Michigan - Day 27 - Munising and Marquette

Marquette Tourist Park, Marquette
Saturday, 27 July 2019

today's route

By the 2nd morning, the ants had shown up at the campground and, added to the Mayflies, I was just as glad to be getting back on the road.

On the road
I spent much of the morning's drive going through the Hiawatha National Forest.  Very pretty.

Almost no traffic.  Many French radio stations.

I passed the turnoff for the Taquemahnon Falls and was sorry to have to do that.  The falls are considered one of UP's more scenic attractions; they're the largest falls east of the Mississippi, other than Niagara of course.  I'd thought a week on the Upper Peninsula would be enough to hit the high spots, but now I find even 10 days might not have been enough for that.  There's a lot to see up here.

Looked like some insect has been killing trees up along here - you'd have thought it was a fire except some weren't touched.

I kept finding really strong squirrely winds that made it hard to stay on the road at times.

One of the highway clean-up crews is Newbury High's advanced biology class.  Good idea.  Surprised others haven't thought of that.  Though I don't know if all schools offer advanced biology these days - they didn't when I was in high school.

I passed parts of the forest that reminded me of tundra in Alaska.  We're not anywhere near that far north here - only on about the level of Bismark, SD, and Helena, MT, and Olympia, WA - but that's still what it reminded me of.  And the trees I'd see on Alaska's tundra - black spruce - looked much like these trees here look, though these are nowhere near as stunted as Alaska's.

Fire danger signs along the road all pointed to Very High today.

Lots of RVs on the road, for some reason.

Munising
I was very sorry not to be able to stay in the Munising area because it's near the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which I'd hoped to visit.  Unfortunately, this being a Saturday, I couldn't find any campsites available anywhere near.  And I'd have had to stay a couple of days because the only real way to get to the rocks is via boat tour ($38), which I couldn't just run in and run out for.  They also offer Glass Bottom Shipwreck Tours, per the signs.  So, yet another thing for another visit to Michigan.

However, the road led me through Munising anyway and I decided to stop and try a pasty.  This is like the pepperoni rolls in West Virginia - developed for the miners to eat underground. 

A pasty - pronounced like patsy, only with the consonants reversed - is stew without the liquid wrapped in a dough.  There are two types: the Finnish style with carrots, and the Cornish style without carrots.  They both have ground beef (usually), onions, potatoes and rutabagas. 

a Finnish-style pasty

Some online review of the various offerings of pasties around the state said those at Muldoon's in Munising were among the best.

They also said people often ask for either catsup or gravy, but that locals scorn these additions.  The nice ladies at Muldoon's, however, told me they personally used catsup with theirs, so I asked for that.  I should have asked for gravy, though I didn't know that then.

Turns out these actually are exactly like stew without the liquid wrapped in a dough.  They're big, too - I could only eat half of one for lunch.  But I found them very dry, because to me stew really does need the liquid.  Catsup didn't at all make up for it.  Next time I'll know although, not being a miner, I'll probably just forego the dough and go straight for the stew in its ordinary form.

Back on the road
From now on I'm skirting the edges of Lake Superior and I catch glimpses of it now and then.

I thought I saw some cranes in a roadside marsh.

There's a Chocolay River and Township along here.

I stopped in a rest area and had a hard time parking because most of the spaces that had been set aside for RVs were being used by cars, even though there were plenty of car spaces available.  I guess it's like people who park in handicap spaces - they don't realize their convenience is seriously inconveniencing someone else.  In fact, I took the last RV slot and several others came in behind me and drove back out again.

Lake Superior

migratory bird info

near the rest area

there are actual hills around here

Marquette
Marquette is proud of the Marquette High State Hockey Champions.

The town of Marquette is built on hills, with streets that go up and down even though it's right on Lake Superior.  Of course I got lost.

I finally parked in the City Hall parking lot to get on the internet to get found again and was impressed by St. Peter's Cathedral right across the street.

St. Peter's

Indiana's not the only state with a tree in the bell tower

And so to the campground, owned by the city and, based on its name, it's quite old.  (Tourist courts are what they called campgrounds about 100 years ago.)