“I’ve seen the world, been to many places
Made lots of friends, many different races
I’ve had such fun around the world it’s true
African skies with a Nairobi mood, ooh
I fell asleep in Tuscany and dreamed
The one thing missing was you…”
– from the song “Runaway” by Janet Jackson
This is part 5 of my 6 part blog from 2004-2010 how the EarthBall became my symbol. I conclude these multi-part story how my April 10, 2010 photo of me with my EarthBall at Copper Harbor, Michigan with Lake Superior behind me became my favorite Earth Ball photo.
Part 1: Everglades National Park, Florida in 2004 to Crater Lake Nat. Park, Oregon in 2009
Part 2: My Pacific Northwest spring travels to living in Ashland, Oregon in Autumn 2009
Part 3: December 2009 cross country travels to spending winter in St. Louis, MO in 2010
Part 4: Seeing Door County, Wisconsin in April 2010
Part 5: Exploring the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in April 2010
Part 6: Getting my ideal EarthBall photo in Copper Harbor, Michigan in April 2010
Part 5: Seeing the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the First Time
On April 8th, Dean Shumway and I went to a diner in Sister Bay, Wisconsin to meet with a friend of his for breakfast. It was snowing lightly with some of it sticking on the ground to form a fresh white cover. It was another reminder from Mother Nature that she did not want to give up her winter hold on this area yet. I felt a bit uneasy that morning hoping the roads would be safe as I traveled north into Michigan on the next part of this adventure. I ate a hearty breakfast of pancakes and Bernie packed a lunch for me for the road. After a good conversation with Dean and his friend over breakfast, it was time for me to hit the road to see new places that day.
As I drove south to try to leave Door Peninsula, the snowy weather persisted. I wanted a beautiful sunny day for this road trip, but Mother Nature insisted that it should snow throughout that morning. I had to drive south to go around Green Bay, Wisconsin. It felt odd to drive south to Green Bay. This is the home of the Green Bay Packers National Football League team. Their mammoth football stadium, Lambeau Field, dominates the Green Bay skyline. With the deep cold weather that the Packers play during their football season in November into January, Lambeau Field, has the nickname of “the frozen tundra.” With the snowy weather I encountered driving through the city of Green Bay on April 8th, that nickname seemed appropriate to me.
From Green Bay, I drove an hour north to Marinette, WI to cross into Michigan. The road paralleled within a few miles of the northern shore of Green Bay. During that hour, it was interesting to see northeastern rural Wisconsin. At the same time, I was full of anticipation to cross into Michigan to experience the Upper Peninsula or U.P. As I drove through the town of Marinette and crossed the Menominee River, I finally saw the sign I was eager to see. It was blue sign shining brightly on this overcast snowy day. It proudly beamed the words “Pure Michigan.”
I did it! I crossed into the U.P. of Michigan. I reached a new goal for this trip. I had been to Dean and Bernie’s house before in Door County. Now I felt like a traveler experiencing uncharted territory for first time. Fortunately, Michigan Highway 39 hugged the Green Bay shoreline for the next hour or 64 miles up to Gladstone, Michigan. I then headed straight east on U.S. Highway 2 through the Hiawatha National Forest to Manistique, Michigan. I don’t remember the forest driving through this part of the U.P. However, I looked forward to seeing Manistique since it was nestled on the north shore of Lake Michigan. The view did not disappoint. From the highway, I could spot a bright red lighthouse that seemed to stand out on this overcast snowy day. The lighthouse only connected to Michigan with just a narrow strip of land.
The scene was ideal for me to pull into the Carl D. Bradley Lakeview Memorial Park to take multiple photos of the lighthouse with Lake Michigan behind it. The snow on the ground and on the vegetation made the view even more spectacular. I was glad to see winter was not over in this part of the country. It was another cold blustery day on this spring break trip. Yet, I was thrilled to see what nature wanted to show me of the winter scene of this area. I ate my lunch inside my cold car while I enjoyed the view. While I was there, I went on a 20-minute walk to get as many photos and views as I could enjoy before I felt the need to explore further east that day.
