Michigan's UP

After a night at North Bay Shore CG, a county park near Oconto WI, we crossed the state line into the Upper Peninisula of Michigan.

For pictures and comments of all the campgrounds we visited, click on "Campground Reviews" in Top Menu or on the links in the journal.

In Escanaba we paused at the Sand Point Lighthouse, built in 1868. The first keeper died just before the light went into operation; his widow took his position. She served for 18 years before dying in a mysterious fire.

We had never seen trucks with as many wheel as triucks here in the UP have. They have axles the entire length of the vehicle - makes one wonder how they're able to make a sharp turn.

The Manistique East Breakwater Lighthouse was erected in 1915. It is still active and has a 35 ft square pyramidal cast iron tower.

We were a bit surprised at the poor condition of the UP's woodlands - something has done serious damage to both hard and soft wood trees - pollution would be my guess.

Now here's something that made us chuckle - back home I think we'd call them "pastries". Wonder what happened to the "r"?

Driving along the Lake Michigan shore, we thought of the Gulf coast of Florida, near Carabelle. This was near St Ignace, where we spent the night at Brevoort Lake CG, a USFS campground.

We awoke to fairly thick fog this morning. It had lifted a little by the time we left, but.... We stopped in St Ignace to take a look at the Strait of Mackinac bridge, but this was the best we got. We waited a while, but didn't see any improvement.

But just a mile or so north of the bridge, we got a nice view of the St Ignace lighthouse and an incoming ferry from Mackinac Island. This lighthouse was originally built by the Michigan highway department at the Monroe Welcome Center on I-75 near the Ohio state line in the southeastern corner of the state. When the welcome center was renovated in 2004, the highway department donated the structure to the City of St. Ignace. The lighthouse was installed at the end of the former railroad ferry pier, where for many years the ferry Chief Wawatam loaded and unloaded railroad cars crossing the Strait of Mackinac.

We're sending a few nights at Aune-Osborne City Park in Sault Ste Marie. The campground is right on the bank of the St Mary's River, affording close-up views of shipping traffic on the river.

As pure luck would have it, today was Engineer's Day at the Soo Locks, an annual one-day event when visitors are invited to tour parts of the locks complex that are normally closed to the public. We spent several hours there, followed by a two-hour boat ride up the American side and back down through the Canadian locks. For pictures of our day around the Soo, click here.

Ontario, New York and Vermont are all that we have left to cover.