Epic Summer Road Trip (Days 38 - 40): Exploring the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (i.e. becoming a Yooper)

We left our beautiful campsite in the Waterloo Rec Area (Sugarloaf North Campground) and were on the road by about 9:30.  I'm realizing that the longer the kids stay up at night, the harder it is to get them up in the morning.  They have no respect for break of dawn.  We spent most of the day driving up to Alpena, Michigan which is on the northwestern bank of Lake Huron.  No one jumped into Huron (despite pleas from Drew), but we did manage to stick our hands in the water and found it surprisingly warm.  The drive was not very eventful, but I did notice that there were still many family-owned farms which had beautiful farm houses as part of the homestead property that were in pretty good shape.  It looked like Southern Cayuga County about 30-40 years ago or how I used to imagine that area as a kid.

Dad's homemade Canadian Bacon

Our campground was an RV park that butted up against a lake and was nothing special except for the fact that it had an indoor swimming pool and an arcade room for the kids to enjoy and waste their money on.  We dropped off the camper at our site and headed back into Alpena to check out Lake Huron, get some groceries, and check out the cool Maritime museum which happened to be free!  The museum was basically a tribute to all of the ships that had crashed, burned, stranded, etc. throughout the Great Lakes.  Pretty good exhibit, though!

On Tuesday, we started our journey to the U.P.  I'm pretty sure there is a lot of trash talking between those that are below the Mackinac Bridge and those that reside above it due to all the nicknames and jokes we heard about each region.  Not quite the hatred between Upstate New Yorkers and those from NYC, but still a simmering rivalry.  I didn't do a ton of research on the matter, though.   Too much to see!  Our first trek was crossing the incredibly long Mackinac Bridge which is used to separate Lake Huron from Lake Michigan.  I'm not sure how a bridge can separate water like that, but I guess it's some sort of modern miracle.

We stopped at a National Forest HQ to make sure we had a hard copy of a Michigan map just in case cell service was spotty as well as find out some cool places to do the next day since the plan was to spend two days at Indian Lake Campground just west of the town of Manistique, MI.  The rangers recommended heading up to Munising, MI which is off of Lake Superior and about 45 miles north of where we were staying.  It seemed like a pretty easy drive even though we were trying to avoid doing any long distances to give our weary traveling heads a rest.  I asked the two rangers if there were any good pasty restaurants in Munising and they couldn't think of any, but they each had their own opinion on whether a beef or chicken pasty was better.  A pasty is basically a potpie formed in the shape of a squished softball which were once used to feed miners as they worked in the mines.  They are incredible hardy and filling.  As Olivia would put it, "a gut bomb."  It's also not pronounced like the stickers that exotic dancers put over their nipples, but with a short "a" which rhymes with lastly.  Don't shoot the messenger, but now you know.

We made our way to the campground and I set up camp in our second site location after seeing that our first site location had neighbors which included 4 dogs and 3 guys sitting around a fire drinking beer about 10 yards from our camp site.  I felt like I needed a bit more privacy even if it meant camping further away from the lake and into mosquito territory.  We, at least, came armed with bug spray even if we didn't have any neighbor spray.  Once camp was set up, we set out for Kitch-iti-kipi spring.  I can now say it the first time without screwing up the pronunciation, but don't ask me to say it three times in a row.  Kitch-iti-kipi is a freshwater spring located in the middle of nowhere.  What makes this spring so cool (literally and figuratively) is that the water pools up in this gigantic pond and it is perfectly clear so you can see down to the bottom even at 45+ feet  There are these huge trout that swim around and you can see the bottom of the pond billow as the spring continuously emits water.  There is a covered "barge" with an open bottom that can be hand-pulled out to the middle through the use of a cable and pulley system.  Truly a sight to behold.  My photos cannot do it justice.

I treated the kids to some chili-dogs for dinner and some decent corn on the cob, before heading off to bed.  This was the first night that we didn't really need any air conditioning and I realized that I was cold in the middle of the night after leaving the windows of the camper open.  Hot summer nights elude the U.P.

