Picture This!

June 5-12, 2022 

Leaving Minneapolis, we gave ourselves a two day stopover at Shawano County Park Campground in Wisconsin on our way to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Shawano Co. Park was a lovely little campground, situated on the shore of Shawano Lake.  It was such a peaceful and relaxing stop!  I had caught a cold while we were in Minneapolis and it was nice to sleep in a bit and just sit around and recover.  I actually wondered whether it was Covid and tested three different times to make sure it wasn’t!  Two years later, and I’m still trying to avoid this nasty virus.  While Covid is nowhere near the threat it was two years ago, I still don’t want to catch it!  

We spent some time in Shawano strolling the beach where we found a swing we couldn’t resist hanging around on for a bit.  While we were on the beach, a wedding party showed up for the sunset beach pictures.  The place had such a nice vibe to it!  It would have been difficult to leave if the Upper Peninsula wasn’t calling!

This was our second go around with the U.P.  We were there two years ago, taking in the western portion.  This time, we stayed at Munising Tourist Campground which provided perfect access to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, located in the eastern section of the Upper Peninsula.  

The campground is situated right on the shore of Lake Superior.  If we stay here again, I’m going to try to get reservations for site #79!  Besides being lakeside, it is a full hook-up site (unlike ours)!  The sunsets were a regular crowd pleaser at this place.  Simply stunning!  Night after night, we were able to take in the glorious splendor of the sun setting over Lake Superior.  

We took in a few short hikes in the area.  All of the hikes we went on had destinations of waterfalls or lighthouses, as both features are abundant in this region!  On the trail to Au Sable Lighthouse, we came across so many wild flowers.  Our favorites included the blue star flower and the pink lady slipper.  We lived in Minnesota for several years and never did find a pink lady slipper while we lived there, despite it being the state flower.  

We found several waterfalls to chase while we were there, including Alger Falls, Horseshoe Falls, Munising Falls, Wagner Falls and Miners Falls.  The waterfalls were all very nice, but I think Munising Falls was my favorite.  The short trail to the falls was beautifully landscaped, following the stream flowing out of the waterfall.  Historically, this was the site of an iron mill plant.  The combination of history and scenery couldn’t be beat!

Alger Falls

Horseshoe Falls

Wagner Falls

Miners Falls

Munising Falls

Local cuisine in the land of the Yoopers includes white fish and pasties.  Both are rich in the history and culture of the area, so of course we had to take in a little of each.  We enjoyed the white fish at Cap’n Ron’s Fish and Chips food truck, where the fifth generation of the Matson family is currently working.  Apparently, Cap’n Ron was featured in episode nine of the 2021 season on Chef Gordon Ramsey’s show!

Pasties were a staple lunch packed for miners and currently remain a traditional food in the U.P.  My best comparison would be to a beef pot pie.  Today, they are served with an option of gravy; however, traditionally they are eaten dry.  I’ve now tried them both with and without gravy and, while I thought gravy helped them a bit, they are still not my favorite dish.  They say tastebuds need to try things a dozen times before you appreciate the flavor of new foods, so maybe I just need to give this one a few more tries… or maybe not!  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t terrible.  It’s just that they are so very heavy.  A quarter of a pastie more than fills you, which, I guess was the point.  A miner’s day was filled with hard labor and I’m sure they worked up quite the appetite!

One of our favorite activities during our stay was the guided kayak tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  The weather was nice, the scenery was stunning and the company very fun!  Our group of ten people in double kayaks followed Emma (our guide) past the painted coves, kissing rock, bridal veil waterfall and several other formations.  The cliffs along the shore of Lake Superior are stained with minerals from water seeping through the 500-million-year-old, rock walls.  The reds and oranges were from iron, black from manganese, white from calcium, yellow from limonite, and blue and greens from copper.  It was so fun paddling the waters of Lake Superior and getting an up-close look at the spectacular colors!

In contrast, one evening we took a cruise boat along these same cliff walls, plus quite an extra distance beyond what we covered in the kayaks.  I was expecting to be a bit disappointed in the scenery after having experienced it so personally in the kayak.  Absolutely not!!  The saying, “You can’t see the forest for the trees,” somewhat explains what I mean.  From the cruise boat, we were more able to capture the big picture of the scene and appreciate the beauty in an entirely different way.  It’s hard to say which experience was better.

Caves of the Bloody Chiefs

Indian Drums

Lover's Leap

One of the Painted Coves

                                           Miners Castle

Another of the Painted Coves

The northern section of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore features the Grand Sable Dunes.  There, you find the Log Slide, which I assumed was going to be a historical logging site of some type.  Nope!  It’s simply an extremely steep, 500-foot drop sand dune, right on the shore of Lake Superior!  All kinds of warnings were posted regarding the difficulty of climbing back up the “slide” if you choose to take a ride down!  It takes only a few seconds to go down; however, over an hour to climb back up!  We took a pass on this adventure and chose to enjoy the spectacular view the top of the slide offered.  

Hurricane Beach is also located at the northern end of the park.  There you find the mouth of the Hurricane River as it enters Lake Superior.  It was such a beautiful spot!  We enjoyed watching a couple fishing there.  They seemed to be having a very successful day as we saw them catch several smelt in the brief time we were there!  

A mile or two up the beach, as you are getting close to the Au Sable Lighthouse, are the remains of a couple of ship wrecks.  The storms on Lake Superior can be incredibly difficult to predict and extremely dangerous.  Even with the guiding light of Au Sable, many ships have been documented as losing their battle with Mother Nature at this location.

Au Sable Lighthouse

The "bones" of an ill-fated ship

Speaking of losing battles, Brandon’s family lost their battle of avoiding Covid.  Eva was the first one to come down with it and in an effort to give her some company in her isolation, I met up with her virtually and we had some fun doing some beginning crochet stitches.  It wasn’t long before all of the family joined Eva with positive Covid test results.  After a couple of days not feeling so great, they began to recover and are now pretty much all back to good health and are rejoining normal social life once again.  Ironically, Lauren’s family all experienced Covid at the same time!  I wonder if before long, everyone is going to have had this bug.  It’s reassuring that, as the virus goes through different variants, it seems to have weakened and there aren’t the high numbers of hospitalizations.

Before leaving, both Dick and I were beginning to sound a little like a Yooper!  Good grief, that dialect slips into your speech quickly!  Dem der Yoopers are pretty nice folks, don’t ya know?

Our home for our week in Munising!

Pictured Rocks certainly exceeded all of our expectations!  We did have a couple of rainy days while we were there, but that gave us time to do a little planning of future adventures.  Maybe we didn’t quite get to all of the spots we would have liked to have gotten to, but that just gives us a chance to try to nab campsite #79 for our next trip here!

Up next:  Northern Michigan!