrating the firing of breech-load muskets,
cannon, etc, and like at Joseph, a film describing the history. Both forts had
been built by the British, but Mackinac was ceded to the Americans after the
Revolution. The British retook it in the War of 1812, as it was more defensible
than Fort Joseph, and after a failed attempt to retake it by the Americans in
1814, the Americans then burned down Fort Joseph. Of course, after the war, it
was returned to the US where it was considered a highly desirable posting among
the military.
After leaving the fort and window-shopping along the
waterfront, we ducked into a restaurant for an early dinner as the weather
began to get dicey outside, then grabbed the next ferry back to St. Ignace. The
shuttle driver dropped us off right in front of our rig.
8/19/14 – Our goal in the next few days is Langford Lake, a
small lake in the middle of nowhere – or conveniently close to Watersmeet in
the far western part of the U.P., depending on your perspective. Nancy’s folks
used to have some cabins lakeside here, which they would visit summers while
living in Chicago and Detroit. It seems there is a tiny U.S.F.S campground here
now, which we will try to find. Our route takes us out the 2, right outside our
campground, west for about 60 miles, at which point we turn north on the 77.
Although it sprinkled on and off over night, now that we are on the road, the
rain is pretty steady, as we pull into
the Seney National Wildlife Refuge visitor center. This is primarily a bird
sanctuary, with many wetland areas recovered from a previously logged-out
tract. A series of dams and sluices are used to control water levels at various
times of year to optimize conditions for nesting, breeding, fish populations,
etc. Besides the many waterfowl, there are bald eagles, osprey, beavers,
wolves, etc. Unfortunately, with the rain, we mostly saw the visitor center,
and whatever was visible from the rig.
We continued, turning west on the 28 to Munising, on Lake
Superior, and during a lull in the storm, visited several waterfalls in the
area, Munising, Wagner, and Tannery. These were all pretty, but most
interesting was the rock layers exposed which created the falls.
On westward to a wilder shore of Lake Superior, where we
stopped to walk the beach and put our hands in the lake under blue sky and
billowing clouds.
When we reached Marquette, we ran into a traffic jam, tied
up solid. Thanks to OsmAnd, we were able to route ourselves through side
streets around the mess, and continued on the 28. At this point, however, the
returning rain went from steady to deluge status, making driving dicey at best.
We made it through, though, and on to Van Riper State Park, on Michigamme Lake,
where we set up camp, stretched our legs strolling around the lakeshore a bit,
and retired.
8/20/14 – Headed on west on the 28, stopping to check out
Agate Falls…
… then shortly south on the 45. We strolled around the Bond
Falls area, pretty falls and surrounding feeder streams…
… then continued south to Watersmeet, where we turned west
again on the 2, about 10 miles to the turnoff south to Langford Lake. After
scraping past protruding branches and sloshing thru rain-muddied roads, we
turned into the Langford Lake campground and chose a spot with a great view of
the lake. We were the only ones around. Well, we were the only human campers,
but the mosquitos were in full swarm! By checking maps, Nancy’s and her
brother’s memories, and Google Earth, we were pretty certain the ancestral
vacation cabins of her family were located in close proximity to the
campground. In fact trespassing onto the posted private property adjacent, we
were reasonably convinced we had found the spot.
Emboldened, as nobody was home, we continued our safari into
the property adjacent to that, where a lady came out of the house and asked if
she could help us? And, indeed she did! Inviting us in for coffee and cookies,
she confirmed that we were correct, and filled us in on the entire history of
the place after Nancy’s family sold it. Later we returned to the rig, spending
much of the evening doing battle with those mosquitos who managed to breach our
perimeter.
