The Far North

September 05, 2012

The far north of Michigan at least, as I'm sure some Canadians reading this will scoff at anything south of permafrost. Anyway, my sister and I took a quick trip up to Michigan's Upper Peninsula this week, at the recommendation of our boss, who thought I'd get some decent pictures up there. And she wasn't wrong, the UP really is beautiful. It wasn't a perfect trip; we got dinner at possibly the worst pastie joint in the the country, and the car was held together by duct tape by the time we got back. Although, really, I think being able to fix a car with duct tape is just another mark of manhood. Anyway, it was a great time nonetheless.

A different view of the Cut River Gorge bridge.

Morgan on top of the bridge

We spent the night at Fayette State Park, at the tip of the Garden Peninsula. It's an old ghost town in a pretty little bay, and I was hoping to get there before sunset. However, I apparently didn't break the speed limit enough, so we got there just in time for the very last little bit of light. It's a beautiful harbor, though I'm sure it would have been much prettier a couple hours earlier.

I try and make a habit of getting up as early as possible while traveling, so I did manage to roust myself out of bed in time for sunrise. I didn't really know the area too well, so I decided to just explore the roads in the car. We camped on the western side of the peninsula, so I ended up taking the first road that led off to the east towards the other side. It started off as a decent road, and then quickly devolved into a gravel road, then an extremely sketchy two-track running through abandoned cow pastures and woods an ax murderer would call home. But, after about half an hour of driving blindly through the bush, I arrived at the opposite shore of Lake Michigan, on a pretty little beach that I suspect very few people have visited before. So it was worth it in the end.

Misty morning, with sandhill cranes to boot. What could be better?

In the afternoon, we decided to explore the ghost town a little more. Apparently Fayette was a rather important port back in the iron mining boom days of the upper peninsula. It died out once the economy shifted away from charcoal iron (what is charcoal iron? I have no idea), and the hardwoods used for iron smelting were cut down. The state of Michigan has since repossessed the town, and the buildings are kept standing as a reasonable facsimile of what they once looked like. I wasn't in it for great photos, but it was a nice excuse to use the Dramatic Tone filter in my new camera (it's basically glorified Instagram). Not great photography in the purist sense of the term, but fun.

The final place we visited was Kitchitikipi (say that ten times fast, I dare you), the largest spring in Michigan, and well worth a visit even if it is in the middle of nowhere. I didn't get quite as many good pictures as I'd have liked, but it's something that really has to be seen to believed; a 300' wide pool of water, that is crystal clear all the way down to the bottom 50 feet below. Fishing is banned, so there are hundreds of huge trout swimming below, as well. It's really quite surreal.