I then had a 45-minute drive through the interior of the U.P to get to Naubinway, Michigan, which lies at the northern most point of Lake Michigan. From Naubinway eastward, I had views of Lake Michigan as the road stayed close to the water’s edge for the next 44 miles or 50 minutes. The road twisted with the lakeshore all the to Saint Ignace, Michigan, the northern shore where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron met. This was my next destination to see what the view was where these two Great Lakes met. As I journeyed along Highway 2 towards St. Ignace, the road would climb up tall cliffs giving me wide birds eye views of the forest behind me with Straits of Mackinac in the most northeastern parts of Lake Michigan in front of me. The scenery was too awe inspiring to drive. I had to pull over at some of the overlooks to just take in the views and capture the beauty in photographs.
At a pullout a few miles west of St. Ignace, a bridge started coming into view. It had two tall crème colored spanning towers like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York City. It was the Mackinac Bridge. I loved bridges like this since I was a child. I had picture books of the Golden Gate Bridge as a young kid that I looked at frequently. I was enthralled to see that bridge when we drove across it on a family vacation to San Franciso when I was 9 years old in 1977. Three years later, my dad drove our family across the Verrazano Bridge when we traveled to New York City in 1980. This bridge looked just as majestic as those bridges. Unlike those bridges, it did not have a big city skyline on one side of it. The Mackinac Bridge just had Lake Michigan on the west side and Lake Huron on the east side with the forests and small towns of the Upper and Lower Michigan peninsulas at either end of the bridge.
The goal of this trip was to see the U.P. of Michigan. However, I had to drive across this bridge just to experience it. As I drove south across it, I did something dangerous of taking a couple of photos with my point and shoot digital camera while driving my car. Looking back, it takes full concentration to drive across that bridge with the other traffic and the winds of the Straits of Mackinac tugging at your car. The photos while driving on the bridge turned out well. However, I shudder to think of all the things that could have gone wrong driving a car while trying to get photos with my digital camera at the same time.
After I drove south across the bridge, I stopped at Michilimackinac State Park on the shore of Lake Michigan, just off I-75 in Mackinaw City. There was a lighthouse there I did not even notice. I was on a mission to take more photos of the Mackinac Bridge from the southwest shoreline sandy beach. This was my only time in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan during this trip, which was just for a few minutes. I then drove across the Bridge again, admiring how Lake Huron was on one side of the Bridge and Lake Michigan was on the other side of the bridge. I tried to take in the whole view of the area while driving as safely as I could to make it to the other side.
When I reached the U.P. on the north side of the Mackinac Bridge, I then drove an hour on I-75 to spend the night in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. I easily found a hotel on the east side of town. I would have liked to have crossed the St. Mary River to see Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. However, I did not have a U.S. Passport at that time. Thus, I was going to have to enjoy staying in the U.S. and experience as much as possible in the U.P. of Michigan. This was a full day with a lot of driving and spectacular scenery. Now I was full of anticipation for the next day to drive from Sault Ste. Marie to Houghon, Michigan on the western part of the U.P. I would be seeing Lake Superior and the northern shore of the U.P. for the first time in my life. As country singer Willie Nelson sang years ago, ‘I could not wait to get on the road again.’
Seeing Lake Superior for the First Time
I woke up on April 9th similar to the anticipation of opening gifts on Christmas morning. This was the pinnacle for this trip: the possibility to look at Lake Superior for the first time. I saw Lake Michigan several times as a child when my parents took trips to Chicago. I viewed Lake Ontario on a family vacation in 1983 when we visited Toronto, Canada around the time of my 15th birthday. But I was curious for decades afterwards to see Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes. It is bigger by volume of water than all the other Great Lakes combined. It has the largest surface area of any freshwater lake in the world. Even more, Lake Superior holds around 10% of all the fresh water in the entire world. I longed to see this gigantic freshwater sea.
I was meeting my friends Cherie Barth and her boyfriend Dan for dinner and staying with them. They lived in Houghon, Michigan, on the northwestern part of the U.P. Thus, I had to make the most of the day and the daylight. It was going to be a 4-and-a-half-hour drive without stopping to get to Cherie’s house, so I had to get up early to make the most of this day. From the beautiful sights I experienced that day, it was one of the most memorable days of my life.
My first destination was Whitefish Point, Michigan. It was an hour and a half drive west of Sault St. Marie, Michigan. The land around Whitefish Point juts out like a shark fin for the eastern U.P. Whitefish Point sits at the very top edge of the protruding land. The way it sticks out into Lake Superior this location would give me a panoramic view to see the lake for the first time in a more meaningful way. It snowed about an inch overnight. The ground was covered white with the snow, but it was too warm for the snow to stick to the payment. Thus, it was an ideal day to drive to take photos of the U.P still impacted by winter, but warm enough to not worry about driving in icy or snowy slick covered roads.
