UP – The Upper Peninsula, MI

Will: Munising, MI – We only stayed 2 nights in Munising, but it did not disappoint. The campground was clean and welcoming, although it didn’t have as many amenities as some others. The thing that made Munising very appealing was its 2 boat tours of the area. The first boat tour consisted of many sights along the pictured rocks featuring many unique formations that you wouldn’t really see anywhere else. At one location called chapel cove, the walls had eroded so much that they were slanted in and  looked like they were going to collapse! The other tour featured a glass bottom so that we could see the shipwrecks on the bottom of Lake Superior. It really boggled my mind that there are so many sunken ships at the bottom of Lake Superior. Ships are not really an “expendable” thing, so to have more than 500 of them be at the bottom of one lake is crazy to me. The water levels have probably risen significantly in the past 300 years with how much wood is at the bottom of that lake. The “second mate” on the tour boat was a very funny guy and knew a lot about all of the shipwrecks that we saw. The only REALLY memorable thing on this tour was Cap. John Johnson’s toilet, visible for the world to see, also known as John Johnson’s John. Thank you for reading this short post!!! Hoping you have a wonderful week. Good luck Bowmans (especially Judith) in the play. If you happen to be in the area at the time posted on the RTOP Theatre, please come to their production of Annie to support Judith and Lucy as well as the theatre. Next: Silver Bay, MN. Overall Rating: 8.5/10

Tamsin: We spent the last couple of days in the beautiful UP, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan right on Lake Superior.  People who live up here are called Yoopers and they seem to eat fish and pasties.  It was a short drive so we arrived in the early afternoon allowing time to get the laundry done and watch the rest of Somewhere in Time.  I had kind of remembered that it had a disappointing ending and unsurprisingly it still has a disappointing ending!  As we were driving in and I was learning about the area I found that the National Park Service had an “official concessionaire”, a boat service that takes people by boat to see the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  I decided that we should do that after a quick dinner (while we waited for a storm to pass.)  It did not disappoint.  I think sunset is the perfect time to catch the beauty of the limestone cliffs and the lake.  Thankfully I grabbed a blanket on our way out the door because it was not very warm out on the boat.  The tour took us past an old lighthouse on Grand Island first and then out to see the cliffs.  I probably took way too many pictures but there were many different named formations.  In the gallery of pictures, look for the one I will label Chapel Rock and notice the tree on top, the one with a bald eagle in it.  I am not sure how it will appear in the picture but behind the tree you should see its roots extending to the mainland.  There is not enough soil on chapel rock for the tree to survive so it is connected to the mainland for more nutrients.  The tour guide told us that some of the beaches are only accessible by hiking and that when people get out on those secluded beaches they want to skinny dip and then the boat comes around the corner.  We all laughed but as we came back around on the way back the scouts on the shore took the opportunity to moon us.  Thankfully I wasn’t trying to take a picture and I was the only member of my family to see.  We got to bed late, which we had done a lot lately.

Wednesday dawned quite cool, high of about 60 degrees which dampened interest in going to the beach.  So, we hung around the trailer.  I got caught up on some work and somehow the girls got to watching Descendants movies.  Will and I ran into town to grab a Yooper lunch of fish and pasties. Our glass-bottomed boat Shipwreck Tour was scheduled for 4pm and we managed to make it on time for that.  While still chilly, the sun was shining making the tour reasonably pleasant.  The shipwrecks they took us to see were reasonably interesting, the scenery even more so.  There are SO many shipwrecks, though we only saw two.  When it was our turn, we headed down from the upper deck and looked into the windows at the bottom of the ship.  The first one we saw went down because it was too heavily loaded for a last run before winter and a winter storm came early.  It seemed pretty funny to me that the salvage crew dragged it to a less busy spot before beginning their work.  It was pretty well intact.  The second one we saw was in pieces because it pretty much split apart.  It was a fun tour.  One of our guides said he would play Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald but the boat Captain vetoed him.  We wanted to hear that!  Our tour was 4-6pm so we decided on a quick campfire dinner of hot dogs and s’mores.  By sheer determination I got the kids into bed just a little after 9pm.  I enjoyed just a little extra sleep myself!  

Our stop here was unusually short as we have the opportunity to go to Isle Royale National Park on Saturday and we wanted to get the drive done with plenty of time to spare.