The Back of Beyond, Michigan's UP

They call it Yooper (U-per) land. We disappeared on our 30th anniversary trip on a rainy humid Tuesday, headed north to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with thoughts to sightsee there and then swing south back into northern Wisconsin to do some fishing. May I say, this was one of the most extraordinary jaunts we’ve ever experienced. It was ad lib, not overly planned, played-by-ear and whim, and blessed with dry, sunny, cool weather making it ideal the entire time after the first day. Almost from the time we left, we were without cell signal or internet the entire time. Do not come here lightly…. 

The highlight of the entire trip was beyond doubt Fayette State Park on the Garden Peninsula of the UP. I will cover this in a separate post given the hundreds of photos we took because the place is just simply stunning; unique; well-kept; and probably a bit of a secret frankly. It’s certainly not on the main drag to anywhere, that’s for sure. 

Knowing I wanted to visit there, we headed for a small, relatively unknown MI state forest campground directly on the shores of Lake Michigan about nine miles from Fayette. Big rigs not apply; the first portion of the dirt road is fine but then goes to single track and finally to a few sharp curves. In addition, the sites are small and primarily designed for tents &/or pop-up sized rigs but we did find about three to four which would afford us entry. We choose the second one we inspected; the very last in line, with direct and short access to the sandy violent shore we found late this day. The waves were crashing, and the sight and sound took me immediately back to being at the ocean, save for the salt-air smell. We enjoyed a bottle of champagne in honor of our 30th on the beach and loved our solitude of no other humans in sight.

The next morning dawned clear and calm and after packing up we were off to explore Fayette.

From Fayette, we backtracked up the Garden Peninsula and stopped at Big Springs (Palm Brooks State Park), a naturally occurring 40 feet deep crystal-clear spring which maintains a temperature year-round of 45 degrees. They have a self-propelled glass bottomed raft which crosses on cable, so you can view the incredibly large trout (lake, brown and brook) swimming languidly and safely below. No fishing or feeding allowed.

Leaving Big Springs, we had no particular destination so choose a back road which after 15 miles headed north turned to dirt. It was on the Ottawa National Forest, so we were keeping an eye peeled for any good boondocking spot, but none appeared before we again hit pavement and a stop sign onto a more major highway. Turning left towards Lake Superior we came upon a National Forest Campground sign for Colwell Lake which was actually one I had been researching and knew to be good, so we pulled in there. This would be the most developed campground of our vacation with a dump and water station and about three sites with electric although we went with a rustic one lakeside.

About 100 foot from the site was a path and decent to a place to moor the boat so we decided this would be where Marc would unpack it and blow it up. We stayed here a couple of nights and took a boat ride around the lake but didn’t fish as we didn’t want to buy out of state fishing licenses. From here we took the day trip to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Superior.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore stretches for about 45 miles along Lake Superior’s shore and we only had a few hours to explore it from the land side. The best way to experience it is from the charter boat tours, rental boats or kayaks which primarily leave from Munising, MI or by hiking or backpacking its many miles of trails. Nevertheless, we enjoyed another spectacular sunny day and fit in a hike to Miner’s Falls and a picnic on Miner’s Beach and watched a newbie class of kayakers go out. This area gets lots of tourists and even on a weekday in this after Labor Day crush, it was still popular.

We made a quick detour to Munising just to say we saw it and I took a few pictures of the large tour boats and city docks. It’s a nice city park in a small tourist town. One thing we noted about the entire UP is that for the most part, people live without a lot of the modern conveniences and shopping most of us are used to. There seems to be cell signal only in the larger towns (my Verizon didn’t work period and Marc got only one to two bars on his ATT); it was difficult to find a grocery store and there was no cable internet since every country home sported a Dish or regular TV antenna. The forests are dense, save for the swath of clear-cut made by the highways or what folks have carved out to build their homes and were starting their fall colors.

To be continued in two more posts....