The next morning, the kids were extra lethargic so I let them sleep in until about 9:30.  We needed to do laundry so I had to plan out how to have an exciting day at the same time get to a laundromat for some much-needed change of underwear primarily for Drew.  I told the kids to pack 7 days of laundry, but he consistently always complains about not having any underwear about 2 days before Olivia and I.  I'm not sure what happened to those two days of underwear and, frankly, am afraid to ask.  The plan was to head up to Munising for the day and see Pictured Rocks off of the National Lakeshore of Lake Superior.  We didn't get moving until about 10:30 and Olivia was asking about a diner in Manistique which was given pretty good reviews, so we skipped breakfast at our site and decided to have brunch at the diner.

Olivia and I split something called the "garbage omelet" while Drew ordered biscuits and gravy.   I'm so glad that Olivia and I split our garbage omelet because it was more than we could handle together.  Drew's biscuits and gravy was supposed to be two biscuits, but the order ended up being 4 with a plateful of gravy.  If you ever get a chance to dine in Manistique, stop off at Cedar Street Cafe and get an order of the garbage omelet with a biscuit that comes with raspberry jam.  Make sure you have two people to eat it, though!  We walked through town and ended up at the post office to buy some post card stamps and I ended up talking to the post master about good pasties up in Munising and she gave a recommendation of Muldoons which makes fresh pasties daily.  She also recommended stopping at a fish shop called Matson's aka "Cap'n Ron's Smoked Fish"and get their whitefish dip.  Hell yes, I'm in!

The drive up to Munising was nice even if it took 45 minutes since it was about 45 miles away.  We stopped at the National Lakeshore HQ just east of town and decided to visit a place called Miner's Castle which gave us a beautiful view of the Pictured Rocks which are basically these multi-colored cliffs off of Lake Superior.  After getting a couple of good photos, we decided to head down to Miners Beach and check out the water temperature to see if it was "swim worthy".  Boy, what a great decision!  Even though the water temperature was slightly-below-warm, the water quality was unbelievable.  I fashioned the kids with swimming goggles and we paddled through the water looking at beautiful rocks on the bottom of the sandy lake floor while drifting in the large, loping waves.  Just like in Lake Erie, I didn't think Olivia would come in unless I said something.  She was in heaven especially after I let her borrow my goggles.

The plan after swimming was to head into town and do some laundry which also gave us some time to scope out the downtown shops.  After finishing up the laundry, we were pretty famished so we made our way to Muldoon's to enjoy our first pasty.  Considering our hunger and the time of day, they hit the spot, though I probably could have taken a nap after I finished mine.  We met the owner and said "hi" and told her I probably wouldn't be able to move after this meal.  We then chatted with one of the young employees to learn that the pasties were fresh that day.  She also told us the best place to go swimming in the area which included a sand bar out on Lake Superior that you had to swim to and 'you better be a strong swimmer to get out there because there is a current that can take you out!'.

We then eventfully found our way to Matsons aka "Cap'n Ron's Smoked Fish" which was a bit of a creepy hole-in-the-wall place, but totally worth the visit.  As I was opening the door the the office/retail space, I was followed by the 5th generation proprietor, Tim.  Tim had a fierce gut on his half naked body which was covered in a fiercer tan.  Tim and I talked about the lake trout and whitefish he caught regularly and how he prefers lake trout since they eat the vegetarian herring rather than whitefish which are bottom feeders.  Lake trout are higher in Omegas so are much healthier and, in his opinion, better tasting.  After purchasing a container of the smoked whitefish dip after seriously considering a fillet of lake trout, I was greeted by Tim's father (or grandfather) who showed me the process for smoking the fish by having me stick my head in his "smoke shack" located just outside of the retail space.  We chatted about how I came from 'salmon country' and he gave me pretty much the same schpeel as Tim regarding how lake trout are high in Omegas and they're better than whitefish.  Tim's smoking method is to brine the fish for about one day (depending on size), put it in the smoke-shack for 10 hours (depending on size), and finally cook it over low heat for about an hour (depending on size).  Sorry everyone, but I purposely built this up to end this paragraph with the eye-rolling, soft groaning response to, "I guess size matters."  Yeah, it hurts me even to write it.  Sorry, not sorry.

We headed back to the campsite where I had the kids fold laundry and give me a chance to write thoughts down on laptop.  It's 8:30 at night and am still undecided if I should present dinner options.  Good night!