On my way to Whitefish Point, I drove through the town of Paradise, Michigan. The name acceptably fit the area with its quiet location. I saw no one or no traffic as I passed through this rural bedroom community. I stopped to take photos of the picturesque view of the snow on the ground, no leaves on the trees, and gazebos looking out into Whitefish Bay, the eastern most part of Lake Superior. From Paradise to Whitefish point, the road stayed close to Whitefish Bay, giving me my first glimpses of Lake Superior. It looked impressive, but not much different than the previous memories I had of Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario.
I could not drive any further at Whitefish Point when I got to the parking lot of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. When I pulled up to the parking lot to take photos, I was listening to Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” several times on my iPod connected to my car stereo. At one spot driving up to Whitefish Point, I had the song playing as I quickly left the car running to run out to get a quick photo. If the locals saw me, they probably thought I was another stupid tourist. Lightfoot’s song commemorates the November 1975 tragic sinking of the American cargo ship the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The Edmond Fitzgerald happened not far from here. As Gordon Lightfoot sang in the song,
“The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er.”
When I arrived at Whitefish Point, it was just me and a couple other cars with visitors in the parking lot. In front of me was a white lighthouse with a white residential house next to it with an orange roof. The orange roof stood prominent with the snow on the ground, the lighthouse keeper’s house and lighthouse were white, and it was a mostly cloudy day with some blue sky. The inside of the lighthouse and the Shipwreck Musuem were not open. The summer tourist season was still many weeks away for these buildings to be open to welcome visitors.
Behind the lighthouse, I had to walk on a long beach to get to the edge of Lake Superior. From the edge of Whitefish Point, Lake Superior looked massive. The winds blew strongly bringing a frigid chill to the air. I bundled up in my winter coat, hat, scarf, and gloves. The winds created numerous whitecaps on the water and small breaking waves on the shoreline. The winds churning up the water of Lake Superior gave it a grumpy appearance that morning. My first impression of Lake with the white caps and shoreline tidal waves is that the lake seemed to be saying to me, “Don’t fuck with me! I am not in a good mood today!”
With the cold winds and choppy disturbed water that day, Lake Superior demanded respect. It was not a day to irritate her with swimming, boating, sailing, fishing, or any activity on her waters. I dared not to do anything foolish to make her angrier that day. I was elated to see Lake Superior for the first time from the safety of the sandy beach. I found another visitor to take a photo of me with my digital camera to capture the moment.
From Whitefish Point, I drove 40 minutes southwest to Tahquamenon Falls State Park to see the waterfalls there. I read beforehand that Upper Tahquamenon Waterfalls, over 200 feet wide, is one of the largest in the eastern United States. After I parked my car in the parking lot, I walked on the short trail to see the falls. It was one of the most splendid waterfalls I saw in my life.
Because of the river’s brownish hue is due to tannins from the surrounding swamps, the water looked like Coca Cola going over the waterfalls. Soda, such as Coke or Pepsi, was a treat my parents bought occasionally when I was a kid. I still love the taste a cola soda, even though I don’t drink much soda now because of all the sugar content. I loved the natural beauty of this area. At the same, the tannin in the river and seeming a bit bubblier going over the waterfalls, made me crave a Coke. I was not having a Coke though because I did not bring one. Even more, there was no concession stand, store or restaurant open in this park this time of year. Besides that, it was too cold to drink a Coke or any kind of soda that day.
With its 50-foot drop and steady partial horseshoe flow, Upper Tahquamenon Waterfalls looked like a mini–Niagara Falls. I walked on the forested paths with no leaves on the trees to see the lower and upper falls with an inch of snow blanketing the ground. It felt refreshing to be in nature that day. I still had a three-and-a-half-hour drive west to Houghton MI to meet Cherie and Dan for dinner and stay with them. However, I did not want to leave this park. As I write this 16 years later, I long to return to see these waterfalls and hike in the forests again.
