Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Day #23

Another blog of the day:    After a restful night, I woke about 8:00 am. It was such a cool, refreshing morning, that we had our devotions outside to enjoy our last morning in Michigamme Shores Campground.

This morning’s packing was leisurely as our drive today is the shortest of the trip, only 2.5 hours to Saxon, Wisconsin.

The most disappointing part of our travels in the Upper Peninsula is not viewing a moose, not sure if elk are in this area.  It’s not like we have not given them opportunity to present themselves. We have ridden state forest dirt roads at dusk, been up early. I’m hoping it might be different in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Here are some interesting things we have heard or noticed: 

The local new is interesting to listen to on Air TV. We hear interesting things like Munising High School has 150 students. 

Michigan has built two things around their state roads 

1. Most of the have passing lanes, it seemed every 10 miles or less, especially on rolling hill roads and ones with very few straights.
2. Road Side Parks are places to get out to walk, picnic and potty break. Really nice, easy off and back on area that are shaded with picnic tables and beautifully maintained. Yes the bathrooms are composting toilets (aka pit toilets), but hey the Road Side Parks are well planned out and maintained.

Local foods (ie – pasties), rivers, lakes, cities, townships, counties and road names are hard to pronounce: Ishpeming, Neguanee, Otongonia, Gogebic, Pentwater, Manistee, Charlevoix, Wapato River, and lot of them seem to be related to the Native American Indian culture, but there we have not seen reservations or advertisements for anything Native American cultural.

There is a lack of billboards for advertising and the lack of cell service has made discovering the points of interest around us difficult. Then when we see a sign of interest, we have already passed the turn off. We soon discovered that the only advertisement was the signs for turn offs. The signs were a 100 yards OR less before turn off. We missed a lot of interesting places and the signs made for interesting turns.

We’ve arrived at our next campground – Frontier Bar and Campground. I guess that what we experienced in Michigan will transfer to Wisconsin – Restaurants and Bars were one and the same. To eat locally we would go into these local establishments. The usual chain restaurants – McDonalds, Hardees, Taco Bells were available, but I can get that at home. We wanted to experience the local fare. Some good, some not so good – like the BBQ from “B Dog’s BBQ” just outside the Michigamme Campground.

Many of the buildings in Asheland were painted with murals that depicted local history.

By this time next week, we will be turning south for the last leg of our trip.

We have driven through the following states:

1. 

   Long roads and the view of the city of
   Asheland on horizon
   

   
   

   
   

   

   Bad River (Official Name)
   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   North Carolina
2. Virginia
3. West Virginia
4. Ohio
5. Pennsylvania
6. Maryland
7. New York
8. Michigan

Bogs, wetlands & grassy inlets

Buildings in Asheland Murals