The Upper Peninsula

I love the UP. A few years ago, I decided I hadn't been up there in too long and flew solo, going through the Pictured Rocks and the Porkies, before taking a route of questionable directness home through Duluth and Minneapolis. I saw no bears. Last year, I went up with my friend Josh and brother-in-law Jon. We again hiked the Pictured Rocks, but spent the remainder of our trip tooling around in the beautiful Huron Mountains northwest of Marquette, finding waterfalls and swimming in them. We again saw no bears. But I did come home with poison ivy.

And this year, it was Dad's turn to accompany me on what has now become an annual pilgrimage. Let me start off by saying we didn't see any bears. We did, however, see a coyote trotting off the road, and got a pretty good view of a bald eagle.

Dad, I think, had never seen one in the wild before and he was thoroughly impressed. I'd never seen one this close, but at camp a few years ago I saw one come flying in from a long way away, all glorious and majestic, wings flapping beautifully, soaring in the Michigan breeze, only to be annoyingly buzzed off by a couple of seagulls. It was beautiful, then disappointing. This time, though, we walked along the beach, pausing every few steps to get a closer picture. They really are beautiful birds.

The UP seems like a place where nature generally wins the battle. We stayed at Fort Wilkins, up at the tip-top of the Keweenaw Peninsula. If you take the road to the west, you can creep up Brockway Mountain and on a clear day see Isle Royale 50 miles out (we hit it on just such a day.)

(this view from Brockway Mountain does not show Isle Royale, which for the record is where I want my next venture to da UP to be.)

At Copper Harbor, they started a fort to protect the miners in Copper Country during the copper boom back in the 1840s. But it didn't last long and they shut it down. Everyone, it seems, got pretty bored. You get a real sense of this walking around the restored buildings on the fort grounds. The area is beautiful, but only if you're into that whole beautiful nature thing. There's not a whole lot else to do up there. The reputation of Michigan Tech, 50 miles to the south of Copper Harbor, and the rest of the UP for that matter, is that people drink for entertainment in the wintertime. They drink to stay warm too, I guess. This seems to have been true for the troops at that fort, judging by the stuff on the historical markers at the park. Yoopers have embraced it.

Apart from Marquette, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of commerce. The only thing to live on is what has been there for a really, really long time - natural resources. In the 1800s they mined copper. In the 1900s it was the iron industry and logging. Now, there's still a lot of logging (and paper mills to coincide) and tourism - people who pretty much just want to see nature. And lighthouses. (I still don't really see their appeal. Sorry, lighthouse apologists.)

The UP, I've heard, has 33% of Michigan's land and only 3% of its population. That means 97% of Michiganders are trolls (who live under the bridge.) You get a real sense for this as you drive the highways. First, there aren't all that many. There are huge tracts of land away from the highways that most people will never see without a snowmobile or a 4-wheeler. Second, the highways are lined with ghost towns, many of which have dead tourism efforts. And these, actually, are some of the most fascinating spots in the UP. Why did people ever live here? Where'd they go? What did they leave behind?

No question, I love the UP. As dad and I drove around, we realized that we were visiting some places that most Americans - and even most Michiganders - will never, ever see. I don't know many people who've been as far north as Copper Harbor, or as far west as the Porcupine Mountains, or hiked the trails of the Pictured Rocks. And that's kind of a shame because they're some of the most beautiful places in our wonderful state.

You should go see them.

UP

While you were all busy trading in your 1989 Geo Prizms (with the rebuilt motor, and the scraping brakes, and the rusty wheel-wells, and the dashboard that gets the awful convulsing seizure every time you drive faster than 55 mph) for a suspiciously large government subsidy to buy a car that, let’s face it, you really can’t afford because your college loan payments are due and you couldn’t get the hardship deferment, which you wouldn’t need if you’d forego a latte here and there, that –

Anyway, while you were all recklessly buying cars thanks to Cash for Clunkers, I took off for the U.P.

I flew solo. Not my first choice, mind you, but my potential fellow journeymen backed out (disclaimer: They did it for legitimate and understandable reasons). So I could have stayed home and watched TV and sat around and sneezed because of the cat, or I could have gone out to see a small woodsy part of the world. Naturally, I opted anti-cat, pro-road-trip. So last week Thursday, I left.

My only locked-in plans: a reserved campsite for Saturday and Sunday night at the Porcupine Mountains in far west of the U.P. Other than that, I had only my slightest whims to obey. Of course, I had plans in the back of my mind.

