Though we continued to fight a bumper crop of mosquitos in Michigan's "Upper Peninsula", we didn't let them stop us from seeing the sights (though we DID wear lots of bug repellant, long sleeves/slacks, and kept moving!).
We continued our trek across the shore of Lake Superior and stopped about halfway in a town called Munising. This is the perfect place to catch a boat tour to see the amazing Pictured Rocks that line the coast in those parts. It is hard to catch the beauty of this area with a camera, but hopefully the photos below will do it some justice. Apparently we just missed (by less than a week) seeing ice still floating on the lake but we could still see some hiding in the rocks on the shore.
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| Max in his Munising campsite on the shore of Lake Superior |
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| The amazing colors of the Pictured Rocks |
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| More color and a waterfall too! |
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| Pictured Rocks as seen from the shore |
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| A little over-exposed, but still a cute dual-selfie |
We also explored nearby Marquette by car, which turned out to be the largest town in the U.P. While we enjoyed a local park and nice downtown area, we were especially impressed with the Wells Fargo bank building. We stopped in to get a little cash and found ourselves the only customers, but the structure was impressive with its majestic ancient vault, soaring elaborate ceiling, and even two revolving doors.
From there we drove the house to Ontonagon on the west U.P. coast. From here we could explore the Keewanaw Peninsula, drive all the way to the end into Copper Harbor, tour a former copper mine, and see the scenic views in Porcupine State Park. While here we celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary at a very understated combo restaurant + bowling alley. The food was surprising good, the wine was nicely inexpensive, and you ate your meal watching the big picture windows hoping to see bears come up and feed on scraps they put outside for them. Unfortunately, even though we came two separate nights for dinner, we struck out seeing any bears.
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| Bundled up in the Quincy Copper Mine |
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| Old copper car |
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| Jeffrey getting blown away in Porcupine State Park |
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| Maren in Porcupine State Park |
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| Heavy rain causing waterfalls everywhere |
We cut our Ontonagon visit a day short to flee some approaching storms that sported predictions of 55+ mph winds -- no thanks! We managed to escape to a campground in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, which was packed to the gills with families since it was Father's Day weekend. Thankfully we only got a bunch of rain, but we saw our first wild turkeys on the drive down!
This schedule change enabled us to arrive in Rochester, Minnesota a day early -- letting us enjoy a full 5 days of visiting and sightseeing with Jeffrey's aunts Louise and Margaret and uncle Merlyn along with their son Mike. Along with Jeffrey's mom, Evelyn, the girls grew up in nearby Burr Oak and Decorah, so it was nice to tour those areas and see plus hear the family history.
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| Visiting with Jeffrey's Aunt Louise, cousin Mike, Uncle Merlyn and Aunt Margaret near Rochester |
As I write this, we are sitting in Forest City, Iowa awaiting a service appointment for Max at the Winnebago factory. Life in a motorhome is just like living in a "sticks and bricks" house... stuff breaks and you need to have repairs made every once in a while -- though maybe a little more often when your house drives down the road hitting bumps along the way :-) We are pretty handy (and getting handier!) and fix what we can ourselves, but we almost always have a list of "fixes for professionals to do" or "upgrades that would be nice" or "cool stuff to buy". Fortunately we've never had anything go wrong that stranded us or prevented us from traveling! Here is an impressive rock chip we got in Max's windshield on the way to Ontonagon (2nd chip in 7 months). It is about 1 inch long and we had it repaired immediately so it won't crack any more. Our insurance company sent a mobile repair guy out to us and you can't even see it now!
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