9/25/09 (Saturday): We're in Gladstone, Michigan, at a campground on the shores of Little Bay de Noc (Lake Michigan). Check out the map. It's a rather industrial, down at the heels, little town, with barges loaded down with what looks like coal docked just above us. But the campground looks fairly new and there are lots of nice RVs here. We'll only be here a couple of days, and it's conveniently located. In a later blog, I'll talk about what we did today. But first I want to finish talking about our adventure when we were in Newberry.

Continuing our quest to see as many lighthouses as possible, we drove to Manistique. This lighthouse, unlike many we've visited, is still an active aid to navigation, guiding ships into the Manistique harbor. It dates to 1916. It isn't open to the public. Wiley fished a bit from the breakwater and I walked the beach.

Then we took a very scenic drive to see the Seul Choix (pronounced "sis-shwa) Point Light near Gulliver on Lake Michigan's southern shore. Seul Choix is French for "last chance." Native Americans and French fur traders who crossed the rough waters of Lake Michigan in canoes toward the straits of Mackinac could only find safety in this harbor. It's known as the haunted lighthouse, because visitors and workers have reported strange happenings, including items being moved, footsteps on the lighthouse stairs and the smell of cigars.

We hadn't intended to visist the Soo Locks, but we were so close and had the time, so we dropped by. This ship was just leaving the locks. It was an interesting experience, but the ship moved so slowly that it was a little tedious. The visitor center was interesting. There's some amazing engineering going on at the locks.

You may be wondering why we've done most of our driving and camping along the southern shore of the Upper Peninsula (Lake Michigan) rather than the northern, Lake Superior, shore. Our adventure getting to the Grand Marais lighthouse illustrates the reason for our route. There are almost no paved roads along big stretches of the Lake Superior shore! We drove 20 miles on a dirt road to get to this shot of the Grand Marais lighthouse. There were deep forests and, toward the end of the drive, glimpses of Lake Superior, but there were almost no homes. It was unbelievable that we were still in the Midwest. It was quite an adventure.The leaves are just beginning to change and they look really lovely with the deep green evergreens in the background. We kept a sharp eye out, especially in the open marshy areas for moose, but haven't spotted one yet.

Grand Marais is a funky little town. One of the things we enjoyed was the pickle barrel house. It was built in 1926 for a Chicago Tribune cartoonist and used as a vacation cottage by various others after that. It's really tiny!One last lighthouse in this blog. The Crisp Point Light was also a long drive on a dirt road. It's really hard to believe how wild the Upper Peninsula is! We reached the lighthouse from Paradise, MI. It was an even longer drive on dirt roads than the one to the Grand Marais light. I should have gotten a picture of our truck after this drive--it looked like we'd been mud bogging!One of the highlights of our trip so far was our visit to Tahquamenon (rhymes with phenomenon) Falls. We stopped for gas first and off to one side of the gas station was this humongous log. The attendant told us that it was one of a grove of large trees that had been lumbered in the area.
The falls are the second highest east of the Mississippi. They are tannin colored because the Tahquamenon River flows through lots of forest land. There's an upper falls (above) and a series of smaller cascades called the lower falls (below).The trails to the falls are paved, with stairs, so access is pretty good. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit, which we topped off with some great ice cream in the visitor center.

Hope you enjoyed your visit to some of these beautiful sites in the Upper Peninsula. I'll be blogging again soon about what we've done the last couple of days, so tune again!