In the parking lot, I spotted a red fox. I worked 25 years in the national parks, but this was one of my top wildlife experiences in my life. The red fox looked bewildered. I was basically the only car in the parking lot. It looked used to having the area to itself. I took numerous photos of it with my digital camera. It was like it was posing for me like a fashion model. Maybe it was fed by humans the way it observed and was curious about me. At the same time, it was leery and it did not want me to get close to it. I was lucky to take many photos of it with my digital camera. A middle-aged woman in the parking lot also saw the red fox and took several photos. We both marveled seeing the red fox. I shared with her that I worked 18 years in the national parks and had never seen an animal pose like this for me. She was too caught up in the moment to acknowledge when I shared my national park background with her.
Tahquamenon Falls State Park was small compared to national parks I visited, such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, North Cascades, etc. It is close to 50,000 acres stretching over 13 miles. However, seeing the large waterfalls, hiking on the trails, and photographing the red fox, ranked up there with the experiences of some of the national parks I visited. This was the only time in my life I visited this park, but I wanted to return ever since then.
From Tahquamenon Falls State Park, I had a close to a two-hour drive to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The National Park Service managed it. It is known for its towering cliffs with amazing views of Lake Superior. Heading towards seeing the lakeshore cliffs, I was impressed seeing robust waterfalls flowing in the park, such as Miner Falls, which drops over 50 feet. When I reached the Miner’s Castle overlook, I had a blue sky with no clouds to get a broad view of Lake Superior. The winds lessened much since I visited Whitefish Point that morning. Lake Superior looked like a bright blue freshwater ocean extending to the horizon to join with the light blue sky. Below and in front of me was with the white sandstone round rocks of Miner’s Rock. This shoreline rock with the expansive waters of Lake Superior behind it is the ultimate iconic photographic location for Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and the U.P. of Michigan.
This was the clearest weather I had so far on this trip to Wisconsin and Michigan. There was still a chill in the air, but it felt like spring was starting to get a toehold in the U.P. I am so glad the weather cooperated at this location. I wanted to spend more time at Pictured Rocks hiking in the woods, seeing the waterfalls, and admiring the views of Lake Superior from the vantage points on the tall cliffs. I was running out of time that day to make it to the home of my friends Cherie and Dan in Houghton.
After leaving the Miner’s Castle Overlook, I then stopped by to see Munising Falls, another 50-foot waterfall. I walked a paved 800-foot trail to see it. This waterfall is located at the very southwest corner of the park, next to the small recreational town of Munising, Michigan. From there, I still had a 3-hour drive to Houghton to connect with my friends Cherie and Dan. I reached their home as it was getting dark close to 7 pm. From her 10 years of knowing me, Cherie figured I would do a lot of sightseeing from Sault Ste. Marie to Houghton. Cell phone signals were limited that day, but I might have tried to call from Munisang or elsewhere to give Cherie my estimated time of arrival. Or, maybe I didn’t call in advance. I don’t remember.
The main point was that I made it safely to Cherie and Dan’s house that evening. They were happy to see me. After I visited Cherie and Dan at Sequoia National Park in March 2009, they found jobs working at Isle Royale National Park later in 2010. Isle Royale is in the northern part of Lake Superior. Even though the island is closer to Canada and Minnesota, it is part of Michigan. The only way to access Isle Royale is by ferries or by a sea plane during the summer season. The transportation to the island would not be running for a few weeks yet. Otherwise, Cherie and Dan might have been able to assist me to get access to the island. I would have loved to have seen Isle Royale, but on a different trip. This trip, I was focused on seeing the U.P. of Michigan for the first time and friends in Wisconsin.
Like when I visited all my fellow ranger friends working in national parks, it was fun to swap park stories and learn more about the park where they lived and the area where they resided. Cherie and Dan agreed with me that there was a lot to see in the U.P. of Michigan, even if they expressed regret that they could not show me Isle Royale. Both of were off work the next two days to explore around the Keweenaw Peninsula. Houghton lies in the middle of the Keweenaw Peninsula, which is a land area connected to the northern most part of the U.P. of Michigan. The Keweenaw Peninsula looks like a bent index finger sitting on top of the U.P. of Michigan. Thus, it is a smaller peninsula connected to a much larger peninsula.
I hoped to achieve a quality of photo of me holding my Earthball with Lake Superior behind me when we explored the Keweenaw Peninsula the next day. Stay tuned for Part 6 of this blog to find out what happened the next day.
Stay tuned for part 6 of this blog: Getting my ideal EarthBall photo in Copper Harbor, Michigan in April 2010.