Pictured Rocks. Never seen ’em, that I can recall. The Porkies, of course. And, probably, I thought, a ride back through Minnesota. I had at that point only been to 28 states, and Minnesota was not among them. Social rounds in Chicago. Then home.

A while ago, I learned that driving alone was actually kind of fun. There’s nobody to dispute musical choices. Or routes. Or pit stops. Or anything else. Nobody to grip the door handles nervously when you narrowly miss an exit. You have complete control over the radio and the route. But no one to banter with.

No one to chip in for gas money.

Okay, flying solo isn’t ideal. I never said it was. I only said it was kinda fun. Five days on the road/in the wilderness all by yourself can stretch you. You’re the crazy guy in camp, the one the other campers wonder why he’s out here all alone, the one roasting hot dogs each night, the one trying desperately to dry his boxer shorts on the picnic table before the sun sets (they didn’t.) You’re the one who, when the sun goes down and you hear funny noises outside the tent, there’s no one else to shove awake for fight-off-the-bears-with-a-hatchet-duty.

And the UP does have bears. I just didn’t see them with my own eyes. When I got to the Porcupine Mountains, I asked the mustachioed guy at the ranger station a question. I phrased it this way:

“Okay, naïve city-boy question… Are there bears around here?”
“Ha! Well, what do you want the answer to be?”
“Well… I kinda want to see a bear. Just not at 2 am.”

He told me they hadn’t seen a bear in this campground for a while, but there were plenty in the park. And I might hear some wolves at night.

Bears are bad enough, but…Wolves? That’s not how I want to go. If I’m going to get eaten, I want to be enjoyed by one single animal, not ripped to shreds and evenly distributed by a pack of wolves. I’ve heard they’re sloppy eaters. They’d leave my various pieces strewn about the park. Perfectly tasty pieces of Jim, left for the lowly turkey vultures, then ants, and finally fungi to finish off. No, I deserve to go in one whole delicious piece.

Well, my food supply was pretty sparse. And I kept it in my car anyway. And besides, I heard the hyenas outside my tent in Tanzania and they didn’t eat me. Maybe I’m just not appetizing to wild animals. Moral of the story: I did not get eaten by wolves or bears. God must need me around for something else.

I have this one other fear when I travel: Leaving stuff behind.

In my head, I’m leaving something behind unknowingly everywhere I go. At first, it’s a few candy wrappers. Then, a few miles down the road, it’s actual food. Then money. Then camping equipment. And clothes. And finally, essential car parts. I picture myself driving down the road, items of increasing importance hemorrhaging from the automobile, leaving a trail like Hansel and Gretel so when my parents get worried in a few weeks and need to find where the wolves left my body parts, they need only to follow the trail of junk. I lose things until I finally arrive in my driveway in my underpants and hiking boots, steering wheel in hand, running along inside a frame Fred Flintstone-style.

Of course, I don’t really leave anything behind. I just worry incessantly about it. It drives me nuts. But that’s part of the beauty of car-camping. You can just cram everything into your car, and if you don’t see anything on the ground of the campsite, you can safely assume it’s all stowed somewhere among the pile of indiscernible stuff in your back seat. To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t leave anything important behind. I just felt sick each time I left a campsite.

I went to Minnesota. Have you been to Duluth? This guy has. Nice area. The downtown is unique, a strip of buildings, shops, and ports narrowly spread near the shore of Lake Superior. I didn’t stay there long. I went on toward Minneapolis, also a cool city. But I rode the light rail. Paid for my ticket, and apparently there’s nowhere for them to check it. Everybody just kinda gets on and off, like an old trolley. Honor system, I guess. I went to a Twins/Orioles game at the Metrodome. My first indoor baseball game, and one of the last in Minneapolis because they’re moving to Target Field next summer. It’s my hope they won’t need the Metrodome in November, as the Tigers should be in the playoffs. But that’s all beside the point.

From Minneapolis, I rolled through Madison, Wisconsin to see Mark, then to Chicago to hang out with Kyle and Linda. I came home Wednesday afternoon and promptly collapsed on the couch in the basement. I just don’t get enough sleep when I’m in a tent, fearing for my life, gripping a hatchet inside my sleeping bag so the bears don’t get me.

Would I do it again? I probably would. About half-way through the trip, I realized that the scale of this adventure was considerably small, and it was more of a practice for a bigger adventure someday. We’ll see what that ends up being. And next time, I probably won’t fly solo. Though it’s worth it, the experiences are all a little better when there’s someone to share them with, even if they’re going to protest your musical choices, veto the random roadside memorial visits, and grip the handle nervously when you narrowly make your exit.

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