Agendas

I love doing trips with no agenda.  Wake up in the morning with really no idea what we will do or how far we will travel today and just do what catches our interest.

Unfortunately, the agenda always catches up.  Not a daily one but a larger one, in the form of squares on the calendar.  Several months ago, the months of July and August were wide open.  So we carved out three weeks for a trip “up North”.  That became two and a half weeks when we realized we had another commitment.  So the time became limited to two and a half weeks..  Which sounds like a lot, but it goes quickly.  Even now we look at some things around here and realize that we will have to keep moving if we want to make it all the way around Lake Superior. Some of those things will have to go into the bucket called “next time”.

One of those things was Mt. Arvon, the highest point in the state of Michigan.  We are so close, but the 9 miles of dirt roads is a show-stopper.  We’ve been on many dirt roads, including a couple on this trip that Google Maps led us down, and the dust and the bone-jarring washboard surface and the potholes makes for some very slow progress and a very dirty RV.  So this is in the “next time” bucket.  Perhaps we’ll take some ATV’s along and really do some off-roading.  That’s a real thing here.

So, sticking to the things we could do, we made our first stop after a scant 4 miles at Thomas Rock Scenic Overlook.  The pictures that others took from this look amazing, the picture that I took is less than stellar, mostly due to the haze from the Canadian wildfires that is polluting the air.  It almost seems foggy here at times and the air quality index is terrible.  I’m thankful that neither of us suffers from respiratory issues.  It may have scrubbed the entire trip.

Then it was back towards Big Bay, as Deb wanted another look at the beach here.

The beach by the Burns Landing Historical Park is another gem, a beach flanked on one side by cliffs, with lots of sand and clear water.  It was a fairly small beach, so a beach walk lasted all of ten minutes.

We headed back south on route 550 toward Marquette, and stopped at Little Presque Isle, a small island off a point in the shoreline.  One could probably walk to the island over the sand bar, but there are warnings about rip currents, so we took a picture instead.  The island is so tantalizingly close.  And the area around looks like a small version of Pictured Rocks, with the straight cliffs rising up out of the water.

Just over a mile farther down the road is Wetmore Landing, a small parking lot that allows access to a network of hiking and biking trails including the North Country Trail.  A short trail leads to the beach on Lake Superior, a fantastic beach that was nearly totally deserted.  This was an enormous expanse of fine sand between the forest and the water, its curving shoreline forming a large bay.  A few outcroppings of rock made for some good rock scrambling, and a family with several kids was taking full advantage of this.  We took a long walk on this beach, enjoying the solitude and the pleasant weather.  The beach at Au Train was my favorite so far, but this could be a very close contender.

Wow, is it noon already?  Where did the time go?  We made lunch right there in the parking lot.

We drove for an hour and stopped at Canyon Falls, dubbed by some as the Grand Canyon of Michigan. The Grand Canyon it is not, but it does resemble a tiny canyon, with the Sturgeon River running through it.  The falls require a bit of a scramble down some rocks for the best view, but it is worth the scramble.

It was also nice to get out and stretch our legs during the short hike.

Between L’Anse and Baraga we stopped at the Bishop Baraga Shrine, not because we are into shrines but because Deb was reading about Frederic Baraga, known as the Snowshoe Priest, who became the first bishop of the Upper Peninsula.  The churches he planted were far flung and he would trek overland in the winter months to serve them, covering distances of over 60 miles in snowshoes.  A 35-foot statue was erected in the 1960’s to honor him and his work.  The statue sits on a bluff overlooking Lake Superior.  The nearby village of Baraga was named after him.

We arrived at the Courtney Lake Campground, in the Ottawa National Forest at about 5pm, just in time to make some dinner.  After dinner we put the kayaks in the small lake and paddled around for a bit, enjoying the stillness of the evening.

153 miles covered today. Progress so far: